( AP Photo/Eduardo Munoz Alvarez )
Documentary filmmaker Ric Burns and James Sanders, architect and filmmaker, co-authors (with Lisa Ades) of New York: An Illustrated History (Knopf; Expanded edition, 2021), quiz listeners on New York City history and discuss their newly expanded book on the subject.
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Brian Lehrer: Brian Lehrer on WNYC and for the next two segments of the show, we'll try something a little different. First, we'll have today's life by the numbers quiz. It's 100 years of New York City history quiz with special guest quiz partners Ric Burns and James Sanders. As I've been telling you, authors of An Illustrated History of New York City, a remarkable book first released in 1999 along with a 7-part PBS documentary, it's being released in a new edition now that comes all the way up to the present and even includes possible futures for New York City after the pandemic.
Then part two, later in the show, will be about exactly that, we will discuss this moment in time through the lens of these two filmmakers who spent a generation documenting the history of New York all the way back to before the Dutch arrived in what was then known as Lenapehoking. First, the quiz, who wants to try your luck 212-433-WNYC, all these questions are based on facts in the book and some of them are hard.
All you have to do is get one right, and if you do, we have a remarkable prize for you. It is a copy of your very own of An Illustrated History of New York, this 800-page gem just being released in its third edition. Call in and give it a shot. 212-433-WNYC. Again, answer just one question right and we'll send you a copy of An Illustrated History of New York City by Ric Burns and James Sanders, who wants to play? James and Ric, thanks so much in advance for this rare double segment and welcome back to WNYC.
Ric Burns: Hi, Brian, thank you for having us.
James Sanders: Thanks so much.
Brian Lehrer: As people are getting in line for the quiz questions, want to give us the lay of the land just a little bit. Why a new addition now 23 years after the first one?
Ric Burns: We know we'll tag-team this as we always do, this is Ric. I'm so glad you mentioned the Lenape and the arrival of the Dutch more than 400 years ago. What the process that began then was the process that we now call [unintelligible 00:02:14] globalization, all the peoples of the world coming together in a single place. It was very true of the early settlement at New Amsterdam. [unintelligible 00:02:24] became even more true over the course of the next 400 years. What happened 20 years ago or so with 9/11 was a wake-up call to New Yorkers and people around the world that we are irreversibly a global civilization. New York is no different in that respect than any other city or any other place. Our mission in the new addition of the book and in the new films that we'll accompany it next year is to track very closely what the reality is for cities and places everywhere of being in part of a global interconnected world.
Brian Lehrer: All right. Let's see if we can give away some books and learn a few things about New York City history at the same time. I'm going to let you two sort out who answers the follow-up questions. Like you said, Ric, the two of you tag team all the time. I'll just throw my informational questions at you. The two of you will sort out how you share the answers. Let's go to our first quiz contestant and it's going to be Peter in Queens. Hi, Peter. You ready for New York City history quiz question?
Peter: Oh, yes, I am. Thank you.
Brian Lehrer: Since it's in our life by of the numbers quiz series, we'll start with this. In the early 1920s, there were 32,000 illegal establishments of a certain kind in the city. What kind of establishments were they?
Peter: Speakeasies.
Brian Lehrer: They were speakeasies. Guess what Peter? You win a copy of An Illustrated History of New York City.
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Peter: Oh, wow. Great.
Brian Lehrer: That was not-
Peter: Thank you.
Brian Lehrer: -so hard, right? Hang on. We're going to take your address off the air. Who wants to talk about that? Ric and James? Just a little bit about how there was prohibition but it came at a time when New York was really on the rise.
James: It is something that we're fascinated by because one of the-- of course, it was a strange time. If you wanted to get a drink, you had to break the law. You had to go to one of these basement places and maybe give a password. It was an acceleration of things that were happening because everybody mixed in the speakeasies because they were illegal, the class stratification and other kind of-- ways that people were kept apart were a little more fluid in the speakeasy.
All the wonderful madness that was making New York what it was which theater and jazz and literature and everything was being mixed up in this amazing cauldron of New York and pushing the world forward culturally and technologically was accelerated in the speakeasy culture.
Brian Lehrer: All right. Let's go next to Amanda in Manhattan. Amanda, you're on WNYC, ready to play?
Amanda: Yes, I hope.
Brian Lehrer: In the 2020 census, the one we just did, Manhattan had about 1.5 million people. Within 500,000 people, how many did it have in the 1920 census?
