Feed on
Posts
Comments

I stumbled across Whitman’s Brooklyn: A Virtual Visit circa 1850 [http://www.whitmansbrooklyn.org], a website of images of mid-19th-century Brooklyn. As best I can tell, this fascinating site is one person’s labor of love and not a project of any university, museum, or other institution. Still, it is rich with images and may have some very interesting and useful content for teaching Whitman or New York City history. Enjoy, everyone.

On Saturday, July 26, the Metropolitan Waterfront Alliance will sponsor City of Water Day on Governors Island. Free ferries will transport visitors from Lower Manhattan to Governors Island, where there will be opportunities to kayak, canoe, fish, explore or just enjoy spectacular views of Brooklyn’s waterfront (Manhattan’s waterfront too, of course).

See the flyer (pdf) or get more information (pdf) about the event, or visit the Metropolitan Waterfront Alliance online.

Here is a Google map of the Greenpoint/Williamsburg walking tour route. Most of the stops are marked and annotated. I hope those who couldn’t attend on May 2 will be able to use this to re-create the tour.
View Larger Map

On May 2nd, Professor Dan Campo of Morgan State University led City Tech faculty members on a wide-ranging tour of Greenpoint and Williamsburg. As the group explored the industrial past and commercial present of this rapidly gentrifying area, it gained a sense of the changes that have taken place on the Brooklyn Waterfront.

To see a set of photos from the tour, please check out our Flickr account:

On Friday 2nd May, we will venture out on an exciting and informative walk of Greenpoint and Williamsburg.

This walk will assist us in understanding the transformation along the waterfront from production to commerce to consumption–and the conflicts that have gone along with those changes.

One of the highlights will be a stop at the Greenpoint Manufacturing and Design Center so we can view what’s left of the sugar refineries that lined the waterfront when Brooklyn produced half of the sugar consumed in the US.

The tour will be lead by Dr. Dan Campo, Assistant Professor in the Institute of Architecture and Planning at Morgan State University in Baltimore and expert on the history of the Brooklyn waterfront.

 

Photo Credit: “Williamsburg Waterfront” by contraceptacon

On March 7, 2008, NYU Professor Karen Karbiener visited City Tech to discuss Walt Whitman’s Brooklyn. Dr. Karbiener is Master Teacher of Humanities in the General Studies Program at NYU. She is editor of Leaves of Grass: First and Death-Bed Editions (Barnes & Noble Classics, 2005), curator of “Walt Whitman and the Promise of America, 1855-2005″ (South Street Seaport Museum), author/narrator of “Songs of Ourselves: Whitman and the Birth of Modern American Poetry” (Portable Professor, 2006), and author of the forthcoming book, Walt Whitman and New York.

View a set of photos from the event, taken by City Tech Professor Robin Michals:

Walt Whitman Session

Karen Karbiener discusses the 1855 first edition of Leaves of Grass. Photo Credit: Robin Michals.

Inaugural Public Event: “Water and Work: An Interdisciplinary Look at the Brooklyn Waterfront”
Wednesday, February 27th, 2008 - 3-5pm

This panel event featured three eminent scholars, who focused on the Brooklyn waterfront from their areas of specialization. Professor Karen Karbiener discussed Walt Whitman’s close relationship to the waterfront and its presence in his poetry. Professor Joshua Freeman analyzed the history of waterfront labor in Brooklyn since World War II. Professor Betsy McCully considered the natural history of Brooklyn’s waterfront.

(click below to see a full-size version of our poster)
Inaugural Poster

Spring Schedule

Semester 1: The History of the Brooklyn Waterfront

Inaugural Public Event: “Water and Work: An Interdisciplinary Look at the Brooklyn Waterfront”

This panel event will feature three eminent scholars, who will focus on the Brooklyn waterfront from their areas of specialization. Professor Karen Karbiener will discuss Walt Whitman’s close relationship to the waterfront and its presence in his poetry. Professor Joshua Freeman will focus on the history of waterfront labor in Brooklyn since World War II. Professor Betsy McCully will focus on the natural history of Brooklyn’s waterfront.

 

Meeting One: “The Brooklyn Waterfront: From Red Hook to Greenpoint”

This session will be held at the Brooklyn Historical Society. Led by the staff, faculty participants will be introduced to a vast store of primary source materials—manuscripts, paintings, photographs, and maps that document the evolution of Brooklyn from indigenous populations to the present. Particular focus will be on the Pierrepont Papers which cover the development of the Brooklyn Heights esplanade and the Brooklyn ferries. We will also explore the history of land use in Brooklyn, its evolution from farmland to the second largest American city in the 19th century, and its industrialization in the 20th century.

Readings: Ellen Snyder-Grenier, Brooklyn: An Illustrated History; Marcia Reiss, Brooklyn: Then and Now; Ray Saurez, “The American Factory, Brooklyn, N.Y.” from The Old Neighborhood; John Tierney, “Brooklyn Could Have Been a Contender.”

 

Meeting Two: “Walt Whitman’s Brooklyn”

This session will be led by Karen Karbeiner, who will speak on Whitman’s Brooklyn boyhood and his poetical and journalistic writings about it.

Readings: Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass (Barnes and Noble edition, with foreword by Karen Karbiener), Henry M. Christman, ed. Walt Whitman’s New York; David S. Reynolds, Walt Whitman’s America.

 

Meeting Three: “The Change in Maritime Technologies Along the Waterfront”

This session led by visiting scholar Marc Levinson and facilitated by Richard Hanley will focus on Levinson’s recent book The Box: How the Shipping Container Made the World Smaller and the World Economy Bigger. The discussion will center on the effects of the change in maritime technology from labor-intensive break-bulk shipment to containerization.

 

Meeting Four: “Yesterday’s and Today’s Waterfront—A Walking Tour of the Brooklyn Navy Yard and Its Environs”

The Brooklyn Navy Yard is a 261-acre maritime and industrial park with 4.3 million square feet of building floor area mostly in mid-rise loft structures, five piers and six dry docks. Purchased by the U.S. Navy in 1801, it employed 70,000 people at its peak during WWII. As indicated in New York City Comprehensive Waterfront Plan of 1994, the Navy Yard had 85 industrial establishments employing 2,555 workers and an additional 600 non-industrial jobs. Led by the Brooklyn Historical Society and Brooklyn Center for the Urban Environment, this field study will enable faculty to tour Brooklyn’s massive naval facility with a focus on the history of the buildings, its current usage, and changing labor history.

Reading: Joshua Freeman, Working-Class New York: Life and Labor since World War II.

Welcome

Welcome to the online home of the NEH-sponsored Water and Work project at the New York City College of Technology. We will use this blog to share our resources and findings with the public and to archive our sessions for future reference.