Immigration | 6sqft

Currently, most Lenape belong to the Delaware Nation and live in New Jersey, Oklahoma, and Ontario, but the word Lenape means “Original People,” and the Lenape are the Original New Yorkers. In fact, the name Manhattan comes from the Lenape “Manahatta,” meaning “hilly island.” Although the Lenape stove to “walk so gently on the earth,” without leaving an impact on the land, they influenced the city’s physical geography in ways we can see and feel today. From Bowling Green to Broadway, Cherry Street to Minetta Lane, here are 10 sites in Manhattan that reflect the legacy of the Lenape.
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LinkNYC announces new campaign to celebrate ‘City of Immigrants’

Photo courtesy of LinkNYC

August 27, 2018

LinkNYC announces new campaign to celebrate ‘City of Immigrants’

The city's 1,742 LinkNYC Wi-Fi kiosks are the site of a new campaign to highlight facts and photographs related to immigrants' impact on New York City's life and culture. "City of Immigrants" will feature historic photos from the Associated Press, along with facts from the Mayor's Office of Immigrant Affairs' annual report. For example, did you know 52% of NYC businesses are immigrant-owned, or that nearly half of the city's population speaks a language other than English at home?
Find out more

Photo by 6sqft

August 14, 2018

Where to experience Bangladeshi culture in NYC, from the East Village to Ozone Park

By Hannah Frishberg

It's hard to miss the two floors of flashing, chili pepper light-adorned Indian restaurants on First Avenue and Sixth Street in the East Village. The origin of these two stacked eateries, though, is much more frequently overlooked, as is the fact that the neighborhood's adjacent "Little India" is really more "Little Bengal." New York's main Bangladeshi community is often cited as being in Jackson Heights, which boasts a large South Asian population and a great representation of its diverse culture, including the beloved Patel Brothers grocery store. Less well known is that East New York also has a large Bangladeshi community, and in the 1990s, the East Village's "Curry Row" worked to identify itself as Indian, a culture more Americans at the time were familiar with. Ahead, we look at the whole history and break down the best places to experience Bangladeshi culture in NYC.
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July 31, 2018

How six Italian immigrants from the South Bronx carved some of the nation’s most iconic sculptures

When the Piccirilli Brothers arrived in New York from Italy in 1888, they brought with them a skill-- artistry and passion for stone-carving unrivaled in the United States. At their studio at 467 East 142nd Street, in the Mott Haven Section of the Bronx, the brothers turned monumental slabs of marble into some of the nation’s recognizable icons, including the senate pediment of the US Capitol Building and the statue of Abraham Lincoln that sits resolutely in the Lincoln Memorial on the National Mall. The Piccirillis not only helped set our national narrative in stone but they also left an indelible mark on New York City. They carved hundreds of commissions around the five boroughs, including the 11 figures in the pediment of the New York Stock exchange, the “four continents” adorning the Customs House at Bowling Green, the two stately lions that guard the New York Public Library, both statues of George Washington for the Arch at Washington Square, and upwards of 500 individual carvings at Riverside Church.
Chisel away at this tale

July 30, 2018

This 1946 map shows how Native American trails became the streets of Brooklyn

While we take for granted the paths and roads we use on a daily basis, it's interesting to find out how they came to be. It's not a new concept that paths worn by the comings and goings of early dwellers and subsequent settlers in a particular area became roads, streets and thoroughfares, often with names that reflect their beginnings. Brooklyn Heights Blog (via Viewing NYC) shares some insight into Brooklyn's familiar roads that began as Native American trails on a 1946 map titled "Indian Villages, Paths, Ponds and Places in Kings County."
Peruse the map

History

Men of steel: How Brooklyn’s Native American ironworkers built New York

Roger Horne, a Mohawk Ironworker in the Raising Gang, ca. 1970 via the Smithsonian