Amanda: Oh my God.
Brian Lehrer: I said some of these are hard. We have 1.5 million in Manhattan now, how many 100 years ago within 500,000?
Amanda: Let's say a million.
Brian Lehrer: A million, unfortunately, that is not right. Not close enough. Amanda, thanks for giving it a shot it. Ric and James, this is going to surprise people. Of course, the premise here is what's going to surprise people. Amanda did just what I thought people might do. That is go down from the current population of 1.5 million. In fact, according to your book, and I looked it up in census records and confirmed it, there were 2.3 million people in Manhattan in the 1920 census. The population of Manhattan has gone down over the last 100 years.
Ric Burns: It's incredible. We think of city growth in particular as being an upward trajectory borrowing catastrophic episodes like the one we're going through right now. In fact, New York, Manhattan, was bursting at the seams in the first decade or 2 of the 20th century. As were cities everywhere as we do expect but New York more so. That moment coincided with the development of a very new transportation technology called the automobile and this beginning of an extraordinary and defining moves, it defined America for much of the 20th century and then moved outward into what became a suburban sprawl, really began there. Manhattan settled on a population which is varied but has went down but has remained relatively constant after this remarkable downturn from this 2.3 million high point in 1920, it's extraordinary. No wonder the roaring 20s were roaring, not only [crosstalk] fueled by alcohol but it was fueled by an incredible population of people who would vary at rubbing elbows.
Brian Lehrer: The first two numbers really fascinating as we look back 100 years, 32,000 illegal speakeasies in New York City. 2.3 million people in Manhattan alone, a number we haven't seen since. That suburbanization really started with the other four boroughs. If we can't call them, "Suburbs" today, that's where the growth has taken place because the total population of New York City, 100 years ago is about 5,500,000 people. Now, it's about 8.5 million people. Even as Manhattan has lost close to 1 million folks, the other borrowers have obviously gained that much more. All right, Elijah in Brooklyn is our next contestant. Hi, Elijah. You ready to play?
Elijah: Yes. I'm ready to play.
Brian Lehrer: All right. By 1920, 5 million people a day-- Turn your radio off in the background so we don't hear the delay, by 1920, 5 million people a day could be found doing this in New York City, sitting or standing, what were they doing?
Elijah: I'm going to say taking the subway.
Brian Lehrer: Taking the subway is right.
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Brian Lehrer: Elijah hang on. You're going to get a copy of An Illustrated History of New York City. We're going to go right to Brian and Ithaca, who's going to be our next contestant. Hi, Brian. Ready to play?
Brian: Yes, I am.
Brian Lehrer: By 1910, there were 128,000 of a certain creature on the city streets, by 1920, there were only half that many, and by 1930, only half that many again, what were these creatures?
Brian: Horses.
Brian Lehrer: Horses is exactly right.
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Brian Lehrer: Brian, hang on. You're going to get a copy of An Illustrated History of New York City. All right. One more to complete the set. Elias in Astoria, you're ready to play?
Elias: Did you say Elias from Astoria, I couldn't hear?
Brian Lehrer: Yes. You're Elias.
Elias: Oh, hi.
Brian Lehrer: Hi.
Elias: I'm so happy to be on. Thank you very much.
Brian Lehrer: By 1930, there were 800,000 of something on the city streets, that they're around 2 million of today, nonliving things, what are they?
Elias: Can you repeat? Someone was beeping in, sorry. Repeat the question.
Brian Lehrer: Sure. By 1930, there were 800,000 of something on the city streets, that they're around 2 million of today, nonliving things, what are they?
Elias: Oh, Goodness gracious, I've no idea. I'm just going to guess. Bus stops?
Brian Lehrer: Not bus stops. Thanks for trying, Elias. If he thought about the context of the previous two, the rise of the subways and the decline of horses, maybe some of our listeners were shouting at the radio, "Elias, say cars." Its cars. Ric and James, the transportation technology fostered the rise of the suburbs, right?
James Sanders: That's right.
Ric Burns: We did indeed, and in a very complex way. Every transportation revolution before the automobile concentrated people in cities, ships, trains, airplanes, but automobiles had the effect to a large degree, pulling people out of the city, whether they were people who are moving permanently to the suburbs or people who came in and out of the city on this great diurnal back and forth that we call commuting. It has been definitive and problematic and shaped cities, not just New York but shaped cities everywhere.
