The Bowery Boys: New York City History

Boston vs. New York: You think this is just about sports? Origins of an epic rivalry, from Puritans to the Super Bowl

2012-02-03T11:12:00.001-05:00

The Metropolitans vs. the Beaneaters, captioned: "Boston and New York players on opening day, 1886, at the Polo Grounds, 5th Ave. and 110th St., NYC. posed in front of stands; Boston player in back row on left has his middle finger raised in obscene gesture." LOC

Eli Manning, Tom Brady -- how heavy the burden you bear on your shoulders!

When the New York Giants meet the New England Patriots this Sunday for Super Bowl XLVI, the beast of an old rivalry will once again emerge from the gridiron, the latest configuration of a fierce competition between two of America's greatest cities.

While the rivalry between Boston and New York primarily manifests within the world of sports -- the venue of modern warfare -- it echos a spirit of competition that has existed between the coastal cities for over two centuries. But how did it begin?

The cultures of the cities which would become Boston and New York were drastically different from the very start. Boston, after all, was founded in 1630 by Puritans of the Massachusetts Bay Colony (at right), a society based on specific religious values, with little tolerance for variation. New Amsterdam, New York's pre-cursor, developed as a company town in the 1620s and was quite renown for being notoriously value-less, relatively speaking.

The Puritans, with a moral superiority that paralleled national antagonisms, believed a distasteful mix of cultures, an abhorrent godless mixture festered there in New Amsterdam. As a secular development, New Amsterdam fostered a policy of religious freedom far more in keeping with modern American ethics than the stringent, finger-pointing Puritans. Many so-called heretics fled the Puritans and were granted haven by the Dutch.

The Puritans were fortified by their connection to England, while New Amsterdam was a rowdy outpost of a faltering world power. By 1644, Massachusetts had created a powerful alliance with other colonies, allowing England a stronghold in the New World. New Amsterdam, meanwhile, deteriorated as the Dutch focused on warfare with the Lenape and encroaching colonies such as Swedish. Peter Stuyvesant arrived in 1647 to shape up the Dutch town, but by then motions were already in place to drive them out entirely.

By 1664, the Dutch were thrown out of New Amsterdam and the defeated city was renamed New York, part of a larger British colony named for the Duke of York. Boston, for its part, became the premier British bastion, capital of the Dominion of New England, and a place many believed chosen by God (the storied 'City Upon a Hill') as a shining beacon of humanity. Boston was right to have an attitude. Even as New York and Boston became competing ports in the British era, the Massachusetts city always had the edge.

America has benefited from Boston pride. The opening salvos of American independence were born from clashes between Boston citizens and British soldiers, rebellion in the form of bloody clashes (the Boston Massacre) and economic unrest (the Boston Tea Party). As colonists rose up against British oppression during the Revolutionary War, they could look to the Boston battle at Bunker Hill as an example of victory and perseverance.

Bostonians celebrated Evacuation Day on March 17 because the British were booted from there in 1776 and never returned. New Yorkers celebrated the same holiday on November 25 because the British kept that city for most of the war and weren't expelled from it until 1783.

Both cities struggled for economic footing after the war. Both had sophisticated ports and bustling harbors ready to send and receive shipping vessels, manufacturing plants rivaling anything overseas, and a growing class of wealthy old-family elites. In Boston, they were the Brahmins and went to Harvard. In New York, they were Knickerbockers and turned to Yale or Princeton. (Columbia was not quite in their league yet.)

Below: Boston in 1873

But only one city had access to a river inland, a point made explicit with the opening of the Erie Canal in 1825. Suddenly, New York became a gateway into the expanding American west. Not only would New York traders and merchants grow rich and form a nouveau upper-crust (thriving in the wake of men like John Jacob Astor), the canal would siphon away much of Boston's livelihood, one ship at a time.

Bostonians were not pleased. The founder of Boston's first daily newspaper saw a diversion of goods to New York as 'evil' and recommended the city jump on a newfangled transportation idea just debuting in England -- the steam-powered railroad. Within a few years, train tracks stretched down the old Boston Post Road (almost, but not quite, to New York) in an effort to connect Boston to the waters of the Hudson River. Or as author Eric Jaffe observes: "...the goal of everyone involved in Boston's railroad system at the time was clear: to move Manhattan toward the [Massachusetts] Bay along the highways of the future."

The two cities remained locked in quiet, but stiff, competition throughout the 19th century, not only in industry and trade, but in intelligentsia, literature, politics and social 'quality'. The dynamics of both cities changed with the immigration boom that began in the late 1840s. Soon, one fifth of the populations of both cities would be Irish. The culture of Boston was greatly affected, perhaps more that any American city, by these new Irish arrivals, but it was New York that felt the most weight. By 1860, with New York as the biggest city in America, even the city of Brooklyn had a greater population than Boston.

Bostonians had their legendary, steely pride for their city -- in many ways, America's first, greatest city -- but New York was a powerful, untouchable metropolis by the time of the Gilded Age. Despite its grime and squalor, despite its sinful and corrupt reputation (or perhaps because of it), New York had bested Boston to become the biggest, richest, most powerful city in America by the time of the Civil War.

Below: New York City in 1873 (from George Schlegel lithograph)

And so it was that, in the late 19th century, an apparatus arose for which the undercurrent of rivalry between the cities could take a more explicit, more robust form -- sports.

Universities already organized sports teams -- with accompanying rivalries of their own -- and now, in the post-war era, professional teams began sprouting up in a wide variety of games. The first sports leagues formed in the Northeast, thus it was natural that teams from Northern and Rust Belt cities would often clash.

The first organized baseball league principally concerned New York and Brooklyn teams. (Don't even get me started on the New York/Brooklyn rivalry!) Teams wouldn't truly take on defined regional characters until the formation of the National League in 1876, which included the Boston Red Stockings, a precursor of the Sox, among its original teams.

The two baseball franchises that would cement the Boston-New York conflict were born in the 20th century. The Boston team came first, in 1901, with the inauguration of the American League, but were not referred to by their distinctive bold-colored foot coverings until 1908. In 1904, the Boston team was declared champion of the American League. However, National League teams looked down upon the 'inferiority' of the younger American League teams, and thus, what might have been the first World Series -- between the Boston Red Sox and National League victors the New York Giants -- never occurred.

The Giants were considered New York's principal baseball franchise and even spawned a successful soccer team. (They frequently played a soccer spinoff of the Boston Beaneaters.) By this time, another New York team limped into the city in 1903 -- the Highlanders, who later changed their name to the New York Yankees.

In 1918 came an event that changed the fortunes of the Boston Red Sox and the New York Yankees forever. Red Sox star Babe Ruth was traded to the New York Yankees during the off-season 1919-1920, allegedly because Sox owner Harry Frazee was looking to finance his Broadway musical offering No No Nanette. (That's the popular legend, although many believe the trade was to finance another, equally ridiculous production called My Lady Friends.)

Whatever the origin of the 'Curse of the Bambino', it had a psychological effect on fans and players on both sides. Boston, once the league's most successful squad, didn't win another World Series until 2004, while the Yankees, well, changed sports history with 27 World Series victories.

The deep animosity spilled over into other sport match-ups. In basketball, the New York Knicks pale under the legacy of the Boston Celtics, simply put the best basketball team in history. In hockey, the Boston Bruins and New York Rangers became the first two American teams to play each other for the Stanley Cup in 1929. The Bruins cleaned the ice with the Rangers.

But it's in football that the two cities have had some truly dramatic clashes. The New York Giants football team, hardly a threat when they first formed in the late 1920s, were a force to be reckoned with by the time they first met the Boston Patriots in 1960. Notably, when the Boston team changed its name to the New England Patriots and moved to Schaefer Stadium in Foxborough in 1971, the first game they played was against the Giants.

The Giants and the Patriots have met in the Super Bowl just once before -- and notably so -- in 2008. New York was the victor, in one of the greatest upsets in sports history. This Sunday, Boston seeks revenge. As you sit through a halftime show with Madonna (a New Yorker in her formative years), ponder upon the weight of history hanging over both teams.

To sports fans: I welcome any clarification of details if I've gotten something wrong!

Langston Hughes: A few Harlem stops on his birthday

2012-02-01T12:01:00.001-05:00

Dapper gentlemen: At a 1924 celebration in Langston's honor, at the home of Regina Andrews on 580 St. Nicholas Avenue. The author is to the far left, followed by future sociologists Charles S. Johnson and E. Franklin Frazier; novelist and future doctor Rudolph Fisher; and Hubert T. Delany, who would become a New York justice in 1942, appointed by Fiorello LaGuardia.

Since I was a teenager, I've had an affinity for writer Langston Hughes, the revolutionary jazz poet who was born 110 years ago today in 1902. I grew up about an hour away from Langston's birthplace in Joplin, Mo. One of the brightest lights of the Harlem Renaissance grew up here?, I frequently pondered in English class. In fact, Hughes is considered Joplin's most famous son.*

But you don't need to follow Langston's footprints back to the Ozarks. Celebrate his birthday with a mini-walking tour, four Manhattan addresses that were pivotal to Hughes' development as an iconic African-American voice and a star of the Harlem literary scene:

181 W. 135th Street (corrected, see note) -- Langston's first exposure to Harlem's creative energy was as a Columbia University student in 1921, wandering the street, hoping to see "Duke Ellington on the corner of 135th Street, or Bessie Smith passing by, or Bojangles Bill Robinson in front of the Lincoln Theatre, or maybe Paul Robeson or Bert Williams walking down the avenue." [source] Before moving into Columbia's Hartley Hall, however, Langston took a room here at the YMCA, known for its live drama productions and art shows. He didn't need to stroll around to find Robeson; he got his start acting in productions at the YMCA.

NOTE: Thanks to Stephen Robinson for the following correction to the information above: "I'm afraid you've got the wrong address for the YMCA at which Langston Hughes would have stayed. From 1919-1933, the YMCA was located across the street from the current building, at 181 West 135th Street. You can see the footprint of this building on the 1930 map we use on our site Digital Harlem: Everyday Life, 1915-1930 , and find more information about it by doing a search for Places, location type=YMCA."

634 St. Nicholas Avenue -- Although Langston would rent out a studio in 1938 down the street at 66 St. Nicholas Avenue, he frequently stayed at this address in the Sugar Hill area of Harlem, the home of his friends Toy and Emerson Harper. (He referred to them as 'aunt' and 'uncle'.) Hughes later moved with the couple to another address...

20 East 127th Street -- For 20 years, Hughes worked out of the top floor, by now an international phenomenon. He was residing here (his own 'ivory tower') when he died in 1967. The house was up for sale for most of the year, but was finally sold in December in a Sotheby's auction.

515 Malcolm X Boulevard (at W. 135th Street) -- The Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, a branch of the New York Public Library, is Hughes' final resting place. His ashes are contained underneath the foyer floor, beneath an inscription: "My soul has grown deep like the rivers." But the library always had a long association with Hughes. His 'poetry-play' 'Don't You Want To Be Free' played to sold-out crowds in the basement of the library in 1938. The play co-starred Robert Earl Jones, the father of James Earl Jones.

You can find a far more in-depth walking tour of 1920s Harlem here.

*Another African-American cultural icon, George Washington Carver, was born in the town of Diamond, Mo., fifteen minutes southeast of Joplin. If you're ever swinging through that area of the world, the George Washington Carver National Monument, where his home was located, is worth a stop.

