Monday, March 30, 2026 – Don’t Miss: Women Authors /Editors on NY History at NYPL

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Exciting Program 

Coming to the

NYPL Roosevelt Island Branch


Monday, March 30, 2026

ISSUE #1655

Presenting: Conversations in City History

Monday, April 13, 2026, 6:30 pm “Too Good to Get Married: The Life and Photographs of Miss Alice Austen” Author Bonnie Yochelson will discuss with moderator Judith Berdy about how a woman who grew up in the Gilded Age, when the term “lesbian” did not yet exist, challenged the conservative ideals of Staten Island high society. She will explain, as does her book, the role of photography in Alice Austen’s journey of self discovery, embrace of feminism and involvement in a loving lesbian partnership.

Monday, May 11, 2026, 6:30 pm “Rural County, Urban Borough: A History of Queens” When preservationist and author Jeffrey A. Kroessler passed away in 2023, his wife, architect Laura Heim, selected the images for his book and saw it through publication. She has generously agreed to be interviewed on this seminal historical work that charts how politics, industry, transportation, government and real estate interests all shaped New York’s borough of extraordinary ethnic, religious and linguistic diversity.

Monday, June 8, 2026, 6:30 pm “The Killing Fields of East New York” Author Stacy Horn (also writer of “Damnation Island,” about 19th-century Blackwell’s Island) has chronicled how the subprime mortgage scandal of the 1970s and a long history of white-collar crime slowly destroyed the Brooklyn neighborhood of East New York. She will share her compelling investigative journalism in a conversation about the area’s fair housing, race, violence and misplaced city priorities.

JUST ADDED:
Monday, September 14, 2026, 6:30 pm “Louis I. Kahn The Last Notebook
Edited By Sue Ann Kahn  An intimate record of Kahn’s musings on design, coupled with preparatory drawings of his monumental last project

Published in honor of the 50th anniversary of his death in March 1974, this two-volume set contains a facsimile of the notebook in which Louis Kahn drew and wrote during his last year of life, alongside a second volume of scholarly commentary and transliterations of his musings. Anchored by a magnificent set of preparatory drawings for his monument to Franklin Roosevelt in New York City, the notebook provides an intimate glimpse into private sketches of Kahn’s final projects and his poetic reflections on thematic preoccupations, such as “Silence to Light,” “Form and Design,” “Society of Rooms” and “Desire to Express.” Each volume is in a vellum sleeve and both are housed together in a transparent slipcase.
Born in Estonia, Louis Kahn (1901-74) immigrated with his family to Philadelphia when he was four years old. Kahn received Beaux-Arts training at the University of Pennsylvania, under the French-educated Paul Philippe Cret, and then adopted his own idiosyncratic modernism, which would engender the heterogeneous “Philadelphia school.” His architectural career did not take off until later in life; he attained his first major commission to design Yale University’s Art Gallery in 1951. Upon its completion, Kahn received many international commissions, and he developed a signature style that was monumental, monolithic and transparent in its functionality. He was awarded the AIA Gold Medal and the RIBA Gold Medal.

THE ROOSEVELT ISLAND HISTORICAL SOCIETY   

  6:30 p.m. 

504 Main Street

Save the Dates
April 25-26
POMEROY FOUNDATION HISTORIC MARKER
WEEKEND CELBRATION

Photo Judith Berdy

OUR CHAPEL IS IN TERRIBLE CONDITION

BROKEN CHAIRS, PATCHED UP FLOORS,WIRES OVER THE PLACE, MILK CARTON STORAGE!

THE CONDITION OF THE CHAPEL IS DISGRACEFUL.

RIOC IS A POOR GUARDIAN OF OUR HISTORIC CHAPEL.

THE LOWER LEVEL IS ALSO IN NEED OF MAJOR REPAIRSLET’S GET GOING AND THOROUGHLY CLEAN AND REPAIR OUR LANDMARK BUILDING.
CREDIT

JUDITH BERDY

All image are copyrighted (c) Roosevelt Island Historical Society unless otherwise indicated
THIS PUBLICATION FUNDED BY DISCRETIONARY FUNDS FROM CITY COUNCIL MEMBER JULIE MENIN & ROOSEVELT ISLAND OPERATING CORPORATION PUBLIC PURPOSE FUNDS.

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rooseveltislandhistory@gmail.com