Salute to Ulmer Park, short-lived Brooklyn beer getaway

All aboard the train to Coney Island, Ulmer Park and Bath Beach Above pic courtesy NYPL

Next weekend on Coney Island is the annual Siren Festival, sponsored by the Village Voice. Are you going? Believe it or not, over a 100 years ago, there was once a time you could get your beer, music and mayhem at a Brooklyn 'pleasure park' just a few stops short of Coney Island -- near today's Bensonhurst neighborhood.

Ulmer Park was the lark of William Ulmer, one of Brooklyn's most successful brewers in an age where much of the nation's finest beer was coming from the future borough. The German-born son of a wine merchant who learned the trade from his uncle, Ulmer opened his eponymous brewery in the 1870s at Belvedere Street and soon came upon the idea of opening a park as a way of selling more beer. (Not a bad idea. Jacob Ruppert would have similar designs in mind when he bought the New York Yankees in 1915).

The park would open in 1893 in Gravesend Bay along the southern shore of Brooklyn -- back when there was an actual shore -- between Coney Island farther south and the more conservative Bath Beach resort community to its west. Ulmer Park seemed to have more in common with Bath Beach -- clean, family friendly (keep Dad happy so he keeps drinking!) with a beer garden, carousels and swings, rifle ranges, a dance pavilion and of course plenty of beachfront property.

The park seemed to be particular popular with Germans -- Ulmer after all was German, and this was a beer garden -- and particularly the annual 'Saengerfest' festival. A Times article even claims that 100,000 gathered at Ulmer Park for the end of one such festival.

Below: an illustration of Ulmer Park. Note the grand pier which stuck out into into the bay


We can get a good idea of Ulmer's intentions for the park by looking at his failure at obtaining a "liquor tax certificate" (or license) in a report from 1900. "A picnic ground, or open air pleasure resort, of about two acres" between Harway Avenue and the shore, the park had a bowling alley, a pier with canopied bar at the end, two or three other beer pavilions scattered throughout the property and a hotel.

Ultimately, neither the resort at Bath Beach nor amusements at Ulmer Park could compete with Coney Island which was about to enter its golden age in the early 1900s; apparently, it was grit and decadence people wanted in their summertime Brooklyn getaways. Ulmer closed in 1899.

The land remained a public space hosting baseball, cricket and track and field events. Eventually it was wiped away and redeveloped. It remains in name only, at the Ulmer Park branch of the Brooklyn Public Library and the name of the neighborhood bus depot.

For your frame of reference, the park was located a couple blocks west of today's bus depot, located here:

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FYI, did you know that Central Park and Prospect Park designer Calvert Vaux drowned "under mysterious circumstances" in 1895 and that his body washed up on shore not too far away from Ulmer Park?

Execution Corner: 13th Street and 2nd Avenue

Public hangings were a rare but grisly part of 19th Century New York life. The one illustrated above is from 1862. Another would famously haunt the area near an East Village intersection.

I pass through the intersection of 13th Street and 2nd Avenue fairly frequently on my way home from work. The plain intersection is probably best known as the home of the New York Eye and Ear Infirmary and for being a block away from a movie theater with some rather small movie screens. If you're a foodie, you probably know it for Momofuku's Milk Bar.

The most recent modern drama this corner has seen might be the electrified manhole cover that almost killed somebody awhile back. But 185 years ago, when this area was nothing more than a large meadow once the property of the Stuyvesant family, it was the site of one of the most well-attended public execution in American history.

It may be hard to understand why (as some reports suggest) almost 30,000 people came to observe the hanging of John Johnson from this field in 1824. Another source claims 50,000 people came to see the gruesome execution, which at the time would have been almost one-third of the entire city population of New York.

Perhaps the facts of his crimes were simply too shocking to ignore. Johnson, a family man who kept his wife and children at an upstate farm, ran a boardinghouse for wayward sailors during New York's heyday as a port city in the 1820s. It was located in the bustling heart of the city and dozens of men passed through his door. It was not exactly a four-star resort, however, and certainly the occasional home for misdeeds. But for the visiting seamen, these types of seedy places were hard to avoid, and the threat of murder would have been bone chilling indeed.

