Download or read book Historic Fires of New York City written by Glenn P. Corbett and published by Arcadia Publishing. This book was released on 2005 with total page 134 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Fire has shaped New York City's skyline and has transformed its political and cultural landscape. Historic Fires of New York City traverses the five boroughs, exploring the historic fires that have occurred since the very beginning of the metropolis. Starting with bucket-wielding Dutch burghers and accelerating with the appointment of 35 "strong, able, discreet, honest and sober men," the effort to bring order out of chaos has been a constant concern of the city for more than three centuries.
Download or read book Fire Department City of New York written by Paul Hashagen and published by Turner Publishing Company. This book was released on 2002 with total page 286 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Traces the history of FDNY from 1865-2000, with 2000-2002 update.
Download or read book New York Burning written by Jill Lepore and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2007-12-18 with total page 352 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Pulitzer Prize Finalist and Anisfield-Wolf Award Winner In New York Burning, Bancroft Prize-winning historian Jill Lepore recounts these dramatic events of 1741, when ten fires blazed across Manhattan and panicked whites suspecting it to be the work a slave uprising went on a rampage. In the end, thirteen black men were burned at the stake, seventeen were hanged and more than one hundred black men and women were thrown into a dungeon beneath City Hall. Even back in the seventeenth century, the city was a rich mosaic of cultures, communities and colors, with slaves making up a full one-fifth of the population. Exploring the political and social climate of the times, Lepore dramatically shows how, in a city rife with state intrigue and terror, the threat of black rebellion united the white political pluralities in a frenzy of racial fear and violence.
Download or read book The Fires written by Joe Flood and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2010-05-27 with total page 307 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: New York City, 1968. The RAND Corporation had presented an alluring proposal to a city on the brink of economic collapse: Using RAND's computer models, which had been successfully implemented in high-level military operations, the city could save millions of dollars by establishing more efficient public services. The RAND boys were the best and brightest, and bore all the sheen of modern American success. New York City, on the other hand, seemed old-fashioned, insular, and corrupt-and the new mayor was eager for outside help, especially something as innovative and infallible as "computer modeling." A deal was struck: RAND would begin its first major civilian effort with the FDNY. Over the next decade-a time New York City firefighters would refer to as "The War Years"-a series of fires swept through the South Bronx, the Lower East Side, Harlem, and Brooklyn, gutting whole neighborhoods, killing more than two thousand people and displacing hundreds of thousands. Conventional wisdom would blame arson, but these fires were the result of something altogether different: the intentional withdrawal of fire protection from the city's poorest neighborhoods-all based on RAND's computer modeling systems. Despite the disastrous consequences, New York City in the 1970s set the template for how a modern city functions-both literally, as RAND sold its computer models to cities across the country, and systematically, as a new wave of technocratic decision-making took hold, which persists to this day. In The Fires, Joe Flood provides an X-ray of these inner workings, using the dramatic story of a pair of mayors, an ambitious fire commissioner, and an even more ambitious think tank to illuminate the patterns and formulas that are now inextricably woven into the very fabric of contemporary urban life. The Fires is a must read for anyone curious about how a modern city works.
Download or read book Manhattan Phoenix written by Daniel S. Levy and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2021-04-08 with total page 513 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Shows vividly how the Great Fire of 1835, which nearly leveled Manhattan also created the ashes from which the city was reborn.In 1835, a merchant named Gabriel Disosway marveled at a great fire enveloping New York, commenting on how it "spread more and more vividly from the fiery arena, rendering every object, far and wide, minutely discernible - the lower bay and its Islands, with the shores of Long Island and NewJersey." The fire Disosway witnessed devastated a large swath of lower Manhattan, clearing roughly the same number of acres as the World Trade Center bombing, Manhattan Phoenix explores the emergence of modern New York after it emerged from the devastating fire of 1835 - a catastrophe that revealedhow truly unprepared and haphazardly organized it was - to become a world-class city merely a quarter of a century later. The one led to other. New York effectively had to start over.Daniel Levy's book charts Manhattan's almost miraculous growth while interweaving the lives of various New Yorkers who took part in the city's transformation. Some are well known, such as the land baron John Jacob Astor and Mayor Fernando Wood. Others less so, as with the African-American oystermanThomas Downing and the Bowery Theatre impresario Thomas Hamblin. The book celebrates Fire Chief James Gulick who battled the blaze, and celebrates the work of the architect Alexander Jackson Davis who built marble palaces for the rich. It chronicles the career of the merchant Alexander Stewart whoconstructed the first department store, follows the struggles of the abolitionist Arthur Tappan, and records of the efforts of the engineer John Bloomfield Jervis who brought clean water into homes. And this resurgence owed so much to the visionaries, such as Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux,who designed Central Park, creating a refuge that it remains to this day.Manhattan Phoenix reveals a city first in flames and then in flux but resolute in its determination to emerge as one of the world's greatest metropolises.
