Monthly Archives: December 2011

The Best New York Museum You’ve Never Heard Of

30 Friday Dec 2011

Posted by in Alexander Hamilton, Museum of the City of New York

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For those of you who have never visited (or perhaps even heard of) the Museum of the City of New York, I’d highly recommend a visit.

Located uptown on Fifth Avenue between 103rd and 104th streets, it’s housed in a beautiful 1930’s building overlooking Central Park, with statues of Alexander Hamilton and DeWitt Clinton flanking either side of the facade on your way in — fitting as they’re the two most responsible for the trajectory of the city’s future (Hamilton could also lay claim to the same for the country’s economic future, and could share the claim for its political future), and unfitting as DeWitt’s uncle, George, was one of Hamilton’s most reviled enemies.

Looks like the pigeons found a perch on this leg...Hamilton, north facade on 5th Ave

I’d suggest starting with the ~20 minute video upstairs which provides a brief but engaging overview of the city’s history (narrated by Stanley Tucci) and then wandering around the various exhibits.

The two that I enjoyed the most (both are open through April 15th) were:

  1. On the first floor, “The Greatest Grid: The Master Plan of Manhattan, 1811-2011“, which provides a engrossing overview — with lots of maps and pictures! — of the city’s 1811 grid plan and how the city was transformed over time.  In the ‘Trivia To Impress Your Friends’ category, I learned that Union Square was so named as it marks where three pre-grid roads converged:  Broadway, Bowery (now Fourth Ave), and Bloomingdale Road (what is now upper Broadway…in fact, I’d never even heard of Bloomingdale Road, but it was built in 1703 through upper Manhattan).
  2. On the second floor (the same floor as Stanley T’s video), “The Unfinished Grid: Design Speculations for Manhattan“, includes eight architects’ and designers’ renderings of what the city might look like in the future. Their ideas were the winners of a competition hosted by the Architectural League of New York, in partnership with the Museum of the City of New York and Architizer.

So put your Metro Card to good use and pay the museum a visit — you’ll be glad you did.

Note: MCNY is open seven days a week, 10am-6pm.  Admission is $10.  For additional details, click here.   And for a full list of the museum’s current exhibits, click here.

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Give Me Maps!

29 Thursday Dec 2011

Posted by in Books, Maps

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One of my pet peeves is when history books don’t include maps.

I’m no cartographer (in fact, I’ve never even met one), but I love a good map. When I look at one and replay the narrative of an historical story over in my head, everything just seems to make more sense — I’m also able to remember what I’ve read far easier and the visual helps push the facts into the long-term memory of my brain.

But many books from first-rate historians keep us starved.  Let me pick on some of the books I’ve read recently: Goodwin’s Team of Rivals: no maps; Chernow’s Alexander Hamilton: nadda; Rakove’s Revolutionaries: zilch…and no pictures either! (ok, I haven’t read this one yet…it was a Christmas gift from my brother…but I did flip through it looking for illustrations); Lacey’s Great Tales from English History: got nothin’.

So why don’t more books contain maps? Why the dearth of diagrams? The paucity of plans?  Are they really more expensive to include than photos?  Do the authors expect us to have atlases by our side while we’re reading?

A great model for how to use maps effectively is McCullough’s 1776 (also one of my favorite books in 2011).  In helping to illustrate the battles in Boston, New York, and New Jersey (Trenton and Princeton), he includes three beautiful maps which include legends of troop movements. Simple, clear, and memorable.

I’m not greedy — I’ll even take just one map per book.  Show us some love!

Two Favorite Websites

27 Tuesday Dec 2011

Posted by in Continuing education, Khan Academy, Lynda.com

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We live in an amazing time when there are a ton of accessible and valuable resources to learn almost anything imaginable.  In effect, we can begin or continue our education whenever it suits us and learn whatever we’re curious about.

Today, the continuing education industry is loosely divided between the degree-granting and non-degree granting markets.  Examples include:

  • Degree-granting institutions: This market is exploding as professionals, who already have an undergraduate degree, seek additional credentialing (either certificates or degrees) required for their jobs; to bolster pay; to improve the possibility for a promotion; and/or to change careers.  Although every major state university has a continuing education program, leaders include: University of Maryland, University of Washington, Harvard, MIT, and NYU.  (I’ve excluded the for-profits which offer undergrad and graduate degrees.)
  • Non-degree granting institutions: This market includes a slew of different offerings — everything from DVDs by mail (e.g. The Teaching Company); a university’s alumni programs; local lecture series (e.g. the 92nd Street Y), university open learning initiatives (e.g. MIT’s OpenCourseWare, Open Yale Courses, and Stanford on iTunes); and independent companies/websites.

In this last sub-segment, lately I can’t get enough of two websites: Khan Academy and Lynda.com.  Both are fantastic resources for all kinds of learners — whether you’re a student, professional, or individual who’s just curious about the world, these are incredible places to spend a lot or a little amount of time.