One day in 1823, in a nearby alley, the body of sailor James Murray was discovered, his head split open with a hatchet. Murray was staying at Johnson's lodge; upon inspection, bloody sheets were found in Johnson's cellar, and the innkeeper was arrested.

Johnson's behavior was especially erratic. He admitted to the crime, then retracted his statement, saying he was merely protecting his family. He claimed another guest had attacked Murray and that Johnson was merely guilty of "neglecting his duty as a host." His confession and subsequent about-face piqued public curiosity, with his wife's letters and even his own minister's spin on the tale quickly printed up into pamphlets.

Any printed entreaties to his innocence fell on deaf ears. Decrying his innocence to the end, Johnson was sentenced to hang on April 2, 1824. (I have also seen sources that say April 4.) He was escorted to the gallows by his minister and even infantrymen who had to part the growing crowds, "a solid mass of living flesh -- men, women and children of all colours and descriptions," by one account.

Public executions were actually quite rare by this time or else relegated to one of New York's lonely islands (such as Blackwell's Island or the tiny oyster island that would later become Ellis Island). Not because they were horrifying displays, but because they attracted large crowds of drunks, rowdies and pickpockets. So in the most macabre sense possible, the event of Johnson's death signified something unique.

Whether Johnson had truly been fairly treated is unclear but the story had reached a fever pitch, its details splashed across newspaper and gossiped about at city taverns. By the time he stood overlooking the crowd with a rope around his neck, Johnson had become a figure of evil. After hanging, his body was donated to a medical school.

Civility would soon come to this death field, as avenues and streets along the grid plan were carved out and the area quickly developed. Violence would return to the neighborhood during the Civil War riots of 1863. A block away, a witness to the murder, Peter Stuyvesant's pear tree at 3rd Avenue and 13th street, would stand until 1867 when it was mowed down by a wagon.

A plaque stands in honor of Peter's pear tree. No evidence remains of the public execution which occurred just a few yards -- and one block -- away.

Augustus Saint-Gaudens calmly graces the Met

The summer exhibits at the Metropolitan Museum of Art have gone blatantly carnal, from the churning, desolate voids of gore featured in the Francis Bacon retrospective to the pristine glamour of female flesh in the "Model As Muse: Embodying Fashion."

But you'll have to swing down to the American wing for a bit of New York history, displayed in a new exhibit exploring the career of sculptor Augustus Saint-Gaudens, maestro of Beaux-Arts floridity and creator of some of New York's great public monuments.

The Irish-born artist quickly became one of America's greatest stylists in the late 90s century, imbuing the philosophies of the Ecole des Beaux-Arts both within the homes of wealthy patrons and in the plazas and parks of big cities. The Met exhibit gives you a quick overview of his life and a nice sampling of work, from simple sculpture to coinage commissioned by Theodore Roosevelt.

Saint-Gaudens made a specific mark on New York, working closely with New York's greatest architectural firm at the time, McKim Meade and White. His first major commission was the Admiral Farrugut monument in Madison Square Park; later he would design the Diana weather vane that would stand atop the Madison Square Garden building nearby. A couple replicas of Saint-Gauden's Diana are included in this show, although the original Diana graces the Philadelphia Museum of Art grand staircase.

His best known work in the city is mostly like the General Sherman equestrian statue at the southeast corner of Central Park, with its striking gold Victory leading the way (she appears in miniature in this exhibit). But the location most intimately connected with Saint-Gaudens is his New York studio at 148 W. 36th Street, where Augustus is depicted working in the famous painting of him (pictured above) by Kenyon Cox. His home at this time was down on 22 Washington Place, right off Washington Square.

The exhibit at the Met just opened and will be running through the summer and fall, through November 15.

Incidentally, Saint-Gaudens sculpted another favorite of mine -- the Peter Cooper monument just outside of Cooper Union.

Independence Day 1876! (Where are you, Mr. Tweed?)

