Responding to Prompt #5: Your Public Domain Remix Proposal

Via NYPL Digital Collections. Football Team, 1898, at the University of Wisconsin

Via NYPL Digital Collections. Squad of Stuyvesant High School, New York, in Early Training

         So far in this class we have had some serious conversations on what researching through public domains means. We have looked at some very meaningful history and have understood their relevance in the modern day world. That being the case, I want to have some fun and make a remix geared mostly towards current high school students and alumni.
This project will be about high school sports and their history. Essentially it would be a collection of team photos and team sports going as far back as possible. I am unsure of how available this information is in the Digital Collections because I have come up empty handed many times. I found some old photos of Brooklyn Technical High School from 1952 but that does not say much about the school’s sports teams. We would only use photos- and maybe even video is available -of the team posing or in action.
Being that the case I think an idea like this would require us to create our own digital collection. We would have to ask schools to submit any and all team photos that they have and then enter them into an online archive (some examples are provided above). The focus will be mainly on schools that are not so large such as our very own BHSEC. We can reach out to the alumni of high schools who may have photos to share. What this remix will do is provide a trail of footprints for current students to view in addition to being a super fun thing to look at.

Responding to Prompt #4: Connecting Space/Time with LES Content Readings

I think one of my favorite moments of this class so far was when we were introduced to the Space/Time directory by Bert Spaan. I was totally mind-blown and had no idea that we can use the simple internet to do such complex research.

Gentrification has become a huge topic of conversation over the past few years. With buildings being built in Brooklyn making the area look like Midtown Manhattan, people are wondering about their origins and where all this came from. With that being the case I think this is a perfect opportunity to show the changes that have taken place over the past century or so. More specifically, I want to focus on the new buildings that are being built everyday on East Houston and the Lower East Side. Walking on that street during my freshman year and walking on that street now is not the same experience. New developments and stores have risen since 2014 which shows rapid growth. If all this can happen in a matter of a few years imagine what has happened in the past century.

Using NYPL’s Space/Time directory and Digital Collections I want to present the real estate changes that have taken place in the Lower East Side with a specific focus on East Houston St. I have already unknowingly done so in my previous blog about the tenement houses. There was a tenement building on 310 E. Houston St. but that is now an apartment building/condominium. That is an incredible leap in time: over 100 years! I want to be able to show the progress that was rapidly made that led to the current day building. Using the Space/Time tools I can uncover maps of the Lower East Side and using the Digital Collections I can find specific pictures of those locations.

The Promised City: Bathhouses and Jews

Via NYPL Digital Collections. A bathhouse located 538 E 11th St-Av A-Av B, Manhattan. Although this photo is from 1934, it gives a general feel to what bathhouses looked like back then.

I never thought that the physical stature of early immigrant Jews would be a big part of who they were back then but according to Rischin it was. One of the biggest factors that separated Jews from any other people was their faith. Orthodox Jews were known for many things such as their style of clothing, daily activities, and religious practices. But one of their most overlooked qualities were their dietary restrictions and hygiene practices. Practicing Jews only ate Kosher and that involved many things. It forbade the eating of pork, as mentioned in Leviticus, and required that the food be prepared in a very strict fashion. Always cooking their meals thoroughly and putting a border around what was permissible to eat decreased their chances of acquiring foodborne illnesses. So despite being physically very small, their immune systems were among the strongest in the United States.

Cleanliness was also a large part of Orthodox Jewish culture in the early 20th century. Jews believed that cleanliness brought purity and holiness so baths were taken more frequently by them than most other people. Being clean enabled them to stay immune from diseases spread through bad hygiene. Many believed that Jews were to blame for the Cholera outbreak in Europe but that was not the case since they were so hygienically aware.Their priority for proper hygiene also led them to owning half of the city’s bathhouses by 1897 whereas only one or two bathhouses were Jewish owned in 1880. 

This type of information is important to know when discussing the immigrant population in the Lower East side because it shows us the cultures of people in contrast to the others. Americans were not very similar to the Jews culturally and that was projected in the statistics regarding deaths related to illness. What this shows is that a lot can be learned from other cultures. Although Jews may have been viewed differently from Americans, they were much more advanced in terms of healthcare which once again supports the idea that immigrants can benefit the general welfare of society.  

The Promised City: Immigrants and Tenements

Via NYPL Digital Collections: A model tenement house from 1908. 310 East Houston Street

Whenever the Lower East Side is brought up the topic of tenement houses is one of the first things to come to mind. Clearly they are an important part of the Lower East Side’s past because a good portion of chapter 5 from The Promised City is dedicated to the tenement houses.

One of the biggest reasons why the tenements are such a big part of the Lower East Side is because of their relation to immigrants-- who were also an essential part of the neighborhood’s history. The tenements were mostly packed with the immigrants that moved to the region from Eastern Europe. A large majority of those immigrants were Jews and their faith played a key role in their involvement with the Lower East Side.
What made the tenements so infamous was the amount of space located in them. Multiple families were crammed together in each floor making the already tiny rooms minuscule. In the photo that is embedded above, the size of each room is clearly shown. This type of plan was created after The Tenement House Law was passed in 1901. Living conditions were made slightly more comfortable and decreased the number of hazards present. Regardless, immigrants were packed into their homes like cattle and stacked on top of each other in 6 or 7 story buildings.
The amount of hardship that those immigrants faced is incredible to read and imagine about in the present day. It goes to show how hard people worked for a comfortable life and how much they persevered. The tenements undoubtedly were a huge part immigrant life and that helps us better understand the origin of the Lower East Side.

Via THE MIRIAM AND IRA D. WALLACH DIVISION OF ART, PRINTS AND PHOTOGRAPHS: PHOTOGRAPHY COLLECTION from NYPL Digital Collections

A photo of Cornelius & Kathleen Walsh who lived on 309 Vanderbilt Ave., Fort Greene, Brooklyn. Taken on April 16, 1978.

Monday's Favorite Segment

Using the Archives and Manuscripts Portal in Monday's class was my favorite part. I preferred this site over the Research Collection primarily because it was the only site I used. However, one feature that I did like and thought was key was the filter option. It enabled me to sort out dates and that is important for researching specific eras.

Biology and Primary Sources

It was the end of the fall semester and our biology teacher had assigned a research project/presentation on the topics of genetic illnesses. Sounded easy enough but there was a catch. We had to use primary sources as our main form of information. This was difficult because many of the crucial facts that were needed in the research project were located deep inside 30 page long science papers.

To begin the research for my presentation I started with the classical search engine: Google. This brought up millions of articles and papers on progeria: my chosen topic. I clicked the first link which took me to a review article-- a perfect place to start. That article was located on omim.org. “An Online Catalog of Human Genes and Genetic Disorders” as stated on their website. Their citations led me to many primary source journal articles and papers that went in depth on the subject of progeria.

Having so many articles on one topic enabled my scope of knowledge to be widened. In addition it helped me understand a difficult concept. Having many different voices explain a single idea enabled me look at it from different perspectives. Looking through primary sources is definitely difficult but worthy. It lets people look at the facts as is before they are construed by secondary sources.