Center in 2001. This Brooklyn HistoricalSociety Program is about an hour. Welcome, everybody. It is so great to see the room full like this. Im marcia eli, Vice President of programs at the Brooklyn Historical society. And we are really, really excited about tonights program. I just wanted to say very quickly that if you are not familiar with Brooklyn Historical society, it was founded, we were founded 151 years ago. And it was the middle of the civil war. And a group of prominent brooklynites realize they were witnessing history. And decided to take it upon themselves to found this organization in order to steward that history. And this building actually was built as the Historical Society and opened in 1881. When it opened, like we have here tonight, it was a place of civic dialogue. In fact, back then this very room had an auditorium and thought leaders came here and spoke. Right here where we were standing, president Woodrow Wilson spoke. Dr. Arthur conan doyle spoke. Senator Henry Cabot Lodge spoke. And probably most pertinent to tonight, Horace Greeley spoke. Which brings me to introduce our guest tonight. Sam roberts has been the times urban Affairs Correspondent since 2005. Prior to the time he worked at the daily news. Hes won numerous awards. As a journalist, he has written books on Grand Central terminal, rockefeller, the rosenbergs and many other subjects. You can hear him on podcasts. He has produced documentaries. He is the host of the New York Times closeup on new york one. And he was born here in brooklyn. [applause] yes i think of him as someone who is superhuman in his powers to be in more than one place at one time. His latest book a history of new york in 101 objects took some superhuman powers narrowing it down. So, without further ado, lets hear about that book. Please help me welcome sam roberts. [applause] thank you. Thanks to all of you for coming tonight. Thanks for inviting me. It is great to be back in brooklyn. My son and daughterinlaw live a couple of blocks away. So i get to come here often and visit with grandchildren. And it is great to be back here all the time. A few years ago, after agreeing to write a book celebrating the centennial of Grand Central terminal, i casually suggested an audacious but catchy subtitle, how a train station transformed america. And almost immediately i was struck by second thoughts. Individuals and events shape history, but could a single building . Luckily, Grand Centrals 100 year imprint on commerce and culture, its pivotal role in urban development, and codifying landmark and air rights, in shifting manhattans Cultural Center of gravity from downtown to its doorstep in midtown manhattan, turned out to validate the subtitle after all. Well, a building, albeit a monumental one, was one thing. Could a single object be transformative . That question arose after the British Museum and the bbc collaborated on the history of the world in 100 objects. That inspired a spate of collections on subjects including bird watching, the first world war, cricket, the future, the beatles, shakespeare, the civil war in a more modest 50 objects, religion in 5 1 2 objects, the smithsonian professed that the history of america demanded 101 objects. Now has produced a cataloglike the history of the world in 1000 objects. I weighed in with my history of new york in 101 objects. You objects make a difference . Think of the marks that things have made on civilization. Think of things like a crucifix, the credit card. The computer chip. Objects says richard curin, provided us with the means to reconsider our past in light of what we value today. What are the objects in your own life . What was your rosebud moment, a favorite doll or other childhood totem . That game winning football . A beatles tickets stub . A grandchilds first tooth. Imagine having to choose just one item that defined your life, your rosebud moment. And what about rosebud . It was very interesting. I went and looked back at what rosebud in the film citizen kane was about. Forget the sled. What about the bicycle . Before Charles Foster cane mumbled his secret to citizen kane on his deathbed, the sled had mutated from a beloved two wheeler. It was stolen from outside a library where herman mankiewicz, the screenwriter, had parked it. The bike became his rosebud, his abiding heartbreak over the consequences of a juvenile indulgence. As punishment for leaving his bicycle unattended, so the story goes, his parents refuse to buy him a new one. So that is what he lived with, and he turned that into the movie rosebud, which he wrote with orson welles. Kanes own metamorphic rosebud moment was even more powerful and subliminal. Orson welles wrote shortly before the film was released in 1941 that kane was snatched from his mothers arms in early childhood. His parents were a bank. In his waking hours, kane had forgotten the sled and the name that was painted on it. In his subconscious, it represented the simplicity, the comfort above all the lack of responsibility in his home, and it also stood for his mothers love which kane never lost. How to rekindle a dying man subconscious with the snow globe . Remember, he was holding that still globe at the end of the film. To conjure up a little boys sled. Welles and mankiewicz cast kane as a hoarder of objects of art, objects of sentiment, just plain objects, objects welles said that represent the dust heap of a mans life. What was my rosebud . It was nothing as lofty is all that. I went back and try to figure it out. It was a frumpy teddy bear. It did teach me an early respect for history i tried to find out the derivation of the teddy bear. The prototype was created in 1902 not far from here in brooklyn by a russianjewish proprietor of a