My City Book Club: Crossing Broadway: Washington Heights and the Promise of New York City
Wednesday, May 20 at 6:30 pm
At the Museum of the City of New York
Though Washington Heights ranks as one of Manhattan’s most distinctive neighborhoods, its identity has never been fixed. Once known as “Frankfurt on the Hudson” for its many German Jews, it later became the largest Dominican community in the U.S., and then endured a decade-long crack epidemic starting in the ’80s. Today its diverse residents take increasing pride in both their neighborhood’s recovery and its roots, but the area faces a whole new identity crisis as rents increase, alongside other signs of gentrification. Join historian Robert W. Snyder, author of Crossing Broadway: Washington Heights and the Promise of New York City (2015), and journalist Ray Suarez to discuss what the neighborhood reveals about our constantly-changing city and its myriad socioeconomic contradictions.
