About Us

Steven E. B. Lechner, Ph.D., authored this dissertation entitled “Recalling Ethnic Yorkville: The Histories, Heritage Practices, Imaginaries, and Identities of Two Ethnic Communities in One Urban Neighborhood.” 

Book I of this work explores the origins, development, and decline of the German American and Hungarian American enclaves once prominent in Yorkville, a formerly working-class neighborhood on Manhattan’s Upper East Side. This historical interpretation also tracks the emergence and persistence of a hegemonic narrative, constructed principally by New York’s print press, that influences social memories of Yorkville’s ethnic past. This imagined past reinforces nationalizing myths such as the melting pot metaphor, a largely racialized distortion that depicts Euro-Americans as the “good” immigrants by which all subsequent newcomers must be judged. 

Book II critically examines contemporary heritage practices arising from these enclaves. Its four case studies – Kathryn Jolowicz, an amateur historian dedicated to preserving memories of German Yorkville; the German-American Steuben Parade that marches up Fifth Avenue each September; the Magyar Ház, Gotham’s Hungarian cultural headquarters; and Hungarian Yorkville’s Christian faith communities – emphasize the complex relationship between ethnic identity and place attachment. 

Lechner serves as an adjunct history instructor at William Peace University in Raleigh, North Carolina. Prior to entering North Carolina State University’s public history program, he taught social studies and civics at the high school level. 

Lechner gravitated to education after practicing law in Maine for a decade. He earned a Juris Doctorate summa cum laude from the University of Maine School of Law, an M.A. in History from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, an M.A. in Communications from Drake University, and a B.S. in Parks, Recreation, and Tourism from the University of Missouri. 

Lechner hails from Saugerties, New York, located in the Mid-Hudson Valley. He and his wife, Jennifer Moeller Lechner, will celebrate their silver wedding anniversary in May 2021. Their daughter, Grace, attends Boston University, and their son, Abera, is completing his eighth-grade year.