Download or read book Triangle written by David Von Drehle and published by Grove Press. This book was released on 2003 with total page 372 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Describes the 1911 fire that destroyed the Triangle Shirtwaist factory in New York's Greenwich Village, the deaths of 146 workers in the fire, and the implications of the catastrophe for twentieth-century politics and labor relations.
Download or read book The Story of the Volunteer Fire Department of the City of New York written by George William Sheldon and published by . This book was released on 1882 with total page 612 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Before the Fires written by Mark Naison and published by Fordham Univ Press. This book was released on 2016-09-01 with total page 195 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Residents of the South Bronx during its promising postwar decades tell their stories in their own words. In the 1930s, word spread in Harlem that there were spacious apartments for rent in the Morrisania section of the Bronx. Landlords, desperate to avoid foreclosure, began putting signs in windows and placing ads in New York’s black newspapers that said “We rent to select colored families”—by which they meant those with a securely employed wage earner and light complexions. Black families moved in by the score, beginning a period in which the Bronx served as a borough of hope and upward mobility. Chronicling a time when African Americans were suspended between the best and worst possibilities of New York City, Before the Fires tells the personal stories of men and women who lived in the South Bronx before the social and economic decline of the late 1960s. Located on a hill overlooking a large industrial district, Morrisania offered migrants from Harlem, the South, and the Caribbean an opportunity to raise children in a neighborhood with better schools, strong churches, more shopping, less crime, and clean air. It also boasted vibrant music venues, giving rise to such titans as Herbie Hancock, Eddie Palmieri, Valerie Simpson, the Chantels, and Jimmy Owens. Rich in detail, these interviews describe growing up and living in communities rarely mentioned in other histories. Before the Fires captures the optimism of the period—as well as the heartache of what was lost in the urban crisis and the burning of the Bronx. “Excellent . . . profound, moving.” —Robert W. Snyder, Rutgers University, Newark
Download or read book A History of New York in 27 Buildings written by Sam Roberts and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2019-10-22 with total page 305 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the urban affairs correspondent of the New York Times--the story of a city through twenty-seven structures that define it. As New York is poised to celebrate its four hundredth anniversary, New York Times correspondent Sam Roberts tells the story of the city through bricks, glass, wood, and mortar, revealing why and how it evolved into the nation's biggest and most influential. From the seven hundred thousand or so buildings in New York, Roberts selects twenty-seven that, in the past four centuries, have been the most emblematic of the city's economic, social, and political evolution. He describes not only the buildings and how they came to be, but also their enduring impact on the city and its people and how the consequences of the construction often reverberated around the world. A few structures, such as the Empire State Building, are architectural icons, but Roberts goes beyond the familiar with intriguing stories of the personalities and exploits behind the unrivaled skyscraper's construction. Some stretch the definition of buildings, to include the city's oldest bridge and the landmark Coney Island Boardwalk. Others offer surprises: where the United Nations General Assembly first met; a hidden hub of global internet traffic; a nondescript factory that produced billions of dollars of currency in the poorest neighborhood in the country; and the buildings that triggered the Depression and launched the New Deal. With his deep knowledge of the city and penchant for fascinating facts, Roberts brings to light the brilliant architecture, remarkable history, and bright future of the greatest city in the world.
Download or read book Love Goes to Buildings on Fire written by Will Hermes and published by Macmillan. This book was released on 2012-09-04 with total page 385 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Chronicles five epochal years of music in the Big Apple against a backdrop of the period's high crime, limited government resources and low rents, tracing the formations of key sounds while evaluating the contributions of such artists as Willie Colón, Bruce Springsteen and Grandmaster Flash.
Download or read book A Vast and Fiendish Plot written by Clint Johnson and published by Kensington Books. This book was released on 2010 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This thrilling story, set more than 130 years before 9/11, accurately depicts a group of Confederate soldiers who planned to set fire to New York City in 1864, detailing the lives of these soldiers, as well as prominent members of New York City society and those individuals involved in the Civil War. Original.
Download or read book New York City Firefighting 1901 2001 written by Steven Scher and published by Arcadia Publishing. This book was released on 2002 with total page 148 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The story of firefighting in New York City is one of danger, tradition, pride, excitement, and tragedy. It is also the story of man's triumph over destructive forces. From the gaslight days of horse-drawn steam engines to the World Trade Center tragedy of 2001, the heroic men and women who make up the city's most dynamic public service have risked and often lost their lives in order to protect and serve the people of New York City. New York City Firefighting: 1901-2001 chronicles the proudest fire department in America. The proximity of buildings in the city streets and the construction materials made each fire especially dangerous, but determined firefighters never hesitated to battle the flames and rescue the victims. Later, facing unprecedented heights and unparalleled danger, firefighters in New York City were called upon to battle infernos in the first skyscrapers, often using the most rudimentary equipment and barely protected from the flames. In its most trying moments, the Fire Department of New York responded to the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center in 1993 and 2001, dutifully rushing into the towers to save as many lives as possible and ultimately losing hundreds of their own.
