100PercentBronx: East Bronx History Forum Presentation. Wednesday, May 20th, 7:30pm.

Thursday, May 14, 2026

East Bronx History Forum Presentation. Wednesday, May 20th, 7:30pm.

Dear East Bronx History Forum Member,

Our 20th year is rapidly approaching its end. However, we have two more lectures in addition to the well-attended lecture sponsored by Bronx County Historical Society and From The Bronx earlier this month which featured John Adams impersonator, George Baker for the Bronx 250thCelebration. This month’s meeting will feature historian Kara Murphy Schlicting, her focus will be on the East River neighborhoods of Soundview, Harding Park and Clason Point.

In the 1910s, the bungalow colony Harding Park developed on marshy Clason Point. Through the 1930s–1950s, Robert Moses sought to modernize this East Bronx waterfront through the Parks Department and the Committee on Slum Clearance. While localism and special legislative treatment enabled Harding Park’s preservation as a co-op in 1981, the abandonment of master planning left neighboring Soundview Park unfinished. The entwined histories of recreation and residency on Clason Point reveal the beneficial and detrimental effects of both urban renewal and community development, while also demonstrating the complicated relationship between localism and large-scale planning in postwar New York City.

Kara Murphy Schlichting is an Associate Professor of History at Queens College and The Graduate Center of the City University of New York. She earned her Ph.D. from Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey. Her work in late-19th and 20th-century American History sits at the intersection of urban and environmental history, with a particular focus on New York City. She has published in numerous journals and is the author of New York Recentered: Building the Metropolis from the Shore (University of Chicago Press, 2019).

Our 205th meeting this month will take place over Zoom on Wednesday, May 20th at 7:30 pm. Please, remember to follow us at BronxNYC.com for the meeting link and on our Facebook, Instagram, Vimeo and Youtube account pages for the most current updates or information.

Looking forward to seeing you.

Dorothy A. Krynicki