July 25, 2018

Men of steel: How Brooklyn’s Native American ironworkers built New York

The Empire State Building. The George Washington Bridge. The United Nations. The Woolworth Building. 30 Rock. The Seagram Building. Lincoln Center. The Waldorf Astoria. Virtually all of New York’s most iconic structures were raised in part by Mohawk Native American ironworkers. Since 1916, when Mohawk men made their way to New York to work on the Hell Gate Bridge, ironworkers from two Native communities, Akwesasne (which straddles Ontario, Quebec, and New York State) and Kahnawake (near Montreal), have been “walking iron” across the city.
Get the rest of this stories-high story

The history of Weeksville: When Crown Heights had the second-largest free black community in the U.S.

Historic Hunterfly Road Houses via the Brooklyn Historical Society

July 18, 2018

The history of Weeksville: When Crown Heights had the second-largest free black community in the U.S.

By Andrew Berman of Village Preservation

It’s a mighty sounding moniker, but the name “King’s County” also speaks to Brooklyn’s less-than-democratic origins. At the turn of the 19th century, the city of Brooklyn was known as the “slaveholding capital” of New York State and was home to the highest concentration of enslaved people north of the Mason-Dixon Line. But, after New York State abolished slavery in 1827, free black professionals bought land in what is now Crown Heights and founded Weeksville, a self-supporting community of African American Freedman, which grew to become the second-largest free black community in Antebellum America. By 1855, over 520 free African Americans lived in Weeksville, including some of the leading activists in the Abolitionist and Equal Suffrage movements.
More about free black Brooklyn

History

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June 15, 2018

Remembering the worst disaster in NYC maritime history: The sinking of the General Slocum ferry

PS General Slocum; photo via Wikimedia On June 15, 1904, a disaster of unprecedented proportions took place in New York City, resulting in the loss of over 1,000 lives, mostly women and children. This largely forgotten event was the greatest peacetime loss of life in New York City history prior to the September 11th attacks, forever changing our city and the ethnic composition of today’s East Village. It was on that day that the ferry General Slocum headed out from the East 3rd Street pier for an excursion on Long Island, filled with residents of what was then called Kleindeutschland, or Little Germany. This German-American enclave in today’s East Village was then the largest German-speaking community in the world outside of Berlin and Vienna.
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History

New York women tell their real immigration stories in a new photo exhibit

Daniela, from Colombia © Dru Blumensheid

March 9, 2018

New York women tell their real immigration stories in a new photo exhibit

6sqft’s series The Urban Lens invites photographers to share work exploring a theme or a place within New York City. In this installment, Dru Blumensheid shares some images from the Queens Museum's new exhibit Real People. Real Lives. Women Immigrants of New York. Are you a photographer who’d like to see your work featured on The Urban Lens? Get in touch with us at [email protected]. "Statistics do not tell the story of immigration. People do. Women do." This was the impetus behind the new photo and video exhibit at the Queens Museum, "Real People. Real Lives. Women Immigrants of New York." A partnership between New Women New Yorkers, NYC's only non-profit dedicated to empowering young immigrant women, and artist Dru Blumensheid aka BUMESI, the exhibit features photos and videos of 16 young immigrant women taken in iconic locations such as the Brooklyn Bridge and Chinatown, all as a way to show "a nuanced and multi-layered picture... of the barriers and isolation they experience, and of the hopes, dreams, and talents they bring with them." In celebration of Women's History Month, 6sqft chatted with Dru Blumensheid about her personal inspiration behind the project, what she learned from the experience, and how she hopes all New Yorkers can benefit from hearing these stories.
Hear from Dru and see her beautiful photos and videos

When it comes to attracting new residents, NYC wins big, but it’s complicated

Photo via WNYC/Flickr

January 19, 2018

When it comes to attracting new residents, NYC wins big, but it’s complicated

A new data analysis effort from the Washington Post titled "The top 10 places people are moving, and how their choices differ by race" offers some interesting insights into where people are ending up when they come from...elsewhere. Though it's not the article's intent, the first thing we notice is that New York City is number one in attracting sheer masses, huddled and otherwise. And the biggest comparable block of hopeful humanity is coming "from abroad." The attraction factor gets more complex, though, when we adjust for size, looking at the percentage of the overall population the newcomers comprise. In that case, metro areas like Colorado Springs and San Jose move to the top. And what about race? Even more complicated.
Read on

