Boatbuilding History with the City Island Nautical Museum | Episode 122

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For well over a century, City Island in western Long Island Sound was an important maritime community, not only as a destination for tourists — which it still is — but also as a center of yacht building and sail-making. As fiberglass superseded wood, the boatbuilding ceased, and the sail-making industry moved on to other locations, but the island remains proud of its nautical heritage, which is celebrated in the City Island Nautical Museum.

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The Melvilles and Sailors’ Snug Harbor: A Story of New York | Episode 118

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By the time he published Moby-Dick in 1851, Herman Melville’s career as a popular prose writer was almost over. While Melville was working on the docks as a customs inspector to support his family, his younger brother Thomas was across the harbor with one of the best jobs in New York City: governor of Staten Island’s Sailors’ Snug Harbor. Join this virtual program to celebrate Herman’s 201st birthday with John Rocco, a Distinguished Teaching Professor and Coordinator of the Maritime and Naval Studies (MNST) Master’s program at SUNY Maritime College, who will introduce us to the Melville brothers’ relationship and its impact on Melville’s “lost” years and final work, Billy Budd, Sailor.

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Preserving the Fleet of the South Street Seaport Museum | Episode 117

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Since its founding over 52 years ago, South Street Seaport Museum has faced the daunting job of preserving its historic fleet. Join us for a photographic voyage with Director of Historic Ships Jesse Lebovics to see the challenges and remarkable efforts made for the long term preservation of 1885 ship Wavertree, 1930 tugboat W.O. Decker, 1885 schooner Pioneer, and the planned upcoming work on 1907 lightship Ambrose.

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Bowne & Co.: Letterpress Printing in 19th-Century New York | Episode 110

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Bowne & Co., Stationers opened their doors at the South Street Seaport Museum in 1975, 200 years after Robert Bowne founded his shop across the street on Queen Lane. Today Bowne & Co., continues the tradition of 19th-century letterpress printing. This virtual program with Art Director Rob Wilson – co-hosted with Stefan Dreisbach Williams from the home of Robert Bowne’s ancestors, the 1661 Bowne House in Flushing, Queens – investigates the changing role that stationery and printing offices played in New York City, and the ways in which Bowne & Co., uses its collection of 34 printing presses, and more than 2,400 cases of movable type in contemporary ways today.

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Three Generations of Conservation: The Marsh-Billings-Rockefeller National Historic Park | Episode 109

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Vermont is known for its natural beauty, but the National Park Service has only one property in the state, the Marsh-Billings-Rockefeller National Historic Park. Established in 1992, the park tells the story of three men who occupied the same piece of land over time in the small town of Woodstock, and each had a unique impact on preserving the restoring the natural landscape: diplomat and writer George Perkins Marsh, railroad tycoon Frederick Billings, and scion Laurance Rockefeller. This virtual program will look at the history of conservation as told through this site, and explore some of the features of the park in and around Woodstock.

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A Conversation with Think!Chinatown | Episode 105

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Manhattan’s Chinatown has been a destination for visitors from around the world seeking exotic food and curiosities for more than 100 years. Think!Chinatown works to demystify this neighborhood, while connecting people and resources to Chinatown businesses and organizations. Co-founder Yin Kong will share some of Think!Chinatown’s most recent projects, discuss their work with the community, and talk about how the neighborhood is working through this difficult time. We’ll explore how the organization uses design, community, and civic engagement as a way to connect visitors and locals alike with a sense of place in one of NYC’s most dynamic and vibrant immigrant neighborhoods. Chinatown is so much more than a culinary destination!

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In Service to Seafarers from Titanic to Today: Seamen’s Church Institute | Episode 103

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The day that news of the Titanic’s sinking reached New York, dignitaries assembled at 25 South Street on the tip of Lower Manhattan to lay the cornerstone. That building would stand tall among the icons of the Port of New York and vastly improved the lives of the seafarers who helped build this port city’s commerce. In this program, the Seamen’s Church Institute’s Senior Archivist and Queens College Assistant Professor Johnathan Thayer discusses SCI, its iconic building at 25 South Street, and its ongoing commitment to the unseen workforce on our oceans and inland waterways.

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Lighter Life with David Sharps of the Waterfront Museum | Episode 102

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The Lehigh Valley No. 79 covered barge shuttled cargo around New York Harbor from 1914 until sometime around the mid-1970s. David Sharps rescued this wooden barge in 1985, digging it out the mud, floating it, and renovating into a museum, performance space, and the home where he and his wife raised their daughters. We take an inside look inside this remarkable vessel and the remarkable institution that is The Waterfront Museum.

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Waterfront Workers: Finding the Harkins Family with Julie Golia | Episode 88

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The waterfront has long been the epicenter of Brooklyn’s economic and cultural life, yet the stories of ordinary workers in the once-bustling piers and factories can be difficult to locate. In this program, historian Julie Golia will share how one small newspaper item – a 1873 notice of the untimely death of dockworker Michael Harkins – allowed her team of researchers at Brooklyn Historical Society to uncover generations of history along the waterfront. Julie is formerly the Vice President of Curatorial Affairs and Collections at Brooklyn Historical Society and oversaw the creation of the exhibit “Waterfront” and BHS DUMBO, and she is currently Curator of History, Social Sciences, and Government Information at The New York Public Library.

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Flash and Clang: Aids to Navigation with the Historic Lighthouse Tender Lilac | Episode 85

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Unlock the mystery of maritime navigation with Mary Habstritt of the Lilac Preservation Project. At night many of our waterways become constellations of flashing lights. These Aids to Navigation (or AtoNs) keep our marine traffic moving safely, but most of us have only the vaguest idea what they mean or what it takes to establish and maintain them. The Lilac, a steam-powered United States Lighthouse Service (later US Coast Guard) tender introduces the public to the world of AtoNs and helps us see our waterways with new insight.

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