June 15, 6:30
Gotham Center for NYC History
365 Fifth Avenue @34th St– Auditorium
Free but reservations required at 212 817- 8215
Always in a class by itself, today’s Lower East Side is beginning to look just like any other place, on the surface at least. Join four scholars of the Lower East Side as they dig deep into the neighborhood’s history. Does the Lower East Side have a special makeup that New Yorkers should protect? Its fascinating places may hold some clues.
Speakers include:
Harriet Cohen, Lower East Side housing activist and Director of Programs for the Lantern Group, former Policy Analyst for Housing and Homeless for the Manhattan Borough President’s Office and current Chair of SPARC (Seward Park Area Redevelopment Coalition); Orlando Plaza, community activist, doctoral candidate at NYU, and owner of Camaradas Restaurant in el barrio, “a worker’s public house where camaraderie is built”; John Kuo Wei Tchen, historian and Director of the Asian/Pacific/American Studies Program at NYU, author of New York Before Chinatown, co-founder of the Museum of Chinese in the Americas; Suzanne Wasserman, historian, documentary film maker, and Associate Director of the Gotham Center for NYC History.
Co-sponsored with Place Matters (a project of City Lore and the Municipal Art Society) and the Vernacular Architecture Forum