Partners

Who are our Partners?

The Gotham Center, which serves as our host institution during our NYC week, provides professional development programming for educators helping them to engage primary source materials and encourage critical thinking skills in the K-12 classroom. Julie Maurer, The Gotham Center’s Education Director, will facilitate pedagogy workshops during the Institute.

In the city, we partner with three other landmark institutions. The Museum at Eldridge Street Synagogue, founded in 1887 by Eastern European Jewish immigrants, became an anchor for Jewish life on the Lower East Side. The restored building is an architectural marvel and participants will explore its role within the turn-of-the-century community. Nearby, the Henry Street Settlement championed progressive reforms during the early twentieth century. Founded by Lillian Wald, the settlement house promoted services for the city’s poor and provided needed support for women and children, including one of the city’s first playgrounds. In 1909, activists met for a reception in the Henry Street dining room which led to the formation of the NAACP. The National Archives at New York City holds permanent records from federal agencies and courts, documenting the late nineteenth and early twentieth century history of the region. Archivists and educational staff will lead primary-source based workshops featuring National Archives materials related to Common Ground’s themes and introduced participants to DocsTeach, the Archive’s online tool for finding and teaching with primary sources.

During week two in the Adirondacks, we partner with SUNY Cortland's Parks Family Center for Environmental and Outdoor Education, which oversees the National Historic Landmark site, Camp Huntington, located on pristine Raquette Lake within the six million acre Adirondack Park. The camp serves as our home base and summer scholars live, eat and learn at the camp. Camp Huntington was built during the 1870s by William West Durant who originated Great Camp Architecture. The camp was sold in 1895 to Collis P. Huntington, the Central Pacific Railroad magnate. The historic camp serves as our Institute's home base during our second week, enabling participants the rare opportunity to lodge at the camp, eat in Huntington's glass dining hall, and meet and study in the original buildings Huntington and his guests used when they vacationed there in the late nineteenth century. 

Participants also study neighboring Camp Sagamore and Camp Uncas (owned by the Vanderbilts and J. P. Morgan respectively), both National Historic Landmark sites located just four miles from Huntington. The Sagamore Institute of the Adirondacks runs Great Camp Sagamore as a non-profit educational institution, interpreting the 27-building Vanderbilt family retreat, also designed and built by Durant. Camp Uncas, another Durant complex, is privately owned but through the partnership with Camp Sagamore, summer scholars enjoy privileged access to the grounds and some of the buildings. 

The Adirondack Experience, a museum located twenty minutes from Camp Huntington on Blue Mountain Lake, hosts participants during the week on its 121-acre campus featuring original Adirondack buildings relocated to the site, a new 2017 exhibit narrating the Native American history of the region, and a first class research library and archive to facilitate summer scholars' exploration of the region's history.