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Speaker 1: I'm Alec Baldwin and you're listening to Here's the Thing

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Speaker 1: Today's guest and I crossed paths once before, some twenty

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Speaker 1: years ago. In two thousand one, I took my only

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Speaker 1: foray into directing movies. Matthew Landfield was just out of college,

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Speaker 1: visiting his parents in a dilapidated building on disposed the

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Speaker 1: Street in Lower Manhattan that turned out to be part

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Speaker 1: of our set. I remember you being outside on Dispersed

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Speaker 1: the street with Um, was it Jennifer Love HEWITTT? So

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Speaker 1: you guys were outside. I remember the grip and electric

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Speaker 1: guys come up the stairs and they had to run.

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Speaker 1: Some lighting came up through my mom's getting window. Um.

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Speaker 1: You spent more time with my dad that day that

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Speaker 1: I'm gonna get to that. Maybe I should have been

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Speaker 1: looking at the dailies. Like I said, it was my

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Speaker 1: only attempt at directing. But Matthews dad, Ronnie Landfield, was

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Speaker 1: like someone out of a New York past. He was

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Speaker 1: a modernist painter who had raised a family there starting

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Speaker 1: in the seventies. Gentrification didn't really begin in Trabecca until

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Speaker 1: after nine eleven, much later than in neighboring Soho. When

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Speaker 1: we were shooting. Ronnie's block was just an Italian restaurant

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Speaker 1: and a row of former industrial buildings. In those buildings,

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Speaker 1: dozens of people like him made their homes and their studios.

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Speaker 1: Ronnie invited me upstairs to see his paintings. He was

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Speaker 1: a character with his cigarettes and a bronx accent. I

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Speaker 1: thought had died off punching consonants like they were sunny liston.

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Speaker 1: I wanted to quit my movie and start a new

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Speaker 1: one about him. Dustin Hoffman would play the lead. The

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Speaker 1: whole scene stuck with me over the decades, and a

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Speaker 1: couple of years ago, I found myself driving down the

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Speaker 1: same block. The building at thirty one Dispross was gone,

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Speaker 1: an empty lot. Instead, I searched the address, hoping I

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Speaker 1: might find what would replace it. What I found instead

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Speaker 1: was a brilliant, lyrical, almost obsessively researched, eight thousand word

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Speaker 1: essay about that single plot of Earth. It's called Requiem

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Speaker 1: for a Living City, and it's the story of thirty

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Speaker 1: one disprosus for ten thousand years. And who was the

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Speaker 1: author of this epic tale none other than Ronnie Landfield's son, Matthew.

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Speaker 1: You know my mom and that were probably some of

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Speaker 1: the earlier people to move into Tribeca, a couple of

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Speaker 1: their families that were already there. I didn't come along

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Speaker 1: until another five six seven years later I was born six.

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Speaker 1: There was no school, there was the whole foods. No,

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Speaker 1: there's no there thing. There was nothing down there were

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Speaker 1: should go get the groceries. So we would go to

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Speaker 1: the West Village. There was a grocery store called the

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Speaker 1: Pioneer on Bleaker Street that we would have to walk to,

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Speaker 1: and there was another place called Morgan's on West Broadway

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Speaker 1: which to get the grocery had little house on street.

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Speaker 1: I mean, it sounds crazy, but at that time it

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Speaker 1: was like living in a pioneer lifestyle in the middle

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Speaker 1: of this urban wilderness. It has a group on a farm.

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Speaker 1: It was like that. So what happened with the school,

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Speaker 1: I guess a school called PS three Annex was opened

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Speaker 1: by a pioneering principal woman named Blossom Galertner, and she

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Speaker 1: was very progressive. She had a very kind of open

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Speaker 1: minded perspective and education, and she opened a school inside

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Speaker 1: of Independence Plausit which was a large housing development. Tiny

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Speaker 1: little school, but um in those days there were so

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Speaker 1: few children that the city didn't want didn't want to

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Speaker 1: keep the school open, and and a lot of the residents,

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Speaker 1: including my mother, had to fight the city to keep

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Speaker 1: a school in that area of Tribeca. So in the

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Speaker 1: film Pollock, you probably know the ad Harriston, there's a

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Speaker 1: scene where, you know, uh Pollock and Lee Krasner are

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Speaker 1: are talking in and he says, hey, let's make a

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Speaker 1: baby and she says, no, you know, you need and

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Speaker 1: you need and you need, and uh she she turns

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Speaker 1: him down because they don't have any money. He's kind

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Speaker 1: of crazy. Yeah, he's you know, he's got all and

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Speaker 1: so no, look, my dad is not Jackson Pollock and

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Speaker 1: my mom was not Lee Krasner, but they faced a

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Speaker 1: lot of the same issues, a lot of the same challenges.

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Speaker 1: You know. They they didn't have a lot of money.

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Speaker 1: They were My dad grew up in the Bronx. He

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Speaker 1: was just basically just a working class kid. And my

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Speaker 1: mom was um raised by a single mother and the

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Speaker 1: the East Side. My grandmother was an artist, so she

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Speaker 1: never had any money either, and so my mother was

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Speaker 1: very lived about, very bohemian life. Um. I was going

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Speaker 1: to show you a picture later of of one of

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Speaker 1: class Oldenburg's Happenings with My mother was one of the

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Speaker 1: cast members of of one of those those performance aren't

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Speaker 1: kind of thing. She was a performer, dancer. Where did

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Speaker 1: they meet. I think they met in woodstock folk dancing

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Speaker 1: or something that that was the Was your father into

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Speaker 1: that too? Yeah? They were all into that in those

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Speaker 1: early sixties. Yeah. Yeah. If you wanted to meet a

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Speaker 1: woman that you were attracted to right away, you were

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Speaker 1: into whatever. She was into it. Oh yeah, I'm into

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Speaker 1: that dancing. I was sure, I do that all the time.

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Speaker 1: I know that deal. Yeah. My my my ex wife

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Speaker 1: said to me, I'm a vegetarian. I said, so am

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Speaker 1: I that's so funny. I had a hamburger like three

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Speaker 1: hours ago. I was like, anyway, so there. So she

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Speaker 1: was a performer. So my mom, my mom had been

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Speaker 1: a performer. She had a clothing store with my grandmother

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Speaker 1: for a little while in the East village. But you know,

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Speaker 1: my mother and my father got together in the sixties,

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Speaker 1: and um my, my father at the time was sort of,

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Speaker 1: like I wanted to say, like an alfontrib of of

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Speaker 1: art in a way, like he was very young compared

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Speaker 1: to so many of his compatriots. But he was very

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Speaker 1: ambitious and very for success, very very driven, and his

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Speaker 1: pace exactly um. But you know, like succeeding in the

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Speaker 1: art world is was is never easy, even if you

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Speaker 1: are coming at it with with lots of resources and

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Speaker 1: support from family, money and all kinds of things, and

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Speaker 1: might didn't have any of that. He had to fight

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Speaker 1: his own family to become an artist. Now what does

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Speaker 1: dad do? A delivery man? And he was a working

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Speaker 1: classic working class And the grandmother that had the apartment

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Speaker 1: of Chelsea was whose mother that was my mother's mother.

