Acknowledgments
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Acknowledgments THis BOOK EXists because countless people were kind enough to share their insights and expertise with me over the years. I’d especially like to thank Sam Goodman, Mark Caldwell, Thomas Mellins, Lloyd Ultan, Evelyn Gonzalez, Mark Naison, Jerome Charyn, Marshall Berman, Leonard Kriegel, Arthur Gelb, Avery Corman, James Crocker, Gelvin Stevenson, Deborah Dash Moore, and Robert Caro, all of whom were exceptionally generous with their time and did a great deal to help clarify my thinking about the evolving world of the Grand Concourse. I am indebted beyond words to Stephen Sinon, head of information services and archives at the LuEsther T. Mertz Library of the New York Botanical Garden, who served as my research assistant. Stephen not only unearthed every document I asked for, he also directed me to countless others that made this book richer and more informative. And given his yeoman work collecting images and acquiring the sometimes elusive rights to them, he is the one most responsible for the illustrations. I am also deeply indebted to those who were kind enough to critique all or parts of my manuscript and offered invaluable suggestions; in addi- tion to Mark Caldwell, Sam Goodman, Thomas Mellins, and Lloyd Ultan, they include Jim Rasenberger, Manette Berlinger, and my New York Times colleagues Mitch Keller and John Oudens. I’m grateful to Mimi Vang Olsen for sharing the story of her father, Kourken Hovsepian, and his priceless photographs of generations of West Bronx families, a collection that I hope someday finds a public home of its own. I’m also grateful to Robert Billingsley for sharing documents and memories about his father, the developer Logan Billingsley; to John Gins- bern for memories of his grandfather, the architect Horace Ginsbern; to Sonia and Paula Kessler for recollections about the poet Milton Kessler; to Suzanne Callahan and Maury Brassert for family memories about the the- ater designer John Eberson; and to James Crocker for sharing a scrapbook ix x Acknowledgments about Andrew Freedman that provided a vivid portrait of a man, an insti- tution, and an era. At the Bronx African-American History Project, in addition to Mark Naison, I’d like to thank Brian Purnell and the individuals whose descrip- tions of life in the borough enriched my understanding of Bronx life, among them Leroi Archible, Beatrice Bergland, Jesse Davidson, Joan Ty- son Fortune, Robert Gumbs, Allen Jones, and Cyril DeGrasse Tyson. At the Bronx borough president’s office, in addition to Sam Goodman, I’d like to thank Daniel Donovan and Wilhelm Ronda. I’m also grateful to three former borough presidents—Robert Abrams, Fernando Ferrer, and Herman Badillo—all of whom shared their insights about the strengths and troubles of the West Bronx, as did current and former staff members of the New York City Planning Department, among them Robert Esnard, Lloyd Kaplan, Larry Parnes, and Rachaele Raynoff. Staff at libraries and other institutions around the city went far be- yond the call of duty in helping me with my research. I’d especially like to thank Laura Tosi, Peter Derrick, and Gary Hermalyn at the Bronx County Historical Society; Janet Munch at the Leonard Lief Library of Lehman College of the City University of New York, and her colleague William Bos worth, director of Lehman’s Bronx Data Center; Melanie Bower at the Museum of the City of New York; Janet Parks at Avery Architectural and Fine Arts Library at Columbia University, home of the Horace Ginsbern archives; Sergio Bessa, Holly Block, and their colleagues at the Bronx Mu- seum of the Arts; William Casari at Hostos Community College; Miranda Schwartz at the New-York Historical Society; and staff members at the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research, the Center for Puerto Rican Studies at Hunter College, the American Museum of the Moving Image, and the Paley Center for Media, formerly the Museum of Television and Radio. At Yankee