Eat the City(91)

32 “take the skill out of every step”: A. D. Anderson, Newsweek, 1965. Quoted in Betty Fussell, Raising Steaks: The Life and Times of American Beef (Orlando: Harcourt Books, 2008), 182.

33 The small, aging multilevel shops … were struggling: “Meat Plants Here Face U.S. Upgrading,” New York Times, March 4, 1968.

34 The market was so congested: Robert L. Holland and Donald A. Bowers, “The Fourteenth Street Wholesale Market for Meat and Poultry in New York City,” Marketing Research Report, No. 556, U.S. Department of Agriculture, Transportation and Facilities Research Division. November 1962.

35 the city had acquired: “Bronx Getting Co-Op Meat Market,” New York Times, April 30, 1973.

36 “the stench of slaughterhouses”: Joe Flood, The Fires: How a Computer Formula, Big Ideas, and the Best of Intentions Burned Down New York City (New York: Riverhead, 2010), 131.

37 New York in 1947: Joshua B. Freeman, Working-Class New York: Life and Labor Since World War II (New York: New Press, 2000), 8.

38 a queerness about the city’s small semi-industrial concerns: Jan Morris, Manhattan ’45, (New York: Oxofrd University Press, 1987), 230.

39 “The sidewalks run with rivulets”: Shaila K. Dewan, “After Blood and Guts, Seeking Landmark Glory,” New York Times, June 4, 2001.

40 “a collective cackle”: Joseph Berger, “A Slaughterhouse in Brooklyn, and Misery Next Door,” New York Times, June 10, 2011.

41 “for a soothing experience”: Lisa Colangelo, “Queens Farm Museum Stops Selling Pork at Farmers Markets, Restaurants,” New York Daily News, June 22, 2011.

42 “Everything from feed to breed”: Tom Mylan, “Hi, My Name is Tom and I’m a Farmaholic,” Gilt Taste, September 7, 2011, http://?www.?gilttaste.?com/?stories/?1804-?hi-?my-?name-?is-?tom-?and-?i-?m-?a-?farmoholic.





4. SUGAR


Documents from the history of the Domino sugar plant in Williamsburg were available at the New York Historical Society and the Brooklyn Historical Society. Harry W. Havemeyer, the last of his family to be apprenticed in the sugar business, has painstakingly documented his family story in books available at the New York Historical Society (and sometimes on Amazon). Noel Deerr’s classic two-volume book The History of Sugar contained fascinating arcana. The collected works of Sidney Mintz—books, articles, and chapters in books—were helpful for an overview of sugar history, and particularly for vivid descriptions of life among Puerto Rican sugar workers. The book Slavery in New York, edited by Ira Berlin and Leslie M. Harris, was very helpful, as was the book Nueva York, 1613–1945, which accompanied an exhibit at El Museo del Barrio. The New Netherland Project has translated and posted online incredible records from the Dutch West India Company, which offered direct access to their concerns. The accounts of eighteenth-century sugarhouse owners and The Weekly Post-Boy and New-York Gazette, two of the city’s earliest newspapers, at the New York Historical Society, also provided a window onto a previous version of the city. The dissertation of José O. Solá, on the sugar planters near Caguas, Puerto Rico, was helpful in understanding Jorge Torres’s story. On Caribbean sugar and migration, I consulted the works of César J. Ayala, including his book American Sugar Kingdom and his article “The Decline of the Plantation Economy and the Puerto Rican Migration of the 1950s,” and other articles. On Puerto Ricans in New York, Virginia Sánchez Korrol’s From Colonia to Community gave a helpful overview, and I really enjoyed Ruth Glasser’s great book My Music Is My Flag.

1 Planters and mill owners: Noel Deerr, The History of Sugar: Volume One (London: Chapman and Hall, Ltd., 1949), 105.

2 “Mr. Torres … has the overwhelming support”: Letter from Ivine Galarza, District Manager, Bronx Community Planning Board #6, to Chris Meyers, Assistant Director, NYC Operation GreenThumb, December 11, 1995.

3 “a reed” that “brings forth honey”: Sidney W. Mintz, Sweetness and Power (New York: Penguin, 1986), 20.

4 “The sugar canes, the few that were”: Christopher Columbus, Giuliano Dati, Diego Alvarez Chanca, Diego Méndez, “Memorial of the Results of the Second Voyage of the Admiral, Christopher Columbus, to the Indies, drawn up by him for their Highnesses King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella; and addressed to Antonio de Torres, from the City of Isabella, the 30th of January, 1494,” in Select Letters of Christopher Columbus, with Other Original Documents, Relating to His Four Voyages to the New World, vol. 43.

5 Beginning in the 1500s, Europeans imported: Sidney W. Mintz, “Pleasure, Profit and Satiation,” in Seeds of Change, eds. Herman J. Viola and Carolyn Margolis (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1991), 121.

6 “A hatchet was kept in readiness”: David Brion Davis, Inhuman Bondage: The Rise and Fall of Slavery in the New World (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006), 108.

7 “clever and strong”: Ira Berlin and Leslie M. Harris, “Introduction,” in Slavery in New York, eds. Ira Berlin and Leslie M. Harris (New York: New Press, in conjunction with the New-York Historical Society, 2005), 51. Also Edward J. Sullivan, ed. Nueva York, 1613–1945 (New York: New-York Historical Society, in association with Scala Publishers, 2010).

8 when the English took Manhattan: Volume 17–Cura?ao Papers 1640–1665, (New Netherland) www.?nnp.?org/?nnrc/?Documents/?curacao/?index.?html#/?1/.