Reproductive Freedom in Lower Manhattan
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Tour Guide: Cindy Cooper (she/her) · Start Location: Broadway & Park Place, next to City Hall Park · 2 Hours · 2 Miles
This tour traces the people and places in New York that have been instrumental in the fight for reproductive health, rights and justice, and the adversaries that they’ve encountered along the way. While walking through old New York, Tribeca, Soho and Greenwich Village, this tour connects the past and the present. Focusing on the 100 years from the end of the Civil War to the 1970s, the tour also looks at the universal desires for reproductive freedom and the struggles that still exist today. Themes Covered: History & Status of Reproductive Freedom, Rights, Health & Justice, Changes in Abortion Laws, Suppression of & Access to Contraception & Birth Control, Related & Intersectional Issues of Bodily Autonomy, Maternal Mortality, Activism, Safety, Nondiscrimination, Equality, Human Rights Sites Covered: Elizabeth Cady Stanton & Susan B. Anthony Marker, Anthony Comstock Outpost, Madame Restell Facility, New York Pharmacy, New York Hospital House of Relief, Trojan Condom & Margaret Sanger’s Diaphragm Headquarters, Illegal Abortion Meeting Site, Mid-19th Century Brothel Setting, 1910 Tenement, First Italian Catholic Church in the US, Polly’s Restaurant, Washington Square Church, Judson Memorial Church, Washington Square Park 10% OF TICKET SALES WILL BE DONATED TO THE NEW YORK ABORTION ACCESS FUND. |
Women's History of the Village
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Tour Guide: Lucy Piccochi (she/her) · Start Location: Broadway & Bleecker St · 2 Hours · 1.5 Miles
Even before Greenwich Village became known as the center of American Bohemianism, extraordinary women have been making their mark here with art, activism and unconventional living. During its pre-WWI heyday the Village was a magnet for feminists, and it continued to be home to women artists and entrepreneurs throughout the 20th century while also cultivating a thriving lesbian and trans community. This tour explores sites associated with some of the many fascinating women in the neighborhood, some of whom have been largely forgotten but no less played a vital role in creating the legacy of feminism we continue today. Themes Covered: Free Love, Queer Culture & Struggle, Birth Control, Women's Suffrage, Anti-Racism, Salons & Debate Clubs, Arts & Journalism, Union Organizing, Settlement Houses, Bars & Restaurants Sites Covered: Notable Residences, Pfaff's Beer Cellar, National Academy of Design, Triangle Factory, Washington Square, The Original Whitney, Provincetown Playhouse, Liberal/Heterodoxy Clubs, Eve Addams Tea Room, Golden Swan, Cafe Society, Romany Marie's, Women's House of Detention 10% OF TICKET SALES WILL BE DONATED TO THE NEW YORK ABORTION ACCESS FUND. |
Rezoning & Dysplacement in Historic Harlem
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Tour Guide: Gregory Baggett (he/him) · Start Location: Frederick Douglass Statue · 2 Hours · 1.5 Miles
In the rezoning of Frederick Douglass Boulevard in Harlem, growth and diversification—gentrification—was not imposed on an unwitting community by unscrupulous developers or opportunistic outsiders, but rather it was imposed on the community from within, from the community’s grassroots. This walking tour discusses the logic and strategy behind a plan framed within a vision of community "progress,” but it was actually a tool to weaponize competing class interest: how one public land process along a single avenue brought about change that resulted in the dysplacement of almost all of the area’s long-term residents and small businesses along the streets and even the neighboring avenues. Using calculators on our smartphones, the participants on this tour reckon with the deep ideological problem that prompted Harlem's political establishment, community-based organizations, middle-class, and even low-income shareholders in limited-equity cooperatives to produce outcomes that benefited the few and threatened the many. Themes Covered: Zoning, Rezoning & Upzoning, Displacement & Dysplacement, Progress, Gentrification, Housing Development Fund Companies (HDFCs), Central Harlem South (SOHA) Controversy, Housing Loopholes: Major Capital Improvements (MCI), Individual Apartment Improvements (IAI), Preferential Rents, Vacancy Bonus, Vacancy Decontrol. Sites Covered: Frederick Douglass Circle, Adam Clayton Powell Jr. Boulevard, Frederick Douglass Boulevard, West 116th Street, New construction, HDFC Cooperatives, Graham Court, Row Houses, A. Philip Randolph Houses, Wadleigh Secondary High School for the Performing & Visual Arts, Harlem Hebrew Language School, Saint Joseph’s Cathedral, Minton’s (formerly Minton’s) Playhouse, Central Harlem South, First Corinthian Baptist Church, A. Philip Randolph Square, HCCI Preservation project, Harriet Tubman Monument 10% OF TICKET SALES WILL BE DONATED TO THE A. PHILIP RANDOLPH SQUARE NEIGHBORHOOD ALLIANCE. |