Stadium, Ken Derry and Tony Morante were extremely helpful, as were Rozaan Boone and Inbal Haimovich at Co-op City. For assistance with research about the Art Deco legacy of the West Bronx, I’m grateful to Andrew Capitan, Michael Kinerk, Glen Leiner, and Tony Rob- bins. For memories of Loew’s Paradise, I benefited hugely from the rec- ollections of Gerald McQueen and the expertise of Rebecca Shanor and Ross Melnick. Others whose research suggestions, personal stories, and general in- sights about the Bronx helped in countless ways include Andre Aciman, Alan Adelson, Michael Agovino, Jacob M. Appel, Rick Bell, Leonard and Leo Benardo, Nancy Biderman, Charles Bleiberg, Harold Bloom, Michael Acknowledgments xi Bongiovi, Ray Bromley, Raphael Carman, Mary Childers, Barbara Co- hen, Ira Cohen, Judith Crist, Laura Shaine Cunningham, Suzanne Davis, E.L. Doctorow, Christopher Rhoades Dykema, Nora Eisenberg, Mary Engelhardt, Gil Fagiani, Jules Feiffer, Arline Friedman, Mindy Thomp- son Fullilove, Ben Gibberd, Harrison J. Goldin, Vivian Gornick, Roberta Brandes Gratz, Helen Green, the late David Halberstam, the late Kitty Carlisle Hart, Pablo Helguera, Tony Hiss, Kenneth T. Jackson, Martin Jackson, Adrian Nicole LeBlanc, Randie Levine-Miller, Phillip Lopate, Elizabeth Macdonald, Francis Morrone, Rhona Nack, Regina Peruggi, Roberta Peters, Richard Plunz, Nick Raptis and his wife, the late Betty Kanganis, Morton Reichek, Patricia Twomey Ryan, Steven Samtur, Ellen Samuels, Joyce Sanders, Harry Schwartz, Helen Schwartz, Richard Sher- win, Edward Sorel, Maria Terrone, Eliot Wagner, Mike Wallace, Maureen Waters, Max Wilson, Carole Zimmer, and Destra Zabolotney. For help with images, I’m extremely grateful to Carl Rosenstein, who made available his gorgeous photographs of Art Deco buildings of the Bronx; I’d also like to thank Phyllis Collazo, Nakyung Han, Maura Foley, and Natasha Perkel at the New York Times. Many current and former Times colleagues provided insights, research tips, rich Bronx memories, and general encouragement over the long span of this project, among them Joseph Berger, Paul Goldberger, Barbara Graustark, Bernard Gwertzman, Michael Leahy, Sam Roberts, Marvin Sie- gel, and Dinitia Smith, along with all my friends and colleagues, past and recent, at the newspaper’s City section, my longtime professional home at the paper. Among the friends who offered moral support and sent their Bronx ac- quaintances my way, I’d like to thank Jonnet Abeles, Peggy Anderson, Pe- ter Freiberg, Susan Hodara, the late Carol Horner, Caryn James, Patricia Kavanagh, Ann Kolson, Lawrie Mifflin, Ellen Pall, Carol Rocamora, Bev- erly Solochek, Andrea Stevens, and Barbara Strauch. I’m grateful to my agent, Mary Evans, to David McBride, formerly of Routledge, now at Oxford University Press, for early support of this proj- ect, and especially to Eric Zinner at New York University Press for help- ing make the book a reality and for his astute editorial guidance all along the way. Everyone at NYU Press was immensely helpful; I’m particularly grateful to Ciara McLaughlin, Eric’s assistant; Despina Papazoglou Gim- bel, the press’s ace managing editor; Fredric Nachbaur, Betsy Steve, Joe Gallagher, and Brandon Kelley in the press’s marketing and publicity de- partment; and Liz Cosgrove, who designed the beautiful cover. xii Acknowledgments Many years ago, when I first began thinking about a book on the Grand Concourse, I got support from Penn Kimball, a professor and later a col- league at Columbia Journalism School. The late William Ewald of the New York Daily News urged me to pursue the project when a book about the Bronx was about the last thing anyone wanted to publish. Gene Roberts has offered encouragement ever since I first went to work for him a quar- ter of a century ago. The lion’s share of gratitude goes to my husband, Andy, and my daugh- ter, Sarah. Simply put, this book exists in large part due to their love, un- derstanding, and most of all enormous patience during the long span of this project..