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The Puerto Rican Casita: A Vibrant Symbol of Puerto Rican Diaspora - A Talk by Molly Garfinkel

  • May 12, 2026 6:00 PM - 7:30 PM

  • Hart Cluett Museum

    57 2nd Street
    Troy, New York 12180
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Description

Puerto Rican Casitas are traditional cultural landscapes associated with Puerto Rican migrant culture in New York City between the 1970s and today.  Built to combat the extreme stress experienced by Puerto Rican immigrants who arrived in New York in the 1970s, casitas are an attempt to replicate a small portion of the historic rural landscape of Puerto Rico in the city. Physically, they are defined as small urban gardens enclosed by fences and divided into informal zones for different activities and featuring a variety of buildings and features. Casitas were built throughout the Puerto Rican settlement areas of New York City, and although once numbering over one hundred, fewer than thirty survive today.  These small vernacular landscapes continue to embody cultural symbols, transmit cultural identity, and serve as sites of ongoing cultural activities.  They are among the most visible and symbolic resource types associated with Puerto Rican migration and settlement in the United States. In 2024, New York City’s Place Matters program completed a project funded by an Underrepresented Property Grant from the National Park Service to survey the surviving casitas and prepare a multiple property nomination.

 

Molly Garfinkel, the primary author of the nomination, will speak about the history and symbolism of the Puerto Rican Casitas. As co-director of City Lore and the director of City Lore’s Place Matters program, Garfinkel leads initiatives related to cultural resource management, public history, exhibition curation, public education, historic preservation, and traditional arts presentation. Her research explores Western and non-Western building traditions, theories of cultural landscapes, cultural policy, and histories of urbanism and city planning. Molly has published in the University of Oregon’s CultureWork broadside, University of Pennsylvania’s LA+ Design Journal, the Journal of American Folklore, Panorama: Journal of the Association of Historians of American Art, and with the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art in association with Princeton University Press and National Endowment for the Arts’ Office of Research & Analysis. Garfinkel holds a BA in Art History from Wesleyan University and an MA in Architectural History from the University of Virginia.

*Programmed by the Society of Architectural Historians, Turpin Bannister Chapter*

Date & Time

Tue, May 12, 2026 6:00 PM - 7:30 PM

Venue Details

Hart Cluett Museum

57 2nd Street
Troy, New York 12180 Hart Cluett Museum
Hart Cluett Museum

The Hart Cluett Museum is operated by Historic Rensselaer County (Rensselaer County Historical Society), a dynamic not-for-profit educational organization established in 1927 to connect local history and heritage with contemporary life. We enrich the present and advocate for the future by bringing the region's past to life, recognizing every face and every story. In pursuit of this mission, we collect, preserve, study, interpret, and make accessible a broad variety of objects and documents. We also conduct educational programs that inspire public enthusiasm for our roots and bolster the entrepreneurial appetites of our community.


 


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