Quantcast

The DNAinfo archives brought to you by WNYC.
Read the press release here.

Locals to Interview Each Other for Uptown Libraries' Oral History Project

 The libraries are seeking residents to share their stories about Washington Heights and Inwood. 
Oral History Project
View Full Caption

UPPER MANHATTAN — If you have an Uptown story to tell, the New York Public Library wants to hear it.

The NYPL's Washington Heights, Fort Washington and Inwood branches are the latest to participate in the Oral History Project, an initiative that aims to preserve the unique history of each NYC neighborhood by collecting the stories of the people who lived it.

The project grew out of an event last summer at the Jefferson Market Library in Greenwich Village.

“They had these longtime residents come in to look at these artifacts from the area: building ledgers, old photographs,” said Alexandra Kelly, who now oversees the initiative. “It sparked this incredible dialogue among people who were there, and the librarians later said, ‘We should have had someone here to record this.’”

After coming up with the idea, library staff recruited and trained 70 locals to act as interviewers. They collected about 120 stories from people in the community, including Angelo Verga, a performance poet who gave readings at artistic salons held above the neighborhood’s Korean delis in the 1960s, and Michael Urgo, who managed a store that was a front for the mob.

Since then, the NYPL has also completed similar projects in Harlem and the eastern Bronx, as well as a venture that focused on gathering stories from New Yorkers with disabilities.

The recordings live at the local branch libraries and are also available to the public via the project’s website.

Kelly said a key component of the undertaking is having the community members conduct the interviews.

“Our feeling is that engagement would be lower if we had an oral historian come in and say, 'I’m going to research your neighborhood and choose who to interview,'" she said. “The residents are the real experts on the neighborhood.”

When Danita Nichols, who manages the Inwood Library branch, first heard about the project, she thought it was perfect for upper Manhattan. The Uptown version of the project, which begins in January, is titled "Bridging Our Stories: Oral Histories of Inwood and Washington Heights."

“There is a sense of many smaller communities within Inwood — various immigrant communities, people who have been here a long time and people who are coming in new — but there’s a strong identification among all of them that they are Inwood people,” Nichols said. “The same is true in Washington Heights.”

Nichols hopes that all of those small communities are represented in the project, like the area’s shrinking Greek community, which brought her 93-year-old neighbor to Inwood many years ago.

One interview candidate is NYPL President Tony Marx, who grew up in Inwood and frequented the local library.

Nichols also said the library is the perfect place to host such an initiative.

“The identity that people have with their local libraries is very big,” she said. “Someone recently posted on Facebook a picture of herself in front of the Inwood library in the 1960s and everyone was sharing their memories.

"It just seems like it was meant to be a library project.”

There will be information sessions at all three branches in January and February for those interested in volunteering or finding out more about the project.