“A Time of Struggle”

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Roberta Gold
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
New York City ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
Rent Control ◽  
Housing Crisis ◽  
World War ◽  
Housing Shortage ◽  
The Great Depression ◽  
The City ◽  
New Yorkers

This chapter examines the unprecedented housing crisis that erupted in New York City at the end of World War II. At the end of the war, New Yorkers faced their worst housing shortage ever. The housing supply that had already been inadequate for the city's population and contained many substandard tenements had fallen even further behind, as construction virtually ceased during the Great Depression and the war. Meanwhile, demand was rising. Even the worst slum apartments found a market among African Americans who were moving north and discovering that de facto segregation confined them to a few crowded neighborhoods. By 1950, census figures showed that the city required an additional 430,000 dwelling units to properly house its population. This chapter looks at the rise of tenant activists and how they addressed the housing crisis via grassroots mobilizations in concert with leftist and liberal organizations, allowing them not only to retain, but also to institutionalize, the signal achievements of rent control and public housing.

“The Child Is Never Basically Bad”

2019 ◽  
pp. 13-38
Author(s):  
Carl Suddler
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
New York City ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
York City ◽  
Juvenile Justice System ◽  
Youth Crime ◽  
World War ◽  
Criminal Behaviors ◽  
Depression Era ◽  
The City

This chapter focuses on the juvenile justice system and its related efforts to address youth crime in New York City before World War II. From the 1930s to the onset of the war, there was a nationwide tension about how to address crime. In New York City, this debate had racial, political, and social implications that persisted beyond the period. On one side, there were those, such as New York City mayor Fiorello La Guardia, who believed crime in the city was rampant and that an increased carceral sovereignty, including preventive policing, was critical to establish order. On the other side, there were those, such as Jane M. Bolin, who rejected such logic and aspired to advance a neo-Progressive rationale that emphasized the correction of social ills contributing to criminal behaviors—regardless of the numbers. This chapter provides a sketch of Harlem during the Depression era, with an emphasis on black youths and various crime-prevention effortsthey encountered.

Introduction

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Roberta Gold
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
Civil Rights ◽  
Labor Union ◽  
Housing Crisis ◽  
Alternative Vision ◽  
Racially Mixed ◽  
The Right ◽  
The City ◽  
New Yorkers

This book explores the emergence of New York City's tenant movement as the leading voice for an alternative vision of residence and citizenship against the backdrop of suburban expansion. It considers how tenants responded to the unprecedented housing crisis that faced New Yorkers at the end of World War II and discusses their positions on three public policy questions: public housing, slum clearance, and civil rights. It also examines the tenants' creation of labor-union cooperatives and their fight against “urban renewal”; the struggle over the rent strikes that erupted in Harlem and other ghettos in 1963; and how community politics played out in racially mixed neighborhoods where tenants waged campaigns against redevelopment in the mid-1960s. The book highlights the variety of ways in which New York tenants laid claim to what Marxists have called “the right to the city”: a kind of democratic say over the uses of capital to shape the urban environment and the lives of its inhabitants.

scholarly journals Time for Revisionism on Rent Control?

1995 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 99-120 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard Arnott
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
New York City ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
North America ◽  
Housing Market ◽  
Control Systems ◽  
Rent Control ◽  
World War ◽  
Imperfectly Competitive ◽  
Case Basis

Economists’ traditional hostility to rent contols is based on models that treat the housing market as perfectly competitive and on the experience with ‘hard’ controls in New York City and many European countries following World War II. The current ‘soft’ rent control systems in North America are varied and qualitatively different from earlier hard controls. The theoretical case against them is weak, particularly when the housing market is viewed as imperfectly competitive. The empirical case against them is weak, too. Economists should reconsider their blanket opposition to current rent control systems and evaluate them on a case-by-case basis.

“We Are the Only Wonderful Things”

2020 ◽  
pp. 269-314
Author(s):  
Melissa J. Homestead
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
World War ◽  
The Great Depression ◽  
Greenwich Village ◽  
Park Avenue ◽  
Living Together ◽  
Permanent Home ◽  
Desert Island ◽  
The City

After losing their Greenwich Village apartment in 1927, Cather and Lewis had no permanent home in New York City, living together instead at the Grosvenor Hotel when both were in the city. In 1932, they finally leased an apartment on Park Avenue. The first half of this chapter reconstructs their life together in the 1930s and 1940s living on Park Avenue and traveling to Europe and Mt. Desert Island in Maine. The chapter includes their responses to the Great Depression and World War II, the formation of new friendships and maintenance of old ones, the deeper intertwining of their families, and Cather’s declining health. After describing Cather’s death and burial, the second half of the chapter tells the story of Edith Lewis’s mourning for Cather in the years immediately after Cather’s death and her work as Cather’s literary executor.

