BANKING ON THEMSELVES: Immigrants in NYC's LES

What are immigrants to do when business opportunities abound in their new home, but banks refuse essential financial support? How could they make the journey in the first place without helping hands? 

Please join us in the West Room for an extraordinary discussion about turn-of-the-twentieth-century Jewish immigrants who stepped up by doing the lending themselves. Settling primarily in New York, they made livelihoods by assisting others and obtain credit that other lenders would not dare provide. Rebecca Kobrin and Andrew Dolkart will discuss the Jewish diaspora, rare money lenders, and the Lower East Side—from within the most infamous immigrant bank building in the United States. 

They will frame the discussion around Kobrin's new book, Credit To The Nation (Harvard University Press, 2026), that details immigrants’ grasping for credit, and the rise and fall of immigrant banks, eventually giving way to a contemporary banking industry that, ironically, refuses credit to today’s immigrants.

Rebecca Kobrin is the Russell and Bettina Knapp Associate Professor of American Jewish History at Columbia University, where she is also the co-director of Columbia’s Institute for Israel and Jewish Studies. She is also one of the lead investigators of the award-winning digital humanities Historical NYC Project, which visualizes the demographic and spatial changes transforming New York City between 1850 and 1940.

Andrew Dolkart has been active in historic preservation in New York City for over thirty years, as a staff member at the Landmarks Preservation Commission. An award-winning author of several books on architecture, history and planning, he has worked extensively with neighborhood groups on preservation efforts, and has completed scores of National Register nominations, Landmark Commission designation reports, historic resource surveys for environmental reviews, and urban cultural resource inventories.

Books will be available for purchase.

• Doors at 7pm; Discussion at 7:30pm
• Cash bar
• Admission is free. Please RSVP with the form 
• Please do not RSVP more than once
• Only the first 175 guests will be admitted
• Please enter at 10 Allen Street

MAKE A NIGHT OF IT

Start with dinner at Corner Bar, then head upstairs for the program — or join us for a nightcap in the Swan Room.