As Garfield fights for life, Arthur lays low in Murray Hill

2012-01-31T11:12:00.002-05:00

There are several enemies in Candice Millard's 'Destiny of the Republic', the terrific narrative history of the assassination of President James Garfield during the summer of 1881. The most obvious foe is the delusional Charles Guiteau, who believed himself the nation's savior when he shot President Garfield twice at a Washington DC train station on July 2, 1881. Then there were the microbial infections transmitted during improperly sanitized operations performed by Garfield's doctor at the White House, causing blood poisoning that worsened the president's suffering and ultimately killed him.

For the purposes on this blog, however, I was drawn into the tales of two New York politicians who became victims of rumor-mongering that summer. Powerful New York senator Roscoe Conkling was seen as a political rival of Garfield's, a thorn in the president's side, especially considering Conkling's own political protege -- his pawn, really -- was Garfield's vice president, Chester A. Arthur.Traumatic crises in this country are frequently accompanied by a churning undercurrent of suspicion and conspiracy, and Conkling and Arthur became victims of just such a shadowy accusation that summer.

Many believed Conkling to be culpable of the assassination attempt himself -- perhaps not of pulling the trigger, but of fostering and encouraging the discord that inspired it. It's not a stretch to consider Conkling an embodiment of the spoils system which determined hundreds of government jobs through political affiliation. Guiteau thought himself unfairly left out of that patronage system when he attacked Garfield that hot July day.

A few weeks ago I wrote about the Fifth Avenue Hotel, the luxury accommodation at 23rd Street off Madison Square that became Conkling's second home and a regular scene of political intrigue for the Republican Party. Conkling endured the disintegration of his political career from his rooms here.

Meanwhile, many were mortified at the very thought of Arthur, hardly a universally admired figure, ascending to the presidency. While the president lay incapacitated in Washington, there was even debate as to when presidential responsibilities should cede to the vice president. Nobody seemed enthusiastic at the prospect of a President Chester A. Arthur.

Thus, Arthur essentially spent his summer hiding out in his townhouse at 123 Lexington Avenue (at right), fearful of seeming overly ambitious even as the fate of President Garfield seemed uncertain. On the day the president finally succumbed to his injuries, Arthur sobbed uncontrollably from his shuttered home as servants shooed away the press. Several hours later, he was sworn in as the 21st President of the United States on September 20, at 2:15 a.m, from the green-shuttered parlor of his home here.

'Destiny of the Republic' is a swift, thrilling read, certainly worthy of the praise it received when it was released last year, bringing in a cast of icons (including Alexander Graham Bell and Joseph Lister) to present a frightening world of medical uncertainty and strange madness.

History in the Making: Jackson Paint Splattering Edition

2012-01-27T11:08:00.006-05:00

Tomorrow is Jackson Pollock's 100th birthday. A trip to MOMA is in order! Also check out this gorgeous collection of 'behind the scenes' photos. (Photo by Loomis Dean, Life)

I'm just getting back from a trip so the blog's been a little thin of articles this week. But we're back to normal here next week, plus we are putting together a new podcast, discussing a major New York City landmark. In the meantime....

Far Out, Man: The joy of writing about topics from the 60s and 70s is that people sometimes stumble onto old blog posts and recount their experiences in the comments section. For instance, you should really check out some of the comments on my December 2009 posting on the psychedelic New York nightclub Cerebrum. Thanks to the former patrons of the strange, strange little club who chimed in with their experiences! [Welcome To Cerebrum: Do You Have A Reservation?]

Setting Sail: The South Street Seaport Museum is open once again for business, thanks to the Museum of the City of New York. The uptown museum brings with it a few retooled former exhibitions from its galleries, as well as a photographic take on the Occupy Wall Street movement. [South Street Seaport Museum]

Backstage Deli: The closing of an East Village deli reveals a startling secret -- a former movie theater from the 1950s. Thanks to Sierra for sending us the link via Facebook [Gothamist].

How The Other Half Reads: Jacob Riis enters the 21st century! His book 'How The Other Half Lives' comes to Kindle, iPad and other reading devices courtesy a new edition featuring extensive commentary and notes by author Lorenzo Dominguez. [Download it here]

Illuminating: Today in 1880, Thomas Edison received a patent for the incandescent lamp. Fans of our Electric New York podcast will want to commemorate by turning on all their lights today. [via Twitter, Milstein Room @ NYPL}

And finally....

The King: Today marks a big day in Bowery Boys land. Our podcast on Robert Moses (Episode #100) officially becomes our most downloaded show of all time, supplanting our Halloween show Haunted Tales of New York (Episode #91).

Here's a little Moses for your wet Friday: The parks commissioner appeared as a guest on the February 1953 episode of the panel program Longines Chronoscope:

The Bowery Boys -- now on Australian radio!

2012-01-26T11:33:00.000-05:00

At the New York World's Fair 1939-40: Australia makes a stylish, woolen debut, thanks to renown designer Douglas Annand. (Photo by Robert Coates, courtesy the Powerhouse Museum. You can check out other images of this curious pavilion here.)

After many years as a mere podcast, The Bowery Boys: New York City History will be making making its debut on the national airwaves. The catch is -- those national airwaves are in Australia!

We're grateful to have listeners all around the world, and now those New York junkies listening in Australia will now be able to hear our show on a new program on Australian Broadcasting Corporation's Radio National, Australia's pubic radio.

Top of the Pods spotlights a selection of programs from around the world, and we'll be joining the show monthly via some of the greatest-hits of our back catalog of podcasts.

We debut in Australia this Tuesday, Jan. 31, at 2 pm (or, if you're listening in from New York: Jan. 30, Monday 10pm EST), when host Robbie Buck will present our show on Tin Pan Alley. We'll be paired up with a program from London, The Hackney Podcast, exploring the historic neighborhood through its transition as a 'host borough' of the 2012 Olympic Games.

If you're in Australia, you can listen in this Tuesday via one of these major frequencies, including 576AM in Sydney and 621AM in Melbourne.

You can listen online via one of these streams. The show will also be re-broadcast in Australia on Sunday, Feb 5 at 3 a.m. (Saturday, Feb. 4, at 11 a.m. in New York)

We're currently scheduled to appear once a month. Thanks to ABC for helping us make our international debut. I will clearly need to make vacation plans to hear the show live from the beaches of Sydney sometime very soon!

And a little bit on the picture above: You can look here to read an article from the Sydney Morning Tribute about the debut of the Australian Pavilion at the 1939-40 World's Fair, "not only the most interesting and informative exhibition that Australia has presented in any country, but one of the most attractive at the Fair." In fact, according to Architecture Australia, "the pavilion was consigned to an interior within a building, which was shared with New Zealand.....From outside it appeared as if Britain occupied the entire complex, with Australia and New Zealand literally subjects beneath and to either side."

Sugar high: Yonkers boys, up to no good

2012-01-24T08:30:00.000-05:00

A band of junior ruffians, gathered around the detritus of a sugar plant in Yonkers, on the Hudson River, c. 1906. I can't quite make out what they're doing, and I possibly don't wanna know. This is very possibly an old plant located in same area as the present corporate headquarters of American Sugar Refining, just a couple miles north of the Bronx border.

American Sugar owns the Domino Sugar brand name today. Domino, of course, grew to sweet prominence in the late 19th century along the Williamsburg waterfront.

Photo by Lewis Wicks Hine

'Mad Men' returns: a guide to eating (and drinking) options

2012-01-23T08:30:00.000-05:00

Drama for dinner: 'Mad Men' meals go down best with fifteen cocktails

AMC's 'Mad Men' returns for its fifth season this March. Until somebody goes ahead and develops a TV show about Peter Stuyvesant and New Amsterdam, the award-winning Madison Avenue drama is the closest we'll get to straight-up New York City history TV. The writers cleverly embed the action within very specific 60s locations throughout the city. During the season I try and delve into those locations in our regular 'Mad Men' feature.

So what, then, to make of 'The Unofficial Mad Men Cookbook: Inside The Kitchens, Bars and Restaurants of Mad Men', by Judy Gelman and Peter Zheutlin? My first thought, naturally, was, "They eat on 'Mad Men'?" They certainly flirt over dinners at times. Carla, the Draper's housekeeper, tortures over hot meals that often get uneaten as Betty sulks and Don swallows down bourbon.

But 'Mad Men' is a show of lounges and restaurants, of decorum and indulgence, adrift in a rising stream of booze. It's also a show of dizzying, if cynical, nostalgia. And that's the secret of this fun little volume. The particular dishes featured in the book may have been seen or mentioned on the show. But the recipes themselves are straight from the kitchens of New York's most famous eateries and from original 1960s magazines and cookbooks.

The authors frame each dish within the context of a certain episode. For instance, a recipe on gazpacho and rumaki is prefaced with the description of Season 2, Episode 8, the episode where Betty presents dishes from around the world to her guests (including, you may remember, the at-the-time somewhat exotic Heineken beer.)

The recipes aren't from Betty's kitchen, but from actual 1960s magazine articles. Sources include 'The Kennedy Style', a 1962 Ebony Magazine cookbook, the 1960's 'How America Eats', among a great many others. Original dishes from New York's great restaurants make an appearance here too -- steak tartar and hearts of palm salad from Sardi's, fettuccine alfredo from Angelo's, chicken Kiev from the Russian Tea Room, Caesar salad from Keens Steakhouse, and of course, the original Waldorf salad and sold Amandine from the Waldorf=Astoria.

Betty Crocker, Julia Child, Amy Vanderbilt -- all the icons of 60s cuisine and ettiquete are represented. Naturally, this means that few dishes are heart healthy. Butter and red meat are a defining theme.

A more classic selection of original New York recipes has perhaps never been assembled. One might squabble over the fact that most of this has nothing much to do with 'Mad Men' itself. But let that slide, relax and have a drink from the guide's cocktail menu, featuring the how-tos on such classic sips as the Stork Club Cocktail, the 21 Club Bloody Mary and the Classic Algonquin Cocktail (whiskey, vermouth and pineapple juice), all sourced from the original establishments.

I was a sucker for this kind of retro mixology back in the days of the '90s retro 'bachelor pad' craze, and 'The Unofficial Mad Men Cookbook' could fit right in with your old Esquivel CDs. But this is an entertaining collection of New York recipes, well-researched, and ready for your weekend soirees and viewing parties..

A century ago, excitement builds as the Woolworth ascends

2012-01-19T09:25:00.000-05:00

The Woolworth Building, as it appeared on January 20, 1912 (Courtesy LOC)

The Woolworth Building was the biggest story in real estate one hundred years ago, long before it was even completed.

By the waning moments of 1911, something finally began to rise out of the belching smoke and clutter collecting at the northwest corner of Broadway and Barclay Street . The building's architect Cass Gilbert was busy at work drafting the details of the interior, and as the tower rose, so too did the cost. Luckily, retail king Frank W. Woolworth would eventually pay the entire bill ($13.5 million, from an original project cost of $5 million) in cash.

In a Jan 7, 1912 article, the New York Times assessed the state of real estate in the city, observing that the greatest developments for the year were in 'apartment houses and lofts', particularly on the Upper West Side and the neighborhoods west of Broadway between 14th Street and 42nd Street. While residential property was the hot commodity, they made note of seven 'purely office structures' that were also debuting. Of those listed, the clear standout was the new office building being designed for Woolworth.