Download or read book FIREBOAT written by Maira Kalman and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2002-08-05 with total page 48 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: * “A hundred years from now, when people want to know what we told our children about 9/11, Kalman's book should be among the first answers.”—Booklist, starred review * “Intelligently conveys those unfathomable events in a way that a picture book audience can comprehend. . . . With this inspiring book, Kalman sensitively handles a difficult subject in an age-appropriate manner.”—Publishers Weekly, starred review * “Fireboat does many things. It sets forth an adventure, helps commemorate an anniversary, offers an interesting bit of history, celebrates the underdog, and honors the fire-fighting profession. Children and adults will respond to it in as many ways.”—School Library Journal, starred review * “Exciting, uplifting, and child-sensitive. . . . Revisits the tragedy without the terror and conveys pride without preachiness."—The Bulletin of the Center for Children’s Books, starred review * “Quintessential New York artist Kalman gives us an idiosyncratic but informative look at a Big Apple institution. . . . Kalman’s use of the events of September 11 is honest and honorable, and rarely is she as straightforward as she is here.”—The Horn Book, starred review This is the inspiring true story of the John J. Harvey—a retired New York City fireboat reinstated on September 11, 2001. Originally launched in 1931, the Harvey was the most powerful fireboat of her time. After the September 11 attacks, with fire hydrants at Ground Zero inoperable and the Hudson River's water supply critical to fighting the blaze, the fire department called on the Harvey for help. There were adjustments—forcing water into hoses by jamming soda bottles and wood into nozzles with a sledgehammer—and then the fireboat's volunteer crew pumped much-needed water to the disaster site. The John J. Harvey proved she was still one of New York's Bravest! Maira Kalman brings a New York City icon to life, celebrating the energy, vitality and hope of a place and its people.
Download or read book Reminiscences of the Old Fire Laddies and Volunteer Fire Departments of New York and Brooklyn written by J. Frank Kernan and published by . This book was released on 1885 with total page 936 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book F D N Y written by Andrew Coe and published by Bloomsbury Shire Publications. This book was released on 2003 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Since the earliest years of city history, New York's firefighters have put their lives on the line to protect its citizens from fire. Written by experts on Fire Department history, this book documents the evolution of city firefighting from the earliest b
Download or read book Birth of the Bravest written by A. E. Costello and published by Macmillan. This book was released on 2003-10-03 with total page 478 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: They are called "the Bravest." They are the New York City Fire Department, ordinary men who put themselves on the line every day to save lives, and this is a chronicle of their early history. Birth of the Braves traces the history of New York firefighting from the earliest days of the city when it was part of the Dutch settlement of New Amsterdam to the end of the nineteenth century when new innovations in firefighting technology began to make their appearance. Along the way are many tales of heroism and bravery, including accounts of the disastrous fire of 1811, the great conflagration of 1835, the awful fire of 1845, and many other signature events in New York City’s history. Birth of the Bravest also documents the history of firefighting itself, the birth and evolution of fire companies (both "volunteer and paid"), legislated fire regulations, the development of new equipment to aid the bravest in their mission, and the birth of fire insurance. Birth of the Bravest also tracks individual exploits of great heroism, on the job and off, as many members went off to serve in the Civil War. A seminal part of New York City history, the chronicle of the evolution of the Fire Department is an informative tribute to the men who are New York City's Bravest. Birth of the Bravest is a substantially abridged edition of Our Firemen -A History of the New York Fire Departments Volunteer and Paid by A. E. Costello which was originally published in 1887.
Download or read book American Metropolis written by George J. Lankevich and published by NYU Press. This book was released on 1998-06-01 with total page 273 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Magnet for the ambitious, lodestone for talented and oppressed alike, Mecca for businessmen and immigrants, New York City has presided for over 350 years as the critical center of American life. From its origins as a primitive Dutch outpost to the sprawling urban complex it is today, the defining characteristic of New York has been continuous, dramatic, and rapid change. Historian George J. Lankevich's volume concentrates on political and economic affairs, illustrating how New York has always combined principle and pragmatism in its role as pace-setter in business communications, education, urban policy, and cultural life. American Metropolis is loosely divided into three historical epochs, each spanning roughly one of the last three centuries. In its early years, New York was defined by trial and tribulation; wars, fires, rebellions, and revolution were guiding influences on the colonial port. Nineteenth-century New York history was dominated by heroic figures in the form of bosses, reformers, merchant princes and statesmen, by enormous population increases, and by the achievement of commercial, financial, and cultural supremacy. For much of the twentieth century, greater New York, plagued by crime, white flight, fiscal trauma, and decay, embodied the nation's urban crisis. Its current Renaissance stands as fresh testimony to its characteristic vitality and resilience. Emphasizing the cyclical nature of New York's history through tides of crisis and renewal, George J. Lankevich here offers the definitive short history of America's most important and vibrant metropolis. By understanding the history of New York, we obtain a vital sense of what America was, is, and can become.
