Gotham Center Podcasts

David E. Kaufman and Yitzchak Schwartz, architectural historians of Jewish New York, on Central Synagogue in Midtown

Martin Melosi, author of the forthcoming Fresh Kills: A History of Consuming and Discarding in New York City, on the infamous landfill-turned-park in Staten Island

Angela Kane, professor of dance at the University of Michigan and the forthcoming author of the first critical study of Paul Taylor, on the famous choreographer’s studio in the Lower East Side

Benjamin Flowers, author of Skyscraper: The Politics and Power of Building New York City in the Twentieth Century, on the Skyscraper Museum in Battery Park

Eric Dregni, author of Vikings in the Attic: In Search of Nordic America, on Scandinavia House in Murray Hill

Lindsay K. Campbell, author of City of Forests, City of Farms: Sustainability Planning for New York City’s Nature, on the Brooklyn Grange rooftop farm at the Navy Yard

Joseph Alexiou, author of Gowanus: Brooklyn’s Curious Canal, on the notoriously polluted creek, and the Conservancy working to restore it

In this episode of The Gotham Center podcast “Sites and Sounds,” Gail Fenske talks about the Woolworth Building in Lower Manhattan.

Fenske is a Professor of architecture at Roger Williams University and the author of a celebrated book on the Woolworth, situating the pioneering skyscraper within the broader issues of early 20th century urban America -- providing an encyclopedic, but highly readable background on its construction, life, and relevance in terms of business, architecture, technology and, of course, New York City. Here, we get a taste of that larger work. 

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In this episode of The Gotham Center podcast “Sites and Sounds,” Edith Gonzalez talks about the Pieter Claesen Wyckoff House in Canarsie, Brooklyn, the oldest structure in the city and the first to be designated a landmark.

Typifying the architectural vernacular of the Dutch, New York’s first colonial settlers, the farmhouse also bears the physical reflection of the myriad social changes which came afterward, thus offering a unique window onto the city’s past. Gonzalez, an historical archaeologist specialized in the colonial Americas, has excavated a number of agricultural estates in the West Indies and NYC, including Wyckoff House -- and in this podcast asks, 'What's in a home?'

For more podcasts like this, and for more Gotham Center programming, visit us at GothamCenter.org and sign up to our mail list. Thanks for listening.

In this episode of The Gotham Center podcast “Sites and Sounds,” Fred Goodman talks about Woodlawn Cemetery in the north Bronx.

A massive necropolis of 400 immaculately and privately maintained acres, Woodlawn serves as the final resting place for 300,000 New Yorkers, counting among its long term inhabitants Herman Melville, Duke Ellington, Robert Moses, Fiorello LaGuardia, Miles Davis, and dozens of Gilded Age titans. Although it remains unknown to many who live in New York City, it’s a place of great cultural and historical significance as well as architectural distinction. Drawing on his book about the subject, Goodman reminds us here that before the age of philanthropic foundations, tombstones served as a way for the rich and famous to demonstrate their stature in the afterlife, and, in a series of portraits, restores some of the once eminent-half-forgotten New Yorkers now buried in this, the city’s largest cemetery.

For more podcasts like this, and for more Gotham Center programming, visit us at GothamCenter.org and sign up to our mail list. Thanks for listening.