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Former Adjunct Lecturer Jessica Larson explores the rise and fall of NYC Neighborhood San Juan Hill
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Jessica Larson
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Thelonious Monk, Minton's Playhouse, New York, ca. September 1947. Photograph by William P. Gottlieb
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San Juan Hill: Manhattan’s Lost Neighborhood. A Film by Stanley Nelson.
Architectural historian and former adjunct lecturer Jessica Larson has spent years studying the buildings of San Juan Hill, the New York City neighborhood depicted in West Side Story, where Thelonious Monk grew up and Josephine Baker got her start.
Painted as a slum by politicians and the press, the neighborhood was razed in the 1950s to build Lincoln Center and surrounding buildings.
As Lincoln Center has begun excavating its buried past, Larson has been invited to share her knowledge. She wrote an essay, “San Juan Hill’s Artistic Landscape,” for the center’s website. Next month, she’ll appear in San Juan Hill: Manhattan’s Lost Neighborhood, a documentary by five-time Emmy Award-winning filmmaker Stanley Nelson that will debut at the New York Film Festival at Lincoln Center.
Read more in her recent interview with the CUNY Graduate Center: A Lincoln Center Debut in ‘San Juan Hill: Manhattan’s Lost Neighborhood’.