Podcast #185: Mike Wallace, Greater Gotham
The New York Public Library Podcast features your favorite writers, artists, and thinkers in smart talks and provocative conversations. Listen to some of our most engaging programs, discover new ideas, and celebrate the best of today’s culture.
On today’s episode: Mike Wallace. Nearly two decades after publishing his first volume of New York City history, Gotham, co-written with Edwin Burrows and winner of a Pulitzer Prize, Wallace is back with the next installment, Greater Gotham. It picks up in 1898, on the eve of New York’s consolidation, when the five boroughs merged into what was colloquially called Greater New York. In the next 20 years—Greater Gotham covers 1898 to 1918—New York was literally and figuratively transformed. Skyscrapers shot up into the troposphere; subways, waterworks, and electrical lines burrowed into the earth; and new bridges and tunnels firmly linked Manhattan to its neighbors east, north, and west. Meanwhile, corporate America and titanic investment banks helped turn Wall Street into a new global financial center, and throngs of immigrants flocked to the city in search of jobs and a better life. By the end of World War I, New York had become the world’s second-largest city, its financial capital, and was possessed of seemingly unlimited potential.
More importantly than any House of Morgan or Manhattan Bridge is that in those same years, the New York Public Library came into existence. The cornerstone for the building at the site of the old Croton Reservoir was laid in 1902; it opened to the public on May 24, 1911. You can read more about our history here. Mike Wallace did extensive research for his book here. He was a Cullman fellow in 2001–2002—Cullman fellowships support outstanding scholars and writers whose work can directly benefit from our collections—and later made use of the research rooms we offer to scholars year round for their projects. Among the archives Wallace might have availed himself of: the records of the New York Times, the archives of the Waldorf Astoria hotel, the history of the Library itself, or maybe my favorite, a collection I recently discovered with the enigmatic title New York City miscellaneous, 1614–1975.
Wallace was joined by historian and journalist Jelani Cobb. You may remember Cobb’s fantastic lectures he gave here at the Library on American history, which we shared on this podcast back in June. They are called “The Half-Life of Freedom.” You likely also know his writing for The New Yorker, where he is on staff. Among the many reasons to admire Cobb’s work is the considered and wide-ranging historical context that he applies to his attempts at helping us better understand the complications of contemporary American politics.
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