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A review by edenseve63
Downtown: My Manhattan by Pete Hamill
4.0
When I was a kid there was a headline in the newspaper that read "Ford to city - Drop Dead". This was in the bad old days of the early 1970's when NYC was on the ropes financially. Diminutive Abe Beame was Mayor and they were seeking federal funds to bail out the city. It was a rotten time financially for everyone with inflation rising and job rates down. But things got better and NYC survived - and came back stronger than ever!
An historical essay that reads like a love note to Pete Hamill's beloved Downtown Manhattan from the tip of Bowling Green to Mid-Town. New York is perpetually in a state of change; new faces, new languages, new ideas, brought to it by people from every corner of the world. Beginning with the first Dutch settlers down on Wall Street, followed by the English who combined to become the Knickerbockers, who Henry James wrote about in his famous novel "Washington Square". It is about the Africans brought as slaves and came as freemen, affecting the culture in ways we are still discovering today. In the mid-19th century fleeing unstable governments came the Germans, who brought with them food and drink, we now come to think of as "American as Apple Pie" like Hot Dogs, Hamburgers and Beer. The Irish flooded New York in the 1850's fleeing poverty and famine. They were poor and often victims of anti-catholic prejudice. In the Five Points neighborhood they found themselves locked in they were surrounded by criminal activity and corruption. By the 1880's the Jews of Russia began coming through Castle Garden and Ellis Island in response to pogroms that followed the assassination of Tsar Alexander II. They were poor, generally uneducated and their co-religionist, the German-Jews and Sephardic Jews who had preceded them decades earlier found them to be "not of their class". They made their lives in the tenements of the Lower East Side and worked in the factories and on the pushcarts. Southern Italians and Sicilian agricultural workers seeking to better wages to bring home to their poor families came and went on a round trip business for a time before settling down near Mulberry Street and bringing their families over, and building a church. Chinatown was until the 1960's made up of Chinese men only, because the Exclusion Act kept them from bringing their families. Latinos fleeing repressive political regimes and poverty also began finding their way to New York following World War II. They moved up-town. They brought with them music and dance that changed the sound of the city.
Pete Hamill describes New Yorkers, whoever they are (Irish writers, Chinese Stockbrokers, Jewish Teachers, Italian Chefs, African Congressman, etc.)as one big tribe and on 9-11 he saw that was truer than ever. We get cynical, we leave, we live in a constant state of nostalgia, but we always come back. Whenever I'm flying and I look down at the New York skyline there is only one thought in my mind "home".
An historical essay that reads like a love note to Pete Hamill's beloved Downtown Manhattan from the tip of Bowling Green to Mid-Town. New York is perpetually in a state of change; new faces, new languages, new ideas, brought to it by people from every corner of the world. Beginning with the first Dutch settlers down on Wall Street, followed by the English who combined to become the Knickerbockers, who Henry James wrote about in his famous novel "Washington Square". It is about the Africans brought as slaves and came as freemen, affecting the culture in ways we are still discovering today. In the mid-19th century fleeing unstable governments came the Germans, who brought with them food and drink, we now come to think of as "American as Apple Pie" like Hot Dogs, Hamburgers and Beer. The Irish flooded New York in the 1850's fleeing poverty and famine. They were poor and often victims of anti-catholic prejudice. In the Five Points neighborhood they found themselves locked in they were surrounded by criminal activity and corruption. By the 1880's the Jews of Russia began coming through Castle Garden and Ellis Island in response to pogroms that followed the assassination of Tsar Alexander II. They were poor, generally uneducated and their co-religionist, the German-Jews and Sephardic Jews who had preceded them decades earlier found them to be "not of their class". They made their lives in the tenements of the Lower East Side and worked in the factories and on the pushcarts. Southern Italians and Sicilian agricultural workers seeking to better wages to bring home to their poor families came and went on a round trip business for a time before settling down near Mulberry Street and bringing their families over, and building a church. Chinatown was until the 1960's made up of Chinese men only, because the Exclusion Act kept them from bringing their families. Latinos fleeing repressive political regimes and poverty also began finding their way to New York following World War II. They moved up-town. They brought with them music and dance that changed the sound of the city.
Pete Hamill describes New Yorkers, whoever they are (Irish writers, Chinese Stockbrokers, Jewish Teachers, Italian Chefs, African Congressman, etc.)as one big tribe and on 9-11 he saw that was truer than ever. We get cynical, we leave, we live in a constant state of nostalgia, but we always come back. Whenever I'm flying and I look down at the New York skyline there is only one thought in my mind "home".