Brian Lehrer: Yet, the subways moved in the other direction, it seems to me. I wonder if you could talk about that a little bit, 5 million people a day, by then 100 years ago, riding the subways, it peaked at about 9 million a day, I think, just before the pandemic. That means, plus that commuter rails, which you also touched on in the book, as making it easier for people to get around within the city and to continue to work in the city even if they wanted to live elsewhere, and adding to the vibrancy of New York in that respect.
Ric Burns: Well, that's right. That goes right back to your original question about Manhattan. Basically, you pick the year 1920, the great boom, we think of the subways starting in 1904, but the real boom period of construction of the subway were the years just before and after World War I, right from about 1912 to 1920. That's when the great network, the great web was put in place.
In 1920, you weren't yet quite feeling it, but by 1930, you certainly were, which was that there was now an easy, reliable way to get from the farthest reaches of the 5 boroughs, meaning the northern Bronx and distant parts of Brooklyn and Queens. Staten Island was a different matter, of course, into the city. The definitive shape of the modern city, in which yes, you had a very busy Manhattan Island, which many millions of people were living on, but more importantly and in a bigger, more definitive way, you had this incredible way that New Yorkers could move around.
An important point that Ken Jackson and other people make is that it didn't cost any more to go any farther. The fare was originally ¢5, then it was ¢10. That was true whether you lived in the far Northern Bronx or just in parts of Queens as anywhere else. Unlike London, where you pay more the farther you go, this encouraged dramatically encouraged the outward growth of the city because it all the same price one way or the other.
Brian Lehrer: That ¢5 to ride for forever and ever. One of the things I learned from your book, just last night, was that the original subway line if today, we think about the east sidelines and the west sidelines, the original subway line started in Lower Manhattan, went up to Grand Central, went across to Time Square, it was its own shuttle train, and then up to 140 5th Street, that was all on the west side. That was all one line, which is a remarkable piece of history. [unintelligible 00:14:30] in Manhattan, you're on WNYC. [unintelligible 00:14:33], ready to play?
Female Speaker: Yes, sir. Good morning.
Brian Lehrer: Good morning. All right. We're going to move away from transportation now, and ask this, Duke Ellington played in regularly scheduled appearances in the same Harlem Jazz Club for 12 years in the 1920s and 30s. What was the name of that famous club?
Female Speaker: Is that the Blue Note?
Brian Lehrer: Oh, not the Blue Note. Sorry, sorry, thanks for trying. It was the Cotton Club. One of the amazing chapters in your book talks about the Harlem Renaissance. That's the context in which the Duke Ellington reference appears, including that stat that he played at the Cotton Club continuously for 12 years. The Harlem Renaissance and Greenwich Village as a counterculture spot were burgeoning at the same time in the intersection of those two things, especially with respect to the acts, it was a really interesting part of the book, who wants to talk about that?
Ric Burns: What an incredible moment in New York history and really, in world history. The great migration of African Americans, of Black Americans from the South to the North, which had taken place and continued to take place across the opening decades of the 20th century had brought the surge of Black Americans into New York City in the opening decades. Initially, looking for opportunity, of course, and looking for safety and to avoid danger elsewhere and founded this remarkable community in what had originally been a middle-class housing development north of Central Park, not intended for any particular ethnic community.
In that place, in the decades of the teens and the 20s, and the 30s, this extraordinary cultural Renaissance and in a way revolution took place, as Black Americans from all over the country and indeed, from abroad, found ways to intersect, to converge, to bring music and literature and political thought together. I would argue that there's been no time in the history of America when more fruit fertility and creativity came together in any one place than during those remarkable decades of the teen's 20s and 30s in Harlem.
Brian Lehrer: All right. We're coming to the end of part one, we will continue in a little while with James Sanders and Ric Burns on their Illustrated History of New York City. Let's see if we can give away one more book before we break. Andrew in Ossining, you're ready to play? Hi, Andrew.
Andrew: Yes, I am. Thank you.
Brian Lehrer: All right. Something new in the 1920s fused the New York City industries of commerce, culture, and communications, reaching tens of millions of people in their homes, something never before done. What was that new thing?
Andrew: Radio.
Brian Lehrer: Radio, of course.
