Before the birth of our nation, brothers William and Thomas Towson forged a hamlet north of Baltimore on the trade route to York, Pennsylvania, at its junction with a Native American trail known as Joppa Road. In 1854, Towsontown was established as the county seat by popular vote, and the cornerstone of the Baltimore County Courthouse was laid.

Mac Griswold's The Manor is the biography of a uniquely American place that has endured through wars great and small, through fortunes won and lost, through histories bright and sinister—and of the family that has lived there since its founding as a Colonial New England slave plantation three and a half centuries ago.In 1984, the landscape historian Mac Griswold was rowing along a Long Island creek when she came upon a stately yellow house and a garden guarded by looming bo...

The story of how the richest city in the world became one of the poorest in North America, with a new introduction by Peter KwongHow did New York City come to be a network of steel towers, banks, and nail salons, with chain drugstores on every block—a place where, increasingly, no one can afford to live except the lords of Wall Street and foreign billionaires, and where more and more of the Big Apple's best-loved businesses have closed their doors? It didn't start w...

The former deputy mayor of New York City tells the story of the city's comeback after 9/11, offering lessons in resiliency under the most trying of circumstances, and a model for the rejuvenation of any city.Deputy Mayor Daniel L. Doctoroff led New York's dramatic and unexpected economic resurgence after the September 11 terrorist attacks. With Mayor Michael Bloomberg, he developed a remarkably ambitious five-borough economic development plan to not only recover fr...

Constructed as the Easton and Amboy Railroad, opened by 1875, the Lehigh Valley Railroad was instrumental in developing commerce and communities of central New Jersey. Thout it no longer runs, it was originally built to haul unending trains of "black diamonds" from Pennsylvania to Perth Amboy, the Lehigh Valley Railroad became so much more than a conduit for shipping coal. In building across the state, it became instrumental in not only hauling produce to New York City markets but also for...

"The true case of Lydia 'Lida' Beecher, a school teacher, being killed by one of her former students . . . The book flows seamlessly" ( Observer Dispatch).In 1914, Poland, New York, was a picturesque slice of small-town America. But that innocence was shattered with the shocking murder of beloved schoolteacher Lida Beecher at the hands of her former student Jean Gianini. At twenty-one years old, Lida wasn't much older than her students. The son of a succes...

Rochester owes much to those who made it the exceptional andunique city it has become. Many of the civic, commercial, industrial, and entertainment leaders who brought fame and prosperity to the city are saluted in Rochester Leaders and Their Legacies. A gallery of rare photographs reveals the images of the founders and their legacies: McCurdy�s, McFarlin�s, Edwards, and Sibley�s department stores; important businesses and products; and entertainment venues and memories. Here are glimpses ...

With these books an effort has been made to present the history of the whole of Long Island in such a way as to combine all the salient facts of the long and interesting story in a manner that might be acceptable to the general reader and at the same time include much of that purely antiquarian lore which is to many the most delightful feature of local history. Long Island has played a most important part in the history of the State of New York and, through New York, in the annals of the N...

Founded in 1895, the Essex County Park Commission was the first county park system in the nation. That year, the commission began its management of Eagle Rock. The reservation was designed by renowned architect Frederick Law Olmsted Sr., who also designed Central Park in New York City and the Capitol Grounds in Washington, D.C. Evident characteristics of the architect within the park are the winding roads, natural blended waterways, open fields, and overlooks, all of which combine to attra...

Real-life Rosie the Riveters worked the lines in New Jersey's factories, such as those of General Motors' Eastern Aircraft Division, while women on the vulnerable coast enforced blackout orders. Others sold war bonds, planted victory gardens and conserved materials for the war effort. Thousands more served as nurses and in branches of the armed forces like the Women's Army Corps and the U.S. Navy's Women Accepted for Volunteer Emergency Service. African American women fought a double war--...

By the 1970s, the Brooklyn piers had become a wasteland on the New York City waterfront. Today, they have been transformed into a stunning park that is enjoyed by countless Brooklynites and visitors from across New York City and around the world. A History of Brooklyn Bridge Park recounts the grassroots, multivoiced, and contentious effort, beginning in the 1980s, to transform Brooklyn's defunct piers into a beautiful, urban oasis. The movement to resist commercial development on ...

Bordered by the Watchung ridges, Mountainside's picturesque four square miles afford a parklike setting in the midst of exurban activity. Author Connie McNamara provides a comprehensive look at this tight-knit community that prides itself on its bucolic surroundings and its caring and cohesiveness. She recounts anecdotes, passed on by town elders, of Mountainside's prestigious historic architecture, the establishment of the nationally renowned Children's Specialized Hospital and the Badgle...