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Speaker 1: My mother's father was an artist also, he was a

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Speaker 1: graphic artist. He and his brothers had been They were

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Speaker 1: born in Savannah, Georgia, all of them, there were four

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Speaker 1: of them, but their mother moved them back to Lithuania

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Speaker 1: as children and so like in the nine twenties and

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Speaker 1: thirties they lived in Lithuania and they had a very

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Speaker 1: very very difficult time there and then when they left,

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Speaker 1: their mother stayed and died in the Holocaust. So my grandfather,

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Speaker 1: my grandfather and his brothers were extraordinarily talented in the arts.

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Speaker 1: They were and they were uh, cartoonists and draw drawers,

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Speaker 1: basically illustrators. My My grandfather's brother is a cartoonist known

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Speaker 1: by the name of Val Jaffee who does the foldings um,

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Speaker 1: and my grandfather worked with him for a little while

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Speaker 1: doing cartoons. But um, my grandfather was was I think

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Speaker 1: a little more fragile than al was. And and um

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Speaker 1: never really recovered from the loss of his mother in

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Speaker 1: the Holocaust, and so uh he he uh struggled with

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Speaker 1: depression and basically PTSD for all of my mother's childhood

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Speaker 1: and wasn't around. And so my mother was raised by

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Speaker 1: my grandmother and her grandparents in uh in Florest Hills

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Speaker 1: and whatnot. So um, but I want to get back

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Speaker 1: to your parents. They were sort of like these kind

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Speaker 1: of you mean kids just kind of on their own.

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Speaker 1: And my mom was very devoted to my father, and

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Speaker 1: my father was very determined and he uh, she was

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Speaker 1: very devoted to your phone. She lived under these I mean,

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Speaker 1: I don't want to describe it like it was that tough.

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Speaker 1: But was the place warm was did they turn the

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Speaker 1: heat on? Sometimes that's what kids so you say, the

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Speaker 1: politic reference and the like, you know, don't we gonna

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Speaker 1: get out of here? Or was there was she was

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Speaker 1: she down the line, she was with him. She was.

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Speaker 1: And but you know, neither my parents graduate from college.

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Speaker 1: My father attended art school for a short time and

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Speaker 1: decided that wasn't gonna crap. No, he was. He actually

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Speaker 1: went to the Kansas City Artist Too for a little while,

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Speaker 1: but decided that, you know, all he really wanted to

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Speaker 1: do was paint, So he came back to New York

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Speaker 1: and and went into painting. My mother, uh didn't didn't

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Speaker 1: didn't finish her college education. And I think that that

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Speaker 1: was something that she may be regretted over over time

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Speaker 1: and sort of was you know, she's of a generation

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Speaker 1: of women where that was not as important to typical right,

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Speaker 1: and and so, um, did your dad have a gallery

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Speaker 1: that represented him back then? Do you do you have

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Speaker 1: some success right away? He did. He in the in

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Speaker 1: the in the late sixties. He was right in there

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Speaker 1: with a lot of of important painters and sculptors who

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Speaker 1: were doing I love your dad's painting. Oh good, I'm

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Speaker 1: sure he would love to hear you say that. You know,

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Speaker 1: he was. Things were working. Yeah. By the time I

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Speaker 1: came along, my dad had already dealt a reputation in

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Speaker 1: the art world, was selling his paintings pretty regularly. And

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Speaker 1: their housing was affordable, which is important for your career

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Speaker 1: for an artist. That's everything. So I come along, and

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Speaker 1: then my brother comes along, and then what happens in

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Speaker 1: seventy nine, actually when the year that you you came

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Speaker 1: to New York, the rent was tripled and and all

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Speaker 1: of a sudden, um, this manageable life becomes a little

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Speaker 1: bit more difficult. And my my dad still continued through

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Speaker 1: the early eighties to have success in the art, in

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Speaker 1: the arts, selling his work, but it was, it became harder.

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Speaker 1: It just was harder. And of course you have a family,

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Speaker 1: have two children, and getting more expensive, things are more challenging,

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Speaker 1: and so you know, uh, it was. It was not.

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Speaker 1: I wouldn't. I would not say that their life was

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Speaker 1: a panacea. It was. It was a challenge. It was

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Speaker 1: always difficult. Um. And he last there how much longer?

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Speaker 1: I mean they lived there until two thousand and twelve,

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Speaker 1: two thousand and twelves. So when I saw him, because

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Speaker 1: I want to paint this picture quickly before I forget,

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Speaker 1: which is and again this is where you're really going

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Speaker 1: to correct me if I'm wrong, because when I tell

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Speaker 1: this story, I always turned your father into like a

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Speaker 1: dustin Hoppin character, and Dustin Hoppin would play your father.

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Speaker 1: He doesn't have a very very New York accent, correct,

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Speaker 1: because I play him like he's had a really thick

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Speaker 1: New York accent. You know. Um my wife would say

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Speaker 1: that he does, but he doesn't. Really like there's certain

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Speaker 1: words that he In my movie version of this, your

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Speaker 1: dad is a really super thick New York he smoked.

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Speaker 1: Because remember this is my Remember this is one I remember.

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Speaker 1: I'm standing out in front of this building and your

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Speaker 1: dad shows up. It's freezing cold, and I'm sitting there

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Speaker 1: and he starts talking to me. He goes, you're making

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Speaker 1: a movie here. And I'm like, yeah, we're making it.

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Speaker 1: He's like, yeah, you're Alan Bowin, right, you were like

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Speaker 1: an actor, right. I'm like, yeah, I'm directed this. But

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Speaker 1: he was like, yeah, yeah, you're living. He's like, yeah,

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Speaker 1: I live here with my wife. I'm a painter. And

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Speaker 1: he lights a cigarette and I go, you got an

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Speaker 1: extra cigarette on it. And I love when people look

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Speaker 1: at me like you're a rich movie star and you're

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Speaker 1: bumming a cigarette off from me and I'm living in

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Speaker 1: this loft and this grocer street. Sure, okay, I'll give

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Speaker 1: a smoke. Here we go, and I'm sitting there smoking

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Speaker 1: a cigarette with your father on the street, and and

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Speaker 1: and just something happened to me. I'm like, I gotta

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Speaker 1: live in this building. I want to live in there.

