This is a press release from New York City’s City Lore (”fostering our living cultural heritage”) about the launch of their City of Memory site.
Welcome to a new, grand repository for all New York’s stories and memories
Imagine gazing at a map of New York City and suddenly being able to see not only all the streets and neighborhoods, but everything that happened on them.
“The cliché,” said site designer Jake Barton in the New York Times, “is that there are eight million stories in the city. But really, it’s more like there’s eight million different cities, each created within each of our memories.” City of Memory brings these cities together into one grand, larger-than-life panoply of stories and memories. Past and present intermingle, as neighborhoods and intersections accumulate layers of memory. The site invites us into a dynamic, ever-growing, ever-changing story map of New York that explores what’s best about our city — its people, places, and stories.
As we give birth to City of Memory, visit this month’s featured story which highlights Joe Caracciollo helping a woman give birth to a baby on the C train – or take the featured South Asian tour of Jackson Heights with Madhulika Khandelwal.
Zoom In
Zoom into your own neighborhood to see the stories others have left on the very streets where you live and work. Zoom in to your favorite areas of New York City to see what others have to say about what they experienced there. After all, every event that you take part in is connected to the place where it happened. In Brooklyn, visit with Abe Lass, the last of the piano players from the silent movies, or spend a moment at the women’s powder room on the Staten Island Ferry. Take a city-wide tour of our “Local Characters Hall of Fame,” or let Rita Kagan show you a little of Brighton Beach.Add Story
Click “Add Story” to include your own tales. This interactive site gives you the chance to contribute your own stories and images to the map, to become a part of this ongoing living archive. It’s easy to upload a story in text with a photograph.Read About the Site
Follow this link to Jake Mooney’s wonderful essay about the site featured in the New York Times.City of Memory is sponsored by City Lore and Local Projects. It was funded by The Rockefeller Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts.
[...] of Memory Hat tip to Tellhistory for their link to the City of Memory site. Constructed by City Lore, a cultural [...]
Very cool site. Thanks for passing it along. I’ve been trying to do something on a different scale because I hate thinking of all those fascinating pieces of history that are gathering dust in attics . . . or being lost.