NYC History

NYC History is a single-semester course that surveys the history of the development of New York City as a metropolis. The course spans the Dutch colonial era to the second-half of the twentieth century. If time permits, the class also studies issues of the 21st century. The course is taught by Mr. Sandler.

Curriculum
The course begins with a study of New Amsterdam (New York City under the Dutch) and Peter Stuyvesant. Topics, which are covered in chronological order, include DeWitt Clinton and the Erie Canal, Walt Whitman, the Five Points slum, Tammany Hall and New York during the Gilded Age, the City Beautiful movement, Jacob Riis, F. Scott Fitzgerald and the Roaring Twenties, New York during the Great Depression, Robert Moses, and mayors such as Fiorello Laguardia, John Lindsay, Ed Koch and Rudy Giuliani. Clearly, much is covered in this single-semester course.

Trips heavily involve themselves in the course. Mr. Sandler may bring the students on 3 trips or more per semester. In the Spring of the 2010-2011 school year, there were two trips around lower Manhattan and one trip to Morningside Heights/Harlem. The students visit interesting sites such as Katz's deli (renowned for its pastrami sandwich on rye and which has been featured in the movie When Harry Met Sally), Columbia University, the inside of City Hall (in the Fall of 2011-2012, the students caught a glimpse of Mayor Bloomberg), the old City Hall station (closed off to the public) and Cathedral St. John the Divine (the tallest cathedral in the world). For a fee, students are offered a chance to climb up to the top of the cathedral with Mr. Sandler.

If the course is taken seriously, it can be pretty intense because Mr. Sandler assigns heavy nightly reading. However, the overwhelming majority of the students in the class are second-term seniors (the class is only offered in the spring), so many students do not take the course seriously. Either way, it is enjoyable regardless of whether the student does the reading because the trips and the interesting facts learned in the course make the course entertaining.

The numerous guest speakers per semester enrich the course as well. In the 2010-2011 spring semester, guest speakers included Professor Robert Cohen from NYU who gave a lecture on student activists at Columbia University in the 60s, Dr. J. Emilio Carillo who spoke about New York during the Dinkins era, and Nicholas Dagen Bloom, author of Public Housing that Worked: New York in the Twentieth Century.

Mr. Sandler
Mr. Sandler is a very friendly and cool teacher. He is not excessively strict, but neither is he a teacher to mess around with. He often befriends students in the class.

Mr. Sandler's lessons are tend to follow a predictable sequence: a roughly 20-minute lecture based off the previous night's reading, followed by a viewing of excerpts of the documentary companion to the textbook. During Mr. Sandler's lectures, he tries to elicit as much participation as possible, inviting students to share their opinions and comments in response to lesson topics or the previous night's homework.

Grading Policy
Mr. Sandler is fairly generous with grades for this elective.