Exhibition Highlights 400 Years of Hispanic NYC

From that first arrival in 1613 until 1945, New York businesses flourished because of Cuban sugar producers, Latin American liberators sought out support for their causes while visiting the city and many Hispanic artists and immigrants left their marks. An exhibition opening at El Museo del Barrio on Friday seeks to reveal these long-buried roots of Hispanic influence and contact with the city.

"New York's role in the history of the United States has been conceived, and accurately so, as a connecting link between European money, European immigrants, European political ideas, European fashion and the like," said Mike Wallace, the lead historian behind the exhibition called "Nueva York," organized by the New York Historical Society and El Museo del Barrio.

"But when you turn the focus 90 degrees and you think about the north-south links rather than only the east-west links you realize that there is a whole other story going on and that's the story that I thought would be a critical background for New Yorkers, both Hispanics and not Hispanics, to understand," he continued.