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Speaker 1: I want to get a whole floor of this building.

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Speaker 1: I want to have a con section of this building

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Speaker 1: to myself. And I'm gonna blow it all up and

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Speaker 1: fix it all up. But um, he lasted till two

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Speaker 1: thousand and twelves. I mean they basically they were forced

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Speaker 1: to Hurricane Andy, really kind of Sandy. Where were you

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Speaker 1: at the time. I was living in Brooklyn with my face.

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Speaker 1: You've never left the city, have you? It was in college,

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Speaker 1: but I haven't lived in other places. Where'd you go again?

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Speaker 1: I went to college in Vermont at a place called

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Speaker 1: Middlebury College. I love Biddleburgh. He went to middle for

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Speaker 1: four years, four years. What did you study? I studied theater.

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Speaker 1: I studied filmmaking, geography, Uh, you know, arrangement, mostly acting,

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Speaker 1: mostly theater, mostly film. What do you want to do?

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Speaker 1: I wanted to be an actor when I got out

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Speaker 1: of school, and then a filmmaker, which is what you're

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Speaker 1: doing now, which is what I do now now. So

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Speaker 1: two thousand, he leaves only because so he would have stayed.

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Speaker 1: There have been many years of legal battles with the landlord,

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Speaker 1: and you know, you know, they had basically been living

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Speaker 1: with the specter of eviction from seventy nine until, you know,

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Speaker 1: the whole the whole time they were there. Eventually, though,

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Speaker 1: their their place was rent stabilized. Everyone in the building,

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Speaker 1: their their units were rent stabilized, and they had a

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Speaker 1: right to stay. So then the storm comes. So yeah,

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Speaker 1: so in Sandy, you know, and my my father's studios

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Speaker 1: on the ground floor, and you know, my father, being

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Speaker 1: who he is, it's a little bit crazy. They stayed

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Speaker 1: in the building. They were there the whole, the whole time.

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Speaker 1: They did not evacuate. He did didn't want to leave

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Speaker 1: his work, He didn't want to leave the place. So

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Speaker 1: he witnessed the whole neighborhood flood. Where did you go?

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Speaker 1: They went up to some of the upper levels of

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Speaker 1: the building because other folks, your father in my Destin

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Speaker 1: Huffin movie, he's smoking, I'm not leaving. Everybody else's leaving.

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Speaker 1: I'm not going anywhere. You're pretty much right, That's exactly

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Speaker 1: how he was. He said. The lights went out, Um,

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Speaker 1: the cars, the cars flooded up to almost the roof

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Speaker 1: of the cars, and um, you know that was like

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Speaker 1: that for about three hours and then the water went away.

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Speaker 1: And you know that part of the city is in

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Speaker 1: a tidal estuary. The basement of our building would flood

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Speaker 1: a lot over over the many years because it was

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Speaker 1: landfill and it was technically part of the river and so, uh,

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Speaker 1: that wasn't a surprise to him. But the flooding in

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Speaker 1: the street was he had never seen. Then. I asked

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Speaker 1: him the other day about it, and he said, never, ever, ever, ever, ever,

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Speaker 1: in the forty three years of their life, there had

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Speaker 1: he ever seen flooding. That that was the big one

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Speaker 1: like that, that was that was interesting how people who

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Speaker 1: don't know that about landfill and and maybe you know

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Speaker 1: this because your article speaks to a lot of that history,

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Speaker 1: which I am not mistaken. Just as excavated material from

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Speaker 1: the World Trade Center was responsible for some of the

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Speaker 1: build out of Battery Park, absolutely, it was excavation from

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Speaker 1: the subway system that built out some of Rebecca correct

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Speaker 1: or no, no, no. Governor's Island, for example, is mostly

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Speaker 1: the excavation from the Lexington Avenue subway right but Rebecca,

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Speaker 1: because that Triple land was was land filled between eighteen

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Speaker 1: o three and eighteen no subway at that time. Most

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Speaker 1: of it probably came from the leveling of hills in Manhattan,

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Speaker 1: because Manhattan and I had a lot of hills in

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Speaker 1: those days. And also oyster shells and garbage and broken

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Speaker 1: ships undoubtedly, right, people who drowned and men control buildings

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Speaker 1: exactly so so so he so the it comes and

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Speaker 1: when it comes, and they they did have to leave.

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Speaker 1: They did have to leave. And basically the city went

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Speaker 1: through the neighborhood and declared their building, um condemned. They

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Speaker 1: condemned that building, yes, and and then the tenants fight that.

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Speaker 1: They did have to fight that, and there was a

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Speaker 1: court case which was there was a little article in

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Speaker 1: the New York Times about it. Um. You know, there

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Speaker 1: was a lot of contention about you know, the state

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Speaker 1: of the building before Sandy had not been great because

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Speaker 1: it hadn't been maintained, and the landlord objected and all

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Speaker 1: this stuff. I can't totally disclose all of the details

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Speaker 1: because there was a settlement, um, but it resolved, and

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Speaker 1: then they decided to leave Upstate, Yeah Valley. They to

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Speaker 1: the Hudson Valley. So so did they try to make

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Speaker 1: it work in New York before they went to the

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Speaker 1: Hudson Valley. You know, my father is a and I'm

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Speaker 1: sure he'll listen to this and chuckle, you know, actually

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Speaker 1: doing my impresonation. Come on, spawn on, come on. I

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Speaker 1: think you're a terrible But I just that's my memory

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Speaker 1: with this tough looking early guy painter. I'm a paint

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Speaker 1: to see. Come up and see my paintings. He was

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Speaker 1: such a New Yorker team he was, he was. He's

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Speaker 1: got a little more of the Bronx in there, I

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Speaker 1: think than than that. But you know, the thing with

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Speaker 1: him was that is that he he's um. He's someone

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Speaker 1: who likes to stay. He's a very grounded person. So

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Speaker 1: his initial um impulse was to move back to the Bronx.

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Speaker 1: He needed a studio. Yeah, I mean, the fact of

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Speaker 1: the matter is my father had a big studio in

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Speaker 1: Lower Manhattan. And there is no way that you can

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Speaker 1: replicate that and talk about what happened Tobacca Price Chebecca.

