Cindy Lobel, Urban Historian

Cindy R. Lobel was an urban historian who did research on the economic and social elements of life in  19th century New York through the lens of food and eating.  She was 48 years old.  Lobel was a professor at Lehman College.  When she earned he doctoral degree in history in 2003, she researched the subject of the culture of food and eating from an academic standpoint.

Her doctoral dissertation was entitled, "Urband Appetites:  Food and Culture in 19th Century New York."  She examined the way technology, consumerism, infrastructure, class, race, gender, public policy and the market influence what, where and how New Yorkers ate in 1800's.  Professor Lobel observed that women willing to eat in restaurants three steps down from the street were once considered "of ill repute."  Her book Urban Appetites earned several prizes for distinguished scholarship.

If you went to dinner with Cindy Lobel, your meal could quickly turn into a history lesson.  She could tell you about ice cream, when it was introduced to New York and how technology made it possible to get refrigerated food to people of different social and economic class.

When Cindy was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2017, she maintained a blog chronicling the day-to-day indignities, agonies, optimisms and dark amusement of living with illness.  At the time of her  death, Professor Lobel was working on a book about the importance and prevalence of oysters in New York in the 1900's, with a focus on Thomas Downing, a well-to-do black man who was the city's leading purvey of oysters at that time.  Friends and colleagues are hoping to finish her book.