Gordon Guild Burris (1903–1988) was a Canadian-born civil engineer for the New York-based Turner Construction Company in the 1920s and ’30s. Among the iconic Manhattan structures he helped build are Bloomingdale’s (Lexington Avenue at 59th Street), the Hotel Lexington (511 Lexington Avenue), and the massive Port of New York Authority Commerce Building (111 Eighth Avenue), now home to Google’s New York…

This posting was written by Catherine McNeur, a Bernard & Irene Schwartz Postdoctoral Fellow at the New-York Historical Society.  In the spring of 1855 Charles Loring Brace, who had recently started running the Children’s Aid Society, ventured into a neighborhood on the edge of the city called Dutch Hill. Located near East 41st Street and the…