Writing

 

Cities

The City’s End: Two Centuries of Fantasies, Fears, and Premonitions of New York’s Destruction (forthcoming in 2007; Yale University Press)

The Creative Destruction of Manhattan (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, December 1999). The book appears in the Historical Studies in Urban America series edited by James Grossman and Kathleen Conzen. Winner of the 2001 Spiro Kostof Award of the Society of Architectural Historians, given for the best work on urbanism and architecture in the previous two years.

"Shifting the Memorial Paradigm," Architecture (August 2006).

"The Preservation Act at 40," Architecture (June 2006).

"Crashing to Earth, Again and Again: 75 Years of Destroying the Empire State Building," New York Times, April 23, 2006.

“Welcome Back, King Kong,” Op-Ed in the Boston Globe (December 17, 2005 ). Reprinted in the Philadelphia Inquirer and International Herald-Tribune.

“The Kindness of Strangers: Rebuilding New Orleans ,” Architecture (December 2005). A PDF file.

"Memory Field: Germany ’s Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe," Architecture (June 2005). A PDF file.

“Careful Urban Renewal Twenty-Five Years Later: How the International Building Exhibition Berlin Has Stood the Test of Time,” Metropolis (March 2005).

“New Architecture in Berlin ,” Architecture (September 2004). A PDF file.

"100 Very American Years At Times Square," New York Daily News (April 5, 2004)

“The Otis Elevator: The ‘Hoisting Apparatus’ That Changed America,” Hartford Courant (February 22, 2004)

“The Unnatural History of Natural Disaster,” review essay in Journal of Planning History (November 2003).

“The Future of the Past: New York History after 9/11,” inaugural issue of the new New-York Journal of American History (May 2003).

“The City That Workers Built,” in Reviews in American History 29:3 (September 2001), with Eve Weinbaum. Review article of Joshua B. Freeman, Working-Class New York: Life and Labor Since World War II.

“’A Vanished City is Restored’: Inventing and Displaying the Past at the Museum of the City of New York,” Winterthur Portfolio 34:1 (March 1999).

"'Uses of the Axe': Street Trees and the Meaning of Nature in New York,” American Studies (April 1999).

“Creatively Destroying New York: Views from the Real and Imaginary Past,” in Lawrence Vale and Thomas Campanella, eds., The Resilient City: Trauma, Recovery, Remembrance (New York: Oxford University Press, forthcoming 2004).

“Creatively Destroying New York: Fantasies, Premonitions, and Realities in the Provisional City,” in Joan Ockman, ed., Out of Ground Zero (New York: Prestel Publishing, 2002).

“Rethink the Type of Memorial We Want,” Gotham Gazette, November 24, 2003

“Takin’ It To the Streets: The Geography of Public Protest,” Architecture Boston (Spring, 2003).

“Opportunity Lost? Rethinking the Rebuilding of New York” Op-Ed in the Philadelphia Inquirer (August 18, 2002).

“Step Back from Ground Zero,” Op-Ed in the Christian Science Monitor (July 30, 2002).

“On Edge, Again: Fear in New York after September 11,” The New York Times, cover article for The City section (October 21, 2001).

“Unimaginable: Precursors to September 11,” History News Service (September, 2001). Reprinted in the Lexington Herald-Leader, and several other papers.

“The Gerrymandered Lower East Side Historic District,” Op-Ed in the New York Daily News (April 26, 2001).

“Preservation Blues: The Destruction of Maxwell Street in Chicago,” Op-Ed in the Christian Science Monitor (December 28, 2000).

“Redlined: All the News That’s Fit to Deliver, All the People Fit for Delivery,” Op-Ed in the Philadelphia City Paper (June 29, 2000).

“Crucibles of Culture: Artists Thrive in Big Cities for a Reason, ” Op-Ed in the Los Angeles Times (May 15, 2000). Reprinted by the Salt Lake Tribune (May 21, 2000).

