@american.intersections

a project exploring the richness and layered depth of the American Experience, block by block, in Lower Manhattan, NYC, 2017 - 2019 | Archive

View fullsize Basement Workshop was an Asian American political and arts organization founded in 1970 and active until 1986. Although there were the number of locations throughout Manhattan Chinatown -  22 Catherine Street, 32 E. Broadway, 1 E. Broa
View fullsize Mine Okubo Residence - 17 East 9th Street - Mine Okubo was a Japanese American artist born in Riverside, California in 1912, and is best known for her 1946 book Citizen 13660, in which she recounts her experience in a Japanese American internment ca
View fullsize Cafe Society - 1 Sheridan Square: Opened in 1938 by Barney Josephson, a former shoe salesman, the Cafe Society was the first racially integrated nightclub in New York City. It welcomed some of the biggest talents in jazz history during its time in
View fullsize Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire Site —  23-29 Washington Place & Greene Street . At this site, one of the deadliest industrial disasters in U.S. history occurred at the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory located at 23-29 Washingto
View fullsize CHARAS / El Bohio Community Center - 605 East 9th Street . . In what is now a bordered up public school building on East 9th street, was the home of the CHARAS / El Bohio Community Center, founded in 1977 during a time of widespread disinvestment and
View fullsize Asian Americans for Equality (AAFE) is multi-service organization that provides education, financial assistance, and training to empower people, small businesses, and neighborhoods. It was founded in 1974 to advocate for equal rights . . In the 1960s
View fullsize Not far from the corner of Baxter and Worth Streets was the location of the New York African Society for Mutual Relief (NYASMR) at 42 Baxter Street . Founded in 1808, NYASMR became the first incorporated African American association i
View fullsize Located at 290 Henry Street, St. Augustine’s Episcopal Church was built in 1828 on the Lower East Side and is one of the last remaining churches that has maintained what was known as its “slave galleries”. These galleries were two h
View fullsize American Anti-Slavery Society - Formed in 1833, and headquartered in NYC at 142-143 Nassau Street, were the offices of the American Anti-Slavery Society (AASS). . The American Anti-Slavery Society was the largest and most influential abolitionist org
View fullsize Housed in a church on East 10th Street, is the office of the American Indian Artists Inc. (AMERINDA), which is the only multi-disciplinary arts organization of its kind in the US that supports traditional and contemporary forms of Native American exp
View fullsize Lower East Side People’s Credit Union -  During a period of neighborhood divestment when the last bank branch closed in the mid-1980s, Lower East Side neighborhood activists organized a credit union to provide financial services to communi
View fullsize La Plaza Cultural Community Garden, on the corner of Avenue C and Ninth Street, was founded in 1976 by local residents and activists who took over what were then a series of vacant city lots filled with trash and rubble. In an effort to imp
View fullsize Located at 236 Church Street by what is today the northwest corner of Worth and Church Streets, Samuel E Cornish and John Brown Russwurm, co-founded and operated the country’s first black newspaper in 1827, Freedom’s Journal - the&nb
View fullsize 165 Mercer Street was the site of the African Grove Theater - the first known African American theater company founded and operated by William Alexander Brown in 1821. Brown was a pioneering actor and playwright from the Caribbean. The theater's repe
View fullsize Chrystie Street Burial Ground -  195 Chrystie Street was the site of the Second African Burial Ground, which replaced the original cemetery for African American New Yorkers located near City Hall that had been closed in the 1790s. At t
View fullsize 53 Bayard Street - was the home of Mabel Lee: suffragist and first woman of Chinese descent to receive a PhD from Columbia University . . . Mabel Lee was born in 1896, and spent her early childhood in Guangzhou, China before join

Following the election of Donald J. Trump in the Fall of 2016 and learning about the impact of social media in swaying people’s perceptions, I decided to break my social media fast of 5 years and leverage the power of that platform to broadcast more subtle political and historical messages as a counter to stereotypes and misconceptions by highlighting public - often hidden -  narratives in Lower Manhattan. This motive was inspired by an article named: “ An Immigrant Named TRUMP”, which revealed Donald J. Trump’s roots and connection to the early 20th century LES immigrant experience. I decided to commence the instagram account on the eve of inauguration day 2017 and one of the first postings was of the tenement building where Donald J. Trump’s grandfather lived when he first arrived in NYC from Germany.  These early postings also coincided with the travel ban (the muslim ban / executive order 13769) that suspended entry of immigrants from the following countries Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, and Yemen, lowered the number of refugees to be admitted into the United States, and suspended the entry of Syrian Refugees indefinitely at the time. 

I am interested in revealing the deep historical roots of marginalized (and often hidden) narratives in site specific places in Lower Manhattan. 

It’s a people’s history of Lower Manhattan. 

@american.intersections