📖A City within a City—A Review of “Freedomland: Co-op City and the Story of New York”

November 9, 2022.Reading time 12 minutes.

Sammartino, Annemarie H. Freedomland: Co-op City and the Story of New York. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2022. Reviewed by Katie Uva East of I-95 and west of the Hutchinson River Parkway, on 320 acres of marshy land that was once, briefly, home to a United States-themed (and United States-shaped) amusement park called Freedomland, stands […]

The Tyranny of the Map: Rethinking Redlining

November 3, 2022.Reading time 66 minutes.

By Robert Gioielli Teaching the history of racism in America can be a difficult thing. Not because students deny it, but because it is something that is so ubiquitous, so all encompassing, that many (particularly white) students let the idea roll over and past them. They know racism existed in the past and people did […]

Announcing the Winner of the Sixth Annual UHA/The Metropole Grad Student Blogging Contest

October 27, 2022.Reading time 3 minutes.

Believing that blogging is an excellent way to teach beyond the classroom, market scholarship, and promote the enduring value of the humanities, The Metropole established the Graduate Student Blogging Contest in 2017. This year, the theme of the contest was “The Senses,” which asked contributors to tell a story about any time, topic, person, or place […]

The Second Story: Looking Up to Henry Binford

October 19, 2022.Reading time 14 minutes.

By Amanda I. Seligman Henry Binford’s most legendary urban tours are ones that he led on Chicago’s elevated trains, but he knows his way around the city by car too. Once while driving with a small group during my time in graduate school, Henry found his planned route blocked. Undeterred, he drove over a block […]

Living in White Spaces: Suburbia’s Hidden Histories

October 10, 2022.Reading time 30 minutes.

By David S. Rotenstein In 2009 I learned about one African American woman who briefly lived in Silver Spring, Maryland, a Washington, DC, suburb. She worked for a white physician’s family. Lucille Walker’s story as a Black domestic worker survives in bits and pieces in the memory of the physician’s daughter, Ann Scandiffio. In 1939 […]

Disciplining the Nation: Documenting Imprisonment and Punishment in the Gilded Age

October 6, 2022.Reading time 6 minutes.

By Timothy J. Gilfoyle The fear of increasing crime in nineteenth-century American cities generated an unprecedented expansion of penitentiary and carceral systems throughout the United States. The autobiography of George Appo (1856-1930) presents a rare window into this subaltern world of incarcerated men. Appo was arrested more than a dozen times and spent more than a decade […]

“They Cleaned Me Out Entirely”: An Enslaved Woman’s Experience with General Sherman’s Army

October 4, 2022.Reading time 22 minutes.

This piece is the sole entrant into the Sixth Annual UHA/The Metropole Graduate Student Blogging Contest. We invited graduate students to “tell a story about any time, topic, person, or place in urban history that foregrounds sight, sound, smell, taste, or touch,” and this essay depicts the sensory experiences of a woman exercising her agency […]

For Whom the Clock Ticks? Cannon Balls, Cruise Ships and Capital Accumulation on the Bosphorus

September 29, 2022.Reading time 29 minutes.

Editor’s note: Istanbul is the Metropolis of the Month for September. This is the sixth entry in the series. You can read additional entries, as they are published, linked at the conclusion of this post. By Yasemin Akçagüner As the ferry approaches the port of Karaköy on the European bank of the Bosphorus, the mast […]

Once Upon a Time in Istanbul: The City of Melancholia as Remembered by Orhan Pamuk

September 27, 2022.Reading time 19 minutes.

Editor’s note: Istanbul is the Metropolis of the Month for September. This is the fifth entry in the series. You can read additional entries, as they are published, linked at the conclusion of this post. By Nefise Kahraman Istanbul, that cosmopolitan city of empires, featured in the itineraries of many travelers, an exoticized setting for […]

Visibility and Power: The Changing Nature of Public Space in the Beyoğlu District of Istanbul

September 20, 2022.Reading time 25 minutes.

Editor’s note: Istanbul is the Metropolis of the Month for September. This is the fourth entry in the series. You can read additional entries, as they are published, linked at the conclusion of this post. By Kirsten Voris As our airport bus turned up the hill towards Taksim Square, I was describing it to my […]