The New York Sun was also dazzled by the Woolworth's construction that month, announcing its construction as the crown of the 'world's greatest building construction era'. Any firm hired for the project promptly touted its involvement in full-page advertisements. Otis Elevators boasted of its 'Marvelous Vertical Railways ... That Are to "Whiz" the Army of Workers Up With Lightning Speed.'

It would take over fifteen months from that moment for the Woolworth Building to be completed, and what a game-changer it was when it officially opened on April 24, 1913. The tallest building in the world until 1930, the Woolworth is also distinctive to this day for its monolithic surface of terra cotta, built before the requirements of setbacks turned future skyscrapers into virtual 'wedding cakes'.

But back in January 1912, as you can see, it rose on a few floors from street-level, not even as high as the City Hall Post Office which sat across the street. The picture below (from NYPL), taken over a month later, indicates its proximity to the post office:

(As for the picture at top, the Library of Congress dates it as January 20, 1912, while the New York Public Library has it as December 28, 1911. You get the idea. Regardless, it's a photo by favorite photographer Irving Underhill.)

Notes from the podcast (#133): Red Hook, Brooklyn

2012-01-17T14:23:00.003-05:00

A haunting snapshot of the Atlantic Docks, circa 1870-80s (possibly as early as 1872) photo by George Bradford Brainerd (courtesy the Brooklyn Museum)

Quite a few notes on the podcast this week! There were a lot of little details I found interesting that didn't make the cut:

Before the Water Taxi: One of the more enlightening tales left on the cutting-room floor was that of the Hamilton Avenue Ferry, the 1846 Atlantic Docks ferry line that linked Red Hook with downtown Manhattan in much the same way the IKEA Water Taxi does today. As the ferry made "the shortest and most direct route from New York" to the newly constructed Green-Wood Cemetery, it also became the method by which many bodies were transported there.

Fiery renovation: A stalwart of the old community is Visitation of the Blessed Virgin Mary Roman Catholic Church (built in 1896) right off of Coffey Park, the third incarnation after the congregation grew out of the first building (originally built in 1855) and fire destroyed the second. That fire, incidentally, was allegedly caused by combustible materials workers were using to renovate the structure.

Goodbye Vienna: A vestige of World War I hysteria exists within the name of Red Hook's Lorraine Street. According to Brooklyn By Name, the street was once named Vienna Street but was deemed 'offensive' during the war and was changed to reflect the area of Alsace-Lorraine, which entered French possession after the war.

What's My Name?: I mentioned a couple facts about the neighborhood of Carroll Gardens (once considered a part of Red Hook), although we hope to elaborate further one day on a show on South Brooklyn. The name Carroll Gardens, like that of its neighbors Cobble Hill and Boerum Hill, was a real-estate invention which the community quickly embraced. (Contrast this with modern failures of real-estate re-branding, like Chumbo, BelDel and LoDel.) You might be interested in reading Carroll Garden's original 1973 historic designation.

Below: I'm not quite sure of the story behind this sunken squatters home, taken on Van Brunt Street from the year 1900 (courtesy the Brooklyn Museum)

Further reading: For more information on the corruption of the New York and Brooklyn waterfronts , I highly endorse Nathan Ward's 'Dark Harbor'. It's brilliantly lucid and immediate. In particular, he focuses some attention on the disappearance of Columbia Street longshoreman Pietro Panto and vividly describes a mob hit that took place in a building in Manhattan's West Village, in a building next door to the treasured piano bar Marie's Crisis. There are several books that feature chapters on Red Hook history, but a dedicated book on the subject is sorely needed. In the meantime, I recommend the short essay by Jerry Nachman that appears in "Brooklyn: A State of Mind," about, of all things, an air conditioning crisis!

Maggie Blanck has an extraordinary web resource that begins as a genealogy of her family and elaborates into a history of Red Hook's industrial giants. And for those of you who are fascinated by late-century street-gang history, the website Stone Greasers has an exhaustive list of gang names, many more unusual than anything you'd find in the movie The Warriors.

Red Hook as inspiration: Several sources, both on Brooklyn history and film history, discuss Red Hook's impact on the work of both Arthur Miller and Budd Schulberg, the screenwriter of 'On The Waterfront'.

In 2009, a unique restaging of 'On The Waterfront' took place aboard the Waterfront Barge Museum in Red Hook, a production that then floated to Manhattan and Hoboken waterfronts for further performances, "all places whose dock wars echoed in Terry [Malloy's] story," according to Ward.

Elia Kazan's Oscar-winning film is embedded with influences from the entire New York waterfront struggle. For instance, Karl Malden's Father Barry is transparently inspired by Father Corridan, an activist waterfront priest from Manhattan's west side. (Author J.T. Fisher focuses on Corridan's contribution in his new book 'On The Irish Waterfront'.) Of course no inspiration was greater than Malcolm Johnson's now classic series of articles for the New York Sun in the late 1940s, a series which won the Pulitzer Prize in 1949 -- coincidentally the same year that Miller won for 'Death of A Salesman'!

I suppose there is some controversy in some circles regarding whether Schulberg and Kazan 'stole' the idea of 'Waterfront' from Miller's 'The Hook', but I'm not touching that. However you can read about it yourself in Stephen Schwartz's argumentative 2005 article.

Thanks to commenter Rob Hill who calls to attention another fascinating literary Red Hook reference. In 1957, Harlon Ellison, one of America's great science fiction and crime novelists, literally went undercover with a Red Hook street gang called The Barons to find inspiration for his book 'Web of the City' and, later, in the non-fictional account Memos From Purgatory. Ellison's entire life would probably make a good subject for a podcast one day. Thanks Rob!

Further listening: This show shares many similar themes with our past shows on Williamsburg, Brooklyn and Corlears Hook and the Pirates of the East River. Hmm, and let's just say, we're probably coming back to the waterfront sooner than later this year....

Community vs Neighborhood: One listener Carolina from PortSide NY had some strong objections to my characterization of Red Hook, particularly my focus on the neighborhood's crime and gang activity. I'm excerpting part of her letter, as it highlights a challenge that Tom and I often tackle with our podcast:

"Red Hook housed great poverty, but for decades was more mixed economically than your focus on gangland stories describes. Personally, I find what is most distinctive about Red Hook over the years is the capacity of this small place to hold AT THE SAME TIME a striking economic range in its residents and a striking range of land use from major industry to residences."

That is an undoubtedly true statement, especially when you compare it to the fate of other dockside neighborhoods, like Corlears Hook and Water Street in Manhattan. I find there are two ways to accurately tell a story of a place like Red Hook -- from an organic, street-level or 'ground up' perspective (what I call 'a community history') and from a macro-view, as a component of the larger forces of the city which contain it (or 'a neighborhood history').

As the creators of a New York City history podcast, we opt to recount neighborhood histories, as New Yorkers and those who love this city are familiar with the mechanisms of change that have influenced it. In this decision, we understand that the normalcy of a place can get sometimes overlooked. (After all, not every person in Five Points was a gang member or a prostitute either.)

However, the sad truth is, Red Hook was for many years nationally known as a blighted neighborhood, and it was important to inspect both how it got that way and how that condition demanded some very unique revitalization plans. I hope I have shown how essential Red Hook was to New York, and continues to be. We encourage you to wander around the waterfront on a sunny afternoon sometime and, in particular, check out places like the Waterfront Barge Museum.

Red Hook, Brooklyn: A rich seafaring history, organized crime and the isolation of a beleaguered neighborhood

2012-01-13T13:20:00.005-05:00

PODCAST Red Hook, Brooklyn, the neighborhood called by the Dutch 'Roode Hoek' for its red soil, became a key port during the 19th century, a stopping point for vessels carry a vast array of raw goods from the interior of the United States along the Erie Canal. In particular, two manmade harbors were among the greatest developments in Brooklyn history, stepping in when Manhattan's own decaying wharves became too overcrowded.

With these basins came a mix of ethnicities to Brooklyn, and along with new styles of row houses came the usual assortment of vices -- saloons and brothels along Hamilton Avenue. This fostered the development of crime along the docks, and Red Hook soon witnessed firsthand the opening salvos of 20th Century organized crime.

How did the history-rich, nautical neighborhood go from a booming center of employment to one of the worst neighborhoods in the United States by the 1990s? And can some surprising twists of fate from the last twenty years help Red Hook return to its glory days?

Featuring: Revolutionary War forts, shantytowns, Vaseline factories, famous gangsters, the gateway to Hell, and cheap Swedish furniture!

You can tune into it below, download it for FREE from iTunes or other podcasting services, or get it straight from our satellite site.

Or listen to it here:
The Bowery Boys: Red Hook: Brooklyn on the Waterfront

Notes, clarifications, sources, and additional information will be posted next week.Photo above: Taken on Van Brunt street, 1/11/2012

The Atlantic Docks, illustration taken from Booth's History of New York. (care of NYPL)

Modern living, circa 1939. The Red Hook Houses at their debut. Although the housing development cleared away a great many dilapidated homes -- following a common model of urban redevelopment -- the uninspired uniformity would put a dent in the neighborhood's original character. (Courtesy LOC)

The Red Hook Play Center opened in 1936, the final of 11 swimming pools Robert Moses built during his early years as parks commissioner. Its Art Moderne style made it a beautiful if curious addition to the neighborhood.

The Erie Basin, a clutter of vessels and piers, is strangely beautiful from overhead in relation to the Manhattan skyline. (Pic courtesy Wired NY)

The crisis of organized crime and corruption within the longshoreman's union along the Brooklyn waterfront was an inspiration for many writers, including Arthur Miller (below) in his unproduced screenplay 'The Hook' -- referring both to the neighborhood and the longshoreman's "ever-present baling hook". Later, Elia Kazan and screenwriter Budd Schulberg found similar inspiration for the Oscar winning film 'On The Waterfront', loosely basing events on situations that took place along the entire New York and Brooklyn waterfront. (The film was made in Hoboken, but there are of course famous shots of the Manhattan skyline.)

Aaron Burr, Staten Island, and the tale of his death mask

2012-01-12T10:14:00.000-05:00

Yes, Hamilton fans, we are a proud people, judging from the many notes and supportive comments yesterday left on the Facebook page on the birthday of Alexander Hamilton, tinged with strong anti-Aaron Burr sentiment. But, from our comfortable vantage of the future, have we been too harsh on the killer Vice President?

Sure, he absolutely got away with murder. But it was, after all, a duel, willingly engaged by both participants, however misguided. Murder charges against Burr were eventually dropped, but he obviously avoided New York for many years.

His later misadventures out West -- his failed, confusing efforts to infiltrate Spanish territory and allegedly form a new government in 1806 -- just slathered on further scorn and distrust for the once respected lawyer. Three years after killing Alexander Hamilton, Burr was brought to federal trial for treason. He was eventually acquitted due to lack of credible evidence, much to Thomas Jefferson's chagrin.

After traveling through Europe and eventually going broke, Burr returned to New York and married the alleged 'black widow' Eliza Jumel. They divorced just four months later. The Morris-Jumel Mansion, his home during that time, is today less than two miles away from Alexander's prized Hamilton Grange. They are two of the oldest homes still standing in northern Manhattan. (The Dyckman Farmhouse , in Inwood on 204th Street, is older than Hamilton's house.)