(Click for greater detail)

The city of New York unfurled its patriotism in a lavish celebration of America's 100th birthday. The illustration above pictures a great rally at Union Square. Later revelers would gather at City Hall for an elaborate fireworks display with "volumes of sulphurous vaper wreath[ing] the City Hall until it seemed some mansion of a nether world, some Plutonic castle, where a dim, weird Prosperine might rule and revel." (Ahem, that's the New York Times in 1876 for you. )

And where, pray tell, was Boss Tweed?

Hiding out, in disguise with a new name (Mr. Secor), in the streets of Santiago de Cuba, having escaped the Ludlow Street Jail and fled the country. That same night, Tweed enjoyed a lesser display of pyrotechnics from the balcony of the Hotel Lascelles, enjoying a short-lived freedom. Sickly, away from his family, in a place where he barely knew the language, pockets crammed with mostly embezzled money -- happy July 4th, Mr. Tweed.

Less than two months later, Tweed would be captured off the coast of Vigo, Spain.

Illustration from Our first century : being a popular descriptive portraiture of the one hundred great and memorable events of perpetual interest in the history of our country. (Springfield, Mass. : Nichols, 1882) Devens, R. M. (Richard Miller), Author. (via NYPL)

William 'Boss' Tweed and the bitter days of Tammany Hall

Hail to the thief: an imposing man with money on his mind

PODCAST Listen to it for FREE on iTunes or other podcasting services. Or click this link to listen to the show or download it directly from our satellite site
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You cannot understand New York without understanding its most corrupt politician -- William 'Boss' Tweed, a larger than life personality with lofty ambitions to steal millions of dollars from the city.

With the help of his 'Tweed Ring', the former chair-maker had complete control over the city -- what was being built, how much it would cost and who was being paid.

How do you bring down a corrupt government when it seems almost everyone's in on it? We reveal the downfall of the Tweed Ring and the end to one of the biggest political scandals in New York history. It began with a sleigh ride.

ALSO: Find out how Tammany Hall, the dominant political machine of the 19th century, got its start -- as a rather innocent social club that required men to dress up and pretend they're Indians.

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William M. Tweed, son of a chair maker, as photographed by Matthew Brady in 1965. The Lower East Side would not spawn a man as powerful as Tweed until the rise of Al Smith in the 20th Century. Tweed's influence, however, came at great expense to the city.



The M. in his middle name is something of a controversy. Marcy or Magear? It's commonly assumed to stand for Marcy; however, there's no real documentary evidence for this (according to biographer Kenneth Ackerman) while Magear is his mother's maiden name.

Below: a younger-looking Tweed appears on a tobacco box


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The powerful Democratic machine Tammany Hall (or, officially the Tammany Society) was actually in a hall, located at Frankfurt and Nassau streets, near City Hall. Built in 1811, the new headquarters saw the once benign social organization morph into an influential and often ruthless group with political objectives.



During Tweed's reign, Tammany Hall was actually located at 14th Street between 3rd Avenue and Irving Place. Tammany moved here in 1867 and would remain until the late 20s, when they would move just around the corner to Union Square. This photo was taken in 1914. Today the Con Edison building, with its beautiful clock tower, stands in its place.


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The Tweed Ring -- on in this case 'the Four Knaves' -- as interpreted by their harshest critic, illustrator Thomas Nast. The Ring was composed of Tweed, Mayor A. Oakey Hall, chamberlain Peter Sweeny and 'Slippery Dick' Connolly, the comptroller. Emanating from this core group would be other underlings and associates who would assist in the Ring's graft and embezzlement



Nast's charges of voting fraud below weren't hyperbole. The elections of 1868, which installed Hall into the mayor's seat and Tammany disciple John Hoffman into the governor's chair, was one of the most manipulated in American history. Fraud was only too common in New York elections in the 19th century.


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The New York County Courthouse, also known as the Tweed Courthouse for the vast amount money supposedly thrown at it during construction. Contractors would wildly overbill for their often shoddy work, with members of the Tweed Ring skimming from the totals. It would take over 20 years for the building to finally be completed -- longer than it took to build the Brooklyn Bridge.


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BOOK RECOMMENDATIONS: If you want to learn more about Boss Tweed, go immediately to Kenneth Ackerman's excellent 'Boss Tweed: The Rise and Fall of the Corrupt Pol Who Conceived the Soul of Modern New York'. For a broader overview on Tammany Hall, seek out a copy of Oliver E. Allen's 'The Tiger: The Rise And Fall of Tammany Hall' which I believe it out of print but worth looking for.