Environmental Justice in Gowanus
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Tour Guide: Michael Higgins Jr. (he/they) · Start Location: Union St & 4th Avenue · 2 Hours · 1.5 Miles
Gowanus is an intensely contaminated community that is simultaneously undergoing multiple processes of environmental remediation and gentrification. The tour will explore these dynamics and the challenges and opportunities posed by the Gowanus Canal Superfund Clean Up, the rapid disappearance of commercial establishments and services that are affordable to low and moderate-income households and the recently announced housing authority plan to build market-rate apartments at Wyckoff Gardens. You will also learn about the Turning the Tide initiative, a multi-neighborhood effort that focuses on building social and environmental resiliency in five Brooklyn public housing developments in the face of climate change. Themes Covered: History of Gowanus, EPA Superfund program, NYC Land use policy, Hurricane Sandy, Public housing and affordable housing policy Sites Covered: Union Street Bridge, Gowanus Houses NYCHA development, Gowanus CSO Pumping Station, Thomas Greene Park, Lightstone Waterfront Park, Whole Foods Market Waterfront |
Gentrification in Downtown Brooklyn
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Tour Guide: Michael Higgins Jr. (he/they) · Start Location: Jay St & Myrtle Ave (outside Starbucks) · 2 Hours · 1.5 Miles
This tour will highlight the development that has recreated downtown Brooklyn as a result of the Downtown Brooklyn Rezoning of 2004. We will also go into political conversations around the use of the rezoning to build new affordable housing and the use of eminent domain at Atlantic Yards in the construction of the Barclays Center. Themes Covered: History of Downtown Brooklyn, NYC Land use policy, 421a and state tax abatements, Public housing and affordable housing policy Sites Covered: MetroTech Promenade, 227 Abolitionist Place (Underground Railroad stop), Myrtle Avalon Plaza, The Giovanni (formerly Associated Site), City Point (formerly Albee Square Mall), BAM Cultural District, Barclays Center 10% OF TICKET SALES WILL BE DONATED TO BAN (BROOKLYN ANTI-GENTRIFICATION NETWORK). |
Unsettling Streets: Policing Public Space in NYC
Tour Guide: Rebecca Manski (she/her) · Start Location: Columbus Park Pavilion · 2 Hours · 1.5 miles
NYC cops are famous, or you could say notorious, worldwide. So are Manhattan's edifices of justice, from the streets leading between precincts and prisons, to the lofty colonnades holding up the ceilings of the Supreme Court. But have you ever walked through those Manhattan "movie sets" and thought about how they got there? Have you ever wondered: "Where does the NYPD come from?" Walking south from the jails and courthouses surrounding Chinatown's Columbus Park, through the plazas of justice infrastructure centered around Centre Street and Foley Square, and looking across to the FBI and the USCIS, we'll begin to connect the dots. We will uncover the origins of policing in response to the urban unrest--which was blamed on crowds of immigrants. We'll investigate the intended and actual effects of the moral reform movement and "slum clearance," and the idea that "loitering" in the streets leads to crime. And we'll trace the connections between “urban renewal”, park redesign in response to mobilizations, and changing laws regarding public assembly over time. We'll find ourselves at Abolition Square (City Hall Park) and see for ourselves how public space and the right to assembly has been curtailed over time. And we'll think it through together: If NYC's system of policing has changed so much over time, what might happen to the system that stands now? Themes Covered: Development of Historic Five Points, Immigration to NYC, City Government Corruption, Public Space, Carceral Capitalism Sites Covered: Historic Five Points, Foley Square, City Hall Park, Jacob Javits Federal Building, Collect Pond Park |