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Speaker 1: But I forget Brooklyn, forget about it. Even I'm going

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Speaker 1: to talk about that too, and so so we can't

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Speaker 1: replicate it in the Bronx. The Bronx are gonna be

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Speaker 1: torn down. Now to the Bronx. All my friends and

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Speaker 1: are real estate executives. That's the that's the not even

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Speaker 1: the next they're there now they're tearing everything down and

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Speaker 1: they're talking about million and two million dollar condos overlooking

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Speaker 1: Yankee steady him, that's good to your view. And then

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Speaker 1: they're talking about two movie studios they're building up. Their

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Speaker 1: Silver Cup went up there. Absolutely, they were all going

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Speaker 1: to take their properties in Queens, tear that down, build housing. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: I'm not going to name name some of them. Some

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Speaker 1: of them can tear their spaces down. Some can's if

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Speaker 1: there's a financial incent of you know, in New York

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Speaker 1: there's the land is worth more money as residential housing

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Speaker 1: for overlooking the river. You're right over there on the

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Speaker 1: foot of the fifty Night Street Bridge in Long Island City.

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Speaker 1: Some people who will remain nameless that I know, have

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Speaker 1: told me they're going to go up to the Bronx

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Speaker 1: and move their whole operation up to the Bronx. You

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Speaker 1: know that that wasn't My father's first impulse was to

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Speaker 1: move up there, and my brother from exactly. Yeah, my

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Speaker 1: brother and I kind of invade upon him to to

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Speaker 1: look to look a little further out, and so you know,

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Speaker 1: he found a place that that where he was able

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Speaker 1: to build a new studio. He built, Yeah, he built one.

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Speaker 1: So he settlement and everything put him in a position

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Speaker 1: he was comfortable. He's doing okay. So he built a

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Speaker 1: new studio, which was the right thing for him to do.

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Speaker 1: He got a place where he could live and work. Uh, comfortable.

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Speaker 1: But he is he up there and a year goes by,

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Speaker 1: and does he turn to your mother and go, man,

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Speaker 1: we should have done this twenty years ago. You know,

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Speaker 1: did he just really sit there and go, why did

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Speaker 1: I break my ass to stay in Manhattan? Or did

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Speaker 1: he miss New York? Every time I visit them, we

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Speaker 1: have this conversation, what does he say? We go through

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Speaker 1: it over and over again, and you know he does

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Speaker 1: miss Tribeca and misses that neighborhood because there are a

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Speaker 1: lot of things about it that that made it a

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Speaker 1: wonderful place to be. Um and it's and it's it

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Speaker 1: is sad to be gone from there, but the things

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Speaker 1: he likes, their plus is about being up there. It's

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Speaker 1: lovely being away from the city too. And I think

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Speaker 1: that Um, when we think about what Rebecca has become,

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Speaker 1: where their neighborhood became in the time even before standing

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Speaker 1: building they're putting up in place of that building is

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Speaker 1: like yeah, I mean, but it looks like something made

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Speaker 1: of legos. Their community. The people who were there when

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Speaker 1: they came, all of them are gone. They either have

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Speaker 1: been bought out or or forced out or passed away.

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Speaker 1: And you know, it's it's a generational turnover. It's funny

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Speaker 1: how people don't realize. I mean in my lifetime, I

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Speaker 1: mean I came here and that was the dawn of

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Speaker 1: the build out of Soho, and then Rebecca beyond that,

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Speaker 1: and then the battery part. Did you ever imagine that

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Speaker 1: apartments would sell for thirty million dollars right around the

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Speaker 1: corner for where you grew up? I mean it is.

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Speaker 1: I mean I think it's unrealistic in a lot of ways.

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Speaker 1: But but at the same time, everybody wants to live there.

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Speaker 1: That's reflective of the bigger trends in our economy and

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Speaker 1: our politics and our work about right now, I mean

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Speaker 1: talk about how it plays up in New York. Well,

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Speaker 1: I mean New York is not divorced from the economy

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Speaker 1: of of of the United States. It's it's part of it,

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Speaker 1: and it always has been. Go. You go all the

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Speaker 1: way back to um the very very beginning of that

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Speaker 1: neighborhood of Tribeca in those days, to Alexander Hamilton's and

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Speaker 1: and the things that they were dealing with after the

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Speaker 1: revel luction. And if you look through my piece about

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Speaker 1: the evolution of that particular neighborhood, it's always been connected

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Speaker 1: to the economy of of America and right now is

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Speaker 1: no different. And right now we're living in a in

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Speaker 1: a plutocracy where you have you know, billionaires right and left,

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Speaker 1: and they and and really they have unfettered power to

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Speaker 1: buy and sell real estate, and that is very clearly

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Speaker 1: distorting the marketplace in the broader economy. Matthew Landfield on

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Speaker 1: Changes at thirty one De Sproses Street, and around the globe,

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Speaker 1: the battle between preservation and development in New York can

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Speaker 1: be brutal. Perhaps New York's most prominent preservationist is Andrew Berman.

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Speaker 1: He's the one who led the charge to landmark the

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Speaker 1: iconic streets of southern Greenwich Village. After fifty years of

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Speaker 1: people trying to get that area landmarks, we were able

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Speaker 1: to get it landmarked in two stage. We actually had

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Speaker 1: an almost blackmail the city. They wanted to get an

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Speaker 1: area adjacent to that reasoned as a stop to a

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Speaker 1: developer Trinity real Estate in this case um and we

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Speaker 1: pushed the city council to say, we won't approve the

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Speaker 1: reasoning that you the city want, unless you move ahead

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Speaker 1: with this landmarking that the community has been asking for

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Speaker 1: for years. Here the rest of that interview at Here's

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Speaker 1: the Thing dot org more with Matthew Landfield coming up.

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Speaker 1: I'm Alec Baldwin and you're listening to Here's the Thing.

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Speaker 1: No political battle and recent memory has crystallized attitudes about

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Speaker 1: gentrification more than Amazon's proposal to build its second headquarters

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Speaker 1: in the Queen's neighborhood of Long Island City. Overnight, the

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Speaker 1: real estate values in Long Island City were went through

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Speaker 1: the roof. And you know, I think that that's just

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Speaker 1: another indicator of aspects of economy that are just broken.