RELATED PODCASTS: Listen to our prior show on Greenwood Cemetery, where Tweed is buried. Re-visit our Union Square show to get a taste of Tammany's wily Fernando Wood. Last year I wrote about the Ludlow Street Jail, where Tweed saw his final days.

Charming mayor A. Oakey Hall: coy, clueless or corrupt?

An early portrait of A. Oakey Hall as photographed by Matthew Brady

KNOW YOUR MAYORS Our modest little series about some of the greatest, notorious, most important, even most useless, mayors of New York City. Other entrants in our mayoral survey can be found here.

Mayor A. Oakey Hall

In office: 1869-1872

Few leaders of New York could match Abraham Oakey Hall in personal flair. For every nine colorless businessmen who ascend to the mayoralty, there is one truly debonair statesman, an enigma of charm who seems to govern with ease. In 1869 that was Hall, a jack of all trades, a raconteur and paragon of style. Unfortunately, as the most glamorous member of the notorious Tweed Ring, corruption may have been another trend that suited him.

Before the events, Hall was destined for great things. Most (even Tweed himself) assumed Hall would become New York's governor, with the White House in sights. He was after all born in Albany, in 1826, back when New York's capital was one of the most populous cities in the entire country. For those who believed in such things, Hall's birth there might have been providence, because his parents were merchants in New York and were merely visiting Hall's grandfather. "I was born transitu," he proclaimed later. But he never made it back to Albany, at least not officially.

A slight, nimble figure, Hall expressed a variety of talents at an early age, latching on first to journalism, writing for many city newspapers while working his way through New York University, graduating in 1844. Next came a love for the law, attending both Harvard and Cambridge before heading to New Orleans to start a small practice. He then returned to Manhattan and swiftly maneuvered through the courts to become the assistant district attorney in 1850 and a short time later to even argue a case before the state Supreme Court -- all before he was 25 years old.

He would win true acclaim and popularity, however, as the city's district attorney proper, serving first from 1853-1859 and again from 1861-1869, one of New York's most important legal voices during the Civil War. He allegedly prosecuted over 12,000 cases. He was also on hand during the Draft Riots, funneling many rioters through the court system and straight to jail. His accomplice was often judge John Hoffman, soon to be the mayor of New York who preceded Hall. Their crusades against rioters would boost both their popularity.

Hall would also be known for a rather alarming law briefly on the books in 1855. The state had outlawed the sale of alcohol in the entire state. Under advisement of mayor Fernando Wood (who wanted to please hard-drinking Irish voters), Hall constructed a law allowing for unencumbered liquor sales, seven days a week, in the two months before the prohibition was to take effect. May and June of 1855 were the booziest months in New York City history.


Above: City Hall in 1874 in an illustration by Currier and Ives

With his professorial good looks and humorous demeanor, A. Oakey was a natural for politics of course. Bespeckled and bearded, he spoke elegantly -- Elegant Oakey was his nickname after all -- and wrote passionately. He penned social polemics, theatrical plays, political tirades and at least one holiday novel -- Old Whitey's Christmas Trot.

More importantly though, he was an attractive politician to Tammany Hall and in particular its boss, William M. Tweed**.

We know the Tweed Ring as that most notorious of crooked entities that came from the Democratic machine. In fact, through, Hall was for many years a Republican -- even claiming to have helped form the Republican Party! -- and was even elected District Attorney as a member of that party. But he was lured into Tammany Hall shortly before the war ended and would facilitate their dominance over the affairs of City Hall.

'Boss' Tweed liked him because he was confident, likable, distracting. He often quoted Shakespeare and cracked jokes. The complicated layers of graft, bribery and outright theft that were installed in city government needed an attractive front. In one of the most manipulated elections in New York history, Tweed and Tammany Hall succeeded that fall of 1868 in getting their man Hoffman into the governors seat, with Elegant Hall becoming his elegant replacement at City Hall. (Hall would be re-elected three times in heavily tampered elections.)