“The ‘City Too Busy to Hate’?: Forgetting the History of Segregation in Atlanta,” Op-Ed in the Creative Loafing (June 20, 1998).

“Turn to Berlin: German Capital Can Teach Atlanta How to Handle Success,” Op-Ed in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution (June 1, 1998, p. A9).

“A Block of History,” Op-Ed in The Atlanta Journal-Constitution (December 5, 1997, p. A23).

“The One Less Traveled By”: an Ode to MARTA," Op-Ed in The Atlanta Journal-Constitution (September 15, 1997, p. A9).

"Letter from Berlin: Hardly a True Memory," The Forward (August 15, 1997, p. 1).

Architecture

Building the Nation: Americans Write about Their Architecture, Their Cities, and Their Landscape, 1789 to the Present (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2003), co-edited with Steven Conn. Winner of the Allen G. Noble Book Award of Pioneer Society of America.

"The Public Realm," a regular column in Architecture Magazine.

“Education By Design: New Architecture at the Five Colleges,” Architecture Magazine (October, 2003). A PDF file.

“Boxed In: The Galante Architecture Studio’s Falmouth, MA Recreation Center,” Architecture Magazine (July, 2003). A PDF file.

“River of Innovation: Returning to the Tradition of Contemporary Architecture on the Charles River,” Architecture Boston (Summer, 2003).

“Reading the Reading Room: The Life of the Mind in the New British Library,” Preservation (May/June 1999).

"From 'Miserable Dens' to the 'Marble Monster': Historical Memory and the Design of Courthouses in Nineteenth-Century Philadelphia," Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography (December 1995).

"Yale's Old Brick Row: The Struggle for a Campus," New Haven Colony Historical Society Journal (Spring 1989).

Public History and Historic Preservation

Giving Preservation a History: Essays on the History of Historic Preservation in the United States (New York: Routledge Publishers, 2003), co-edited with Randall Mason.

Hijacking New York's History, New York Daily News, July 13, 2004

Christopher Woodward, In Ruins, in Metropolis (February 2003).

“The Gerrymandered Lower East Side Historic District,” Op-Ed in the New York Daily News (April 26, 2001).   

“Preservation Blues: The Destruction of Maxwell Street in Chicago,” Op-Ed in the Christian Science Monitor (December 28, 2000)

“The Life and Death of a Document: Lessons from the Strange Career of The Diary of Anne Frank,” The Public Historian 21:1 (Winter, 1999)

 

Politics

"Minuteman Athletics Logo Makeover Reveals Skewed Priorities at UMass," with Eve Weinbaum, Worcester Telegram and Gazette (July 29, 2003).

“Democrats Should Unpack the Court,” Philadelphia Inquirer (January 16, 2003).

“Trent Lott and the Color Line,” Valley Advocate (January 2, 2003).

“Speaking the Truth about Welfare into a Political Void,” Valley Advocate (April 3, 2002).

“Measuring the Value of Lives: A Critique of the September 11 Victims Compensation Fund,” Christian Science Monitor (January 4, 2002).

“Unkind Legacy: The History of George W. Bush’s Presidency,” Op-Ed in the Philadelphia City Paper (March 29, 2001).

“Private Tragedies and Public Life: Privatization after September 11,” Valley Advocate (September 27, 2001).

“Rage is Right: Renewing the Democratic Party,” The Politic (Spring 2001).

“Voter Cleansing: The Votes We Traded to Get Clean Machines,” Op-Ed in the Los Angeles Times (November 29, 2000).

“A Concession Speech for George W. Bush,” Op-Ed in the Yale Daily News (November 16, 2000).

“Whither National Health Care? Simple and Profound Lessons from Great Britain,” Op-Ed in the New York Daily News (July 1, 2000).

“Home with Dad on International Women’s Day,” Op-Ed in the New York Daily News (March 9, 2000).

"Wal-Mart's British Invasion," Op-Ed in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution (September 8, 1999).