Interested in how the Hawaiian islands formed? How to understand the periodic table? The scale of the solar system?  The cause of heart disease and heart attacks?  The art of the northern Renaissance?  How the FICA tax works?  Newton’s laws of motion?  Khan Academy is the place for you.

Interested in understanding the foundations of photography composition?  How to use Microsoft Excel?  Eager for an intro to HTML?  Curious about all things related to design?  Lynda.com is the place for you.

I’ve summarized below the key features of each site as they’re a bit different, but equally valuable.

Content

Format

Price
Khan Academy Wide range of academic and practical topics (2,600 videos and counting).  Its strength is science and math — to date, only a few history topics are covered but I suspect it’ll do more in the future. Video, each topic session is about ~10 minutes long (range 6-25 minutes). Free (it’s a non-profit)
Lynda.com Wide range of professional courses (non-degree), including photography, design, web and interactive design, and business, etc. Video, each course is a few hours long (range 2-6 hours) $25/mo for unlimited use.  Add $12/mo if you want to download all course files.

The breadth of topics covered by each is remarkable — but more importantly, the courses/videos on each are clear and easy to digest.  I would be shocked if they didn’t clarify for you topics which had always somehow seemed baffling.

It’s good to have favorite things!

New York City Property

27 Tuesday Dec 2011

Posted by in New York, Queen Anne, Trinity Church

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There was a recent article in the NY Times which discussed the deteriorating relationship between the Occupy Wall Street movement and Trinity Church, highlighting the demonstrators’ anger at being prevented from camping on Trinity property.

Trinity Church is one of New York’s largest land holders, stemming originally from a substantial farmland grant — some 215 acres — from Queen Anne in 1705. That’s one great gift, made a full lifetime (or back then, a couple of lifetimes) before the Declaration of Independence.*

At the time, much of this farmland was north of the city center (i.e. north of today’s financial district), and included plots such as the area between West Broadway, Murray, Barclay, and Church Streets in lower Manhattan (one block west of today’s City Hall) which Trinity granted to King’s College.  This is the college that Alexander Hamilton attended after Princeton spurned his request for accelerated study in order to graduate as fast as possible, and the same one that became today’s Columbia University (it smartly changed its named in 1784 — post the American Revolution, it wasn’t the best thing to be associated with the crown), and much later relocated uptown.

But back to Trinity Church and its properties.  Over the centuries, it gave away most of its land, but Trinity Real Estate still owns 8 acres with 6 million square feet of office space in the Hudson Square Area, making it one of New York’s largest real estate owners.  Here are its 15 properties (74 Trinity Place is downtown so not shown):

'Tis good to be a NY land holder, no? Source: Trinity Real Estate

If you’re walking through this neighborhood, keep your eyes peeled for plaques near the front entrances of these buildings which highlight that they’re Trinity’s property.

* Interestingly, Trinity Church had received its charter and an initial land grant in 1697 from King William III, Anne’s brother-in-law.  This was William of “William & Mary” fame (Mary being Anne’s sister) who together overthrew King James — Mary’s dad! — to take the throne of England in 1688.  As William and Mary had no kids, Anne succeeded them.

World War II

26 Monday Dec 2011

Posted by in World War II

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I’ve been watching a new channel over the holidays called the Military Channel and a number of its shows on World War II, including the battles between the Stalin and Hitler.  This lead me to head over to Wikipedia to learn more, and I came across the following chart.

It summarizes military and civilian deaths by country, including the percentage of the population killed.

Other sites I looked at had different figures so there is some variability in each of these estimates — either way, the scale of these figures is staggering and difficult to comprehend.

  • Soviet Union had over 20mm deaths and I’ve seen estimates for China range from 10mm-20mm.  Even at the low end, combined their ~30mm deaths represent ~50% of the war’s causalities.
  • Within the Soviet Republics, Belarus lost ~25% of its population and Ukraine, its larger neighbor directly to the south, lost ~16%
  • Poland lost over 17% of its population during the war.
  • The chart includes~6 million Jews killed in the Holocaust.

To put these losses in some context:

  • WWII’s 60+ million deaths were ~2.6% of the planet’s ~2.3 billion people (1939)
  • WWI’s ~16mm deaths were ~0.9% of the planet’s ~1.8 billion people (1914)
  • The American Civil War’s ~625,000 deaths, the country’s bloodiest conflict, were ~2% of the country’s ~31.4 million people (1860)

Hello World

26 Monday Dec 2011

Posted by in Hello world

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Ahhh, my very first blog post.

I’m not sure why, but now felt like the right time to get a blog of my own up and running.  Honestly, the hardest part is finding a name that hasn’t already been taken.

I picked “Historicalness” since I love history and figure that many of my posts will have some historical theme, but I guess time will tell.  I was pretty sure “Historicalness” wasn’t actually a word, but apparently it is.  Thanks to my friends at TheFreeDictionary.com, I learned it’s a noun meaning “the state of having in fact existed in the past” and “significance owing to its history”.

Not too shabby.  Gotta remember it for Scrabble.