Results tagged “americanrevolution”

The series of residential structures lining Flushing Ave. in Brooklyn are historic treasures, but they are a little the worse for wear and some legislators can't wait to tear them down. Officers' Row, or Admirals' Row, is a feature at the Brooklyn Navy Yard that has admittedly fallen into sad disrepair, but nonetheless has a rich history linking New York harbor to the naval industry that was a cornerstone of building the United States as an international power.

Historical ecologists and research cartographers are using historical pre-Revolution military maps produced by the British to create a 21st Century digital rendering of the topography of Manhattan in the 17th Century, before the arrival of European colonists. The New Yorker has a slideshow of a number of images that are attempts to show Manhattan as it was occupied solely by Lenape Indians. The basis for the topographical model was drawn from this 1782 map* drawn up by the British military to help defend the colony from George Washington and the Continental Army. The image above is a rendering of what a 17th Century Times Square looked like in comparison to West 42nd St. today.

Totally weird: Authorities have found a "make-shift" submarine with three men in it near the Brooklyn Cruise Terminal. WABC 7 reports that the men may have been trying to "set sail off Brooklyn."

The New York Public Library is closed today––it is a national holiday––but New Yorkers should be proud to hear that the main branch on 42nd St. and 5th Ave. has been entrusted with one of two surviving copies of the Declaration of Independence, written by Thomas Jefferson himself. The document is a handwritten duplicate of the document signed in Philadelphia 231 years ago, asserting the original thirteen colonies' indepedendence from England and starting the American Revolution.

Despite having been defeated in a City Council vote, where his chief of staff heckled Council Speaker Christine Quinn and threatened a black councilman with assassination, Councilman Charles Barron renamed a street in Brooklyn "Sonny Abubadika Carson Avenue" anyway, declaring that the renaming "is official whether they [presumably the city] take that sign down or not." Sonny Carson's name was struck from a list of people who would get honorary street signs earlier this spring. Council Speaker Quinn felt he was too divisive a figure in the city's history. This sparked a City Hall battle that frayed nerves and invoked additional police protection.

The state legislature in Albany is prepared to issue a formal apology for the historic practice of slavery and will be the first northern state in the Union to do so. Several states on the Confederate side of the Civil War have already issued similar apologies. Albany lawmakers are pushing to pass the resolution in time for "Juneteenth", which is an unofficial holiday celebrating the June 19th arrival of federal troops in Texas to announce the final eradication of slavery from the United States and its territories in 1865.

City schoolkids are woeful underperformers when it comes to taking a statewide history exam. Just over a quarter proved capable of passing an 8th grade exam that covered the U.S. Constitution, major wars the U.S. has fought in, and native cultures. The passing average for the rest of the state was 55%, which is hardly impressive, but twice as good as city kids' scores. We sympathize with the 2006 test takers, because we tried to take the test and quickly became incredibly bored around the time we reached question #7, which reduced an interesting subject to a stultifying two-tone diagram.

The Brig was built in the early 1940s and served as a naval prison. After the closing of the Brooklyn Navy Yard in 1966, the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service used the Brig as a detention center until 1984 when, faced with severe overcrowding in its prisons, New York City sought ownership of the prison. The Brig served as a minimum security prison until it was closed in December, 1994. The last occupants of the Brig were volunteer workers involved in the post-September 11th cleanup effort.

New York City introduced a proposal to develop the property to provide affordable housing several years ago. The history above was excerpted from a city press release almost three years old announcing the project. The New York Times reports this week, though, that developers will be turning the former penal facility into townhouses, co-op apartments, and rental apartments for a mixed-income population.

The Department of Housing Preservation and Development announced that a partnership between the Dunn Development Corporation and L&M Equity Participants Ltd., two development companies specializing in low-priced housing, would redevelop the 103,000-square-foot site between Flushing and Park Avenues with 434 housing units.

Gothamist noted this project back in July 2004 when it was first introduced. This particular section of Brooklyn has a history with prisons dating back to the American Revolution. Until the British left New York in 1783, there was a system of prison ships and barges anchored in the bay that is now surrounded by the Navy Yard. Approximately 11,000 Americans died on these ships from disease and starvation during the war. There is a memorial in Fort Greene Park nearby called The Prison Ships Martyrs Monument, dedicated to the prisoners whose bones continued to wash ashore in Brooklyn for years afterward.

, which chronicles these affairs from the point of view of the novel design team with which he collaborated. He also chucked a few zingers in the direction of the architect David Childs and former Governor Pataki. Left relatively unscathed was the developer Larry Silverstein, owner of the acclaimed new building (7 World Trade Center) in which the event was held.