The year 1869 was a watershed year in New York City corruption, with the Tweed's hand-selected cohorts fully in place at City Hall, all oversight committees abolished the previous year, and civic projects sprouting up throughout the city, ripe for graft and embezzlement.

Tweed and the others directly associated with the ring (chamberlain Peter Sweeny, comptroller Richard Connelly) needed Hall's charm to bedazzle the press and public, deflecting any charges of malfeasance.

The level of Hall's involvement in the city corruption at the time is unclear. He was brought before a grand jury twice, once during the final days of his tenure as mayor. Two trials followed, the first ending in mistrial, the second in acquittal. Despite clear signatures on dozens of suspicious invoices, Hall claim was that he was much too busy running the city to have carefully inspected each and other claim.

Below: Thomas Nast parodies Hall's statements at being 'blissfully ignorant' of corruption


Perhaps so. During his first year in office came a devastating stock market crash, the Black Friday of September 24, 1869, facilitated by Tweed's chums Jay Gould and Jim Fisk.

As immigrant numbers increased -- as tenements like Five Points were swelling to overcrowded -- racial and religious disunion threatened the city. Like Tammany, Hall was a friend of the Irish; on St. Patricks Day, he would wear an emerald flytail coat. When Hall suddenly banned the particularly violent protestant Orange parade that year, its participants feared his actions were controlled by Irish Catholics. Governor Hoffman ordered the parade to resume, but the result was an even more violent riot, with 62 people dead and over a hundred injured. Confidence in Hall's leadership quickly evaporated.

Despite the aura of corruption and mediocrity that hung over his tenure as mayor, Hall actually had a quite colorful life afterwords, working as both a newspaper editor (for the New York World), a London correspondent for the New York Herald and the manager of a theater. He even produced and starred in his own play. For some reason, few went to see it.

He returned to practicing law in his later years in London, famously returning to New York in a court case in 1893 representing Emma Goldman. Despite the convergence and press coverage of these two great New York figures, Goldman and Hall lost the case.

Hall died on October 7, 1898, at his home at 68 Washington Square South, just blocks from where he first went to college. The picture above was taken the year of his death (pic courtesy NYPL)

**Wanna know more about Boss Tweed and the Tweed Ring? Tune in on Friday!

Storytime in Hudson Park: West Village 1910s

ABOVE: Children young and quite old gather around this Hudson Park storyteller. Can't quite place where Hudson Park is? Check here.

Tom and I are hard at work on this week's podcast. I'll be updating the blog later in the day on Wednesday!

The days before DUMBO: Brooklyn Bridge, June 29, 1909

From a pamphlet celebrating the Brooklyn Bridge's 50th anniversary in 1933. (Click photo for larger view.)

Sip-In shenanigans: before Stonewall, there was Julius'

Old memories lovingly clutter the walls of Julius, a West Village institution (Pic Flickr)

FRIDAY NIGHT FEVER To get you in the mood for the weekend, every other Friday we'll be featuring an old New York nightlife haunt, from the dance halls of 19th Century Bowery, to the massive warehouse clubs of the mid-1990s. Past entries can be found here.

NIGHTCLUB Julius
In operation: 186?-present

This weekend is the 40th anniversary of the Stonewall riots, a chaotic, rowdy altercation that bloomed over the course of the weekend to energize the New York's gay movement. (If you haven't already, give our podcast on the history of the Stonewall riots a listen.) But despite its reputation, Stonewall is not the oldest gay bar in New York. Not even close.

For that honor, you need only march a few steps to Waverly Place and 10th Street to that crusty, beloved old institution Julius (159 W. 10th St). It also happens to be the location of a pre-Stonewall protest of angered gay activists, an event both revolutionary and somewhat amusing.

Julius is truly an old bar although nobody seems to know exactly how old. Two popular guesses settle at either 1965 or 1867, easily making it one of the oldest bars in New York, just a tad younger than McSorley's Old Ale House. The building itself is even older, dating from 1826, becoming a grocer in 1840 before transforming to its current, more jovial purposes.

