Virtual Visit to Williamsburg’s Moore Street Market | Episode 73

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Learn the history of Brooklyn’s Moore Street Market and join a live broadcast with market manager Egaudy Gomez, who will take us on a virtual tour of the market to meet the vendors, hear their stories, and learn about what they are making and selling during this time of crisis, including businesses that are collaborating to make Puerto Rican- and Dominican-themed protective masks. Built in 1941 as part of a city-wide network of public retail markets, today “La Marqueta de Williamsburg” is a neighborhood institution, known by local residents for family-owned businesses selling herbal teas, beverages, gift items, and traditional ingredients like tubers and plantains, as well as prepared food vendors with lunch counters that serve up flavorful Latin dishes.

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Explore Brooklyn’s Avenue of Puerto Rico | Episode 33

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Explore the history of Graham Avenue, Brooklyn’s “Avenue of Puerto Rico” and take an in-depth look at the businesses and people of this community, including the historic Moore Street Market, and the department stores, butcher shops, and pushcarts of the past and present. Turnstile Tours has worked in the neighborhood for more than 10 years, and this program is based on more than 20 oral history interviews with neighborhood residents and local business owners and on original archival research that we will share during this session.

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The History of NYC Public Markets, Part 2 | Episode 22

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The first and second floors of the Essex Market with a historic neon sign from the Orchard Essex Meat Market

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Take a deep dive into the history of New York City’s public markets, which have their origins in a vast food distribution system set up by Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia in the 1930’s. Once encompassing 10 retail markets and nearly as many wholesale facilities, today many of the historic buildings of this era remain, and these markets continue to offer affordable space for food entrepreneurs and fresh, high-quality food for shoppers throughout New York City.

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New York City’s Public Markets, Past and Present

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This weekend marks the end of an era, as the Essex Street Market will be moving from the building it has occupied since 1940 into a new facility across Delancey St in the Essex Crossing development. The new Essex Market will have nearly all the same vendors as the old market, plus 15 additions, in a larger space that will be more convenient for shoppers and vendors.

The old market building had its own charms, and it represented an important period in New York City’s history, when Mayor Fiorello La Guardia fought to keep food affordable for New Yorkers and to provide indoor space for the city’s growing population of street vendors in the midst of the Great Depression. As we say goodbye to the old market, we are looking back at the history of the city’s public markets, and what happened to the rest of them. >> Continue reading

Makansutra: Eating In New York

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Makansutra logo

Makansutra, September 20, 2015

by KF Seetoh

I was taken on a food and heritage spin around Brooklyn, “to places where tourist would look out of place” ironically by Cindy Vandenbosch, founder of Turnstile Tours (www.turnstiletours.com), and her husband Andrew Gustafson, offering a range of tours and have 7 guides under their fold specialising in different fields, including food. A chunk of their profits goes to the Vendy folks to support their efforts in protecting the livelihoods of the migrant food cart vendors.

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Mayor LaGuardia and the War on Sidewalk Christmas Tree Sellers

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It’s that time of year again – we’ve had our first snow in New York City, Christmas music is playing in every shop and store, and Christmas tree stands line the sidewalks.

While most Americans buy their Christmas trees from places like hardware stores, garden centers, churches, or Wal-Mart, New Yorkers rely on a somewhat unique economy of sellers that occupy public sidewalks all over the city for one month a year. So, how did we arrive at this arrangement, and why does it persist when so much of our city’s sidewalk economy has been stamped out?>> Continue reading

NYC Museum Educators Roundtable: Oral History in a Public Context

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Presentation at the New York City Museum Educators Roundtable Annual Conference // 2013

“Oral History in a Public Context: Fostering Human Connections with Broader Public Meanings”

This conference session, organized by Cindy VandenBosch, included case study presentations and facilitated small group discussions to examine how oral history can be used effectively in a variety of museum-based projects, from apps to place-making activities, walking tours to educational programs, as a means of fostering personal connections with the past, and with broader public meanings. The goal of the session was to allow participants to discuss the challenges and rewards of documenting and telling the stories of people and places that are not well documented, and of using both old and new methods and technologies to connect the public with those stories, and their contemporary implications. Presenters included Cindy VandenBosch, who discussed Turnstile’s project to record 20+ oral histories with vendors and neighborhood residents in and around Brooklyn’s Moore Street Market, and Andrew Gustafson, who discussed the use of oral history in the Brooklyn Navy Yard World War II Tour to not only tell the stories of shipyard workers and sailors during this time period, but also as a tool to elicit tourgoers to share their own experiences and family stories. The panel also included Molly Garfinkel, director of Place Matters, and Hanna Griff-Sleven, Director of Cultural Programming at the Museum at Eldridge Street.