New York Rising: How Real Estate Shapes the City

The History of New York City Real Estate offers a historical survey of the last four centuries of real estate development in New York City, with a primary focus on Manhattan. It relies not only on existing sources held by Columbia libraries and others, but also on material from the collection of Seymour Durst – a patriarch of one of New York’s foremost real estate families and a passionate collector of the City’s historical memorabilia. The course will be organized chronologically, and will cover the period from the original Dutch settlement of New Amsterdam through the present time. However, each presentation will also contain thematic elements, using real estate developments to examine social and economic forces of the period. In the first half of the course, these topics range from the earliest systems of landholding and the evolution of the Manhattan street grid through the development of the nation’s first public housing projects and the construction of the world’s tallest skyscrapers. The latter part of the course will touch specifically on modern themes that continue to shape the real estate environment of the city today. These include the continued regeneration of a once-industrial waterfront, the ever-evolving nature of public- private partnerships in development, and the seminal connection between civic places, like transportation hubs and parks, and real estate.