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Speaker 1: I think that's true of the whole city in a

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Speaker 1: lot of ways of Manhattan. You know, it's very uh

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Speaker 1: manicured in a way, and it's I don't want to

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Speaker 1: say it's never going to go back, because one thing

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Speaker 1: that i UM found in doing the research into the

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Speaker 1: history of of Um where I grew up, was that

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Speaker 1: the city waxed and waned described a period where it

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Speaker 1: waned well between eighteen seventy and nineteen forty. All of

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Speaker 1: Lower Manhattan was this massive sport, just a gigantic shipping

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Speaker 1: hub from from from the very tip of the battery

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Speaker 1: all the way up goods and and all kinds of

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Speaker 1: foods and services until after the Second World War, when

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Speaker 1: shipping trans formed into container shipping. The technology of container

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Speaker 1: ships was developed, these enormous tanker size ships that could

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Speaker 1: ship more, that could ship faster, and it was just

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Speaker 1: it was less expensive. So all of that moved to

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Speaker 1: the Port of Elizabeth in New Jersey. That meant that

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Speaker 1: the entire west side became a ghost town and you

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Speaker 1: have this sort of vacuum of space, and and into

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Speaker 1: that vacuum artists started exactly exactly. So that's that's one

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Speaker 1: version of how the city, that part of the city

428
00:23:36,480 --> 00:23:41,879
Speaker 1: has waxed and waned Um. But even before that, when Um,

429
00:23:41,960 --> 00:23:46,280
Speaker 1: the neighborhood was first settled by really by Trinity Church,

430
00:23:46,320 --> 00:23:49,040
Speaker 1: because Trinity Church owned a lot of the land down

431
00:23:49,760 --> 00:23:53,280
Speaker 1: Um and still does own a lot of land, Trinity

432
00:23:53,280 --> 00:23:56,720
Speaker 1: owns a lot of stuff. Trining owns this building. So

433
00:23:56,920 --> 00:24:01,080
Speaker 1: after the Revolution, the church burned down, had burned down

434
00:24:01,119 --> 00:24:04,199
Speaker 1: during the war, there was a terrible fire burned down.

435
00:24:04,240 --> 00:24:07,960
Speaker 1: They had to rebuild the church, and the congregation grew,

436
00:24:08,240 --> 00:24:10,560
Speaker 1: and UH, the city was starting to grow, and so

437
00:24:10,920 --> 00:24:14,760
Speaker 1: they wanted to expand, and they wanted to build a

438
00:24:14,800 --> 00:24:18,760
Speaker 1: new church UM a little further north, just just north

439
00:24:18,800 --> 00:24:22,320
Speaker 1: of City Hall. And so they built a chapel called

440
00:24:22,359 --> 00:24:27,639
Speaker 1: St John's Chapel, which was on Vestry and Verick. And

441
00:24:27,880 --> 00:24:30,720
Speaker 1: in front of the church, they built a park called

442
00:24:30,760 --> 00:24:35,480
Speaker 1: St John's Park or Hudson Square, and that that park

443
00:24:36,000 --> 00:24:39,680
Speaker 1: um was a private park. There were houses that were

444
00:24:39,800 --> 00:24:41,720
Speaker 1: that were the Grammercy Park in fact, was the model

445
00:24:41,760 --> 00:24:45,639
Speaker 1: for Grammercy Park and Washington Square Park. They built houses

446
00:24:45,680 --> 00:24:50,040
Speaker 1: around the park and they wanted um. They wanted basically

447
00:24:50,160 --> 00:24:53,120
Speaker 1: wealthy people who were mostly living down on like Broadway

448
00:24:53,200 --> 00:24:56,040
Speaker 1: and further further south, like closer to Wall Street, they

449
00:24:56,080 --> 00:24:58,760
Speaker 1: wanted them to move in there. And so that neighborhood

450
00:24:58,800 --> 00:25:03,159
Speaker 1: becomes a wealthy, kind of very genteel enclave around the

451
00:25:03,240 --> 00:25:08,040
Speaker 1: park between eight and eighteen fifty. But then you have

452
00:25:08,080 --> 00:25:12,720
Speaker 1: the railroad, Cornelius. Vanderbilt builds the Hudson River railroad line

453
00:25:12,840 --> 00:25:16,760
Speaker 1: along Hudson Street and starts running trains up and down

454
00:25:16,800 --> 00:25:20,560
Speaker 1: to ship things back and forth. And Uh, the residents

455
00:25:20,560 --> 00:25:23,560
Speaker 1: of that neighborhood, I don't want to be close to

456
00:25:23,600 --> 00:25:25,520
Speaker 1: the railroad, and so they start to leave. And so

457
00:25:25,600 --> 00:25:29,640
Speaker 1: by eighteen sixty seven they were completely out of the area,

458
00:25:29,680 --> 00:25:31,880
Speaker 1: and the park is sold and and and converted into

459
00:25:31,920 --> 00:25:36,040
Speaker 1: a rail yard by by Vanderbilt. And so again you

460
00:25:36,119 --> 00:25:39,320
Speaker 1: have you have this sort of waxing and waning of

461
00:25:39,440 --> 00:25:41,719
Speaker 1: life in in a in a particular area, growth and

462
00:25:41,760 --> 00:25:45,000
Speaker 1: death mostly do you know, partly due to technological change.

463
00:25:45,040 --> 00:25:48,639
Speaker 1: I mean you have you have the coal powered steam engine,

464
00:25:48,720 --> 00:25:52,520
Speaker 1: you have railroads, and with the Jeff Bezos area was

465
00:25:52,680 --> 00:25:56,280
Speaker 1: like that exactly exactly. And so what I want you

466
00:25:56,320 --> 00:25:57,879
Speaker 1: to get to is what was the genesis of this

467
00:25:57,960 --> 00:26:02,600
Speaker 1: piece you wrote? So after Sandy my parents left, they

468
00:26:02,600 --> 00:26:06,119
Speaker 1: moved up up to that valley and a lot of

469
00:26:06,119 --> 00:26:10,160
Speaker 1: the buildings down there were empty, and um, obviously something

470
00:26:10,200 --> 00:26:13,040
Speaker 1: was going to be done with them. Um, I didn't

471
00:26:13,080 --> 00:26:15,919
Speaker 1: know what they knocked down the building that it was

472
00:26:15,920 --> 00:26:21,600
Speaker 1: demolished in twenty end. And you know that was that

473
00:26:21,680 --> 00:26:25,200
Speaker 1: was painful to to experience. It was very painful. Actually,

474
00:26:25,160 --> 00:26:28,679
Speaker 1: it's very sad um and I had a lot of

475
00:26:28,680 --> 00:26:32,919
Speaker 1: feelings about it. And at the time I had I

476
00:26:33,000 --> 00:26:36,359
Speaker 1: actually been recently laid off from a demanding job and

477
00:26:36,400 --> 00:26:37,760
Speaker 1: I was kind of burned out and I wanted to

478
00:26:37,800 --> 00:26:40,640
Speaker 1: do something a little bit different. And I went down

479
00:26:40,680 --> 00:26:43,159
Speaker 1: there one day and the building was completely gone, and

480
00:26:43,160 --> 00:26:45,920
Speaker 1: I was looking down into the foundation and I was like, well,

481
00:26:45,920 --> 00:26:49,159
Speaker 1: wait a minute, what's in there? Like I wondered. I

482
00:26:49,200 --> 00:26:51,679
Speaker 1: was like, oh, were there you know American Indians who

483
00:26:51,760 --> 00:26:54,280
Speaker 1: lived there? Was there? Is there like some archaeological history

484
00:26:54,280 --> 00:26:56,760
Speaker 1: in there? I want to know what was under there

485
00:26:56,920 --> 00:27:00,560
Speaker 1: because I never thought about the building and now being there.