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Brian Lehrer: Andrew, if somebody didn't get that one right, I would have been really disappointed. Glad you did. Hang on, we're going to take your address, so we can send you a copy of An Illustrated History of New York City. We'll do part two with Ric Burns and James Sanders coming up. Brian Lehrer on WNYC.
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Brian Lehrer: It's The Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC. Good morning, again, everyone. We continue now with filmmakers and authors, Ric Burns and James Sanders. Their book An Illustrated History of New York City is just out in its third edition. The first one came out back in 1999. They're working on a new episode of the accompanying PBS documentary as well. Ric and James, that was fun doing the quiz in part one before the news. Welcome back.
James Sanders: Thank you.
Ric Burns: That was a blast, Brian, well done.
Brian Lehrer: Now, no quiz. We'll just talk for this follow-up conversation. The epilogue to the book about the pandemic era of the last two years raises much more than COVID contagion questions. It's one of the great things about the new addition, how you put this in the long historical context of New York City, and you quote the urbanist Bruce Schaller, who says, "It put back into play old tropes about cities in general, New York in particular, that cities are bad because density is bad, because too much human contact is bad." Can you talk about that trope in historical context, and what you've been hearing echoes of the past two years?
James Sanders: Sure. Everybody knows the famous Thomas Jefferson line about cities being pestilential to the health and spirit of human beings, but what we were reminded of in doing this, was that he was writing specifically in response to an epidemic that had occurred in New York in 1799, the yellow fever epidemic, which the news of which got to Washington or elsewhere later. These were very common, of course, all through the 19th century, there was a terrible cholera epidemic in 1832, which there's a sidebar about in the book and I must say, reading that sidebar, it's almost uncanny into how similar it sounds to what the events of spring 2020.
The wealthy and the prosperous, leaving the city to go to their estates, which in those days were not East Hampton or other parts of Connecticut, but this new place called Greenwich Village, a few miles north of Lower Manhattan, leaving the essential workers as they would have been called to be suffering from cholera. People blaming them, those immigrants and poor in New York for the troubles. Then a few doctors say, "Hey, there might be some other things going on here."
Certainly, we're really struck by the fact that it was almost as if these anti-urban sentiments which have been in abatement for now, for about 20 years as not just New York, but so many American cities have boomed and grown indeed, to the point where their main issues or problems are problems of success. The rents are too high but there they were those feelings, those anti-urban feelings, and they just spring right back to us in April of 2020.
Brian Lehrer: Of course, funny to hear you make that reference to when Greenwich Village from the heart of the population center of Manhattan was going uptown. You even quote Thomas Jefferson, who wrote in 1800, that quote, "Cities are pestilential--" You just use that word and made that reference. "Cities are pestilential to the moral, the health, and liberties of man." Thomas Jefferson said that in the context of the yellow fever epidemic, but how generally did Thomas Jefferson mean it as we think about this figure in American history, a giant of American history, the founding of this country who people are reassessing now?
Ric Burns: This will take Alexander Hamilton any day over Thomas Jefferson, for the most part. Jefferson, it was way beyond the sense of a pandemic, the yellow fever epidemic. He also wrote more or less at the same time that the mobs of great cities, as he said, add just so much support to pure government as soar as due to the strength of the human body. Which is very, very strong sense of how at the core from the Jeffersonian point of view, that cities were deeply problematic. They brought people in, they were filled with immigrants, there was too much density. It was a violation of the Jeffersonian sense of how a democratic republic could operate. Now, of course, we in New York, dispute that view.
Brian Lehrer: I guess so. Not only that, but if he said, "Cities are pestilential to the moral health and the liberties of man," Jefferson condemn City's relationship to the morals and liberties of man, even though at the same time he was keeping people in slavery on his rural plantation?
Ric Burns: That sense of what the relationship to a working-class [unintelligible 00:23:16], in his case, his slave [unintelligible 00:23:18] was going to be was very much at the heart of the beginning of the American experiment. He found no apparent contradiction in exactly what you're saying. We live with that, in some sense down to today, with the continual revival of an end-year-- but all the problems come from dense, crowded, over-mixed, over-[unintelligible 00:23:41] cities. This is an issue and a conflict is a very, very long dynamic in American history, and one which has not been unchanged, in which the 21st century will grapple with and continues to grapple with, hopefully, in evermore transformative ways.
Brian Lehrer: You quoted distinction relevant to how COVID spread, but also to the culture of cities in general. Density and crowding are not the same thing. Can you talk about that in a virus context and in a larger sociological sense that we shouldn't use density and crowding in cities synonymously?
