Aug 28, 2024
Baseball legends Babe Ruth and Ty Cobb compared batting stances before their All-American Boys' East and West teams met at the Polo Grounds, August 28, 1945.
Photo: Dan Grossi for the AP
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Baseball legends Babe Ruth and Ty Cobb compared batting stances before their All-American Boys' East and West teams met at the Polo Grounds, August 28, 1945.
Photo: Dan Grossi for the AP
The construction of Lincoln Center required the obliteration of the neighborhood known as San Juan Hill. It was home to a large population of Blacks, Puerto Ricans, and Afro-Caribbeans when Harlem was still White. Also known as "the Jungles," it was the setting for West Side Story, which opened on Broadway in 1957. It also had a lot of middle-class White residents.
As that was happening, residents were fighting the proposal for an arts complex in the Lincoln Square part of the neighborhood. The poster above urged residents to attend a meeting to stop the project on August 28, 1957. Harris L. Present, a lawyer who had long advocated for the rights of minority groups in the city, led the fight. More than 400 residents showed up. Present urged them to march on City Hall on September 11, hoping to overwhelm the City Planning Commission with pickets and testimony.
Check back here on September 11, 2023, for the sequel. (Spoiler: Lincoln Center was built anyway.)
Photo: Lincoln Center/Gothamist