Lincoln Center – arts, culture, and performance – this bastion of artistic creation and pillar of the Manhattan community welcomes an excess of 5 million people annually. Yet, through the muddy depths of history, a different tale is told: demolition, displacement, and victimization. The American nightmare. As the powerful white elite of America ensured their fantasy of New York as a cultural capital of the new world, 1,647 working-class families and 16,723 minorities were evicted from their homes in the Columbus / San Juan Hill neighborhood. Raising the living standards of white families were executed in concert with redlining which ensured the ghettoization of Black Americans into an under-invested and neglected Harlem — many of whom returned from WW2 with none of the benefits of their white men-in-arms. Perhaps most symbolic, the white travertine veneer, transported from the quarries at Bagni di Tivoli in Rome, successfully mortared over the wrecking ball of 1950s urban renewal. This work aims to peel back the layers of whiteness that exist on the edges of the Upper West Side and tell the stories of the silent minorities and their plight in mid-20th-century New York.