Skip to main content

All Quiet On The West Side Front

March 2023
1min read

Nathan Ward’s “Gym Crow Must Go” of “The Time Machine” in the April issue is a vivid account of the crisis that engulfed Columbia University and the Parks Department twenty-five years ago, yet the story has a coda too, a happy ending of sorts. The excavation site for the gym languished for more than two decades, but in 1990-91 the scars to the land were finally healed. Through a city-funded capital renovation the hillside was re-landscaped, and the gaping hole left over from the debacle of 1968 was converted to a lily pond. Nature, with a push from humanity, has a way of reclaiming itself.

We hope you enjoy our work.

Please support this 72-year tradition of trusted historical writing and the volunteers that sustain it with a donation to American Heritage.

Donate

Stories published from "July/August 1993"

Authored by: Nathan Ward

Schermerhorn, the Rain King

Authored by: Nathan Ward

Unclean Gene

Authored by: Nathan Ward

Keeping It On

Authored by: The Editors

A Journey Down the Atlantic Shore

Authored by: The Editors

Songs of Stephen Foster

Authored by: Lawrence Block

A personal overview of American mystery fiction

Authored by: John Steele Gordon

Foreign trade—import and export alike—has been indispensable in building America from the very start, and many of our worst economic troubles have arisen when that trade wasn’t free enough. A historic overview.

Authored by: Alexander O. Boulton

The generation that fought World War II also won a housing revolution that promised and delivered a home for $7,990

Authored by: Donald L. Miller

THE 1893 WORLD’S COLUMBIAN EXPOSITION WAS SO WONDERFUL THAT EVERYBODY HOPED IT WAS A PROPHECY OF WHAT THE TWENTIETH CENTURY HELD IN STORE. BUT IN FACT, THE CITY THAT MOUNTED IT WAS.

Authored by: Wilfred M. Mcclay

First heard just a century ago at the Chicago fair, Frederick Jackson Turner’s epochal essay on the Western frontier expressed a conflict in the American psyche that tears at us still

Featured Articles

The world’s most prominent actress risked her career by standing up to one of Hollywood’s mega-studios, proving that behind the beauty was also a very savvy businesswoman. 

Rarely has the full story been told about how a famed botanist, a pioneering female journalist, and First Lady Helen Taft battled reluctant bureaucrats to bring Japanese cherry trees to Washington. 

Often thought to have been a weak president, Carter was strong-willed in doing what he thought was right, regardless of expediency or the political fallout.

Why have thousands of U.S. banks failed over the years? The answers are in our history and politics.

In his Second Inaugural Address, Abraham Lincoln embodied leading in a time of polarization, political disagreement, and differing understandings of reality.