486
00:27:00,600 --> 00:27:03,239
Speaker 1: And then number two, like what it was on in

487
00:27:03,280 --> 00:27:06,520
Speaker 1: the first place. That started me off in this sort

488
00:27:06,560 --> 00:27:09,640
Speaker 1: of inquiry. And I didn't plan to write anything. I

489
00:27:09,680 --> 00:27:12,840
Speaker 1: didn't plan to tell anybody. I just was gonna answer

490
00:27:12,840 --> 00:27:16,200
Speaker 1: the question for myself. And so I started digging into it,

491
00:27:16,800 --> 00:27:20,400
Speaker 1: and um, I found a lot of that in collecting

492
00:27:20,440 --> 00:27:23,359
Speaker 1: the material and looking into it. The only way I

493
00:27:23,359 --> 00:27:24,920
Speaker 1: could make sense of it was to write it all

494
00:27:25,200 --> 00:27:29,720
Speaker 1: down and compile it into some form that could communicate

495
00:27:30,280 --> 00:27:33,280
Speaker 1: both my feelings about the experience of having grown up

496
00:27:33,280 --> 00:27:36,359
Speaker 1: in this place as well as what I was learning

497
00:27:36,400 --> 00:27:41,359
Speaker 1: about the history of the place and perhaps what the

498
00:27:41,400 --> 00:27:43,800
Speaker 1: future of the place might be. UM So that was

499
00:27:43,840 --> 00:27:46,159
Speaker 1: really the genesis of writing that particularly. I want did

500
00:27:46,160 --> 00:27:48,400
Speaker 1: it take you to write the piece? There's like copious

501
00:27:48,440 --> 00:27:51,240
Speaker 1: research involved in this piece. I got a little carried away,

502
00:27:54,119 --> 00:27:57,439
Speaker 1: you know, and answer these questions. It has a lot

503
00:27:57,480 --> 00:27:59,400
Speaker 1: of stuff in it, and I did do a fair

504
00:27:59,440 --> 00:28:01,480
Speaker 1: amount of reason church. I'd spent a lot of time

505
00:28:01,480 --> 00:28:04,160
Speaker 1: in the library, which I have to say, if if

506
00:28:04,680 --> 00:28:08,240
Speaker 1: anyone UH is interested in supporting an institution, the near

507
00:28:08,280 --> 00:28:11,000
Speaker 1: public library is probably the best when I can think

508
00:28:11,040 --> 00:28:13,840
Speaker 1: of right now. And I just kept finding things that

509
00:28:13,880 --> 00:28:15,960
Speaker 1: I was like, oh my god, look at these photographs,

510
00:28:16,000 --> 00:28:18,879
Speaker 1: look at this material of St. John's Park, or these

511
00:28:18,920 --> 00:28:22,840
Speaker 1: images of the docks in Lower Manhattan in eighteen ninety

512
00:28:22,960 --> 00:28:25,399
Speaker 1: nine or whatever like, and all of this has gone

513
00:28:25,520 --> 00:28:28,760
Speaker 1: like these are phantoms that have been forgotten about but

514
00:28:29,160 --> 00:28:31,760
Speaker 1: made the city what it is. They're the reason why

515
00:28:31,920 --> 00:28:36,120
Speaker 1: I was there at all, and I wanted to capture that.

516
00:28:36,160 --> 00:28:40,560
Speaker 1: And in nine they moved, Yeah, my mom dad moved

517
00:28:40,560 --> 00:28:44,680
Speaker 1: there in sixty nine. And um. When they moved there,

518
00:28:45,240 --> 00:28:49,240
Speaker 1: that building had been empty for probably at least five years,

519
00:28:49,880 --> 00:28:53,920
Speaker 1: had been an industrial manufacturing building where they made protesting

520
00:28:53,920 --> 00:28:56,920
Speaker 1: coughs syrope. There was no bathroom, there was no kitchen,

521
00:28:56,960 --> 00:28:59,880
Speaker 1: there was there was nothing. When when artists moved into

522
00:28:59,880 --> 00:29:02,920
Speaker 1: that neighborhood at that time, they were moving into largely

523
00:29:03,360 --> 00:29:07,440
Speaker 1: commercial spaces, renting them on like ten year commercial leases

524
00:29:07,520 --> 00:29:10,840
Speaker 1: and living there, which was technically illegal illegal. What do

525
00:29:10,880 --> 00:29:12,800
Speaker 1: they do about the facilities that they didn't have? Where

526
00:29:12,800 --> 00:29:15,480
Speaker 1: do they put them in? Put They put in um,

527
00:29:15,520 --> 00:29:19,040
Speaker 1: you know, hartwood floors and the kitchens and bathrooms and stuff.

528
00:29:19,080 --> 00:29:22,400
Speaker 1: And your dad did that and rent was so the

529
00:29:22,440 --> 00:29:25,080
Speaker 1: owners who had run it as the industrial building, they

530
00:29:25,080 --> 00:29:28,840
Speaker 1: were commercial landlords let them come in there. They just

531
00:29:28,880 --> 00:29:32,000
Speaker 1: turned a blind eye. When I came to New York

532
00:29:32,040 --> 00:29:34,720
Speaker 1: in nineteen seventy nine, it was the beginning of the

533
00:29:34,720 --> 00:29:37,640
Speaker 1: flip of SOHO and you'd read in the Village Voice.

