Gergely Baics

Gergely Baics

Associate Professor of History and Urban Studies; Helman Faculty Chair of Urban Studies; Faculty Co-Director of the Empirical Reasoning Center 

Department

Urban Studies, History

Office Hours

905 Milstein Center / Office Hours: Tuesdays 12:00-2:00 PM

Contact

Gergely Baics joined the Barnard History Department in 2010. He holds a joint appointment with the Urban Studies Program, where he is Helman Endowed Faculty Chair. He is Faculty Co-Director of the Barnard Empirical Reasoning Center, and previously served as Director of the Barnard-Columbia Urban Studies Program (2018-22).

Baics's scholarly interests include urban history, spatial history, digital public history, 19th-century US economic and social history, trans-Atlantic population history, and social science history methods. He is the author of Feeding Gotham: The Political Economy and Geography of Food in New York, 1790-1860 (Princeton University Press, 2016). His articles have appeared in the Journal of Urban HistoryUrban History, Annals of the American Association of Geographers, and Planning Perspectives.

Baics's recent work has focused on two collaborative digital public history projects. "Envisioning Seneca Village" (2024) combines historical research with digital mapping and visualization to present an interactive 3D digital model of what Seneca Village might have looked like in 1855, about two years before its destruction to build Central Park. "Mapping Historical New York: A Digital Atlas" (2021/24), a big data spatial history project based at Columbia's History Department and the Center for Spatial Research at GSAPP, draws on the 1850, 1880, 1910, 1940 federal censuses to map and visualize changes in immigration, residential, and occupational patterns in New York City's five boroughs. Baics is also at work on a new book project, Transitional City: Built and Social Environments in 19th-Century Manhattan’s Urban Periphery, and on several coauthored articles on a variety of topics, exploring social heterogeneity in US cities in 1880, measuring socially meaningful distance in the historical city, mapping residential mobility in late 19th-Copenhagen, and interpreting the Jesuit missions of the Guarani as an Indigenous urban system in colonial Spanish America.

Baics's research has been supported by the American Council of Learned Societies, the Max Weber Fellowship at the European University Institute, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Fellowship at the New-York Historical Society, and the Presidential Research Award at Barnard. He is a recipient of Barnard's Gladys Brooks Teaching Award. At Barnard, he offers lectures and seminars on transnational and US urban history, New York City history, and spatial history, including “Colonial Cities of the Americas, c. 1500-1800”; “19th-Century New York City Spatial History”; “Urban Studies Junior Seminar”; “History Department Senior Thesis Seminar.”

  • B.A., ELTE University, Budapest, 2002
  • M.A., Central European University, Budapest, 2003
  • M.A., Ph.D., Northwestern University, 2009

  • Urban history
  • Spatial History
  • Digital Public History
  • US Economic and Social History
  • Trans-Atlantic Population History
  • Social Science History Methods

Feeding Gotham: The Political Economy and Geography of Food in New York, 1790-1860 (Princeton University Press, 2016, paperback 2018)

  • One of Financial Times Best History Books of 2016
  • The Gotham Center for New York City History Blog (excerpt); Campaign for the American Reader (The Page 99 test); A Taste of the Past: Feeding Gotham: History of Urban Provisioning (podcast)  

Envisioning Seneca Village [with Meredith Linn, Leah Meisterlin, Myles Zhang], Website with Interactive 3D Model, 2024.

Mapping Historical New York: A Digital Atlas [with Wright Kennedy, Rebecca Kobrin, Laura Kurgan, Leah Meisterlin, Dan Miller, Mae Ngai], New York, NY: Columbia University. 2021.

  • The Cartography and Geographic Information Society 49th Annual Map Design Competition’s Winner of Best Digital/Interactive Map and Tied for Best of Show (all categories), 2021
  • Columbia News: A Digital Map of Historical New York Offers an Extraordinary Level of Detail (article)

"Population Density in Nineteenth-Century American Urbanism," [with Celia Arsen & Leah Meisterlin], Annals of the American Association of Geographers, Published online Jul 2024

"The Social Geography of Near and Far: Built Environment and Residential Distance in Mid-Nineteenth-Century New York City," Urban History 47, no. 3 (2020), 512-34

The Grid as Algorithm for Land Use: A Reappraisal of the 1811 Manhattan Grid,” [with Leah Meisterlin], Planning Perspectives 34, no. 3 (2019), 391-414

Introduction: Meat and the Nineteenth-Century City,” [with Mikkel Thelle], Urban History 45, no. 2 (2018), 184-92

Zoning Before Zoning: Land Use and Density in Mid-Nineteenth-Century New York City,” [with Leah Meisterlin], Annals of the American Association of Geographers 106, no. 5 (2016), 1152-75

  • CITYLAB: Density and Class in Early Manhattan (blog)

The Geography of Urban Food Retail: Locational Principles of Public Market Provisioning in New York City, 1790-1860,” Urban History 43, no. 3 (2016), 435-53

“Meat Consumption in Nineteenth-Century New York: Quantity, Distribution, and Quality, or Notes on the ‘Antebellum Puzzle,’” in Institutions, Innovation, and Industrialization: Essays in Economic History and Development, ed. Avner Greif, Lynne Kiesling, and John Nye (Princeton University Press, 2015), 97-127

Is Access to Food a Public Good? Meat Provisioning in Early New York City, 1790-1820,” Journal of Urban History 39, no. 4 (2013), 643-68

"Feeding Gotham: A Social History of Urban Provisioning, 1780-1860,” Journal of Economic History 71, no. 2 (2011), 475-80 [Dissertation Summary]

"Meat and the Nineteenth-Century City,” [guest editor with Mikkel Thelle], Urban History 45, no. 2 (2018), 184-274

Myth 10: Example of Laissez-Faire Planning” [with Leah Meisterlin], in “The Manhattan Street Grid Plan: Misconceptions and Corrections,” series by Jason M. Barr and Gerard Koeppel, The Gotham Center for New York City History Blog (April 2019)

Myth 9: System of Block and Lot Divisions” [with Leah Meisterlin], in “The Manhattan Street Grid Plan: Misconceptions and Corrections,” series by Jason M. Barr and Gerard Koeppel, The Gotham Center for New York City History Blog (Jan. 2019)

"How Did Meat Provision Work in the Nineteenth-Century City?" [with Mikkel Thelle], Cambridge Core Blog, Humanities (July 2018)

"Market System: The Case of Early New York,” Food+City. How We Feed Our Cities 3 (Nov. 2017)

Mapping as Process: Food Access in Nineteenth-Century New York,” Global Urban History (May 2016)

Old Maps, New Tricks: Historical Maps and Data Visualization,” [with Leah Meisterlin], Urban Omnibus (June 2015)