Village Preservation’s Tom Fox Photography Collection includes images of the Hudson River waterfront dating from the 1970s, 80s and 90s taken by Fox, who played an influential role in the research, planning, and advocacy for the redevelopment of the waterfront. [Read more…] about Featured Collection: NYC Hudson River Waterfront Photos
Hell’s Kitchen
NYC Preservationists, Officials Protest Demolition of Historic Landmarks
On Thursday, December 15th, the New York City Historic Districts Council (HDC) and their community partners were joined by elected officials and concerned members of the public for a press conference at City Hall, condemning City agencies for approving a raft of demolitions of landmarked buildings across New York City. [Read more…] about NYC Preservationists, Officials Protest Demolition of Historic Landmarks
NYC Politico Jimmy McManus and Tammany History (Series Conclusion)
Jimmy McManus was interested in promoting the political history of Hell’s Kitchen and Tammany Hall. He occasionally would co-lead walking tours about the political history of Hell’s Kitchen for the 92nd Street Y or Culture Now.
One of McManus’s earlier activities in this regard was as a member and later President of the National Democratic Club of New York, which dated from 1834 and was credited with swinging the 1844 Presidential election to Democratic candidate James K. Polk, when as the Empire Club it helped carry New York State to James K. Polk over his opponent Henry Clay. [Read more…] about NYC Politico Jimmy McManus and Tammany History (Series Conclusion)
Tammany’s McManus Club: The Final Decades
In 1984, longtime Tammany politician and leader of McManus Democratic Club James R. McManus was challenged for his position as Hell’s Kitchen’s District Leader by a reform politician named Hamed Houssain. Houssain argued that it was time for the district’s voters to retire the last vestige of Tammany Hall and throw out the organization affiliated with the corrupt disgraced Camine DeSapio.
McManus however, was overwhelmingly reelected and Mayor Ed Koch attended his victory party. For the next 33 years, until his retirement in 2017, there would be no other challenges to Jimmy McManus for the position of District Leader in Hell’s Kitchen. [Read more…] about Tammany’s McManus Club: The Final Decades
The Theatre District & Hell’s Kitchen Revival
With the recent reopening of Broadway and the Theatre District in the city of New York, which is claimed to be a $1.8 billion industry, it’s appropriate to remember James R. McManus’s role in the efforts to bring Broadway and the adjacent Hell’s Kitchen district to what it is today. [Read more…] about The Theatre District & Hell’s Kitchen Revival
Tammany’s Last Stand: The McManus Club & The McGovern Campaign
James R. McManus was born in Hell’s Kitchen in 1936 and recently died in 2019. For 54 years (from 1962 to 2016) he was the Democratic Party District Leader from the Hell’s Kitchen area. This was a position that his father Eugene E. McManus had held for 20 years before him.
Previously Eugene McManus’s great grand uncle, Thomas J. McManus, had held the position, since the formation of the McManus Democratic Club in 1892, when he defeated the prior District Leader George Washington Plunkitt, author of Plunkitt of Tammany Hall: A Series of Very Plain Talks on Very Practical Politics (1905). [Read more…] about Tammany’s Last Stand: The McManus Club & The McGovern Campaign
Hell’s Kitchen and the Battle for Urban Space
Hell’s Kitchen and the Battle for Urban Space: Class Struggle and Progressive Reform in New York City, 1894-1914 by Joseph J. Varga (Monthly Review Press, 2013) considers how urban spaces are produced, controlled, and contested by different class and political forces through an examination of the famous Manhattan neighborhood during the “Progressive Era.”
Hell’s Kitchen is among Manhattan’s most storied and studied neighborhoods. A working-class district situated next to the West Side’s middle- and upper-class residential districts, it has long attracted the focus of artists and urban planners, writers and reformers. Now, Joseph Varga takes us on a tour of Hell’s Kitchen with an eye toward what we usually take for granted: space, and, particularly, how urban spaces are produced, controlled, and contested by different class and political forces. [Read more…] about Hell’s Kitchen and the Battle for Urban Space