The New York Historical Society was such an eye opening experience. The photographs that were displayed to the class were great visualizations of how New York City has evolved over time and the kind of drastic changes that were made to make room for the industrialization of the city as a whole. My favorite photographs through out what was presented was the picture of the houses in 1901 that were taken down due to the construction for the building of the Williamsburg bridge. This opened my eyes to the idea that the 1900s pre and post Great Depression was a time of industrialization and many people were left without homes due to the construction of corporate buildings, and artifacts like bridges. Throughout the entire presentation at the library, this was something that struct out to me the most. Industrialization was a time of enrichment and development but people never really focused on how poorly citizens were affected by these kinds of developments.
This visit to the New York Historical Society was much different from one of our first trips together as a class to the Cooper Hewitt Smithsonian Design Museum. The comparison of these two visits side by side really show you how drastically New York City has changed from 1850 to 2016. Materialistic interior design never used to be a thing. The Historical Society showed that homes, cute cozy cafes, and places people used to spend everyday in, were torn down for things like the building of the Williamsburg bridge. The bridge would never have had to been built if industrialization was not booming and things like cars weren’t being introduced. I’m not saying industrialization was a bad thing, because it has definitely led to life changing advancements made by people t
hat have made our current lives in New York City much different from what they could have potentially been. Now, New York City is filled with sky scrapers and common tourist attractions like Times Square and all the iconic buildings such as the World Trade Center, Empire State Building, and Chrysler building. To build all of those current attractions, many things had to be torn down. It used to be quaint little areas all over New York City. Now, places like Stone Street and Williamsburg are trying so hard to make buldings that were “aesthetically pleasing” and “quaint” how they were in the early nineteenth century. The Cooper Hewiitt Museum showshow interior design and exterior architecture have made a compelte turn around. Instead of small buildings with fire escapes, there are hugely intric
ate buildings that all make up streets such as Museum Mile. Advances in architecture made all these buildings possible and each one of these museums gets hundreds of thousands of visitors a day, but no one really had thought about what had to be torn down to fit what is built now.
Economic wise, the country is in millions of dollars of debt. With demographic and social advancement, the debt would still be there but advances in the corporate world help the country dig deeper holes of debt but also have a greater chance of some day slowly coming out of those holes. The New York Historical Society really brightened up my vision on how drastically the common New York City streets have changed and the causes for those changes.
Karina,
Your idea to focus on how New York has physically changed is really insightful. The fact that so many homes were torn down in order to construct the Williamsburg Bridge is so disheartening and I never knew that. We have to sacrifice things sometimes in order for the city to evolve and I thought it was really cool that you touched upon that idea.
Karina,
I loved how you mentioned how in the past, New York didn’t have as much intricate and larger-scaled building as they do today. I had a similar analysis in my blog as well. I liked how you mentioned specific places like Williamsburg, you see a lot of changes going around there. Overall. great blog! I really enjoyed it.