Aaron Burr died in 1836 in Staten Island at a boardinghouse in the Port Richmond neighborhood, not far from the Bayonne Bridge. The boardinghouse later became the St. James Hotel, where guests could specifically ask to stay in Burr's room for an evening. And sleep in the same bed! A sign even hung over the mantel, "Aaron Burr died in this room."

The former Vice President spent his last, lonely days in this particular room, shying away from curious locals and pouring over old love letters from Eliza. According to a 1895 New York Times article on the subject of his 'deathbed', Burr was hounded by pious ministers who wished to save his soul and release him from his crippling depression.

The article also highlights a very bizarre visitor. One guest at the boardinghouse had an unnatural fascination with Burr, but never spoke to him and kept quietly to himself. When the landlady discovered that Burr was died in his room, the stranger suddenly appeared at the door, opened his satchel and removed the materials to make a plaster death mask of the Vice President. I believe this may be the morbid mask in question!

To Mr. Alexander Hamilton, on his birthday

2012-01-11T10:22:00.002-05:00

"A garden, you know, is a very usual refuge of a disappointed politician. Accordingly, I have purchased a few acres about nine miles from town, have built a house, and am cultivating a garden." Alexander Hamilton, in a letter to South Carolina statesman Charles Cotesworth Pinckney, regarding Hamilton Grange

Today's the birthday of Alexander Hamilton, New York's greatest Founding Father (sorry, John Jay) and a man that embodied the best of American potential with the weaknesses of a modern politician. I continue to find him a fascinating, unusual, frustrating and remarkable historical figure.

The National Park Service is throwing a 257th birthday party for Alexander Hamilton this Saturday at the Founding Father's old home Hamilton Grange, newly moved to St. Nicholas Park. There will be a local historian garbed as Alexander Hamilton. I will be there to get his autograph. Let's get this party STARTED. [Read the flyer here.]

Fellow Hamilton-phile and 'In The Heights' creator Lin-Manuel Miranda asks a question I too have pondered: "Why hasn't anybody done a hip-hop version of Alexander Hamilton's life?" [New York Times]

If you'd like to take a little somber stroll today, it's about a 40 minute walk from the spot near the Meatpacking District where Alexander Hamilton died to his eternal resting place in the Trinity Church Cemetery. Although he was famously shot by Vice President Aaron Burr in Weehawken, his mortally wounded body was taken to the home of William Bayard "just below the present Gansevoort Street. . . close to the present Horatio Street" where he died. There is a house at 82 Jane Street with a plaque that presumes to mark the spot as the place where Hamilton died, but this has largely been debunked. What is it with dead Founding Fathers and inaccurate plaques? (See: Nathan Hale)

In our third podcast -- and the oldest one currently available for download -- we spent some time discussing Mr. Hamilton. Listen to it at your peril; we were very green at this podcasting thing back then. Also, my first proper post on this blog (dated July 5, 2007) was about Mr. Hamilton. Frankly, we do a much better job discussing a building that once served as Hamilton's temporary Treasury office, in our podcast on Fraunces Tavern. And after you listen, go for a visit!

And for some American history laced with camp value, here's some juicy scenes from the 1931 melodramatic biography on the life of Alexander Hamilton, starring George Arliss as the title hero. Interestingly, most of the cast is British.

The New York Giants, before they were giants

2012-01-10T10:26:00.001-05:00

At the legendary Polo Grounds 1925, where the Giants football team (after a couple false starts) finally make their mark on the sport.

The New York Giants, currently in the playoffs and on their way to tackle the formidable Green Bay Packers this Sunday, are football's oldest existing NFL team, and among its greatest -- with seven total championship victories since their debut in 1925. But that original team, dazzling with such stars as Jim Thorpe at their original home at the Polo Grounds, was not New York's first professional football team. It wasn't even New York's first football team called the Giants!

The first try at a New York Giants football club came in 1919. They were a spin-off of the New York Giants baseball team*, a club considered the best of its day, dominating the sport from the late 19th century and into the 1910s. Like the baseball franchise, the young Giants football team was to have played at the Polo Grounds as well, the location for many college football contests of the day. But those college games were played on Saturday, and on the month of October 1919, all Saturdays were fully booked.

So the Giants were scheduled to debut on a Sunday, against an Ohio team called the Massillon Tigers. This seemed possible, as team organizers understood that New York's blue law, prohibiting Sunday play, had been removed from the books. But the city quickly clarified: the law had made way for Sunday baseball, not Sunday football.

Since football was more popularly considered a college pastime -- many still questioned the validity of so-called 'professional' teams -- nobody budged for the football Giants. And thus, the game was cancelled, and the team disbanded before they even hit the field.

The team's coach, Harvard football star Charles Brickley, tried again two years later, managing to cobble together twenty-four players, a squad that is sometimes referred to as 'Brickley's Giants' to distinguish them from the 1925 team. And people often choose to distinguish them, because Brickley's Giants were a utter disaster. As one of 21 teams with the American Professional Football Association during its second season, Brickley's team lost both its regular-season games. The Buffalo team actually destroyed them, 55-0.

During a bout with Jim Thorpe's Cleveland team, The New York Times noted, "The game was lopsided and had little to excite even the most rabid of rooters....[L]ittle can be said for the brand of football displayed."

They were more successful at some exhibition games, such as the one advertised below in the Brooklyn Daily Eagle, Brickley's 'Brooklyn Giants' (as they played at Ebbets Field by this time) against the Governors Island 'Army All Stars', whom they defeated. (Thanks to Paul Luchter for this image.)

The following year, the American Professional Football Association changed its name to the National Football League, but Brickley's team never made it that far, dropping out for good before the new season. They did continue to play exhibition games, but eventually disbanded by 1923. After these two disastrous attempts, nobody would attempt another Giants franchise for another couple years, when former newsie-turned-bookmaker Tim Mara joined the ascendant NFL with a third go at a New York team. And you know what they say about the third time.

By the way, the Maras have kept the Giants in the family since its 1925 debut. Tim's grandson John Mara is an owner along Steve Tisch (whose last name should be familiar to any students at NYU's Tisch School of the Arts).

*The original Giants baseball team now haunts and torments New York sports fans today in the form of the San Francisco Giants. The franchise moved to the West Coast in 1958.

The Fifth Avenue Hotel: Opulence atop a potter's field, and accommodations for heated Republican power brokering

2012-01-06T11:49:00.000-05:00

By the date of this photo (1890), the Fifth Avenue Hotel, facing Madison Square Park, had already seen its share of American political drama.

The double-breasted, cigar-chewing gentlemen who gathered in the sumptuous rooms of the Fifth Avenue Hotel were occasional connoisseurs of New York City history, and in particular, these amateur historians spoke of the very street corner where their hotel stood.

Before Madison Square, when the area was a barren parade ground, one Corporal Thompson opened a roadhouse and stagecoach station in the area that was to become 23rd Street and and Fifth Avenue. Many spoke fondly of Thompson's establishment, called Madison Cottage, because they remembered the place as young boys. They recalled the area's rural quality, with carved rectangular blocks carved into the land and a dirt-road Broadway meandering north.

But that was the 1840s. Forty years later, Madison Square Park was the center of New York, a focal point of class, business and luxury that stretched south to Union Square, through that attractive collection of fine stores known as Ladies Mile, and up Fifth Avenue into the fabulous mansions of the rich. And dead center of all that activity was the Fifth Avenue Hotel, not only the "finest [hotel] in this metropolis", the "leading hotel of the world ," but quite simply one of the most surprising stages for American politics of the mid and late 19th century.

Hotels were fast becoming the center of New York life from at least the days of the Astor House, located near City Hall, in the 1830s. Within two decades, trendy new hotels (such as the St. Nicholas and the Metropolitan) spread up along Broadway and eventually clustered around Union Square. By the Civil War, the thrust of New York society was so defined by them that Confederate conspirators tried setting fire to a several of them.

The Fifth Avenue Hotel opened in 1859, the venture of wealthy merchant Amos Richards Eno, who accurately gambled that the center of city commerce would soon settle at 23rd Street. So confident a speculator was Eno that he moved from his brownstone at 74 Broadway (the first New York brownstone, he claimed) to a massive home nearby the hotel.

Some thought it unwise to build so far north, and when workers unearthed dozens of skeletons during construction -- the area once being a potter's field -- the corner was even considered cursed. Eno defied the naysayers, pouring his wealth into the hotel to make it the most modern, most luxurious accommodation of the day.

The Italian exterior was awash in five stories of imported marble, while austere, carpeted interiors of French design drew comparisons to European palaces. Guests enjoyed reading rooms, a luxurious bar, a barber shop, a dedicated telegraph office, and a variety of dining and drawing rooms, not to mention the first passenger elevator ever built in the United States, a steam-powered monstrosity whisking passengers to their floor. The private quarters were soundproofed, fixtured with the modern innovations in plumbing, and lavishly decorated, becoming to many "the safest, the most healthy and most comfortable hotel in the world."

As the finest hotel in the city in the post Civil War years, it naturally became a magnet for politicians and financiers. Of all the 'backrooms' of American politics, none were as gleaming as the Fifth Avenue. Bankers huddled in the legendary 'parlor D. R.' during the tense days of the financial panic of 1873. In particular, the hotel became a de facto headquarters for New York Republicans. While often secondary to the city's Democrats -- this being the era of Tammany Hall's swelling power -- Republicans were frequently in control of state government, and the Fifth Avenue Hotel became a smoky center of political wheeling and dealing.

During the 1870s, New York republicans became national power brokers and frequently hashed out crises here at the Fifth Avenue. In the years before the Waldorf-Astoria, presidents and dignitaries all stayed here during visits. Seamier political maneuvers took place in the chambers of prominent politicians who held court here, including the inimitable Roscoe Conkling (at left), senator of New York and leader of the Republican faction known as the Stalwarts.

When fractured Republicans at their convention in 1880 nominated non-Stalwart James Garfield for president, the nominee had to basically grovel for their support by symbolically 'kissing the ring' of the Stalwarts during a visit to the Fifth Avenue Hotel, partially agreeing to their system of patronage and taking Conkling ally Levi Morton as a member of his cabinet. (Garfield later backed out on this arrangement.)

Another frequent guest here was Chester A. Arthur, Garfield's eventual vice president. When Arthur became president after Garfield's assassination by Charles Guiteau (who had himself wandered the hotel's hallways in delusion), he would set up his entire administration here during visits to his adopted city.

By the 1890s, a corridor of the hotel known as the 'Amen Corner' was a famous congregation spot for Republican political bosses and reporters. As they frequently powwowed here on Sundays, gatherers would caustically shout 'Amen!' during heated discussions.

The hotel became a magnet for shenanigans of all varieties. In 1893, a couple hundred proponents of a U.S. monetary silver standard erupted into a riot that included two U.S. senators. The bank robber Robert Montague was arrested here in 1896 thanks to a tip-off from a chambermaid. An early vestige of baseball's National League met here annually, and the national pool competitions were held in the hotel's billiard room.

By the new century, of course, the locus of New York activity was hastily moving uptown, and the Fifth Avenue Hotel was deemed a relic, even as a brand new structure across the street -- the Flatiron Building -- was being proclaimed the finest building in the city. In 1908 the Fifth Avenue Hotel was torn down and replaced by the 16-story Toy Center (called the Fifth Avenue Building back in the day), the epicenter of toy manufacturing for much of the 20th century.

