* Use this link to join our virtual program: https ://us02web.zoom.us/j/82221895340
\nOn a freezing December night almost two centuries ago\, a fire erupted in lower Manhatt an. The city's inhabitants\, though accustomed to blazes in a town with so many wooden structures\, a spotty water supply\, and a decentralized fire department\, looked on in horror at the scale of this one. Philip Hone\, a former mayor of New York\, wrote in his diary how "the progress of the f lames\, like flashes of lightning\, communicated in every direction\, and a few minutes sufficed to level the lofty edifices on every side." By the time the fire was extinguished\, a huge swath of land had been transformed from a thriving business center into the "Burnt District\," an area rough ly the same size as was devastated during the September 11th attack. In th e end\, nearly seven hundred buildings were destroyed. So vast was the con flagration that it was immediately and henceforth known as the Great Fire of 1835.
\nThe author reveals how New York emerged from the disaster to become a global powerhouse merely a quarter of a century later. Daniel S. Levy's book charts the city's almost miraculous growth during the earl y 19th century by focusing on the topics that shaped its destiny\, startin g with fire but including water\, land\, disease\, culture\, and politics\ , interweaving the lives of New Yorkers who took part in its transformatio n. Some are well-known\, including the land baron John Jacob Astor. Others less so\, as with the Bowery Theatre impresario Thomas Hamblin and the Af rican-American restaurateur Thomas Downing. The book celebrates Fire Chief James Gulick\, who battled the Great Fire\, examines the designs of the a rchitect Alexander Jackson Davis who built marble palaces for the rich\, f ollows the abolitionist Arthur Tappan\, chronicles the career of the merch ant Alexander Stewart\, and reveals how the engineer John Bloomfield Jervi s succeeded in bringing clean water into homes. The city's resurrection li kewise owed much to such visionaries as Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux\, who designed Central Park\, creating the refuge that it remains to this day.
\nAt the conclusion of the program please feel free to tak
e a brief online survey here:
https://www.projectoutcome.org/responses/63617 \
;
* Virtual programs work best with the curren t version of the browsers listed below:
\n