Finding the Human Story Inside of Aging Architecture
From Ivy League Equations to New York Times Narratives
Combining her wide-ranging background with a passion for highlighting local heroes of yesteryear, Mia Jackson explains her work for the New York Times’ Streetscapes column.
An Ivy League Math Major. A Fulbright Architecture Scholar. A New York Times Columnist. Each of these identities would be enough to fully encompass a singular person, yet Mia Jackson fits all three descriptions in her quarter-century of life.
In the singular literary class she took at Yale, Jackson wrote a piece so beautiful on health policy that it was published nearly instantly, and she received copious freelancing opportunities right off the bat. As a math student, Jackson never considered writing, but with this encouragement, she entered her Fulbright era considering the applications of her studies and academic interests in a journalistic setting.
Starting with humble beginnings of local magazines, talking about playgrounds and community spaces, Jackson worked her way up to a regular freelance spot at the New York Times — all while having a full-time job in tech.
Her most recent piece for the New York Times streetscape column details the life of rebellious, jazz musician, Dizzy Gillespie’s life in the mid-20th century in Corona, Queens, which fits nicely into her goal of sharing the stories of local people solving local problems.
Ruthie Turner: Your articles range from community architecture to the most recent one you wrote on rebellious jazz. How would you define your beat?
Mia Jackson: My focus has been on using urban spaces, so like public spaces, buildings, and community centers, as a way to speak to the histories of the community that live there and like interact with these spaces. So I’m much less interested in traditional definitions of historic importance when it comes to architectures. I’m more like using urban structures as a way to better communicate like what a community values.
For the jazz history one, I stumbled across this story by looking through the New York City Landmark Preservation Commission meeting notes, and I saw they landmarked his home. I know he’s a really famous jazz musician, but through that, I found that there was a community of jazz musicians who were living in Corona, Queens, and got interested in the story. It became much less about the actual historic architecture of that home, but more about, imagining how these prolific, preeminent jazz musicians could have been like interacting with these spaces and what it was like living in this community in Corona during the 40s and 50s.
RT: How do you pick the stories that you’re going to write? Is it just what sparks your interest?
MJ: Yeah, so I freelance part-time, like I have a full-time job, so it’s not like my full-time thing. I can’t write too many articles in a month, so I hone in on stories I’m really excited about. If I’m only writing one article a month, or every month or two, I just want to do the ones that are the most exciting. Most ideas I write about are things that I’ve discovered just through research and reading articles and Land Preservation Commission meeting notes.
RT: How do you know when you want to pitch a story?
MJ: I typically think of pitching as like, convincing the editor that there’s like an interesting question to answer.
I don’t do too much reporting before I pitch an article. I generally want to have a sense that there is an answer to this interesting question that I am posing through like online research looking at historical archives. Occasionally, I’ll talk to like someone, but that’s like more rare.
RT: Do you normally plug into the communities you’re writing about first and then write about them or vice versa?
MJ: I wish I could plug into the communities first and then talk to them and then come up with ideas. But again, because I only do it part time, I don’t have time to do that so I come up with ideas. Then, I reach out to the communities, and fortunately, they trust me to tell their stories, which is nice.
RT: When you start a story, how do determine how to reach out to and start that process of developing the framework?
MJ: I typically don’t start outlining until I’ve talked to everyone and done all the reporting and like the research. It’s like hard to find those like, sort of unique angles to include. It would have been awesome to chat with someone who lived next door to Dizzy Gillespie or something for like, a long part of his career that was still alive in Corona, but it’s like really, that’s like a really time-consuming thing to figure out who to chat with.
I was an applied math major, and I think a lot of what I enjoy about writing is outlining and figuring out how, like, especially in a long, historic, long piece that’s focused on like histories like how to fit together, the histories with the current events in ways that are like engaging and exciting to the radar. I think part of that does have an analytical nature to it.
RT: Why do you think it’s important to share these stories on local history and local communities?
MJ: I think they are just some of the most interesting stories out there. Just like how, you know, normal people interacted and lived in New York City.
That’s kind of like the story of all of us just like normal people doing normal things. Sometimes there are interesting tidbits that get lost and are untold because they’re not making breaking news or newspapers or video journalism. It’s fun to talk with underrepresented communities — people whose stories are often told — and there are always interesting things there. You need someone actually interested in telling them because they’re never gonna be headlines.
This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.