Pictures courtesy New York Public Library (source)

New Year's Murder: Return of the Tong Wars 1912

2012-01-04T12:16:00.001-05:00

"On New Year's Day they presented any celebration in Chinatown with fireworks. There have been murders sometimes when the whole joyful populace of the crooked streets of Doyers, Mott and Pell have been patriotically celebrating with gunpowder an historic anniversary." -- New York Times, 1/16/1912

The streets of Chinatown were relatively quiet in 1911, a delicate truce drawn between the neighborhood's two rival gangs, the On Leong and the Hip Sing tongs. But few strolled down narrow Pell Street without fear that old rivalries might return. Fierce battles had erupted throughout the past decade, culminating in dozens of bloody altercations throughout 1909 and 1910. (We outlined some of the violence in our podcast last year on Manhattan's Chinatown.)

A committee of Chinese businessmen finally mediated a truce between the two tongs, but few suspected that hostilities would disappear. The control of On Leong Tong, who had once ruled the Chinese underworld for much of the 1890s, had been whittled away by the interloping Hip Sing Tong. Hip Sing's leader, the flamboyant Mock Duck, often meandered down Pell conspicuously garbed in diamonds and a chain mail vest.

Although Hip Sing was subject to the truce, their allies -- and the only other Chinatown tong of significant influence -- the Four Brothers, were not. This imbalance of control, favoring Hip Sing and keeping Mock Duck in power, was bound to erupt.

At right: Pell Street in 1899. The address 21 Pell Street is out of frame, just to the right.

And so it did one evening one hundred years ago, on January 5, 1912, at Mock Duck's fan-tan parlor at 21 Pell Street, today the location of the First Chinese Baptist Church. Members of Hip Sing were gathered there, merrily gambling the night away under the glow of dangling light bulbs when three assassins from the On Leong Tong, armed with their trademark Smith & Wessons, burst in and began shooting.

Mock Duck himself may have been in the room that evening. He was certainly there, calmly sipping tea when police arrived. One of his gang members, Lung You, lay dead on the floor, while another, the 'president' of Hip Sing, Chung Pun Sing, was seriously wounded and fled to his home.

Witnesses led police to On Leong's headquarters at 14 Mott Street. By the end of the day, over two dozen Chinese gangsters and bystanders had been arrested, including Mock Duck himself. He was charged with owning a gambling parlor, a fact that could not have been surprising to anybody at the Elizabeth Street police station. He was quickly released.

Top pic courtesy Library of Congress.

2012! Will this be the year New York gets moving sidewalks?

2012-01-03T10:36:00.001-05:00

Have you ever walked down a New York sidewalk and thought, "I'm wasting so much energy creating my own forward motion. Why can't the sidewalk do some of the work?"In one vision of the future, city sidewalks operated as a conveyor belt, whisking people to their destination in a steady stream of moving seats.

This wacky and most likely death-defying public transport was seriously considered in 1903 as a way to link the three downtown bridges -- the previously built Brooklyn Bridge, the brand new Williamsburg Bridge and the yet-to-be-completed Manhattan Bridge. This 'system of moving platforms or continuous trains' would flow from the Williamsburg Bridge terminal down to Bowling Green via underground tunnels. In essence, a subway without the subway car.

Proposals called for six miles of platform that connected to both elevated trains stations and, presumably, the actual subway platform under construction at City Hall. Passengers got to their seats by a double layer of 'stepping platforms' which moved at different speeds -- 2 1/2, 5 and 7 miles per hour. In theory, one simply alighted from one conveyor to the next. Imagine how fun this would be with a baby carriage or an armful of packages!

Harper's was confident this mode of transport was on its way, citing the use of 'continuous trains' at the Chicago and Paris Expositions and the fervent support by prominent New York businessmen. No less than New York's bridge commissioner Gustav Lindenthal briefly promoted the plan.

Alas, this dizzying and complicated form of basic transportation was never realized. Interestingly, plans for the Second Avenue Subway below Delancey Street closely mirror the original route of the moving sidewalk. And there are already serious plans for a subterranean park on the Manhattan side of the Williamsburg Bridge, where the moving sidewalk was to have terminated. So this horror show may yet see the light of day!

Illustration courtesy New York Public Library digital collection

The Bowery Boys Year In Review -- and the 1,000th post!

2011-12-30T09:30:00.000-05:00

Here's a listing of all the podcasts we recorded in 2011. This year we followed New York's contribution to electricity and film, bridged the Narrows and took to the sky, revisited the Revolutionary War via the city's most influential tavern, and spent the summer surviving riots and conspiracies cooked up during the Civil War. If you missed any, you can download directly via the links below, or find us on iTunes or other podcast aggregate sites.

Our podcasts #120 NYC and the Birth of the Movies and #127 The Civil War Draft Riots and were our most popular shows of the year, but our most downloaded show of 2011 was recorded in December 2010 -- #118 Times Square.

We both would like to thank everybody for listening in this past year! And we look forward to bringing you new tales of the city in 2012. Also, if everything falls in place, we'll be doing our first real expansion into different media next year.

This is also my 1,000 post for the Bowery Boys: New York City History blog. Onward to 2,000!

#119 The Verrazano-Narrows Bridge

Click here to download

Blog page: The Verrazano-Narrows Bridge: Robert Moses, Bay Ridge, and the birth of America's longest suspension bridge

#120 NYC and the Birth of the Movies

Click here to download

Blog page: New York City and the beginnings of the film industry 1894-1918

#121 Fraunces Tavern
Click here to download

Blog page: Fraunces Tavern: Raise your glass to the Revolution!

#122 The Grid - The Commissioners Plan of 1811

Click here to download

Blog page: Building blocks: The Commissioners Plan of 1811, inventing a New York grid of streets and avenues

#123 TRUMP

Click here to download

Blog page: A short history of Trump: the roots of Donald's wealth, from quiet Queens beginnings to glitzy Midtown excess

#124 Idlewild/JFK Airport

Click here to download

Blog page: Idlewild Airport/John F Kennedy International Airport: from a golf course to a motley crew of classic architecture

#125 Sardi's Restaurant

Click here to download

Blog page: Dinner at Sardi's: New York celebrity history, wall to wall

#126 Fernando Wood: The Scoundrel Mayor

Click here to download

Blog page: Fernando Wood, the scoundrel mayor during the Civil War: Will New York and Brooklyn secede from the Union?

#127 The Civil War Draft Riots
Click here to download

Blog page: The Civil War Draft Riots: New York's worst week ever

#128 Hoaxes and Conspiracies of 1864
Click here to download
Blog page: Welcome to 1864! A 24-karat hoax, New York's first theme restaurant, and a Confederate plot to torch the city

#129 Chinatown
Click here to download
Blog page: Manhattan's Chinatown: A tribute to the old neighborhood, and to the temptations of rich delicacies and basement vices

#130 Haunted Histories of New York
Click here to download
Blog page: Haunted Histories of New York: What horrors lie beneath the foundations of the city's treasured landmarks?

#131 The First Apartment Building
Click here to download

Blog page: The Stuyvesant, New York's first apartment building: Imported luxury style for a new middle class

#132 Electric New York: Edison and the City Lights
Click here to download
Blog page: Electric New York: From gaslight to Edison's Pearl Street Station, illuminating the shadows, re-visualizing the night

If Wal-Mart can't come to Brooklyn, then Wal-Mart will bring Brooklyn to Arkansas

2011-12-29T11:55:00.003-05:00

Francis Guy hangs in good company at the Crystal Bridges Museum.

Wal-Mart is aggressively lobbying to bring its chain of big box stores to the New York City region. In the meantime, a member of the Walton family is buying up bits of New York and taking it back to Bentonville, Arkansas, the headquarters of Wal-Mart located in the Ozark Mountains.

I just got back from visiting my parents who live in neighboring Missouri and swung by Bentonville to visit the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, which recently opened in November, the project of Alice Walton, daughter of Wal-Mart founder Sam Walton. It lands in the region a bit like an alien spaceship, its arched and twisted architecture (think L.A.'s Getty Center as inspired by dinosaur fossils and river gulches) just one mile away from the quaint storefront-turned-museum that was the very first Wal-Mart store.

Alice Walton did an infamous tear through the art scene in the last two decades, buying up a great many well-loved works in anticipation of this project. Along the way, she also bought up a significant area of Brooklyn.

Or rather, its most famous early depiction.Francis Guy was one of America's earliest landscape masters, making his home in the village of Brooklyn in 1817. From then until his death in 1820, he painted what interested him from his second floor window on 11 Front Street, a series of panoramic, cool-hued works capturing both Brooklyn's bustle and serenity.

The Brooklyn Museum proudly displays one version of Guy's spectacular work, called 'Winter Scene In Brooklyn'. But the other version of this painting now sits in Arkansas, at Crystal Bridges. It sits in a prominent place indeed, across from a Gilbert Stuart portrait of George Washington and a noble portrait by John Trumbull of the man the Stuart portrait was painted for, Alexander Hamilton. They're all in great company in this warm, expansive new building.

By the way, his version of 'Winter Scene' once sat on loan next to its companion at the Brooklyn Museum in 2006. The Brooklyn Historical Society has Guy's summertime version of this view.

Pre-Scrooged: The Ghost of New York Christmas specials

2011-12-24T09:00:00.000-05:00

A Bill Murray holiday classic is closely linked to a forgotten 1955 teleplay

Tracing itself back to one of America's first television broadcast station, New York's local WCBS-TV can claim a host of significant achievements, including the first regular broadcasts in color and the first baseball game in color (with the Brooklyn Dodgers, naturally).

Their early news documentary series 'Eye on New York', hosted and produced by future CBS president Bill Leonard, took a break from serious reporting on the evening of Christmas 1955 to broadcast a live version of Charles Dickens' 'A Christmas Carol'. I don't believe a version of this classic exists to view today, but holiday television lovers benefit from one odd quirk of this fleeting program.

At right: Bill Leonard with CBS News correspondent Walter Cronkite.

This version of 'Carol' starred the extraordinary Bronx-born character actor Jonathan Harris (best known as the flamboyant Dr. Smith from 'Lost In Space') as Ebenezer Scrooge and Tony Award nominee Biff McGuire as Bob Cratchit.

But far from constructing a dour Victorian London set upon their midtown Manhattan soundstage, Leonard (who wrote the teleplay) decided to change the setting of the story, to modern day New York City. According to author Fred Guida, "this clever conversion preserved the spirit of the original but in the milieu of lower Park Avenue and big industry."

Harris' Scrooge was transformed into the bitter old CEO of Metropolitan Plastics, with Cratchit his elevator man. Scrooge was visited by the various ghosts via "a TV receiver as an up-to-date medium for his unearthly visions," according to Variety.

Leonard's 'Carol' was the very first version of the tale set in New York, and with a modern twist. While this original program has been lost, its cheeky trope has been used in a great many modern shows (especially those of the 1970s and 80s) in 'very special Christmas episodes', to bring holiday realizations to jaded characters from Alex P. Keaton of 'Family Ties' to even the title character of 'Xena: Warrior Princess'.

