Museum of the City of New York
During our trip to the City Museum of New York, we took a tour and traveled through time to get to know New York through every decade since it was once called New Amsterdam. The tour was very engaging, with lots of cool artifacts that were saved since the 1600s.
This museum was intriguing because it had sections that took you through New York City in every decade and gave a background and history of the time period. It was amazing how much transformation and change this city has been through and the increase in diversity that occurred. The four words used to describe New York City were; Density, Diversity, Money, and Creativity. I felt as though it was the perfect combination of words to describe this incredible city we live in.
There are many interesting things that have occurred through the years such as the progressive era, the roaring twenties and even the birth of hip hop, but the best part of seeing all the decades of New York all at once was seeing how people were always looking and fighting for change and better rights. Protests for better working conditions and treatment of immigrants, more rights for women and the black community, rights for the LGBTQ community and many more examples. The power of the people is incredibly strong and I was able to see that through the exhibit.
Speaking about the evolution of People of New York City in class, this trip was a quick roundabout of how the people in NYC really changed over the decades and reasons to come with why people were changing. In class we discuss inequality, intersectionality, and assimilation; all deep and tough discussions, however we bring it back to recurring events and how they caused these themes to occur in the history of people in NYC.
Another important theme we speak about in class includes multiculturalism and diversity in New York and how the word diversity changed through the years. It’s interesting to connect to the exhibit that diversity in the being of immigrating and Ellis Island consisted of immigrants coming from Italy and Germany versus today where diversity has broken all boundaries and people are literally coming from all over the world. The exhibit helped offer that perspective, although minimally, through the tour where we discussed diversity as a major part of New York City.
Public history and the display helps put all these topics and issues into perspective. It allows us students to put ourselves in the time period instead of seeing things only through our own lens and our current day and age. It is important to step out of our lens and remember that certain issues occurring in the 50’s and how they were approached depended on people’s knowledge and awareness of these issues.
Questions:
- How did the New Deals resemble the progressive era of the early 1900s and how did it help the people in both cases within New York City?
- How has Wall Street transformed since J.P. Morgan’s time and how is it still similar today?
