The study of Audubon Park's origins, maturation, and disappearance is at root the study of a rural society evolving into an urban community, an examination of the relationship between people and the land they inhabit. The chain of events that John James Audubon set in motion in 1841 moved forward inexorably to the streetscape that emerged seven decades later. The story of how that happened makes up the pages of Audubon Park: The Neighborhood Manhattan Forgot. With a colorful cast of characters drawn from the upper crust of nineteenth century New York City, this fully illustrated history peels back the many layers of a rural society evolving into an urban community, enlivened by the people who propelled it forward: property owners, tenants, laborers, and servants. Thoroughly researched through primary and secondary sources, as well as private collections, Audubon Park tells the intricate tale of how individual choices in the face of family dysfunction, economic crises, technological developments, and the myriad daily occurrences that elicit personal reflection and change of course, pushed Audubon Park forward to the cityscape that distinguishes the neighborhood today. A longtime evangelist for Audubon Park, author Matthew Spady delves deep into their lives of the two families most responsible over time for the anomalous arrangement of the roads and dwellings: John James Audubon (1785-1851) and George Bird Grinnell (1849-1938). Buoyed by his extensive research, Spady reveals the darker truth behind John James, a towering patriarch who consumed the lives of his family members in pursuit of his own goals. Like the Audubons fifty years earlier, the Grinnells found themselves the owners of extensive property that was not yielding sufficient income to pay taxes, insurance, and maintenance. And like the Audubons, they planned a strategy for controlled change that would have an unexpected ending. Beginning with the Audubons' return to America in 1839, Audubon Park follows the many twists and turns of the area's path from forest to city, ending in the twenty-first century with the Audubon name repurposed in today's historic district, a multi-ethnic, multi-racial urban neighborhood far removed from the homogenous, Euro-centric Audubon Park suburb.

Book Information
ISBN 9780823289424
Author Matthew Spady
Format Hardback
Page Count 320
Imprint Fordham University Press
Publisher Fordham University Press
Weight(grams) 152g