History, Natural History & the Arts
Jeffrey Kroessler, a longtime board member of the Historic Districts Council (HDC) in New York City, preservationist, author, and historian, passed away on Sunday, February 5th at the age of 71.
Kroessler served on HDC’s boards of directors and advisers for 36 years, helping to craft the organization’s advocacy strategies and educational programs on preservation across the city. [Read more…] about Remembering Historian, Preservationist Jeffrey Kroessler (1952-2023)
What and where a person eats, suggests togetherness with one community and dis-identification with another and is therefore a factor that affects all migrant communities. Consumption conveys an idea of public identity.
Food can also serve as a psychological stimulus by unlocking emotional childhood reminiscences. Such experiences have frequently been expressed creatively. There are, for example, the uncooked wrinkled French prunes for Tolstoy’s Ivan Il’ich or the famous “petites madeleines” for Marcel Proust’s Swann that recapture vivid images of early years. [Read more…] about Mayonnaise, Hollandaise, Huguenots and Nostalgia: A Culinary History
On June 12, 1909, New York City began an eight-day celebration of the connection of the East Side of Manhattan with Long Island City in Queens with the Queensboro Bridge, designed by Henry Hornbostel.
Though it officially opened to traffic on March 30, 1909, the June festivities drew over 300,000 people (larger than the population of Queens at the time) to see the bridge lit up with electricity, and hear 1,500 children sing the “Star-Spangled Banner” in its honor. It meant that crossing the East River was no longer an obstacle to the development of the borough of Queens. [Read more…] about When The City Celebrated The Queensboro Bridge