International Opera in Nineteenth-century New York

2020 ◽  
pp. 244-269
Author(s):  
Karen Ahlquist
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
New York ◽  
New York City ◽  
World War I ◽  
Buenos Aires ◽  
Considerable Extent ◽  
World War ◽  
Metropolitan Opera ◽  
The City

This chapter charts how canonic repertories evolved in very different forms in New York City during the nineteenth century. The unstable succession of entrepreneurial touring troupes that visited the city adapted both repertory and individual pieces to the audience’s taste, from which there emerged a major theater, the Metropolitan Opera, offering a mix of German, Italian, and French works. The stable repertory in place there by 1910 resembles to a considerable extent that performed in the same theater today. Indeed, all of the twenty-five operas most often performed between 1883 and 2015 at the Metropolitan Opera were written before World War I. The repertory may seem haphazard in its diversity, but that very condition proved to be its strength in the long term. This chapter is paired with Benjamin Walton’s “Canons of real and imagined opera: Buenos Aires and Montevideo, 1810–1860.”

scholarly journals Police Misconduct, Community Opposition, and Urban Governance in New York City, 1945–1965

2015 ◽  
Vol 44 (4) ◽  
pp. 643-668 ◽  
Author(s):  
Themis Chronopoulos
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
New York City ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
York City ◽  
Urban Governance ◽  
Police Department ◽  
Police Misconduct ◽  
World War ◽  
Police Reform ◽  
Black Freedom

In the post–World War II period, the police department emerged as one of the most problematic municipal agencies in New York City. Patrolmen and their superiors did not pay much attention to crime; instead they looked the other way, received payoffs from organized crime, performed haphazardly, and tolerated conditions that were unacceptable in a modern city with global ambitions. At the same time, patrolmen demanded deference and respect from African American civilians and routinely demeaned and brutalized individuals who appeared to be challenging their authority. The antagonism between African Americans and the New York Police Department (NYPD) intensified as local and national black freedom organizations paid more attention to police behavior and made police reform one of their main goals.

Activism from the Start

2021 ◽  
pp. 9-26
Author(s):  
Daniel R. Garodnick
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Civil Rights ◽  
World War I ◽  
York City ◽  
Housing Crisis ◽  
World War ◽  
City Life ◽  
East Village ◽  
The Town ◽  
New Yorkers

This chapter begins by describing the redbrick buildings that emerge out of the East Village on Manhattan's East Side, the plain and unenticing facades of Stuyvesant Town and Peter Cooper Village that disguise the unique slice of city life that takes place within. It talks about Stuy Town's idyllic quality that contradicts the tumultuous history that produced this middle-class enclave tucked in the midst of Manhattan. It also explains Stuy Town's roots that are planted in bitter soil as the town was born of government-backed, and subsidized, racist policies and displaced with poor New Yorkers. The chapter tells Stuy Town's story of activism, where elected officials, civil rights leaders, and tenants joined together to fight against corporate greed and unjust policies, and for the rights of New Yorkers. It recounts how Stuy Town emerged from a housing crisis in New York City that began during World War I.

Florence Jaffray Harriman

2019 ◽  
pp. 54-77
Author(s):  
Philip Nash
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
New York City ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
York City ◽  
Democratic Party ◽  
World War ◽  
The Face ◽  
Party Activist ◽  
Franklin Roosevelt

This chapter looks at the tenure of Florence Jaffray Harriman, minister to Norway (1937–1941). Harriman was a prominent New York City socialite and Democratic Party activist. President Franklin Roosevelt agreed to send the sixty-six-year-old Harriman to Norway because it was a small, neutral country unlikely to become involved in a European war. When World War II broke out in 1939, Harriman was caught in the midst of it. She performed admirably in the episode involving the City of Flint, a US merchant vessel captured by the Germans, and even more so when the Nazis invaded Norway in April 1940. Harriman risked her life trying to keep up with the fleeing Norwegian leadership, which was being pursued by German forces. Her performance in the face of such danger earned her widespread praise, further strengthening the case for female ambassadors.

The Swash and the Buckler

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alan K. Rode
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
New York City ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
York City ◽  
Santa Fe ◽  
World War ◽  
Santa Fe Trail

Curtiz directed The Sea Hawk, an epic swashbuckler starring Errol Flynn. Shot on the studio’s Stage 21, which could be flooded with water and included two hydraulically operated ship sets, the picture was personally crafted by Curtiz, who shot unauthorized action scenes instead of relying on stock footage that Hal Wallis wanted to use. The picture was a smash, although Flynn had become increasingly upset about his typecasting and working with Curtiz. Also explored is a famous Curtiz anecdote that illustrates the director’s total focus on realism and disregard for the safety of performers. After a whirlwind trip to New York City, Curtiz directed the notoriously inaccurate Santa Fe Trail, with Flynn and de Havilland, and an outstanding version of Jack London’s The Sea Wolf, starring Edward G. Robinson, Ida Lupino, and John Garfield. Curtiz and Flynn had a final falling-out during Dive Bomber, a Technicolor tribute to the aerial navy. Flynn physically attacked the director, and the pair never worked together again.Although bereft of Warner’s top male star, Curtiz would move on to his greatest films as World War II began.

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