Natural History of NYC

Central Park
Getting There
In the early 1800′s, Seneca Village was the site of one of New York City’s earliest and most robust African American settlements. Located in the 80′s between 7th and 8th Avenue, the “village” was eventually displaced by the development of Central Park. The New York Historical Society has curated a web-based experience where you can explore the history and culture of Seneca Village and grapple with its dissolution to make way for the park. As you might imagine, residents of Seneca Village did not give up the land without a fight, which you can read a bit more about here.

Central Park itself has been a contested landscape since its development in the mid-1800′s, as you’ll read about in the chapter by Matthew Gandy assigned for next week. Reading a more general history of the park can help you put Gandy’s work in context. The park recently celebrated a significant anniversary, and there are buckets of historical analysis about its development online. Start with the simple stuff, and you should be able to gain a working understanding of the site before you read Gandy and before you go out exploring.

As all of you already know, Central Park is massive and it includes a wide range of smaller experiences and landscapes within its boundaries. You’re free to explore any part of the park on your own or with other members of the class, though I’d encourage you to check out the portion that used to be Seneca Village. For a place that claims to be an untouched natural oasis in the middle of the city, it can be difficult to confront what’s there now with what we know to have been there in the past. In the patch that used to be Seneca Village, we need to come to terms with a pretty landscape that bulldozed a working landschaft. As casual tourists making our way through Central Park in the area of Seneca Village, can we find any evidence of what used to be there? Why should we care at all?

Brooklyn Bridge Park
Getting There
Brooklyn Bridge Park presents us with a different set of issues than those we confront in Central Park. Yet, at the end of the day, we’re looking at the same general trends of changes in the social and economic history of the city creating and destroying (and re-creating) those places we associated with “nature.” What is Michael Van Valkenburgh, the landscape architect designing Brooklyn Bridge Park, hoping to accomplish at this site? How would you compare the design and plan for Brooklyn Bridge Park with Frederick Law Olmstead’s design for Central Park? After visiting both sites, how would you describe the differences and similarities of the physical experience of being there? As with Central Park, consider what was on the site before and the social and economic forces that have changed the site’s usefulness and availability for development into a park.

Assignment
I’ll start by saying that this is an assignment that isn’t “due” in the traditional sense. I’m trusting you to take some time out in the next two weeks to go and explore these two sites on your own or with some other folks from class. Take a notebook and journal and a print-out of this blog post to guide your reflection and conversation at the site. Finally, in the “comment” section of this blog post, take some time to note some ideas, thoughts, or reactions when you get back home. That’s all. Really. Go, explore, think, and reflect.

It’s that time of year. The first homework assignment for Natural History of NYC was distributed in class today. If you were absent, you can access the assignment by clicking the link below.

Click to Download.

It’s a fairly simple little project, and it will familiarize you with a tool used by NYC open space and community development planners in all five boroughs: the NYC OASIS Map. Have fun making your own map of lost NYC waterways and feel free to email me if you have any questions.

I mentioned this video in class earlier this week. Hope this gets you to see it sooner!

Majora was my boss at Sustainable South Bronx in 2007, where I worked on urban forestry initiatives.

It will be a few weeks before we explore the natural history of Newtown Creek in northern Brooklyn, but if you’re curious about the topic you should check out Creek Speak, a project of the Newtown Creek Alliance.

Creek Speak is an oral history project that uses online interactive maps to present the stories of people and places near Newtown Creek. You can use the map to hear stories and get to better know the little places that make up northern Brooklyn and southern Long Island City.

It’s a pretty awesome tool, and it may even be a resource for our final projects together. I know I just wasted a solid half hour listening to the stories it hosts.

In our second class together, we began to confront our thoughts about where to find nature in New York City. Given the task of taking a visitor on a tour of nature in the city, we developed a quick map of places to visit. The map, pictured here, showed that we’re mostly thinking about nature in Manhattan (with some great exceptions, like the Rooftop Farms in Greenpoint, Brooklyn). We’re also mostly thinking about parks and waterfronts. How might such a tour change after our readings this week? How will it change by the end of the semester?

Providentially, the post-it notes started to fall off the map as we discussed the concept of the whole city as an ecosystem. At the risk of leaning too heavily on metaphor, I’ll say that the map cleared itself off as we became more comfortable with the notion of New York City as a complex, dynamic ecosystem. Pictured here are the site-specific casualties of our new perspectives, laying on the ground after falling off the map.

Here are a few of the sites we pulled together (for the sake of posterity and reflection later this semester): Battery Park, Union Square, Central Park (lots of these). Unspecified Rooftop Gardens, Rooftop Farms, Bronx River Park, Pier 41 (which we had a hard time finding!), the Hudson River, and Street Trees.

On Friday, February 4, faculty from across The New School will speak in five minute marathon relays about topics related to water. I [Phil] will be speaking, however briefly, about the link between organized crime and the natural history of NYC. I’m sure to make a fool of myself, so you don’t want to miss it. Bring popcorn.

2:30 to 4:30 in the Tishman Auditorium at 66 West 12th Street.

More information HERE.

Welcome to the workshop blog for Spring 2011 Natural History of NYC, a first-year “Reading NYC” undergraduate course at The New School. Check back soon for more!