But the greatest beneficiary of Leonard's holiday twist is the 1988 Bill Murray classic 'Scrooged', where a grumpy New York television producer -- filming his own version of 'A Christmas Carol' -- finds epiphany after an evening with three illuminating spirits, including a cab driver played by former New York Dolls singer David Johansen.

And since we're on the subject, here's some more New York holiday themed cheer from Johansen, under the name of his alter ego, Buster Poindexter. Happy holidays from the Bowery Boys!

'Christmas or Chanukah?': NYC discovers the Jewish holiday

2011-12-22T12:45:00.001-05:00

Early news reporting on the celebration of Hannukah (or Chanukah, as it was popularly referred then) in New York usually took a arms-length approach, as most of their readership knew little about the celebration 100 years ago. More than one old Tribune or World carried a variant of the headline 'Jews Celebrate Chanukah' , as though there might have been some doubt. A 1905 headline informs: 'Chanukah, Commemorating Syrian Defeat, Lasts Eight Days.'

It wasn't just non-Jews that were misinformed about this seemingly mysterious holiday. A December 1894 edition of the New York Sun asks 'Christmas or Chanukah?' as a prominent rabbi from Temple Emanu-El (pictured at right, in its Fifth Avenue incarnation) "rebukes the tendency of Jews to confuse the festivals." In fact, many Jewish leaders at this time were concerned that many traditions were being abandoned, the better to acclimate in a city that was decidedly more Christian-seeming.

The wife of American Jewish scholar Richard Gotthell* worried in 1900 that "this festival occurs so nearly coincident with the Christian festival of Christmas that there is danger that the observance of one may be lost in a gradual assimilation with the other."

But with the mass immigration of Eastern European Jews to New York in the 1900s, soon thousands celebrated the holiday -- and newspapers could hardly be so cavalier.

One event they took particular note of was the Chanukah celebration by the Federation of American Zionists, at the Herald Square Theater on January 1, 1911. One anecdote sprang out at me: "Dr. S. Levin spoke in Hebrew for an hour, on 'Jewish Life and Art.' He took exception to a certain Jewish speaker who recently declared that the Jews had produced nothing in art. Dr. Levin asserted that he was greievously wrong."

Across town at that very moment, a young Russian Jew named Irving Berlin was hammering out tunes in Tin Pan Alley and would debut, just a couple months later, 'Alexander's Ragtime Band', while other songwriters of Jewish heritage, such as Jerome Kern, were right then hard at work reinventing the American songbook. So, yes, Dr. Levin, grievously wrong.

And of course, these Jewish songwriters would go on to even help reinvent Christmas itself via a flurry of popular holiday tunes, like Berlin's own 'White Christmas.'

*Gotthell was also the founder of America's first Jewish fraternity, Zeta Beta Tau, formed in New York in 1898.

Christmas in the afternoon: A tour around Greeley Square

2011-12-21T08:30:00.000-05:00

I'm not 100% sure on the date of this photo, but I'll place it in the late 1940s, as Life photographer Nina Leen did a great many photoshoots for the magazine in this period. The statue of Horace Greeley sits astride the big Christmas tree as perfect afternoon light casts shadows upon the corner of 33rd and Broadway. Here's a slightly different angle of the same scene.

Gimbels, at left, one of America's largest department store chains in the 1940s, was presumably filled with shoppers. The building to its north was is Sak's Herald Square, the ancestor of the far swankier Saks Fifth Avenue. Out of view at 34th Street is, of course, Macy's.

The Hotel McAlpin, at right, was once the biggest hotel in the world when it was built in 1912. The storefront that sits at the corner of 33rd and Broadway is Crawford's men's clothing store. Today that same corner is occupied by Game Stop.

On the southeast corner of 33rd and Broadway was Whelan's Drugstore, an New York drug store and soda fountain chain in its heyday during the 1940s and 50s. Its business neighbor was Young's hat shop, specializing in Stetsons.

Notes from the podcast (#132): Electric New York

2011-12-20T09:31:00.000-05:00

Manhattan grid illuminated, taken from the Metropolitan Life Tower in Madison Square, looking downtown. I'm not sure when this photo was taken, but a reasonable guess might be the late 1910s. The caption says 'New York Edison Company, Photographic Bureau.' (Photo courtesy NYPL)

FOR MORE INFORMATION: We just scratched the surface on the 'war of the currents' and 19th century American achievements in electricity. Luckily there are a great many readable books on the subject. Tom's favorite is 'Empire of Light' by Jill Jonnes which descriptively recounts the battles between Edison and Westinghouse. There's also the breezy 'AC/DC: The Savage Tale of the First Standards War' by Tom McNichol which is a more sensationalist take on the subject.

If you want a broader history of electricity and power (one that includes the innovations of steam and gas), nothing is better than Maury Klein's 'The Power Makers.'

There are dozens of books and films on Thomas Edison himself, but I highly recommend 'The Wizard of Menlo Park' by Randall E. Stross, probably the most engrossing of the books listed.

FURTHER LISTENING: If you enjoyed this episode, you might also like our show on the history of Times Square (Episode #118, find the blog entry here, download the show from here). And of course, Edison makes a significant appearance in NYC and the Birth of the Movies (Episode #120, blog entry here, download show here).

Now, if you dare go back to some of our really older shows I also make a mention of electricity's impact on the development of Coney Island. We delve into the Brooklyn amusement neighborhood's early history in Episode #12: Coney Island: the Golden Age (download). And of course, one of our earliest podcasts ever was on the Blackout of 1977. It's Episode #5, dozens of podcasts ago, so be kind! (here)

Electric New York: From gaslight to Edison's Pearl Street Station, illuminating the shadows, re-visualizing the night

2011-12-16T10:15:00.000-05:00

The soft luminescence of electric light brings a mysterious glow to City Hall, the New York World Building and the newly opened City Hall subway station in 1904.

PODCAST The streets of New York have been lit in various ways through the decades, from the wisps of whale-oil flame to the modern comfort of gas lighting. With the discovery of electricity, it seemed possible to illuminate the world with a more dependable, potentially inexhaustible energy source.

First came arc light and 'sun towers' with their brilliant beams of white-hot light casting shadows down among the holiday shoppers of Ladies Mile in 1880. But the genius of Menlo Park, Thomas Edison, envisioned an entire city grid wired for electricity. From Edison's Pearl Street station, the inventor turned a handful of blocks north of Wall Street into America's first area entirely lit with the newly invented incandescent bulbs.

ALSO: It's the War of Currents, the enigmatic Nicola Tesla and the world's first electric Christmas lights

You can tune into it below, download it for FREE from iTunes or other podcasting services, or get it straight from our satellite site.

Or listen to it here:
The Bowery Boys: Electric New York

Notes, clarifications, sources, and additional information will be posted next week

The home of Samuel Leggett, the first to be illuminated with gas lighting, at 7 Cherry Street. This home stood just a few blocks from the location of Edison's Pearl Street Station (255-7 Pearl Street), which would also change the way people consider lighting their city. (NYPL)

Inside the Pearl Street Station: Direct current surged through Edison's generators to the neighboring blocks.

Laying the electrical wires under the streets of the blocks surrounding the Pearl Street station was an arduous, potential dangerous task. It took well over a year to complete the job. (Courtesy NYPL)

'New York The Wonder City', and indeed it was, thanks to electricity. Whole neighborhoods, like Times Square and Coney Island, were defined by it. Landmarks like the Brooklyn Bridge, thoroughfares like the Bronx's Grand Concourse and even Broadway itself were transformed at night by electric power. (NYPL)

Nikola Tesla, the brilliant Serbian inventor who spent his final decades in New York living in hotels and communing with pigeons.

Behold! The first Christmas tree with electrical lighting, courtesy Edison employee Edward Hibberd Johnson. This tree glittered and twirled from Johnson's home in Murray Hill. (Courtesy Jim on Light)

On the fiftieth anniversary of the invention of the lightbulb, an elderly Thomas Edison 'reinvents' it in 1929 at a reconstructed laboratory in Dearborn, Michigan, to the delight of Henry Ford and newly elected President Herbert Hoover.

And finally, footage of the death of renegade Coney Island elephant Topsy, electrocuted in an Edison experiment of the viability of electric power to kill.

All of the Lights: An invention of Edison's invention

2011-12-15T10:58:00.001-05:00

A new podcast will be ready for download later this evening!

The film 'Edison, The Man' was nominated for Best Original Screenplay, which is appropriate because most of the movie is entirely fictional, including this re-imagining of Edison's Pearl Street Station and the first blocks cast in the glow of incandescent lights.

In truth, the 'switch' was flipped from the offices of J.P. Morgan at Wall and Broad streets in 1882, and not from the ruddier station on Pearl Street. And, while many were impressed, there was hardly such a hat-tossing ruckus made in the street as depicted here. After all, streets had gaslights already, and some people even criticized the first electrical bulbs with having inferior light.

Holidays on Ice 1861: Skaters flock to Brooklyn's icy ponds

2011-12-13T10:57:00.000-05:00

Williamsburg(h)'s Union Pond, one of the finest destinations for ice skating in the city, 1863. It later became America's first enclosed baseball field.

The nation was at war one hundred and fifty years ago, but that didn't stop the austere celebrations in the 'borough of churches'. But while thousands of Brooklyn residents attended church that morning in 1861, many participated in a more whimsical holiday celebration -- wild and uncontrollable ice skating.

So famous was the city of Brooklyn's famed ponds -- which reliably froze each winter -- that New Yorkers by the boatloads crammed into ferries across the East River to join in the icy merriment. On really cold days, of course, it was often the East River itself that froze solid. But in 1861, an unseasonable warmth kept the river disappointingly liquid, forcing thousands of skaters upon Brooklyn's small ponds where the ice quickly melted.

For instance, Washington Pond (at right), at 5th Avenue and 6th Street -- then considered Gowanus, today it's Park Slope -- was normally ideal for skating. Horse-drawn streetcars took crowds right from the Fulton Ferry to the door of the nearby old stone house, built in 1699 and famous for its role in the Revolutionary War. (It's why the pond is named for Washington, after all.) But on Christmas 1861, "the ice was unpleasantly rough" there.

Skaters may have found more success at other Brooklyn skating destinations. The Capitoline Skating Lake, near the train station in the former independent village of Bedford, was known as the "principle pond of the Western District." In Williamsburg, the versatile 'world-renown' Union Pond drew thousands during the winter and thousands more in the summer -- as the nation's first enclosed baseball field. On this particular day, the newly opened pond in its 'gay and brilliant appearance' was crammed with skaters laughing and caroling, in various states of sobriety.

By the afternoon of Christmas 1861, most of the closest ponds were mushy and nearly dangerous. At a pond on Third Avenue, "a gentlemen with two ladies fell trough the ice and took their Christmas immersion without any material damage save a very decided shivering," according to the Brooklyn Eagle.

Urban ice enthusiasts were forced to follow the advice of horsecars festooned with the signs 'Good Skating in East Brooklyn'. I'm not sure exactly where crowds went that day, but a New York Times article from a three years later lists several 'free ponds' that might have been available for ice skating that day, including Seller's Pond "in Bedford, near the Jamaica Pond Road", "Dumbleton's Pond on Myrtle Avenue" and the Suydam's Pond, "on Atlantic-avenue near the Hunters-Ferry road.".