candy store. The live specimen that inspired the teddy bear was in fact personally saved by teddy roosevelt. He deemed it unsportsmanlike to shoot prey that was already cornered by fellow hunters. Unfortunately, i later learned to my disappointment that the bear was killed any way to bear was killed any way to spirit further pain. My teddy bear is still wearing the flannel suit that was tailored for him by my grandfather who was an immigrant pattern maker who worked in the garment center. And when i was in the first grade, i wrote a poem about him, which was published in the East New York savings bank school bank news. It was my first byline. I loved the attention. And who knows . Maybe that is why i became a journalist instead of a big game hunter. That was my rosebud. In a materialistic world, one advantage of focusing on objects, on artifacts is demonstrating that plane objects have value beyond money. They have a certain worth, richard kern said, not just because someone paid a zillion dollars for them. A footnote or did that rosebud sled, it belong to offer bauer who got it as a 12yearold member of a film club at p. S. 217 in brooklyn. He won it in a contest. He was picking the oscar winners that year. And he won the sled from the movie company. And he sold it 54 years later for 233,000. So not a zillion dollars, but it was worth something in sentimental value and in monetary value. It a virtual world, objects also lend a certain authenticity that not three dimensional objects do not do. They provided another way of looking at history, not just in terms of the chronological timeline. Not just in terms of events. They show there was a need for something, there was an invention, something that was not necessarily obvious, something that was not overdetermined. Someone had to put something together. Why did that thing come into being . And that is something that an object can make us think about in ways that other things cannot. Inspired by the British Museum and the bbc, i decided to attempt my own historical object list. First is an article for the New York Times. The conceit of mind was 100 might suffice for the world, new york needed 101. The criteria, they had to be emblematic of some sort of transformation. They had to exist. There is only one in the book that i could not find. They could not be too much bigger than a breadbox. There are couple of exceptions. That they could not be too much bigger than a breadbox, and they could not be human. So that rolled out things like the statue of liberty and also at koch ed koch, who a number of people suggested. They could be iconic. I did not want things like the empire state building, things that were obvious. But also provocative. Which is why i wanted things that were less obvious and more quirky. So, why in this book of new york objects would i include Something Like an artichoke, or the command mechanical Cotton Picker . What did that have to do with new york . Or an 1803 missing persons notice that appeared on the front of new york newspapers. They could not all the about food. There were so many food items that people suggested from every variety p izza, egg creams. Given the declining crime rates, i thought maybe the citys official motto should become leave the gun, take the cannoli. The challenge was in winning wing the objects down to 101. I asked readers to submit suggestions and hundreds and hundreds poured in. And what was startling was this was not a new york centric. Exercise people from all over the country and all over the world had suggestions. And they were ingenious. And people had some connection with the city, not just from being expatriates, but people had seen a movie, read a book, people who felt some sort of connection that i just had not imagined. And deacon sussed deconstructing history turned out to be fun. Probing history through authentic objects enable you or enabled me to embrace the past. Here i was someone who thought i knew everything there was to know about new york. I did not. I learned so much in doing this book. Objects in dow history with the unique dimension. They allow you to explore it. As the British Museums Neil Mcgregor said, by deciphering the messages that objects communicate across time. They let you tell a narrative that encompasses everybody texts dont. And jeremy hill, the curator of that British Museum history series that ran on radio and podcasts, said that the objects when you put them together in a finite number make a project like that much more comprehensible. Focusing on 101 is a way of putting them in a digestible format. We all love lists. He said it makes us all sort of like we are participating in american idol. It makes us like simon cowell. One of the things i was striving for was to represent a broad spectrum, not a politically correct spectrum but a broad spectrum. Now, when you think of objects i was considering this caveat from russell baker, the former New York Times columnist. He said objects can be classified scientifically into three categories. Those that do not work, those that break down, and those that get lost. Well, we do not want the list to be skewed because the objects are simply those that managed to survive. As jeremy hill said, there is a limit to the number of stone axes and buddhas you can include. Appealing to the public for suggestions can skew the list to objects that people remember most or have developed nostalgia for. Last summer, when sony invited americans to vote for the object that best to find its collection, what was most iconic in this smithsonians collection. The winner turned out to be one year old. Born in 2013 in the national zoo. The runnersup were the original starspangled banner Woody Guthries recording of this land is your land and gilbert stuarts portrait of george washington. Lets take a look at some of the things that i chose for my book. If i can get this to work. Lets see. I am going to try. If i can find the right button. There we go. This is the oldest object in the book. It is bigger than a breadbox. It is called fordham gneyss. It is opposite the Playing Field at columbia, the columbia c painted, called c rock. And it is the oldest rock formation believed to be in new york city. Not the oldest manmade object. That is cleopatras needle behind museum of metropolitan museum of art. But this is the oldest natural object in new york. 1. 