Courtesy of Zeva Bellel and Paris By Appointment Only.
We received a nice submission from Zeva Bellel, "an American journalist born and bred in Brooklyn, who has been living in Paris for the last ten years". She is the founder and editor in chief of Paris By Appointment Only, a
website "devoted to the hidden artisans and innovators of Paris".
Zeva told The Lo-Down she posted a story about a private tour of the Two
Bridges section of Lower Manhattan as part of the special summer USA
edition she's doing for her blog. The tour was given by her father, who grew up in Knickerbocker Village (cradled by a district once referred to as the “fourth ward”). She writes about how she convinced her father to give the tour:
the middle of the neighborhood where his parents grew up. Around the
corner from his school was the apartment where my grandfather lived,
several blocks away (from) the Synagogue where he met my grandmother, nearby the cleaners where my aunt and uncle worked, yadda, yadda, yadda…Inspired by his surroundings, he reconstructed the past piece
by piece using historic documents, photographs, and a treasure trove of
census bureau records he’d found in the trash. The result was a (highly
personal) new-media tapestry of early 20th century Lower Manhattan
immigrant life.
Her father's research led him to create a blog about Knickerbocker Village, which can be found here. You can also email him through his blog for additional tour information.