All that skating and merriment drove many to more intoxicating holiday spirits, preferring their drinks 'on the rocks', or as the 1861 Eagle reports, "the boys will insist that 'Christmas comes but once a year' and with it comes a large measure of 'good cheer' and so they must get cheerful." The most serious altercation came with one reveler, tiring of throwing rocks at boys, attempted to pistol whip a police officer.

The more respectable Brooklynites traipsed home at dawn, as the gaslights meet the fading light, casting the wet snow in a bright glare. Many reformed again for choirs of caroling, or else to distribute presents at charity 'Christmas tree exercises', where children lined up outside downtown theaters hoping for presents and a gander at the gorgeously trimmed tree, sparkling with candles.

Top pic courtesy NYPL. Second pic courtesy the Old Stone House.

A Very Special New York Newsies Christmas

2011-12-09T11:00:00.000-05:00

The gritty image of the scrappy 19th century newsboy, the can-do kid slinging newspapers from the street corner, full of vinegar and character, was an encouraging invention of the newspapers themselves. Children were cheap labor, willing to sling stacks of freshly printed papers to corners across the city. Many kids preferred the profession to that of bootblack or messenger boy, and it was certainly more profitable than peddling door to door.

Newsies were frequently mentioned within general-interest stories of homeless, outcast whelps, considered almost blissfully, as though their own news delivery forces weren't themselves part of that pathetic number. The papers stereotyped newsboys (who were occasionally girls, too) as orphans or 'street arabs' with purpose, self-sufficient little adults plucked by their profession from the grasp of destitution.

Many children were homeless; the lucky ones took shelter in 'newsboy lodging homes', but many braved it in doorways and slept over gratings. Some found this life preferable to New York's houses of refuge, dreary orphanages that were often grouped with homeless shelters or other asylums. Those children who did have families took employment out of necessity or as a means of escape. It took organized action (culminating in the Newsboy Strike of 1899) and the work of child-labor activists like photographer Lewis Hine to highlight the unsavory conditions and low pay.

Below: A newsboy posing for a Jacob Riis picture at the Duane Street lodging house, 1889

No time was worse for a newsboy than winter. Not only was it physically difficult to sell newspapers in cold and snowy weather -- or worse, the wet, wintry mix that often typifies the New York season -- but children were rarely dressed for comfort. The idea of Christmas was a luxury. As newspapers were sometimes heavier due to increased page count, some children may have even dreaded the holiday.

But the Gilded Age wealthy were charitable around the holiday, and a few lucky 'urchins' got a gracious Christmas handout.

Some groups, like Charles Loring Brace's Childrens Aid Society, worked year-round to get children off the streets, via 'orphan trains' that sent children to live with families in other places. Those that remained in New York, the ones fortunate enough to find shelter at a newsboys lodging house like the one at 9 Duane Street, celebrated the holidays with an large annual feast hosted by importer William M. Fleiss. The wealthy trader brought annual Christmas meals to the needy children at the lodging house for almost thirty years. "The newsboys were not overlooked by Santa Claus, " said the New York Times in 1893.

Below: Dinner at a newsboys lodging home, from an earlier period (1867), courtesy NYPL

At the 1897 dinner, the lodging house dining room was festooned with evergreen branches and white linens. Children ate in shifts, enjoying a bountiful feast that included ham, turkey, mashed potatoes and plenty of pie. A familiar face at some of these lodging dinners was a young police commissioner Theodore Roosevelt, his father being a co-founder of Brace's aid society.

Reformer Jacob Riis recounts one such dinner:

"Tramp! tramp! comes the to-morrow upon the stage. Two hundred and fifty pairs of little feet, keeping step, are marching to dinner in the Newsboys' Lodging-House. Five hundred pairs more are restlessly awaiting their turns upstairs....As the file of eagle-eyed youngsters passes down the long tables, there are swift movements of grimy hands, and shirt-waits bulge, ragged coats sag at the pockets. Hardly is the file seated when the pliant rises: 'I ain't got no pie! It got swiped on me.' Seven despoiled ones hold up their hands."

There was plenty of room for shenanigans at this dinner. Another source confirms that "a few fine, soft pies were deposited down some unfortunate newsboy's back between his shirt and him." By most accounts, however, more food was eaten than thrown.

Fleiss's generosity, while certainly genuine, kept him in good social company. The wife of William Waldorf Astor (not to be confused with her aunt, in social parlance THE Mrs. Astor) paid for Thanksgiving suppers for the boys. And for Mr Fleiss, charity may have had a more soul-cleansing motive. In 1894, he was accused during the Lexow police corruption investigation of giving a prominent inspector "about $5,000 to $6.000 as a result of speculation in stocks."

Another group of newsboys in 1898 enjoyed a bountiful dinner of "oysters on the half shell, consomme julienne, radishes, celery, salmon, mayonnaise dressing, turkey and cranberry sauce" courtesy of early grocery giant Frank Tilford of Park & Tilfords, the Whole Foods of its day.

Top picture: Photographed by Lewis Hine, caption "Group of newsboys starting out at Brooklyn Bridge early Sunday morning," courtesy NYPL

From a Bowery tattoo parlor: "Remember Pearl Harbor!"

2011-12-07T12:33:00.001-05:00

Charlie Wagner (seen above, in the sombrero) was New York's most skilled and revolutionary tattoo artist of his day, plying his ink trade behind the partition of a "five-chair barber shop" on the Bowery, according to a 1943 New York Times article. His shop was at 11 Chatham Square (pictured below), unsurprisingly located beneath the elevated train station.

In that article, he heralds the war effort for driving up the demand for tattoos. (The headline of the article is actually 'War Booms The Tattooing Art'.) His most popular piece featured an inked dagger with the phrase "Remember Pearl Harbor, Dec. 7, 1941."

Wagner is an historic figure of subculture, the "dean of tattoo artists," designing and administering his work for almost half a decade, from his first apprenticeship in 1908 (in the very shop he was to later own) to his death in 1953. He even held the patent for an "electric tattoo device", a precursor to the tools used by a modern tattooist.* Wagner decorated many of Coney Island's early sideshow stars and is even credited with being among the first to apply 'permanent lipliner' for women.

But the war also produced unfavorable results for Wagner. He was arrested in 1944 for violating the city's sanitary code due to allegedly unwashed needles.

Sadly, when Wagner died, most of his work was thrown out, so we have little original documentation of his particular artistry. Yet his influence was noted later that decade in an article by young writer Gay Talese. "A tattoo fan can distinguish the precise pecks of Chicago's famous Tatts Thomas from the free strokings of the late Charlie Wagner as easily as an art critic can tell a Modigliani from a Grandma Moses."

*Some also credit the invention of the tattoo machine to Wagner's mentor Samuel O'Reilly, who first owned the Chatham Square tattoo/barber parlor. It seems likely they worked on it together.

Top picture (c 1947) courtesy the blog Inkflesh who have more information on the history of New York tattoo artists. Secondary picture of Wagner's shop courtesy Monroe Stein/Tumblr

The first board game: Before Monopoly, a whirlwind tour around America became the perfect Christmas gift

2011-12-06T12:00:00.000-05:00

The 24 States: playing field for America's first board game

HOW NEW YORK SAVED CHRISTMAS My yearly roundup of little events in New York history that actually helped establish the standard Christmas traditions many Americans celebrate today. Not just New York-centric events like the Rockefeller Christmas Tree or the Rockettes, but actual components of the festivities that are practiced in people's homes. You can read past articles in this series here.

Board games are a staple of the holiday gift-giving season and one of the presents most easily guessed correctly by children when sitting wrapped under the tree. My young niece has already texted me strongly implying she would like to see the new UNO ROBOTO under the tree this year.What if I decided to be the weirdest uncle in the world and give her the first board game ever sold in America -- The Travellers Tour through the United States, first manufactured and sold in New York?

Contests played on wooden boards (like backgammon and chess) have been around for millenia, but they were mostly seen as an adult dalliance, often kingly, sometimes undignified, and almost never for children.

The concept of non-physical boxed games for adolescents developed, not surprisingly, for educational uses. Board games are actually the step-children of maps, with many 18th century European models focusing on geographic instruction. Considering the penchant of European countries to invade each other then, this may have been both useful for teachers and vexing for students.

Historians trace the first real children's board game to that party in a box called The Mansion of Happiness, indoctrinating Puritan values as children maneuvered pieces along a winding, multi-colored path. Although the game was invented in England in 1800, it took several decades to be reproduced in the United States. By this time, New York kids already had their own board game.

It debuted in 1822, courtesy the brother book publishers Frederick and Roe Lockwood. Their father, the spectacularly named Lambert Lockwood, owned a book store in Bridgeport, Connecticut. According to game historian Joseph Angiolillo, it's believed Lambert also sold 'linen games' which could be unfurled on the floor, folded and put away. (Think of Twister, but less shocking.) The Lockwood's fine home would not be far from that of the downtown Bridgeport residence of P.T. Barnum.

With father's help, the young brothers moved to New York in the late 1810s to start their own publishing business, setting up a small shop at 154 Broadway at Liberty Street (today, catty-corner Zuccotti Park). They appear to have specialized in 'foreign works' -- probably books in other languages -- but had a few startlingly devout titles in their collection, from "Views on Theology: President Edward's Doctrine of Original Sin, the Doctrine of Physical Depravity" to "The Excellence and Influence of the Female Character." They even dabbled in game instruction with the 1821 guide "Instructive and Amusing Pastimes."

In 1822, they developed an educational tool for the purpose of learning American geography -- a topic not terribly complicated back then -- and called it The Travellers Tour through the United States. Essentially, it was a map of the states and territories, including the freshly unveiled states of Missouri and Maine and the blue lumpen-shaped Arkansas territory. The map was printed on some type of flexible wooden board that could be folded.

The object of Travellers was to give the names of cities and places, with players following a line around the board. Seems easy, right? In a more advanced version of the game, however, one also had to guess the population total. I cannot think of a more apt symbol of the pride for American expansion than this particular feature. The first player to get to New Orleans won.

There were no dice with The Travellers Tour through the United States, being associated with gambling and vice. Instead, players maneuvered around the terrain via a spinner, a far easier method of cross-country travelling than the one chosen by Lewis & Clark several years previous.

The game was clearly successful enough in their store that two expanded versions were created, The Traveller's Tour through Europe and The Traveller's Tour through the World.

The Lockwoods aimed their board games to holiday shoppers. In in the 1820s, however, many New Yorkers didn't celebrate on Christmas; in a Puritan throwback, many believed celebrating on Jesus's birthday itself was too unholy. New Years celebrations, however, were just as relevant, with families visiting the homes of friends and neighbors, often bearing gifts.

The brothers Lockwood were ready: "VALUABLE NEW-YEAR PRESENTS," according to one old newspaper."The works of Byron, Scott, Cowper, Moore....in elegant bindings." And among the books they sold backgammon and chess boards. With such games for adults, the Travellers series must have seemed a desirable purchase, lest they leave the children jealous.

The Lockwoods continued making books through the 1820s at this location, although it doesn't appear they were in business together after 1830. One source mentions Frederick Lockwood as a watchmaker later in life. His brother Roe, however, stayed in the book business, partnering with his son. It appears he even later published the extraordinary illustrations of John James Audubon.

I'm not sure what happened with the building at 154 Broadway, but if it was still standing in 1845, it was surely destroyed in the Great Explosion of 1845.

