Crossing Broadway: Washington Heights and the Promise of New York City by Robert W. Snyder (review)

Many of New York City’s most iconic neighborhoods—the Upper East Side, Greenwich Village, Chelsea, Hell’s Kitchen—have been richly researched over the years, but until now no one has tackled a thorough study of Washington Heights, the colorful enclave of perpetually changing immigrant groups on the northern tip of Manhattan. Robert Snyder, a professor of journalism and American studies at Rutgers University in New Jersey, uses his highly honed skills as an interviewer to extract vivid personal narratives from members of the large variety of racial, ethnic, and religious groups that arrived in New York on waves of hope and settled in the abundant housing near the George Washington Bridge. The oral histories, deftly woven through the historical and economic narrative, authoritatively reflect the development of the patterns of immigration that have swept across much of New York City over the last several decades and provide a richly textured and deeply engaging picture of urban change. Using both analytical and historical techniques, Snyder tackles the growth of crime in Washington Heights along with the changing trends in education, culture, and levels of citizenship that both derived from and influenced its inhabitants. The result is an investigation that reveals the structures and systems that underlie the smooth, and sometimes not-so-smooth, functioning of a significant part of one of the world’s major cities.

Crossing Broadway is a traditional community study and also a beautiful narrative. It will be of interest not only to professionals who engage with the urban landscape but also to those who work with oral histories on many levels. Snyder is a master at bringing out the struggles and the triumphs of the generations of working people who have inhabited Washington Heights; his skillful use of language and his interviewing techniques can be successfully mined by those who create and conduct oral histories and those who use them in their research. At once both comprehensive and compelling, Crossing Broadway gains much of its traction by illuminating the individual ways in which residents developed their devotion to their community, demonstrating successful methods for improving public life. What makes it work so well is that Snyder traces the growth of the community through the personal stories of its residents.

Snyder is an award-winning author of three books, an editor, and a media professional, in addition to being a professor. Using all these skills, he carefully sets the scene by describing the sights, sounds, and smells of Washington Heights in its various incarnations. Having lived there for a short period of his life enabled him to add a welcome personal touch to his investigation. Through colorful prose he demonstrates his empathy for the generations of newcomers who take their turns peopling the community through vivid storytelling about even the smallest details of their lives. Letting them speak for themselves through his powerful use of oral history techniques sits at the root of this book’s success. Snyder gives us the authentic voices of Greeks, Jews, Irish, and Cubans, to name just a few of the ethnic groups whose members chose Washington Heights in their quest to create better lives for themselves in their adopted city. Maps, extensive notes, photographs, and a comprehensive index help tell the story.

Tracing New York’s transformation from an industrial base to a service economy, Snyder shows how the new immigrants integrated themselves into the Washington Heights community to set up a base from which to grow. He follows many of the African Americans and the Dominicans who worked so diligently to gain a foothold, only to be felled by the invidious crack epidemic and the drug wars that turned the neighborhood into an urban battlefield in the 1980s. Situated just north of Harlem, Washington Heights shared with its less affluent neighbor many of the struggles born of poverty and alienation, yet at the same time it also served...