Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts

This guide to Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts in New York City starts underneath the marble plaza, with the neighborhood that stood here before 1960: San Juan Hill, a dense strip of jazz clubs and rooming houses where Thelonious Monk grew up. It follows how master builder Robert Moses declared the blocks a slum and used eminent domain to clear them for a new performing arts complex, and the film crew that showed up on the emptied streets just as the last families moved out. Listen for the names of the people who lived there before you take in the plaza itself.