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[ COLUMBIA FORUM]
WWII & NYC
No shots were fired in earnest,
yet New York City — and Columbia —
played a significant role in WWII
PHOTO: EILEEN BARROSO
Kenneth T. Jackson, the Jacques Barzun Professor in History
and the Social Sciences, has taught at Columbia since 1968.
Though he hails from Memphis, the former Air Force officer is
a preeminent authority on New York City and the leader of an
annual all-night bike ride from Columbia to Brooklyn. His many
books include Crabgrass Frontier: The Suburbanization of
the United States (1985), Empire City: New York Through
the Centuries (with David S. Dunbar, 2002) and The Encyclopedia
of New York City (as editor, 1995). When asked by
New York magazine to describe what he does for a living, he
answered, “I read a lot. … and I talk about New York City, just
about all the time.”
The excerpt that follows is from the book that accompanies
“WWII & NYC,” an exhibition staged by the New-York Historical
Society this past spring (Jackson was president of the society
from 2001–04). Both the exhibition and the book describe
New York’s pivotal role in the 20th-century war that was one of
the United States’ greatest military moments. In the short term,
Jackson says, the war stimulated New York’s economy, but in the
longer term, the city lost ground to places in the South and West
that could better accommodate huge factories and military bases.
Readers can view “WWII & NYC: Harbor Tour With Kenneth
T. Jackson,” on YouTube: youtube.com/watchv=SnoxyvkTVaA.
Rose Kernochan ’82 Barnard
The S.S. America makes its way up the busy Hudson River in 1940,
steaming past the skyline of lower Manhattan.
PHOTO: McLAUGHLIN AIR SERVICE PHOTOGRAPH COLLECTION, PR 043, DEPARTMENT OF PRINTS,
PHOTOGRAPHS, AND ARCHITECTURAL COLLECTIONS, THE NEW-YORK HISTORICAL SOCIETY
SUMMER 2013
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