534
00:29:37,680 --> 00:29:40,320
Speaker 1: You'd read about, you know, the battle to save industrial

535
00:29:40,400 --> 00:29:43,160
Speaker 1: space in New York, and everyone kept saying, well, maybe

536
00:29:43,240 --> 00:29:46,240
Speaker 1: it'll come back and eventually get to the I don't

537
00:29:46,280 --> 00:29:48,920
Speaker 1: know what year was, seventy seventy seventy nine, where it's

538
00:29:48,920 --> 00:29:52,560
Speaker 1: which basically ruled they're not coming back, and they allow

539
00:29:53,040 --> 00:29:56,560
Speaker 1: the residential build out of Soho. This place was a

540
00:29:56,560 --> 00:29:59,600
Speaker 1: bolt factory. This place was a sewing machine factory on

541
00:29:59,720 --> 00:30:02,320
Speaker 1: Green Street or Westboro. And they're all gone and you're

542
00:30:02,320 --> 00:30:04,280
Speaker 1: in front of all these cast iron buildings they're about

543
00:30:04,280 --> 00:30:07,800
Speaker 1: to flip. But T Rebecca was behind that, right exactly.

544
00:30:07,920 --> 00:30:12,600
Speaker 1: I mean also under the Lenape, because the Lenape Indians

545
00:30:12,600 --> 00:30:16,800
Speaker 1: were the original inhabitants of Manhattan. What I didn't really

546
00:30:16,840 --> 00:30:20,000
Speaker 1: know was that there hadn't been people there before. It

547
00:30:20,120 --> 00:30:24,000
Speaker 1: had been the river, that particular strip of lower Manhattan

548
00:30:24,000 --> 00:30:26,480
Speaker 1: field was it was filled. It had originally like when

549
00:30:26,560 --> 00:30:29,280
Speaker 1: European settlers got there in the very beginning, all of

550
00:30:29,320 --> 00:30:31,920
Speaker 1: that was was the river, and and it was filled

551
00:30:31,920 --> 00:30:35,560
Speaker 1: in over over the course of several years. And I

552
00:30:35,960 --> 00:30:38,480
Speaker 1: found who who filled it in. I found out who

553
00:30:38,560 --> 00:30:43,840
Speaker 1: filled it in. Well, what happens is between seventeen ninety

554
00:30:44,040 --> 00:30:48,000
Speaker 1: and eighteen o three the city starts to sell the

555
00:30:48,040 --> 00:30:51,080
Speaker 1: water rights to the coast of the of the island

556
00:30:51,080 --> 00:30:54,200
Speaker 1: and say you we will sell the rights to the

557
00:30:54,240 --> 00:30:56,440
Speaker 1: coast if you develop it. If you develop it, and

558
00:30:56,520 --> 00:30:59,680
Speaker 1: so real estate speculators a guy named Hugh Gaine is

559
00:30:59,720 --> 00:31:02,880
Speaker 1: one of them. Uh. He was a printer, he was

560
00:31:02,960 --> 00:31:07,480
Speaker 1: a publisher, he was a real estate speculator. Um kind

561
00:31:07,480 --> 00:31:08,880
Speaker 1: of was a little bit on both sides of the

562
00:31:08,920 --> 00:31:14,680
Speaker 1: war in the revolution. Uh right. Um, he buys the

563
00:31:15,280 --> 00:31:20,240
Speaker 1: particular lots there and starts to development and been to lots. Yeah,

564
00:31:20,640 --> 00:31:23,880
Speaker 1: they divided up into lots. Um. And so what he

565
00:31:23,920 --> 00:31:26,239
Speaker 1: does is or what they do is is they they

566
00:31:26,840 --> 00:31:29,040
Speaker 1: first they build these wharves, I guess, the little wars.

567
00:31:29,040 --> 00:31:30,840
Speaker 1: They are called Cobb wharves. And then they start to

568
00:31:30,920 --> 00:31:33,160
Speaker 1: kind of like fill in the space in between them

569
00:31:33,160 --> 00:31:37,239
Speaker 1: with with junk, with with oyster shells, with detritus from

570
00:31:37,280 --> 00:31:41,440
Speaker 1: the city from you know, uh, earth from from hills

571
00:31:41,480 --> 00:31:45,360
Speaker 1: that have been leveled further inland on the island. And

572
00:31:45,680 --> 00:31:50,560
Speaker 1: over the course of about twenty five years, the um

573
00:31:50,720 --> 00:31:55,320
Speaker 1: the West Street areas developed. So like you know, Washington

574
00:31:55,360 --> 00:31:58,280
Speaker 1: Street is filled in, then the block west of Washington

575
00:31:58,360 --> 00:32:00,480
Speaker 1: is filled in, and then there's there's West Street. Now,

576
00:32:00,880 --> 00:32:04,880
Speaker 1: that edge of the island was still pretty rough even

577
00:32:04,920 --> 00:32:07,320
Speaker 1: all the way up until about eighteen seventy when the

578
00:32:07,360 --> 00:32:09,920
Speaker 1: city goes in and really standardizes. The must be a

579
00:32:10,000 --> 00:32:13,000
Speaker 1: massive engineering and it took It took a long time,

580
00:32:13,400 --> 00:32:16,560
Speaker 1: but yeah, so so I found that and what that

581
00:32:16,680 --> 00:32:21,920
Speaker 1: told me was that when Sandy flooded Lower Manhattan, the

582
00:32:22,000 --> 00:32:25,240
Speaker 1: high water mark lines up with the contours of the

583
00:32:25,280 --> 00:32:29,920
Speaker 1: island before it was settled. You can overlay the I

584
00:32:29,960 --> 00:32:32,600
Speaker 1: found this amazing. It is it is like that you

585
00:32:32,640 --> 00:32:36,320
Speaker 1: can overlay the sixteen o nine version of Manhattan to

586
00:32:36,680 --> 00:32:40,480
Speaker 1: Sandy the inundation zone, and it lines up right in

587
00:32:40,520 --> 00:32:45,600
Speaker 1: there and doesn't like Rebecca, you know, maybe it doesn't

588
00:32:45,600 --> 00:32:49,040
Speaker 1: like the settlement so much. I don't know, because before

589
00:32:49,280 --> 00:32:51,640
Speaker 1: Hugh gained, before settlement, before they developed it, it it was

590
00:32:51,960 --> 00:32:55,280
Speaker 1: it was swamp. I suppose the word is takeaway or

591
00:32:55,280 --> 00:32:56,920
Speaker 1: what have you. But when when you look back on

592
00:32:57,040 --> 00:32:59,440
Speaker 1: you spent a lot of time writing this, You spent

593
00:32:59,480 --> 00:33:01,600
Speaker 1: a lot of time researching. There's a lot of research

594
00:33:01,640 --> 00:33:04,200
Speaker 1: that win this. And when you're done, how do you

595
00:33:04,280 --> 00:33:08,760
Speaker 1: feel about what's happened to the property, your home? Have

596
00:33:08,880 --> 00:33:11,240
Speaker 1: you made peace with that or are you still Yeah?

