The Pulitzer-winning founder of the Gotham Center, Mike Wallace, has argued in his soon-to-be trilogy, no city has been as important for the development of the United States as New York, which became its unofficial capital: headquarters of trade, finance, manufacturing, consumption, immigration, labor activism, social reform, intellectual and cultural life, publishing, media, entertainment, and more.

Explore the five boroughs from the comfort and safety of your own home in this virtual talk on GothamEd, the new online adult education series from CUNY’s Gotham Center for New York City History. The conversation will be led by Justin Rivers, Untapped New York’s Chief Experience Officer, and will feature the Gotham Center’s director Peter-Christian Aigner, along with talks by some of the program’s fall instructors including Russell Shorto, author of the bestselling history of New Amsterdam, the original Dutch colony, Island at the Center of the World and Susan Goodier, historian of women’s activism during the late 19th and early 20th century, now working on a manuscript entitled, “Networks of Activism: Black Women in the New York Suffrage Movement.”

Dutch New Amsterdam map

Exploring NYC History with The Gotham Center

At the talk, also get a taste for the wide-ranging menu of courses at the Gotham Center, and learn about how the Dutch profoundly shaped New York City, a significance obscured by centuries of myth and misinterpretation, as well as what made New York City central to the rise of feminism and lesbian organizing between the 1950s and ‘90s. The event is free for Untapped New York Insiders (and get your first month free with code JOINUS).

GothamEd offers history buffs far and wide a chance to explore this storied past with experts and leading scholars, in a mixture of lectures and more traditional classes, Zoomed into the comfort and safety of your own living room. GothamEd presents online courses in New York City history, designed to serve a range of backgrounds and purposes — from the generally interested looking for a compact introduction to avid buffs in search of a much deeper dive.

Courses include New York City’s American Revolution, NYC Schools: Segregation Then, Segregation Now, Segregation Forever?, Nieuw Amsterdam: Myth and Meaning in Gotham’s Dutch Past, and New York City And Comics: Examining The ‘Special Relationship.’ Past courses have included The Long History of Terrorism in New York City, Birth of the LGBTQ Power Movement, Epidemic City: Infectious Disease and the Making of Early New York, and New York’s Jewish Gangsters.

Explore the five boroughs from the comfort and safety of your own home in this virtual talk on GothamEd, the new online adult education series from CUNY’s Gotham Center for New York City History. The event is free for Untapped New York Insiders (and get your first month free with code JOINUS).

Next, check out 10 NYC Streets From the Original Dutch Street Grid!