If you can't quickly name the young immigrant to New York and Columbia graduate whose vision helped to shape the economic future of his adoptive city and the rest of the fledgling United States, then you probably missed episode one Sunday night of the well-publicized New York City documentary on PBS.

If Alexander Hamilton, the first Secretary of the Treasury, did not spring immediately to mind, take heart -- there are four more episodes of "New York: A Documentary Film" to air this week (Monday through Thursday on Channel 13, New York, at 9 P.M.). The 10-hour series is both a celebration of New York and a showcase for the achievements and talents of many current Columbia faculty and alumni and others long departed -- Hamilton was singled out for his revolutionary oratory, the narrator said, "even as a young student at King's College," Columbia's name before the American Revolution.

The documentary was directed and produced by Ric Burns, a 1978 graduate of Columbia College, who, with his older brother, Ken Burns, established the format for "New York" through the success nine years ago of their PBS documentary "The Civil War." Ric Burns co-wrote "New York" with James Sanders, a 1976 Columbia College graduate, author and architect, who also earned a degree from Columbia's School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation.

(To view the "New York" documentary web site, please click here),

Like the earlier "Civil War" documentary, "New York" moves chronologically through 400 years of history, allowing a general theme to unfurl through archival photographs, period music, and accounts of events and the reading of letters and literature by unseen actors while experts on-screen follow and interpret the narrative information. In "New York," several of the on-screen experts are Columbia faculty. The dominant presence is historian Kenneth T. Jackson, the Barzun Professor of History and the Social Sciences, who served as senior historical consultant on the film and provides commentary in each of the five episodes. In Sunday night's episode, Jackson made the case that commercial interests dominated New York from its beginnings in the mid-17th century as a Dutch trading post run by the Dutch West India Company. Cultural historian Ann Douglas is a featured commentator in the fifth episode on Thursday about the Jazz Age.

Other Columbia alumni who provided commentary in Sunday's episode were critic Margo Jefferson, Journalism '71; architect Robert A.M. Stern, College '60; historian Craig Steven Silder, Ph.D., G.S.A.S. '94; and Philip Lopate, College '64.

Future episodes will feature commentary by poet Allen Ginsberg, College '48, completed before his death; playwright Tony Kushner, College '78; biographer Robert Caro, Journalism '67; and writer Alfred Kazin, G.S.A.S. '48, also given before his death.