Germania Hall (with the flags), ca. 1870. Germania Hall (or Assembly Rooms) was a brick building, constructed in the mid 1860s, that hosted gatherings of the local German immigrant population beginning in 1874. In the 1870s and 1880s political and social clubs held meetings here and a second floor theatre presented ethnic performances (including German, Yiddish, Italian, Polish and French). Later the visitors to the building became seedier, with gambling its main business. During the 20th century the former Assembly Hall building served as a low-cost lodging house and a mixed-use factory. It was demolished in 2006 for a new residential building.

New York City has the largest network of community gardens in the United States. Community gardens borrow from earlier urban-gardening movements, such as Frannie Griscolm Parsons' educational "Farm-Gardens" of the early 20th-century and Depression-era "subsistence gardens" which provided for communities across the city. Beginning in the 1960s, New Yorkers increasingly favored progressive government programs and looked towards the city to sponsor many past-due revitalization efforts for neighborhoods. One such effort was community gardens, which beautified abandoned lots and, most importantly, allowed the community to have an active say in the design of their urban environment.

Won't you join us for a walk in the steps of early immigrants exploring their new American lives in the city? Start way downtown in Manhattan, so you're facing the East River, with Ellis Island in view. We invite you to wonder about those who arrived here willingly and even desperately, and passed through immigration hall at the notorious arrival port of Ellis Island depicted in the Forward's archival image below. In traditional Jewish lore, to look eastward, with devotional intent, is to open the heart to Jerusalem and the source of all illumination.

"The Bowery, east side, north from and across East 1st Street. To the left appears the Empire State and the Metropolitan Life Insurance Bldg's. across the Third Avenue elevated lines which runs on the Bowery and continues northward on Third Avenue from Cooper Square, 1938." The storefront and corner signage advertise a 10 cent shave and a 15 cent haircut.

Does anybody need a haircut? A few months ago, going to a barbershop, shopping, or dining outdoors wouldn't have seemed extraordinary. As New York carefully reopens after closures due to the Covid-19 pandemic, these photos offer a glimpse of "Phase 2"-friendly scenes from the city's history.

On May 25, 2020, George Floyd was murdered by then Minneapolis Police Officer Derek Chauvin. As Floyd was arrested for supposedly using a counterfeit $20 bill to buy a pack of cigarettes, the officer knelt on the back of his neck for 9 minutes and 29 seconds as he lay face down on the street. Despite Mr. Floyd’s pleading with the officer stating “I can’t breathe” several times Chauvin continued to use the non-sanctioned technique to restrain and subdue the victim until he died in what culminated in an extrajudicial murder. All of this was captured on video by witnesses, security cameras at a nearby restaurant, and the body camera of J. Alexander Keung, an officer complicity standing nearby. When the news broke and the footage hit the internet, the country was distraught. At the time, the world was already reeling from the Covid-19 pandemic, in the midst of a near nationwide lockdown with many out of work or working from home. Similar to the ways in which television made the injustices of the Jim Crow South no longer ignorable to Americans around the country it was almost impossible to miss the footage of this event as it proliferated across the internet and media outlets. Yet again, another murder in the seemingly never-ending string of violence committed by police forces against communities of color. Demonstrations began the very next day in Minneapolis. They spread throughout the country and eventually the entire world. All eyes were on this moment and communities mobilized to express frustration with the endemic of police brutality as well as the judicial and societal complacency towards that violence. They also came together in solidarity, ready to confront the reality of the murder, the truth behind the systemic inequalities that allowed the murder to occur, and not just to demand change but actively engage and construct ideas of what that change can and should look like. Things were no different in SoHo, Manhattan; a place that is known to be more aligned with the retail trends of the wealthy rather than a hotbed of community activism. Despite that reality the area was reclaimed by the community and made into a center of direct action. The streets, formerly deserted, were transformed into a parade ground of demonstration and the plywood boards that secured the storefronts of shops that serve the elite were co-opted by local artists and activists to transmit messages that resonated with those concerned with improving the whole of society. Since then, former police officer Derek Chauvin was charged with second-degree murder, third-degree murder, and second-degree manslaughter in the death of George Floyd and the three officers also present: J. Alexander Kueng, Thomas K. Lane, and Tou Thao have been charged with aiding and abetting second-degree murder. It is important to note that this is not justice this is accountability, but it could be a step in the right direction towards preventing further injustices by police. Local artist James Hong realized what was happening and knew it was important to capture and preserve this juxtaposition on display in the midst of a community reclaiming the streets as part of a nationwide response to the murder of George Floyd. In his own words “The poignancy of Soho – the pinnacle of consumerist society – transformed into a platform of social messaging cannot be lost. This may serve as a reminder that no matter how things in society may be beautifully cloaked in delivering subliminal messages of how we should live, a raw but potent social message can subvert it- not with iPhones and high tech, but with messy paint, caulk and spray cans.” James’ actions led to this selection of ten photographs, and many others not included here, to be exhibited at the Museum of Reclaimed Urban Space in the fall of 2020. The plywood windows of SoHo are torn down by this point but James and Bill DiPola, director of MoRUS, had the foresight to save the very same plywood in these photos and install them as gallery walls for the pictures to hang on, in effect recreating parts of SoHo within the museum and immortalizing the conversations these boards promoted from their storefronts. They are still on display at MoRUS and will live here on the Urban Archive so that you too might tour the neighborhood during one of its most critical moments of direct action taken by a community in the 21st century.