Final Thoughts

There were many themes addressed as we moved through our incredibly varied sites in New York City and selected up- state areas.  However, one stood out above all the others: progress, and the price it extracts on those who embrace it in some form.

As Ed O’Donnell led us through the neighborhoods on the East Side, you were able to see how these places became actual breathing entities that took on whatever recognizable form the people inhabiting them wanted, with a heavy emphasis on the culture’s food, dress, and, in a less celebratory sense, its working conditions.  The hours and business environs were challenging to the employees; pay was a subject not be debated.  None of this, apparently, mattered.  The participants knew that if they just endured a bit longer, they and their fellow countrymen would establish a toehold in the new land, and their ultimate reward would be met down the road–to progress out of this place of bad living conditions and go somewhere better.  The lower East Side was not really made up of familiar old neighborhoods like those from whatever European or Asian land the inhabitants originated from; it was a functioning way station.

These areas were in stark contrast to the homes of great privilege in Sagamore and Hyde Park, where presumably all the needs of the dwellers were met due to the wealth of the heads of the houses.  But there was progress, as Theodore Roosevelt’s Sagamore engendered a growth in him as a father (though his wife once labeled him her “seventh” child, with his sense of decorum scarcely above those who he was assumed to be supervising).  His intellectual capacity continued to develop here as well, within his study.  Franklin Roosevelt’s Hyde Park saw this also; but his greatest growth would come as he formulated and carried out strategies that would not allow his physical incapacities to blunt a career in public service or politics.  Eleanor Roosevelt’s personal progress allowed her to symbolically (and literally) remove herself from her mother-in-law’s steely gaze to her house at Val-Kill (actually, Franklin did the same at another place on the property).  Eleanor also had the ability to remain above the seaminess  of her husband’s lack of marital fidelity while continuing to carve out her niche in the areas of worker’s rights and human rights–without a doubt a step of progress.  Here was growth by FDR, TR, and Eleanor in very different settings.

There were other, more diverse instances of progress presented during our journey, shown in the Museum of the City of New York; stories of the city’s urban planning history, chiefly orchestrated by Robert Moses, whose many successes could be contrasted with some things that didn’t work (talk to any Brooklyn Dodgers fan); the automobile’s evolving connection with New York; John Lindsey’s attempted reorganization of personal representation of various groups within gotham–an effort at progress that met with, at best, questionable results.  These examples affirm the opinion that progress is fraught with starts, stops, complications, and, sometimes, a finish that leaves place and participants in an unimproved position.

However, the most obvious example of  progression during our sojourn into the diverse environs of New York City would be Ellis Island,and, to a lesser extent, the restored examples of apartment living quarters in the Tenement Museum.  On Ellis Island exhibits, we read tales of the origins of the immigrants’ desire (or need) to relocate, the starting points of their across- the-ocean voyages (which included things as amazing as simulated living conditions they might be facing upon arrival in America), and the journey itself.  These disparate traveling groups dealt with these many challenges because the  goal of a better life was somehow in their mind’s eye. The rooms of photos and recorded oral histories then give way to the results of their searches, showing the jobs they were forced to take, as well as how some managed to progress beyond day labor or working class status to a position of middleman or shopkeeper.  The Tenement Museum was an opportunity to see the immigrants’ close quarters and lack of privacy, often using their own living space for completion of piecework to make ends meet.  These conditions certainly encouraged many to  progress beyond their lot in life to a better example of what they hoped to pass on to their children and others that followed them.

Circumstances of progress took many forms in these snapshots of New York City history.  While it may have reaffirmed and cemented some previously-held opinions on how new arrivals in this great city approached achievement of their hopes and dreams, it also provided some heretofore unknown stories of people who did not let tough obstacles get the best of them.

And, finally, rising out of a highly-publicized, emotionally-wrought hole in the ground, all of America has watched as a city shows that it will not be defeated by the attempted perpetration of a conspiracy of fear within its limits.  For many, this is the most vivid and obvious example of the undeterred strength of progress.

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