Saving the Subway

Last Subway ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 96-123
Author(s):  
Philip Mark Plotch
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Public Transportation ◽  
York City ◽  
Operating Costs ◽  
Budget Cuts ◽  
The World ◽  
Downward Spiral ◽  
Subway System ◽  
The City

This chapter describes how, in the 1970s, the New York City subway system continued the downward spiral of fewer riders, budget cuts, and reduced service, which led to a loss of more riders, further budget cuts, and even worse service. Despite carrying fewer passengers, the transit system's operating costs kept increasing. David Yunich's successor at the Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA), Harold Fisher, failed to address the MTA's slide, although he claimed that his programs were making public transportation travel more efficient, comfortable, and safe. By 1980, New York City's subway riders had more to complain about than ever before. New York City's subway system was not just unreliable, crowded, and filthy; it was also the most dangerous in the world. Moreover, the ongoing deterioration of the subways was threatening the city's economy. The chapter then focuses on the role of house developer Richard Ravitch as MTA chair. Ravitch had no interest in restarting the Second Avenue subway, and the project was a low priority for many of the communities it would serve. Instead, under Ravitch's leadership, the MTA took care of the abandoned tunnels below Second Avenue. More importantly for the future of the neighborhoods that the Second Avenue subway had been designed to serve, Ravitch rescued the existing subway system and the city along with it.

The Billionaire’s Ambitions

Last Subway ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 49-72
Author(s):  
Philip Mark Plotch
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
New York City ◽  
Public Transportation ◽  
York City ◽  
Transportation Network ◽  
East Side ◽  
Legislative Session ◽  
Transportation Agencies ◽  
The City ◽  
Grand Vision

This chapter assesses the roles played by New York governor Nelson Rockefeller and New York City mayor John Lindsay, as well as William Ronan, in transforming the transportation system. Ronan, Rockefeller, and Lindsay all realized that improving public transportation was critical to strengthening the economy of the city and the region. They were also well aware of the benefits of a Second Avenue subway, since all three of them lived on the Upper East Side. After Lindsay failed to reorganize the transportation agencies, Rockefeller and Ronan developed their own grand vision for the region's transportation network, and in December of 1966, Ronan stepped down from his post as secretary to begin implementing their plan. At the beginning of the state's 1967 legislative session, Rockefeller and Ronan announced their two-pronged approach. First, they proposed integrating the New York City Transit Authority and the Triborough Bridge and Tunnel Authority (TBTA) into the Metropolitan Commuter Transportation Authority (MCTA). In addition, Rockefeller and Ronan would seek voter approval to borrow $2.5 billion that would be dedicated for roadway and public transportation improvements across the state. In 1967, the governor and Ronan obtained the support they needed to transform the transportation network, a feat that Lindsay had not been able to accomplish.

Introduction

2018 ◽  
pp. 1-14
Author(s):  
Catherine Keyser
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
New York City ◽  
York City ◽  
Great Gatsby ◽  
The Great Gatsby ◽  
The World ◽  
First Time ◽  
The City

In The Great Gatsby (1925), Nick Carraway gazes upon the New York City skyline: Over the great bridge, with the sunlight through the girders making a constant flicker upon the moving cars, with the city rising up across the river in white heaps and sugar lumps all built with a wish out of non-olfactory money. The city seen from the Queensboro Bridge is always the city seen for the first time, in its first wild promise of all the mystery and beauty of the world....

Staging Integration

2019 ◽  
pp. 32-71
Author(s):  
Rebekah J. Kowal
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Natural History ◽  
York City ◽  
Public Institutions ◽  
Educational Outreach ◽  
The Public ◽  
The World ◽  
History Of

Between 1943 and 1952, the American Museum of Natural History sponsored a dance program called Around the World with Dance and Song. Chapter 1 focuses on the history of this program as evidence of the museum’s efforts to stage globalism. Drawing on extensive archival materials, the chapter documents the role of director Hazel Lockwood Muller to develop the program as part of the museum’s larger educational outreach activities. The chapter details how over the course of its history the program met growing cultural expectations that public institutions such as museums serve the public good. Serving in this capacity, the museum become a de facto concert dance venue, elevating the profile of international dance performance in New York City and for the nation and heightening a globalist consciousness among its audiences. Even so, the museum’s performances and the challenges the museum faced in sustaining them manifested the difficulties of putting globalism into practice. While the program was successful in elevating values of ethnic self-definition in embodied dance practices, it promoted an ideology of cultural integrationism that maintained dominant universalist assumptions about Western cultural superiority.

An Empty Promise

Last Subway ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 27-48
Author(s):  
Philip Mark Plotch
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
New York City ◽  
York City ◽  
New York State ◽  
The State ◽  
Public Works ◽  
Constitutional Amendment ◽  
System P ◽  
Subway System ◽  
The City

This chapter examines how parks commissioner Robert Moses had been a powerful player in Fiorello La Guardia's administration and a dominant force under William O'Dwyer. Moses simultaneously held multiple public-sector positions that gave him enormous power over public works projects in the New York metropolitan area. During the four years and eight months of the O'Dwyer administration, O'Dwyer and Moses convinced New Yorkers, the media, and even state legislators that the city would soon begin building a Second Avenue subway. However, New York City was in a precarious financial situation. Not only was New York City getting less federal aid, but it was also reaching the maximum amount of money it could borrow, a level defined in the New York State constitution. To generate support for raising fares and building the new subway, O'Dwyer's team lied, claiming the Second Avenue subway would be self-sufficient and that the fare increase would create a financially sustainable and growing subway system. In 1950 and 1951, the state legislature authorized a constitutional amendment that would allow the city to borrow an additional $500 million over and beyond its constitutional debt limit. After the amendment passed, city officials knew that the city could not afford to proceed with the Second Avenue subway. By 1953, the city's business leaders and their allies in the state capital had lost faith in the city's ability to manage the transit system.

