This Wednesday April 6 at 7 PM I’ll be attending a talk at Community Bookstore about the new book THE INVENTION OF BROWNSTONE BROOKLYN by my old Park Slope friend Suleiman Osman.
Wednesday, April 6th at 7 PM: The Invention of Brownstone Brooklyn
Here is the description from the Community site:
Please join us to welcome Suleiman Osman for a presentation and discussion of The Invention of Brownstone Brooklyn: Gentrification and the Search for Authenticity in Postwar New York. Park Slope native Osman, now an assistant professor of American Studies at George Washington University, has written a landmark study of how this place we call home came to be. If you weren’t among the dozens of people he interviewed for this book, you’re bound to know some of the people mentioned. A follow-up discussion will be moderated by blogger Norman Oder (Atlantic Yards Report). Don’t miss this important event, co-sponsored by the Park Slope Civic Council. (Read Norman’s interview with Suleiman in the Park Slope Patch.)
I’m psyched to attend. I hope some of the old guard shows up to tell their first-person stories. So little is known and understood about the 1960s and 1970s generation that made it all happen – for better and for worse.
See you there!
March 2011
Tuesday, 3/15/11 at 6:30 pm
The Invention of Brownstone Brooklyn: Race and Gentrification in South Brooklyn
Museum of the City of New York
Before Park Slope, Boerum Hill, Carroll Gardens, Cobble Hill, Fort Greene and others, there was South Brooklyn. Labeled a “blighted” industrial wasteland by postwar city planners, the area became re-branded in the 1960s and ’70s as “Brownstone Brooklyn,” as idealistic newcomers allied with longtime residents against urban renewal. While some argue that the gentrification of Brownstone Brooklyn is a successful story of neighborhood revitalization, progressive politics, and human scale planning, others argue that it has become a yuppie disaster, driving up property values and pushing out longtime residents. Suleiman Osman, author of The Invention of Brownstone Brooklyn (Oxford, 2011), moderates a discussion with Eric Demby, co-founder of Brooklyn Flea; D. Kenneth Patton, former divisional dean of the NYU Schack Institute of Real Estate; Amy Sohn, author of Prospect Park West (Simon & Schuster, 2009); and Michelle de la Uz, executive director of the Fifth Avenue Committee, exploring the racial and economic fault lines in the pro-urban ideal and the contested meaning of Brooklyn. This program is presented as part of the ongoing Urban Forum series, New York Neighborhoods: Preservation and Development. $
RESERVATIONS REQUIRED
$12 Non-Members
$8 Seniors and Students
$6 Museum Members
*A two dollar surcharge applies for unreserved, walk-in participants.
For more information please call 917-492-3395 or click here