City Living

October 28, 2016

For New York City rats, getting here is easy, surviving is tough

To investigate the question, “What is a New York City rat, and where did it come from?” the New York Times checks in with researchers at Fordham University, led by Jason Munshi-South, who have embarked on a rat-tracking study to find the answer to that very question (among others). It turns out that–much like the city's millions of two-legged inhabitants–the answer is "everywhere," from Galapagos and Brazil to New Zealand and Japan.
We're all immigrants at some point

City Living

September 1, 2016

Interactive graphic explores the diversity of Queens through its 59 endangered languages

Queens is one of the most diverse places on the planet, and it's believed that around 500 languages are spoken here. Fifty-nine of these, however, are endangered, meaning that those who speak these languages are the last people on Earth who know them. This number is staggering, considering the fact that UNESCO puts the worldwide number of "critically endangered" languages at 574, which is why artist Mariam Ghani has embarked on a mapping project that explores these disappearing tongues. First shared by Fast Co. Design, The Garden of the Forked Tongues is an online, interactive graphic and an acrylic mural in the Queens Museum, both of which plot colored polygons to represent how the languages are distributed throughout the borough.
All the info

Uncategorized

July 5, 2016

Immigration Map Shows Migration Patterns for Every Country in the World

Puzzled at how many conversations about international issues turned to the subject of immigration no matter what the original context might have been, NYC-based entrepreneur and data visualization geek Max Galka created a map showing the flow of immigration to and from each of the world’s nations to better visualize where the patterns really lay. In addition to topics like terrorism, Brexit, this year’s presidential race and the refugee crisis, according to Galka, immigration was "being mentioned in connection with all sorts of topics I never would have expected.” Finding that the debates on immigration, though sometimes heated, were lacking in factual information, he hopes that his mapping efforts, brought to us via his blog Metrocosm, can provide some real-world context on questions like, "how many migrants are there? Where are they coming from? And where are they going?"
Take a look at the map to see who's coming and going

Uncategorized

February 5, 2016

Map Shows Where Foreign-Born New Yorkers Live

New York's immigration history is a long and complex one, and still today 37 percent of city residents are foreign-born. Using data from the 2010-2014 American Community Survey, the NYU Furman Center created this easy-to-read map that shows the top ten countries of origin, how many such New Yorkers there are (each dot represents 500 residents born in the respective country), and where they live (h/t Untapped).
The full map and more info

Uncategorized

September 9, 2015

Colorful Dot Maps Paint a Picture of Immigration in the U.S.

First spotted by CityLab, these dot maps called Mapping Immigrant America are colorful in two senses of the word. Kyle Walker, assistant professor of geography at Texas Christian University, used census tract data to map America's immigrant population. The nine countries of origin (Mexico, Latin America and the Caribbean, East and Southeast Asia, South Asia, Sub-Saharan Africa, North Africa and Southwest Asia, Europe, Oceania, and Canada) are represented with a different hued dot, creating a picture of diversity and ethnic enclaves. With each dot standing in for 20 immigrants, a quick look at a city's color palette tells a lot about its cultural makeup.
More maps ahead

Uncategorized

August 14, 2015

Map Shows the Countries Other Than Mexico That Have the Most Immigrants in Each U.S. State

New York prides itself on its diversity, so it comes as no surprise that we have the second-highest immigration population in the country. But what may be surprising is that the most immigrants–other than those from Mexico–in our state come from China, according to this informative map. In nearby New Jersey and Connecticut, India is responsible for the largest immigrant group.
More on the map here

Uncategorized

Infographic: Here’s NYC’s Immigration Patterns over 387 Years