It has many things in common with McSorley's. The walls are plastered with memorabilia from days gone by. The bar is a well-worn relic, the tables and benches made of old beer barrels. Like McSorley's, they even serve burgers, and really, really good ones at that! Its history is a tad more shrouded than McSorley's but equally studded with famous clientele.



It was a popular speakeasy throughout the 1920s, evidenced today by Julius' still existing sidedoor with peephole. Both Fats Waller and Billie Holiday are rumored to have performed in the backroom, quite likely as Holiday worked at the nearby nightclub Cafe Society during the 1930s. In subsequent years the clientele was decidedly a mixed lot and Julius would ply writers like Edward Albee, Tennessee Williams and Truman Capote with drink and companionship.

By the 1960s Julius had become a low-key staple of the West Village gay scene. However, it appears that it was 'straight enough' that it survived Mayor Robert Wagner's cleanup of the city in preparation of the 1964 World's Fair, a wholesale shutdown of West Village gay bars and other 'undesirable' places. Even through this Julius lived on, although patrons and management alike had to maneuver through rather arcane and sometimes silly rituals.

According to writer Edmund White, who often visited the bar, said "There was even a period when we weren’t allowed to face the bar but had to stand absurdly with our back to it to prove, I suppose, that we had nothing to hide."

It gets even more absurd. Technically, according to the New York State Liquor Authority, it was actually illegal to serve drinks to homosexuals. Obviously, this rule was seldom enforced, but the constant fear of such a twisted regulation being suddenly enforced by an undercover cop eventually drew action from New York's burgeoning group of young gay activists.



Members of the Mattachine Society, one of New York's earliest gay organizations, planned on challenging the rule by going into bars, loudly announcing their homosexuality and ordering a drink. Their read statement at the bar would be awkward, but simple: "We are homosexuals. We are orderly, we intend to remain orderly, and we are asking for service."

The key would be that they were followed around by a phalanx of press representatives. So, when the bar refused to serve them, the Mattachine Society would have their moment, captured and ready for print.

It didn't quite go as planned. The challenge came on April 21, 1966, more than three years before the Stonewall riots. They told members of the press to meet them at the Ukrainian-American Village Restaurant but management closed shop before they arrived. They tried two other bars, a Howard Johnson's and a place called Waikiki, and each time they were served without incident.

But of course, the organizers were looking for an incident. They arrived at Julius for their big moment. Obviously, they would be served here as well. But they made a deal with the management who "agreed to play along" (according to Carter's book), refusing service to the men.

The now-legendary Julius Sip-In, as the event as come to be called, was an entirely fabricated event, yet it served its purpose. The New York Times even ran the story, under the rather backhanded headline, "3 Deviates Invite Exclusion by Bars." The law was successfully challenged in court.

Since then, Julius has quietly sat on the sidelines, observing both the curious changes to the neighborhood and the development of a viable and open gay community in the Village and elsewhere. You don't have to be gay to appreciate its unique place in New York City history. Just grab a stool and spend awhile admiring the bar's warm, lived-in details.

Oh, and you really must try the burgers. Did I say that already?

By the way, who the heck is Julius? According to one speculation, Julius was the name of the original owner's basset hound.

Michael Jackson at the Museum of Natural History 1984

Michael Jackson 1984: The singer relaxes at a New York hotel, preparing to visit the Museum of Natural History. Not to buy any ancient bones, but to be honored for two entries in the Guinness Book of World Records -- for selling the most popular album in history (Thriller) and then winning the most Grammy Awards (8). Thousands of fans stood outside across the street that cold February evening, awaiting Michael's appearance at the special black-tie event; the lucky ones who got to go inside clutched invitations made from single white gloves.

Inside the museum, Jackson was presented with a letter from Ronald Reagan: "You've gained quite a number of fans along the road since 'I Want You Back' and Nancy and I are among them."

Michael took several occasions that evening to step outside and meet his fans, staring bewilderedly from barricades in Central Park. According to Susan Blond, who organized the event: "It was unbelievably exciting. Even to this day, I don't think anyone has become as big a star as he was at that moment."

Michael's date that evening was Brooke Shields, but cameras were also focused on another guest that evening -- 8-year-old Sean Lennon, making a rare appearance without his mother Yoko.