The Center for Puerto Rican Studies (CENTRO) at Hunter College has announced its newest exhibition, Afterlives of San Juan Hill, at CENTRO en El Barrio, located within the Silberman School of Social Work. The exhibition opening will be celebrated on May 14th at 6:00 PM. Using never-before-seen archival documents made available to CENTRO by the Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts and other archival materials from that period, this exhibit delves into the larger history of the Lincoln Square Urban Renewal project.
It traces the process through which Puerto Rican families were disrupted and displaced in 1958 from New York City’s Lincoln Square and San Juan Hill neighborhoods to make way for the construction of the Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts and Fordham University. Infamously called “the Puerto Rican Slum” and “the worst slum in New York,” by Robert Moses, the architect of New York’s urban renewal process, Lincoln Square and San Juan Hill were home to approximately 2,000 Puerto Rican families. These records invite us to engage in a necessary reframing of the scripts that bolstered dispossession in the name of development across New York City in the mid-20th century. By delving into the lived experiences of the community’s residents, Afterlives of San Juan Hill highlights the individual stories of Lincoln Square residents during this pivotal time.
Curated by Dr. Cristel M. Jusino Díaz and Christopher López, with curatorial support and research by Jorge Soldevila Irizarry, Damayra Figueroa Lazú, Dr. Laura Colón Meléndez, Monique Young, Camila Juarbe, Arianna Meneses, and Maya Borg, Afterlives of San Juan Hill combines data analysis with archival documents, visual storytelling, and oral histories to offer a community-centered perspective on a crucial period in U.S. urban history. At the center of this exhibit are the experiences of the Ramírez Zapata family: María Zapata and her four children, Gustavo, Magdalena, Harry, and Miguel Ramírez Zapata—one of thousands of families that were displaced in the name of urban development. These histories of dispossession and erasure are as crucial today as they were in the 1950s, and we are honored to illuminate an untold aspect of New York City history through the lens and stories of those who were directly affected.
The exhibition will be on view until September 30, 2025.
Click here to read more about the exhibition and see photos.