2 billion years old. This is a painting in new jersey but depicts the first recorded murder in new york. I stumbled across this when i was writing a story about the quarter centennial of Henry Hudsons voyage to new york in 1609. There was a diary by his first mate, and it described in murder of one of the members of Henry Hudsons crew. I discovered this was the first recorded incident of racial profiling in new york. Because everybody blamed the murder on the indians. And i took the evidence that i could find and brought it to a number of forensic detectives. They said, wait a minute. Who knows that it was the indians . It was the murder of a crew member whom nobody liked. There was really no evidence, except that he was apparently shot by an arrow. And it couldve been a setup. This couldve been fate. It couldve been an attempt to frame the indians. There was no other evidence whatsoever. And looking at it through modern perspective, there was really no evidence to blame it on the indians whatsoever. So this is a painting of the member of the crew getting shot by the indians and what couldve been the first racial profiling case and the first murder in new york history. This is the citys birth certificate. 1624. It is called the hagenbrief. The certificate is in the hague. It tells what was on the first ship coming back from New Amsterdam. It is a letter to the west India Company. And it says there are x number of beaver skins and other commodities that were brought back. It says a certain number of kids were born in the New Amsterdam colony. And it also says, by the way, we bought manhattan island. It drew a great deal of question whether the indians thought they were selling manhattan island. The dutch thought they were buying it. If anything constitutes the birth certificate of new york, this is it. This is the flushing 1657, a group of settlers in queens 100 years before the bill of rights. Petitioned Peter Stuyvesant and said you are mistreating the quakers. The west India Company promised that we are going to treat everyone equally. Not necessarily because we are tolerant, but because unlike every other colony in every other settlement in the americas, we did not come here for escaping religious persecution. We did not come here to prospect for gold. We did not come here to convert the indians. We came here to make money. As long as nobody interfered, we were not going to bother them. You can call that tolerance. You can call that indifference. But that is what distinct what became new york from every other colony in the country. And that in difference or tolerance, however you want to look at it, idealistically or not, is what new york exported to the rest of the country and what the rest of the world saw as the American Dream that new york represented. And here were these people in flushing, queens, demanding that Peter Stuyvesant live up to that dream. And the west India Company forced him to do that. Which is why a decade later when the english showed up and said surrender to us, the colonists in New Amsterdam stead said sure. Because we would rather have the english then Peter Stuyvesant. New amsterdam gave up. Much to Peter Stuyvesants surprise. This is a Rosetta Stone of New Amsterdam. It was in englishdutch dictionary. The english came in and did not want to change anything. Why tinker with something that was working . They said to the dutch, we will abide by your laws and customs. We will abide by everything you could keep your weapons and keep your bars open. We will let you have your property rights. The only problem was the jury system. We do not understand your language. So how are we going to institute the english system of trial by jury . So, they had to learn the language. And one of the ways they did it was a dictionary. So learning the language, believe it or not, something as simple as that became very important. And this was an englishdutch dictionary. This is the missing person notice. 1809. It was a notice that said a man was missing from his hotel room. And the man had left a manuscript of a book. And if the man did not return to his hotel room, the manuscript would have to be sold to pay his hotel bill. This was the first literary hoax in new york history. And it was sort of the birth of celebrity, something that we are all familiar with today. And it was taken out and put on the front page of almost every new york newspaper by a man named Washington Irving. And it was to sell his knickerbockers history of new york. And it did. It made a lot of money for Washington Irving. Because a couple of weeks after this announcement, irving publish that manuscript, and this was all a publicity stunt for the book. And it sold the book and became the birth of literary celebrity, literary hoax. Obviously spawned a great fashion in this city. This is a bolt sitting in the middle of central park. Some of you may have tripped over it. It seems pretty innocuous, but it defined manhattan, and it defines development in manhattan. In 1811, city commissioners hired john randall jr. They said, we want to make a map of manhattan. Manhattan is haphazard. You