A Black man in the dock following claims of a plot by enslaved people in New York to revolt and level New York City with a series of fires, at an unspecified court in New York, 1741

Was the Conspiracy That Gripped New York in 1741 Real?

Rumors that enslaved Black New Yorkers were planning a revolt spread across Manhattan even more quickly than fires for which they were being blamed.
People outside the entrance to Luna Park on Coney Island, New York

Luna Park and the Amusement Park Boom

The fortunes of Coney Island have waxed and waned, but in the early twentieth century, its amusement parks became a major American export.
Washington Market, New York, 1872

Feeding a City the Municipal Way

Between 1790 and 1860, New York City’s food markets were public, sustained by active government involvement. What happened?
Lodgers in a Crowded Bayard Street Tenement. Photo by Jacob Riis

When Lodgers Were “Evil”

A wave of immigration from eastern and southern Europe transformed urban landscapes, creating crowded tenements that stoked humanitarian concerns.
The cover of issue 4 of Adventures in Poetry

Adventures in Poetry

Published in the East Village from 1968 to 1975, Adventures in Poetry features poems by New York School poets Anne Waldman, Frank O’Hara, John Ashbery, Allen Ginsberg, Bernadette Mayer, and more.
Green-Wood Cemetery with Manhattan in background

Restoration in the Heart of the City

Green-Wood cemetery in New York City is also a site of urban grassland management and restoration, an effort to mitigate its contributions to climate change.
New York upper Eastside looking south flooded

New York City, Underwater

Climate change is transforming the Big Apple. How long will it be until America’s largest city is all but wiped off the map?
The cover of the September 15, 1970 issue of The East Village Other, featuring Timothy Leary

The East Village Other

The East Village Other, a countercultural newspaper founded in 1965, published interviews with Timothy Leary and Allen Ginsberg.
Washington Arch, New York, 1907

Who Lived in Greenwich Village before the Bohemians?

The neighborhood of New York City was a haven for Catholics before it earned its reputation as a haven for artists.
A delivery person is seen crossing a nearly empty 5th Avenue during the coronavirus pandemic on April 25, 2020 in New York City

Recalling City Sounds During a Quarantine

The New York Public Library presented the city with the gift of its own "missing sounds" during the coronavirus crisis.