Voices of Queensbridge

“I love Queensbridge, there’s no place like it,” Karen Alston, a Queensbridge Houses resident for 57 years, says at the beginning of a short documentary, “Voices of Queensbridge.”

The film tells the story of a year-long project to collect oral histories from long-time Queensbridge residents. The project is a partnership between LaGuardia Community College’s Gardiner-Shenker student scholars and seniors who live at Queensbridge Houses and attend the Jacob A. Riis Neighborhood Settlement Senior Center at the development.

Ms. Alston is one of 25 residents interviewed by LaGuardia students; most participants were older adults. Their interviews are being added to the New York City Housing Authority collection at the LaGuardia and Wagner Archives, which collects and preserves materials on the social and political history of New York City under the direction of Dr. Richard K. Lieberman. The NYCHA collection covers 1927 to 2007 and features over 18,500 folders and over 100,000 photographs that show the history of NYCHA, from the construction of developments to information on resident lives and how the agency works.

The oral histories were funded by the Robert D.L. Gardiner Foundation as the second-year project of a three-year grant to the Archives to have LaGuardia staff and faculty introduce students to history and how it can be documented.

Before the Gardiner-Shenker student scholars interviewed residents, they spent time researching the NYCHA collection at the Archives to learn about the history of public housing and were trained on how to conduct oral history interviews.

Until this project, the NYCHA records only reflected the resident experience through newsletters or community event documents. Now, first-hand accounts from residents will also be preserved.

“It was really interesting to me, because I feel like the project really brought to light the more positive aspects of Queensbridge and public housing,” Gardiner-Shenker Scholar Telijah Patterson said in the film.

In February, the film was shown to project participants as well as community members. Molly Rosner, Assistant Director of Education Programs at the LaGuardia Archives, said that seniors were excited to see their stories shared on the screen and “students were able to share how their perceptions of public housing had changed; the stereotypes they were seeing on the news were not the experiences they were hearing in their interviews.”

The Queensbridge project is continuing beyond the original scope of the grant with a new set of student scholars working on collecting oral histories from the children of the older adult residents. The goal is to capture different perspectives and an intergenerational view of Queensbridge.

Watch Voices of Queensbridge here. Visit the LaGuardia and Wagner Archives NYCHA collection here.