James Sanders: Sure, it's something we'd like to point out that all of that stuff that was said in April of 2020 now looks absurd, as many people pointed out at the time. COVID made its way perfectly happily all across the United States in the weeks and months that followed. It had nothing to do-- COVID didn't really teach us much about that but what it did do, in interesting ways, was reveal things about the way the city work.
The distinction between density and overcrowding, the simple analogy that we use with New York analogy is that the Upper East Side of Manhattan is incredibly dense but because it's large apartment houses where everybody has their own sleeping room, it's not overcrowded, whereas areas like Elmhurst queens, and amazingly, named Corona Queen, you might walk down the street there and see detached houses or semi-detached houses, leafy streets doesn't look very dense at all.
In fact, if you were to go into those houses, you would discover that in many cases, you might have six or seven people sleeping in a basement. That's overcrowding and not density. It turned out that the vector of the disease went completely toward overcrowding, such that Manhattan all along throughout the whole story of COVID was actually one of the least effective places in all of the New York City and the region and places that might look low density were, in fact, really the places that were victimized by it.
It's a distinction that went back to Jane Jacobs. She pointed out that to attack areas like Greenwich Village, which were dense without necessarily being overcrowded because of memories of the Lower East Side in 1910, which was ridiculously dense and overcrowded, was absurd and that's where many of us first learned about that distinction.
Brian Lehrer: We've got a few minutes left. Now, that you've written 800 pages on the history of New York, published in 1999, and revisited for the updated edition now, let me ask you something about what you call New York's most abiding problem, housing affordability. When my parents were growing up poor on the Lower East Side in the South Bronx, my father tells me low-income housing was so available that landlords would offer a month-free rent as an incentive to move to their buildings and my father was telling me just the other day that his family did, in fact, move a number of years in a row because that one month's rent was worth it to them. When and why did surplus become shortage in New York City housing?
Ric Burns: There were two great booms of housing availability in the 20th century and they coincided with two of the great downs. The Depression was a remarkable downturn, but also saw a massive federally sponsored increase in housing, building, and construction, housing availability. As well, in the 1970s, another famous downturn in New York City's history, coinciding with the flight to the suburbs. There was an enormously cheapen degree of housing availability in New York City. What one sees is that in some sense, housing affordability and the availability of housing has everything to do with what one might think of is the price of success.
As the city does better, at certain points, and as people come into the city, competition for space skyrockets, and that's very much why your father might find it very, very difficult to settle a family in the Lower East Side now. Just as I might find it very difficult to come in as a college student right now and find affordable housing in the city. Though in the 1970s, when I moved to New York, really literally, at the moment of the [unintelligible 00:28:17] city dropped dead moment, I could get my half an apartment for $127.50. It's a very complex aspect of the reality of city living.
Brian Lehrer: There we [crosstalk]--
James Sanders: I have to say--
Brian Lehrer: Go ahead, you want to tag on that? [crosstalk].
James Sanders: I just want to say that in my whole experience of living in New York there, one phrase I have never heard people say was that New York was cheap to live in. It was always expensive and may have been cheaper than it is now but even then, it was more expensive than other places. I think that's a continent certainly grown worse over the last few years.
Brian Lehrer: James Sanders and Ric Burns, the new edition of their remarkable Illustrated History of New York City, 800 Plus pages of their words, an array of contributors, that boggles the mind and, of course, photographs and other things individual's just amazing. I could've just stopped doing my work for this whole week and sunk in with your book and learned this about New York City and that about New York City and how it all ties to today. There's things to do when I get time in between the cracks. Thank you so much for joining us for this. Just tell us real quick, since this was originally in conjunction way back then with a PBS series, do you have an updated PBS documentary part coming?
Ric Burns: We do indeed, not one part but two parts, which will be coming out next year under the shared rubric of The Future of Cities, two two-hour films, for which the last two chapters of the book form the foundation, the pandemic was been the final of four massive, global existential crisees that the city has struggled with just in the 21st century, and so we say, tune into your local public television station in 2023 for The Future of Cities, Parts 1 and 2.
Brian Lehrer: Alright. Thanks again. Thanks very much.
Ric Burns: Thanks, Brian.
James Sanders: Thank you.
Brian Lehrer: Brian Lehrer. WNYC, much more still to come.
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