Lunch & Learn: When the City Stopped

Join Manhattan Borough Historian Robert Snyder for a discussion of his upcoming book, When the City Stopped!

Join the NYC Department of Records and Information Services (DORIS) each month for our virtual Lunch & Learn Series—an intimate conversation with agency staff and special guests focusing on the collections of the Municipal Archives and Library and the history of New York City. During 2025, the 400th anniversary of the founding of City government, DORIS is expanding access to records documenting the city and its diverse communities.

On April 3rd, join Dr. Robert Snyder for an in-depth discussion on his upcoming book, When the City Stopped: Stories from New York’s Essential Workers.

Five years after New York City shut down to reduce the spread of COVID-19, Snyder examines the inequalities illuminated by the pandemic, the workers who saved the city, and the lessons we can learn from the days when New York City was at the center of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Using poems, first-person narratives, and oral histories, When the City Stopped explores the experiences of immigrants, people of color, and low-income New Yorkers whose work exposed them to the dangers of the pandemic, the fear and uncertainty of life in the early weeks and months of the pandemic, as well as the solidarity that sustained the city.

About the Author:

Robert Snyder is the Manhattan Borough Historian and professor emeritus of American Studies and Journalism at Rutgers University. In a career devoted to writing and teaching about the history of New York City, he was a fellow of the Smithsonian Institution, a Fulbright lecturer in South Korea, and elected to the New York Academy of History. His books include Crossing Broadway: Washington Heights and the Promise of New York and Transit Talk: New York’s Bus and Subway Workers Tell Their Stories. He has also written for the New York Times, the Daily News, and the Washington Post.