The Underground Railroad Coalition recently announced a major effort to celebrate the 200th anniversary of the New York State constitutional provision that ended slavery in the State on July 4, 1827.
The emancipation provision in the New York State Constitution of 1799 provided for the gradual elimination of slavery in New York, but it did not end the widespread legal race discrimination in the state. The most glaring example of this was the New York State Constitution of 1821, which eliminated property qualifications to vote for white men, but denied black men owning less than $250 worth of property the right to vote. [Read more…] about Real Estate, Philip Payton And The Rise of Black Harlem
European starlings are one of the most common bird species in the United States. They are known for their stunning aerial displays (murmerations), but many observers consider them a curse.
When I was growing up in the 1950s, my mother had one of those old Maytags. The washing machine agitated the clothes in the soapy water until she turned it off.
In early November 1966, 
Zachary J. Violette’s new book The Decorated Tenement: How Immigrant Builders and Architects Transformed the Slum in the Gilded Age (University of Minnesota Press, 2019) reexamines urban America’s tenement buildings born of the housing reform movement embraced by the American-born elite in the late nineteenth century, centering on the immigrant neighborhoods of New York and Boston.
The Gotham Center for New York City History has announced Rethinking the Grid, a program looking at the NYC street grid, has been set for Monday, May 6th, at 6:30 pm, in the The Graduate Center of CUNY, Skylight Room (9th Floor).
The Albany Institute of History & Art is set to host a lecture on the Brunner-Lay Plan of 1914 with professor emeritus John Pipkin.
A discussion about urban renewal in the Hudson Valley and exploring creative ways communities mobilize around contested landscapes has been set for Sunday, April 7th, from 3 to 5 pm, at the Fullerton Center, 297 Grand Street, Newburgh. 
Neighborhoods change. Ours was changing when my single parent mom managed to buy