Strings and Skins

2020 ◽  
pp. 54-81
Author(s):  
Benjamin Lapidus
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
New York City ◽  
Puerto Rican ◽  
York City ◽  
The United States ◽  
The People ◽  
The World ◽  
Percussion Instruments ◽  
Latin Music

This chapter outlines the important history and role of craftsmen based in New York City who produced and repaired traditional instruments used in the performance of Latin music. It introduces individuals who came from Cuban, Puerto Rican, Dominican, and Jewish communities, and examines how their instruments physically represented the actual sound of Latin Music to New York and the world on widely disseminated recordings. Many of these instrument makers also sold their instruments beyond New York City and the United States. The chapter also discusses the work of builders and musicians in New York City to create and modify the tools used to forge the sound of Latin music and diffuse both the instruments and their aesthetic throughout the world. Ultimately, the chapter seeks to unify into one coherent narrative, the efforts of folklorists, journalists, and authors who paid attention to the origins of hand percussion instruments in New York, their subsequent mass production, and the people who built the instruments used to play Latin music in New York City.

Johann Most and the German Anarchists

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tom Goyens
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
New York City ◽  
York City ◽  
Social Revolution ◽  
Working Classes ◽  
International Profile ◽  
The City ◽  
As If

This essay tells the story of the first instance of a revolutionary anarchist movement in New York City, and the role of radical immigrant Johann Most in shaping and dividing the movement. This urban, immigrant movement pioneers several features that will be part of various subsequent movements and expressions of anarchism in the city. For example, Germans grounded their community in beerhalls and other meeting places in specific neighborhoods. They built cultural and recreational spaces and groups as if to live anarchism now, while advocating for it in public. The German anarchists also maintained an international profile through periodicals, and experienced the downside of ethnic insularity. Most added an ideological element when he advocated social revolution, propaganda by deed, and arming the working classes. The image of the anarchist bomb thrower was born and lingers to this day in the minds of mainstream observers.

Urban Consumers on Two Wheels

Transfers ◽  
2011 ◽  
Vol 1 (3) ◽  
pp. 90-112 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tomás López-Pumarejo
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Puerto Rico ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Urban Landscape ◽  
Outdoor Advertising ◽  
The World ◽  
Street Furniture ◽  
The Impact ◽  
The City

Large-scale public bicycle rental programs represent the latest grand venture for outdoor advertising corporations. By supporting these programs, advertisers gain unfettered access to street furniture and municipal billboard space and thus acquire the power to transform the city dwellers' experience of the urban landscape both visually and kinetically. These public-private bike rental programs have mushroomed around the world due in part to the impact of Paris' Vélib, which is the world's largest. This paper discusses the role of outdoor advertising in this trend, and focuses on two existing and two projected public bicycle programs. The existing programs are Vélib and Montreal's Bixi; and the projected ones are slated for New York and San Juan, Puerto Rico.1

New York City at the dawn of neurological surgery

2016 ◽  
Vol 125 (5) ◽  
pp. 1291-1300
Author(s):  
Robert A. Solomon
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
New York City ◽  
York City ◽  
Early 20Th Century ◽  
Surgical Subspecialty ◽  
The Us ◽  
The World ◽  
Neurological Surgery ◽  
Neurological Surgeon

Although there are many cities that can claim to have been the incubator of modern neurological surgery, the rise of this surgical subspecialty in New York City in the late 19th and early 20th century mirrors what was occurring around the world. The first confirmed brain tumor operation in the US was performed there in 1887. The author describes the role of several pioneers in the development of neurological surgery. Charles Elsberg was the first dedicated neurological surgeon in New York City and was instrumental in the development of the Neurological Institute and the careers of several other notable neurosurgeons.

Nineteenth-Century Stories and Columns

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Aurora Wallace
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
New York ◽  
New York City ◽  
York City ◽  
The World ◽  
News Industry ◽  
The City

This chapter sets Joseph Pulitzer's spectacular building for his paper, the New York World, against the moves uptown by the Herald and the Times that would begin the shift away from the nineteenth-century concentration on Park Row. Pulitzer's aim was to have the tallest building in the world and a shining beacon in New York City. At twenty-six stories and rising over three hundred feet from the sidewalk to the base of the lantern on top of the dome, the building achieved the height superiority and the notoriety that Pulitzer wanted. The chapter demonstrates how the taller structures signaled a new corporate presence in the city, as wealthy press barons with seemingly unlimited resources increasingly led the news industry. Publishers like Pulitzer built their offices on the uppermost floors from which they could survey the city, their readers, and their competitors.

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