Doc Chat, Research at NYPL
Doc Chat Forty-Two: The Brooklyn Battery Bridge and the Fight to Save New York
On February 3, 2022, Doc Chat kicked off another great season by digging into the story of a never-built NYC bridge and the origins of the city's preservation movement.
A weekly seriesfrom NYPL's Center for Research in the Humanities, Doc Chat pairs an NYPL curator or specialist and a scholar to discuss evocative digitized items from the Library's collections and brainstorm innovative ways of teaching with them. In Episode Forty-Two,NYPL curators Ian Fowler and Julie Golia examined maps proposing the construction of the Brooklyn Battery Bridge, a development project that would have decimated the built environments of downtown Manhattan and South Brooklyn, and that helped spark the city's modern preservation movement.
Doc Chat Episode 42: The Brooklyn Battery Bridge and the Fight to Save New York from The New York Public Library on Vimeo. A transcript of this episode is available here.
Below are some handy links to materials and sources suggested in the episode.
Episode Forty-Two: Primary Sources
In addition to the map above, Ian and Julie examined the following:
Both maps are from the Robert Moses papers, held in the Library’s Manuscripts, Archives, and Rare Books Division.
This document is from the Albert Sprague Bard papers, held in the Library’s Manuscripts, Archives, and Rare Books Division.
Edwin McDowell, “Moses Files Are Opened,” The New York Times, November 4, 1987, C27.
Episode Forty-Two: Readings and Resources
Hillary Ballon and Kenneth T. Jackson, eds., Robert Moses and the Modern City: The Transformation of New York (W.W. Norton & Co., 2007).
“The Brooklyn Battery Bridge,” New York Preservation Archives Project.
Robert Caro, The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York (Vintage Books, 1975).
Anthony Flint, Wrestling with Moses: How Jane Jacobs Took on New York's Master Builder and Transformed the American City (Random House, 2009).
Roberta Brandes Gratz, The Battle for Gotham: New York in the Shadow of Robert Moses and Jane Jacobs (Nation Books, 2010). Also in e-book format.
Jane Jacobs, The Death and Life of Great American Cities (Vintage Books, 1963).
Stuart Marques, “The Brooklyn Battery Bridge,” New York City Department of Records blog, September 27, 2019.
Suleiman Osman, The Invention of Brownstone Brooklyn: Gentrification and the Search for Authenticity in Postwar New York (Oxford University Press, 2011). Also in e-book format.
Kara Schlichting, New York Recentered: Building the Metropolis from the Shore (University of Chicago Press, 2019). Also in e-book format.
Mason Williams, City of Ambition: FDR, La Guardia, and the Making of Modern New York (W.W. Norton & Co., 2013).
“The My Day Project,” The Eleanor Roosevelt Papers Project, George Washington University.
Join the Doc Chat Conversation
Doc Chat episodes take place on Zoom every Thursday at 3:30 PM. Check out upcoming episodes on NYPL's calendar, and make sure you don't miss an episode by signing up for NYPL's Research newsletter, which will include links to register. A video of each episode will be posted on the Doc Chat Channel of NYPL's blog shortly after the program. There you can also explore videos and resources for past episodes. See you at the next Doc Chat!
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