Monthly Archives: September 2018

NYPL Map Division visit and site report #1 due on Thursday

Site report #1 is due on Thursday, September 27. Please post a link to the PDF of your site report or upload the PDF to the media library of our OpenLab site.

NYPL Lion

By C.S. Imming [CC BY-SA 3.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0) or Public domain], from Wikimedia Commons

This Thursday is our visit to the Map Division of the New York Public Library, in the Stephen A. Schwarzman Building at 476 Fifth Avenue at 42nd Street. The closest subways are the B, D, F, M, and 7 trains at 42nd Street/Bryant Park. You are probably familiar with Patience and Fortitude, the famous lion sculptures outside the library. That’s Fortitude, above. We will meet in room 117 at 3pm SHARP. Come prepared to take notes (pencil only, please) and photos (no flash). In class today we examined familiar places represented on historic fire insurance maps of New York City and asked the question, What has time done to this place?

Questions on Archives

 

In the case where an archive is damaged or lost after the document or object was cited and used, is the source still usable. In other words is the an argument or statement supported by a citation no longer useful in a paper if the source can’t be found?

Do archives create secondary documents in case a primary document is lost? For example a picture or a scan of the original document. Will this still be considered to be of the same value when citing it in paper?

Tuesday 9/25 and Thursday 9/27

I remembered I’d taken a photo of the crumbling party wall and the ghost signs concealed by the recently demolished building at the corner of Fifth Avenue and Flatbush Avenue last fall:

5th+Flatbush201711

5th & Flatbush, November 2017

Today the site has been prepared for new uses yet is now overgrown with plants, indicating no construction has been happening lately:

5th+Flatbush201809

5th & Flatbush, September 2018

Thanks, everyone, for participating in a great site visit today. The first site report is due on Thursday, September 27. Remember to save a copy of the site report template, and then edit it with your content and responses. On Tuesday we’ll discuss research in archives and special collections in preparation for our research visit to the New York Public Library Map Division, 476 Fifth Avenue at 42nd Street, on Thursday, September 27 from 3-4:30pm. Before Tuesday’s class, please read the articles linked below, and comment on this post with 2 questions you have about these readings:

Introduction to Archives, Visiting the Archives, and Citing Archival Sources from the Purdue OWL

What are archives and how do they differ from libraries? and Using Archives: A Guide to Effective Research from the Society of American Archivists

Primary, Secondary, and Tertiary Sources from Virginia Tech libraries

~Prof. L.

Urban Walking Prompt

After reading the article on Urban walking, I have to say that I personally do not agree with the author when he said that walking in the countryside is better than urban areas. Living in an Urban area I enjoy walking everyday, I take the same path to school everyday from my house on Ave J down Nostrand Ave to the Flatbush-Brooklyn College train station. And I enjoy the walk, it gives me time to take In my community and to catch up with people from my block who I haven’t seen in a while. I also walk from 59th st Columbus Circle to 34th street Penn station after every work shift and I use that time to listen to music, take in some air, and remove all stress from that work day. It also gives me time to contemplate some of the nice things we have in our city. All in all I believe that walking wherever you are should be something that you enjoy and find pleasure in. It should be something you do to have an adventurous time and to discover new things throughout your community.

Everyday commute observation

I gotta say, walking is one of the most dreadful activities I can think of. I just don’t understand how people like it, however moving to New York city it became a necessary thing I had to do in order to move around for a while when I was younger. Around my neighborhood there hasn’t been many changes. I live in a residential building and the only changes I noticed are the growth of parking for the building residents  and increase of traffic in the main streets. Since my building is adjacent to a major expressway, the vehicular circulation is always very busy while the pedestrian sidewalks are pretty empty. The area is calm asides from the constant car transit. Also at around 5-10 minute walk you will find yourself in a heavily pedestrian walkway since there are two different shopping malls around, which are busy for majority of the day. There are not enough food places  or open areas, like parks around. The only open space available is a main courtyard and entertaining center with different amenities shared between all the residential building of my complex. My daily commute involves driving from home to school everyday which doesn’t really allow me to observe most of the changes around that you would appreciate by walking. I have only notice a big increase in traffic and the lack of parking around my neighborhood and school, because what two years ago would take 10 minutes now takes up to and hour to find parking. I would still rather drive to places and I mostly avoid walking to any places, or if it involves major walking I’ll just not go at all, but after reading ” Urban walking isn’t just good for the soul” it made me think perhaps I Should walk once in a while.