597
00:33:11,360 --> 00:33:14,680
Speaker 1: So it's a place that I love. It's my home.

598
00:33:14,880 --> 00:33:18,800
Speaker 1: It's the village in which I was raised, regardless of

599
00:33:18,800 --> 00:33:22,440
Speaker 1: of the the the economics, regardless of who's who's living there,

600
00:33:22,520 --> 00:33:26,480
Speaker 1: regardless of the historic preservation or the real estate or whatever.

601
00:33:27,440 --> 00:33:31,880
Speaker 1: My takeaway is that my home is in jeopardy from

602
00:33:32,080 --> 00:33:37,760
Speaker 1: climate change. I think that that particular place is is

603
00:33:37,920 --> 00:33:42,080
Speaker 1: at risk of being an uninhabitable place in in a

604
00:33:42,160 --> 00:33:45,120
Speaker 1: generation or two. And it doesn't matter if you make

605
00:33:45,160 --> 00:33:47,320
Speaker 1: a lot of money or if you are just a

606
00:33:47,640 --> 00:33:51,560
Speaker 1: normal person working to to make a living. We're facing

607
00:33:51,920 --> 00:33:55,920
Speaker 1: a threat that requires us to confront together or else

608
00:33:56,800 --> 00:34:00,320
Speaker 1: we will have to retreat to other boundaries. Maybe yeah,

609
00:34:00,360 --> 00:34:02,640
Speaker 1: I mean, well, with with my family, we had to go.

610
00:34:02,960 --> 00:34:07,680
Speaker 1: We said to my father, you can't stay there because

611
00:34:07,800 --> 00:34:12,319
Speaker 1: if there's another sandy, you won't make it through. So

612
00:34:12,520 --> 00:34:16,640
Speaker 1: we chose to to move to higher ground. Um. You know,

613
00:34:17,440 --> 00:34:18,960
Speaker 1: there will be people who will listen to this and

614
00:34:19,000 --> 00:34:21,640
Speaker 1: think that I'm crazy. Look at the property values and

615
00:34:21,680 --> 00:34:24,160
Speaker 1: you can still make so much money, and apartments down

616
00:34:24,160 --> 00:34:26,600
Speaker 1: there and they're selling for millions and millions, and the

617
00:34:26,680 --> 00:34:29,279
Speaker 1: true threat from climate change may be far off. But

618
00:34:29,400 --> 00:34:32,440
Speaker 1: for us, it's in the rear view mirror. Right. New

619
00:34:32,520 --> 00:34:35,600
Speaker 1: York is an island on an estuary. It's it's a

620
00:34:35,760 --> 00:34:38,880
Speaker 1: it's it's surrounded by water. We are not immune and

621
00:34:38,920 --> 00:34:41,360
Speaker 1: there are a lot of people with a lot of

622
00:34:41,360 --> 00:34:45,480
Speaker 1: precious things here that are at risk, and we have

623
00:34:45,640 --> 00:34:50,040
Speaker 1: to either solve our political problems and start dealing with it,

624
00:34:50,200 --> 00:34:53,440
Speaker 1: or we have to make a plan. And I have

625
00:34:53,600 --> 00:34:58,719
Speaker 1: not heard any politician or leader adequately address the scale

626
00:34:59,280 --> 00:35:02,480
Speaker 1: of what are truly dealing with and not in this country.

627
00:35:02,719 --> 00:35:05,960
Speaker 1: You know, I think I will say, like God bless her,

628
00:35:06,000 --> 00:35:08,800
Speaker 1: Alexandra Kazi Cortez is one of the few who's actually

629
00:35:08,800 --> 00:35:12,719
Speaker 1: saying it. And here's the other thing about it. We're

630
00:35:12,760 --> 00:35:16,400
Speaker 1: not good at dealing with problems that are beyond our imagining.

631
00:35:17,280 --> 00:35:19,640
Speaker 1: If I told you on September ten, two thousan't one

632
00:35:20,160 --> 00:35:23,680
Speaker 1: that by noon the next day the two towers would

633
00:35:23,719 --> 00:35:28,320
Speaker 1: be completely and thousands of people would be dead, and

634
00:35:28,400 --> 00:35:30,120
Speaker 1: most people would have thought you were crazy if you

635
00:35:30,120 --> 00:35:34,439
Speaker 1: had said that. But the next day what happened. And

636
00:35:34,440 --> 00:35:37,480
Speaker 1: and I remember seeing those buildings and and and and

637
00:35:37,520 --> 00:35:40,640
Speaker 1: the whole in the from the plane and thinking, how

638
00:35:40,680 --> 00:35:43,239
Speaker 1: are they going to fix that? How how are they

639
00:35:43,239 --> 00:35:46,040
Speaker 1: going to repair that? And it didn't occur to me

640
00:35:46,280 --> 00:35:48,120
Speaker 1: that they weren't going to be able to fix it,

641
00:35:48,440 --> 00:35:51,200
Speaker 1: that that there are some things, there are some problems

642
00:35:51,239 --> 00:35:54,879
Speaker 1: that you just cannot that you can't that can't solve.

643
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Speaker 1: And I think that with with the situation like we're

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Speaker 1: facing with what is with climate change? Um, it is

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Speaker 1: one of those problems. And so either we address the

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Speaker 1: problem and do what we have to do to cut

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Speaker 1: emissions or whatever it is, what are those policies to try.

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Speaker 1: We're not even trying. Our politics are so broken we

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Speaker 1: can try. If that is the case, then we have

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Speaker 1: to say, Okay, what does that mean. If it means

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Speaker 1: that the whole neighborhoods are going to flood, we have

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Speaker 1: to be prepared for how do we get people out

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Speaker 1: of that? At high tide the Lenapic, they could canoe

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Speaker 1: from the East River up a creek into the Collect Pond,

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Speaker 1: which is now where the Center Street Courthouse is, across

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Speaker 1: another creek to the Hudson without getting out of the bowl.

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Speaker 1: And if you look at projections of what climate change

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Speaker 1: will do in Lower Manhattan, it may be possible again.

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Speaker 1: Author and filmmaker Matthew Landfield on the past, present and

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Speaker 1: future of his native soil. His article is called Requiem

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Speaker 1: for a Living City, Notes on a Home in Rebecca,

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Speaker 1: and it's available on his website Matt Landfield dot com.

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Speaker 1: I'm Alec Baldwin, and you're listening to Here's the Thing

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Speaker 1: m