Everyday Commute Observations

Observations:
7:40 am coming out of my apartment the subtle light (it was cloudy in the morning) of the skylight on the stair bulkhead shines on to the 5th floor. Coming down viewing through the landing window and across the alley and into the other building there is a bucket on the floor below (3rd floor) round and with a tint of white and tan, yet uninhabited. Passing the third floor there is a garbage bag in front of the second apartment on my right. In contrast to the other door frames the same apartment with the garbage bag in front of it has a wooden door frame. The following floors were all the same except for the 1st floor. The 1st floor lighting was much brighter than the rest. Coming out of the building and walking to my left I see an aggressive amount of pedestrian. The time was now 7:45 at the corner of 182nd and most of the pedestrians consisted of children accompanied by their care taker moving hurriedly through the streets as the 8am elementary school opening time approached. Walking down the sidewalk I recognized the trees on the sidewalk puts that stand 3 stories up. Most of the trees having being juxtaposed to the masonry brick buildings were leaning towards the streets. There exist about a 2 ft space between the tree branches and the face of the building where as on the street side branches overhang the parked cars. Approaching the entrance to the subway more  people enter as opposed to a much earlier time In which I often take the train.

Urban Walking in Brooklyn

My daily morning commute is just what you would imagine of your everyday New Yorker. A half mile walk to the J train station at Marcy avenue to rub shoulders and sometimes literally fight to get onto the train with the thousands of people waiting as well to commute. In as much the commute is not as enjoyable as I would love it to be, I do pick up a lot of things while I work. In the 5 years that I have lived in the Jewish populated neighborhood of South Williamsburg in Brooklyn, a lot has changed. With the rise of Williamsburg in the real estate industry comes a lot of other changes, on broadway directly below the J train line, you have new Condos with a stretch of stores restaurants and cafes. In the early morning as I walk to the train, Bedford ave is quiet with the exception of a few cars going by and the follow commuters who are headed to the train with me. This changes once you hit broadway, it is a whole different atmosphere because unlike Bedford, Broadway is a commercial street and people are already packed up either at the McDonald’s, Dunkin Donuts or the food trucks getting their breakfast to get them started for the day

“Urban walking isn’t just good for the Soul”

Walking around my neighborhood, and paying attention to the surroundings makes me understand the meaning behind it. One thing that I defiantly have seen change is the increase of traffic in the area. The reason behind it is that 7 years ago there were no areas for public spaces, neither schools. Present time, I’ve notice the construction of a high school, and the development of a park. Streets are completely packed because of the usage of parking, and when it hits 4-5pm traffic overloads the street, making it almost impossible to get in my parking spot. This, however is only when I drive. When I commute in public transportation, I’ve notice that the typical deli that used to close at 7pm now stays open until 11-12pm. The bus line runs packed, and they also change the line to limited because of the extremely amount of people. The bus takes you to the train line, where it hits the major street; Queens Blvd. The boulevard is big, and the city extended many of their turning lanes because of the demand of cars. One last thing to be mentioned is the construction of a new residential building right on the Boulevard. Couple of years ago before they started building the residential space, they constructed another building across the street making me analyze that the demand of living around the area has increased incredibly.

Blog #2

As every new yorker, I spend time in traffic too, not as much as others, luckily train in my area almost never have delays, but still, things happen, especially when it driving. I work as a part-time driver and I think traffic is good when you have patience. it gives you chance to look around and see stuff.  There are so many places you can drive by and see, even from the train you might see a lot around, but there is nothing better to walk, you can discover places where you would never be able to go by train or car, or even better you might walk by the same place you drive by every day and notice things that you don’t pay attention from the car. in my case I always walk from home to train. I would love to walk from sheepshead bay to school but it is too far. after around two semesters of architecture, I started noticing interesting and exciting things on my daily route to city tech. Every day I find out more and more, I start to pay attention to details, and some things remind me of stuff I have learned in my architecture classes. I think you just have to look around when you walk and not be on the phone all the times.