One final note -- in 1822, just as the Lockwoods were debuting their new board game, a wealthy gentleman uptown in his estate (the austere Chelsea manor) became inspired by the holiday season and wrote a festive poem. The following year, that man, Clement Clarke Moore, published it under the title "A Visit From St. Nicholas," aka 'Twas the Night Before Christmas."

Top pic courtesy NYPL

A Wretched Anniversary: The Brooklyn Theater Fire of 1876

2011-12-05T08:30:00.000-05:00

It is difficult to discuss calmly the frightful disaster which happened in Brooklyn on Tuesday night. No such awful sacrifice of human life has ever been known in this country shipwreck and the casualties of war alone being excepted. -- New York Times editorial, Dec. 7, 1876

One hundred and thirty-five years this evening, nearly a thousand playgoers entered the Brooklyn Theater, at Washington and Johnson streets near City Hall, to enjoy the well-reviewed (and lengthy) production of N. Hart Jackson's 'The Two Orphans'. During the show's final act, stage hands discovered that a set piece backstage had caught fire. The actors onstage attempted gamely to stay in character, for fear of causing a panic, until fiery bits of wood and flaming parts of the set began raining down upon them.

As the audience leapt to the aisles in terror, the actors tried to calm people to prevent a stampede, to no avail. An usher forced open a rarely used exit door to free audience members, but the rush of December air only fed the flames, turning the once elegant auditorium, built only five years previous, into an inescapable trap of heat and asphyxiation.

Those in the upper tiers of the theater -- the 'family circle', or cheap seats, filled with men, women and children -- were trapped by smoke within darkened foyers and unnavigable stairwells. Some fell from balconies to their deaths. Dozens were crushed heading for doorways, and to some of those who survived, it seemed that all respectability had given way to base animal behavior. Most perished by suffocation or underfoot, while others were lost into the oblivion of belching smoke when weakened floors gave way.

Twenty five minutes after flames were first spotted backstage, one entire wall of the Brooklyn Theater caved backwards into the inferno, the once elegant ceiling fresco nothing but a crumbling scorch now. Flaming projectiles caught in the wind settled upon surrounding structures, and firefighters scrambled to soak the inferno, now in fear of scattering randomly through one of Brooklyn's oldest neighborhood. Most in danger was the hotel on the corner, where some audience members had found momentary safety.

Since 1869, Brooklyn had a paid fire department, and many fought the fire from the streets. But the rudimentary firefighting implements of the day were unable to combat the inferno. The Brooklyn Theater burned for several hours more, dying out by early morning. Throughout the night, most could only watch -- what to do, plunge into darkness? -- and many did watch. Thousands flocked, some to help, others fascinated, horrified.

Inspectors found an unspeakably grisly sight the next morning, heaps of burned bodies in formless masses -- people choked or crushed, their remains almost unrecognizable amid blackened debris. In an eerie parallel to two later disasters (the General Slocum explosion of 1904 and the Triangle Factory Fire of 1911), a make-shift morgue was prepared on nearby Adams Street to accommodate the dozens of unidentifiable corpses.

Nobody is sure exactly how many died that evening -- some number between 275 to 300 people. It is certainly among the worst disasters in Brooklyn history and one of the most catastrophic fires in American history.

The place where the theater once stood is now occupied by Cadman Plaza, in the grove of trees just east of the Henry Ward Beecher statue. Many of the bodies (over a hundred) are buried together under a memorial at Green-Wood Cemetery.

Top picture courtesy NYPL

Below: the area of Cadman Plaza where the Brooklyn Theater once stood.

The Thermos Building, keeping it hot (and cool) in Chelsea

2011-12-02T11:00:00.000-05:00

A charming family enjoys its insulated beverages -- just as they like it, just as they need it -- in an ad from 1909.

The invention of the vacuum flask in 1892 (by Scottish chemist Sir James Dewar) does not rank high among mankind's most remarkable inventions, but its longevity relies on being a steady companion. The first gas-operated motor vehicle debuted in Massachusetts the following year. In an era before disposable containers, the vacuum flask came along at exactly the right time. Now, people could travel long distances of their own accord and drink a hot beverage along the way. In the 1890s, the road trip was born.

Believe it or not, Dewar was not a member of the family that produced the famed Scottish whiskey, although I suspect much of that intoxicant has been stored in Dewar's vacuum invention. Like many inventors, Dewar was not terribly business-savvy, and he failed to properly patent and profit from his own creation, unsuccessfully taking rivals to court.

One of those competitors, the German glass blowers Burger and Aschenbrenner, ran away with the industry. They loosely named their revised vacuum flask after the Greek word for 'heat' and began producing the Thermos for local use in 1904. Two years later, William B. Walker, an American visiting the Munich-based Thermos plant, became enamored of the magic container and obtained a license from the Thermos company to bring the product to America the following year.

Walker opened the American Thermos Bottle Company in 1907, producing the containers out of a small factory in Brooklyn, in the shadow of the Manhattan Bridge. (Today's DUMBO neighborhood, 31 Washington Street, to be precise. The building is all condos today, so that means one or more people are living in an old Thermos factory as you read this.)

His timing could not have been more divine. Auto dealerships began popping up around Times Square, driving a market for accessories. New York's continuing construction boom -- paired with less advantageous lunch-break privileges -- suggested new uses for the Thermos.

But most likely it was Walker's clever marketing strategies that made the Thermos a desirable product. As seen in the advertisement at top, the Thermos brought the family together. It was traditional. At the same time, it was a marvel of invention, at an affordable price. An ad (at right) that ran 100 years ago today, in the New York Tribune, heralds its appropriateness as a Christmas present. "It does just what everyone wants done -- it keeps coffee, tea, soup, etc., hot for 24 hours."

Walker soon expanded the Thermos company. While his marketing and distribution team moved to a swank office near Madison Square (1171 Broadway), his production facilities moved to Chelsea in 1910, to 232 West 18th Street, with additional entrances on West 17th Street. "The building will hereafter be known as the Thermos Building," proclaimed the New York Times.

The product began popping up in truly odd places, all engineered for the maximum of publicity. Most of the 200,000 New Yorkers who lined Broadway for an "automobile carnival parade" in 1909 observed one prize-winning vehicle -- a car in the shape of a Thermos bottle. (The Thermos car below is from the 1909 Vanderbilt Cup races, in Long Island. I imagine it must be the same vehicle. Pic courtesy Vanderbilt Cup Races.)

The Thermos made a stout companion during the era of exploration. E. H. Shackleton had one during his 1909 voyage to the South Pole, as did Robert Peary on a his similar expedition north. The Wright Brothers allegedly had one on their early planes. Back on Earth, so did the President of the United States that year, William Howard Taft.

Christmas shoppers along Ladies Mile, not far from the Thermos Building, would have found a wide selection of sizes. According to Charles Panati, "A quart-size Thermos sold for $7.50; the pint size for $5.00." Those are appliance prices; according to the Inflation Calculator, a $5 Thermos in 1910 is equal to a $115 product today. (I don't know what that ad above is talking about with its $1.00 Thermos.)

Demand soon required larger facilities, and the Thermos company moved out of the Thermos Building. But not before a disaster that struck on May 1, 1913, a fire that quickly swept through the structure, rather unsettling in light of the Triangle Factory Fire that occurred just two years before. Luckily, most of the Thermos employees were out to lunch, and a hero, "Samuel Gumps, a negro elevator man" rescued employees from the top floors. Although "several girl employees" were forced to escape to the rooftop.

The Thermos company moved its headquarters to Norwich, Connecticut. Today the building is a basic residential address, its Thermos Building name long forgotten. (As the building cuts through the block, it's known today as 245 West 17th Street.) On the 18th Street side, it's just next door to Barney's Co-Op. Perhaps they sell Thermos there?

By the way, I love that in the early days of this product, it was sometimes marketed as 'Thermos, the Bottle."

Mark Twain was here: Mapping a trail of his misadventures

2011-11-30T10:23:00.001-05:00

Last year at this time, I did a podcast on Mark Twain in New York and featured this map of notable places Twain worked, lectured, lived and played. Today is the author's birthday -- he was born 176 years ago -- so I thought I'd reprint the map in case you wanted to revisit a few places in his honor, with stops in Manhattan, Brooklyn and the Bronx. (And even places on Governors Island and Randall's Island!) The three key destinations are his two residences near Washington Square Park and his cliff-side respite up at Wave Hill in Riverdale, Bronx. But the boarding house where he first lived, as a teenager? It's on Duane Street, in today's TriBeCa.

View Mark Twain in New York in a larger map

He also seemed to have had an altercation on a streetcar in 1890 that rankled him most severely, according to a letter he wrote to the New York Sun. The author jumped on the streetcar at Sixth Avenue and 42nd Street. An excerpt:

"Of course there was no seat -- there never is: New Yorkers do not require a seat, but only permission to stand up and look meek, and be thankful for such little rags of privilege as the good horse-car company may choose to allow them

...After a moment, the conductor, desiring to pass through and see the passengers, took me by the lappel and said to me with that winning courtesy and politeness which New Yorkers are so accustomed to: "Jesus Christ! what you want to load up the door for? Git back here out of the way!".....This conductor was a person about 30 years old, I should say, five feet nine, with blue eyes, a small, dim, unsuccessful moustache, and the general expression of a chicken thief -- you may probably have seen him.

I said I would report him, and asked him for his number. He said, in a tone which wounded me more than I can tell, "I'll give you a chew of tobacco."

I went up to Sixth avenue and Forty-third street to report him, but there was nobody in the superintendent's office who seemed to want to converse with me. A man with "conductor" on his cap said it wouldn't be any use to try to see the President at that time of day, and intimated by his manner, not his words, that people with complaints were not popular there, any way.

So I have been obliged to come to you, you see. What I wanted to say to the President of the road was this -- and through him say it to the President of the elevated roads -- that the conductors ought to be instructed never to swear at country people except when there are no city ones to swear at, and not even then except for practice. Because the country people are sensitive. Conductors need not make any mistakes; they can easily tell us from the city people. Could you use your influence to get this small and harmless distinction made in our favor?"

Oh, Samuel.

Courtesy Twain Quotes

Finally, the Bowery Boys look good on mobile devices!

2011-11-29T12:51:00.000-05:00

Not sure why this took me forever to set up, but you can finally read our blog on your mobile devices without any awkward scrolling or squinting your eyes. Just visit www.boweryboyspodcast.com (www.theboweryboys.blogspot.com) on your phones to check it out!

I'm also in the planning stages of creating an actual mobile app, but until that makes an appearance, just find us on your favorite mobile search engine....

Relaxation in Astoria, in the lap of Queens history

2011-11-28T12:05:00.000-05:00

You'll still find a few free-standing homes on this tip of Astoria. Queens -- traditionally called Hallet's Cove -- but you won't find the one above, a veritable (if ramshackle) plantation getaway as photographed by Berenice Abbott in 1937. The caption of this picture places this house in the hands of Joseph Blackwell, an ancestor of an early settler to this area. Another descendant, Col. Jacob Blackwell, remained loyal to the British during the Revolutionary War; it was his home, named Ravenswood, that gave its name to the neighborhood just south of here.

This was one of many such multi-story single-family homes that lined Franklin Street, in the shadow of 'The Hill', an elegant neighborhood in the days soon after the borough of Queens was created and incorporated into New York City in 1898. This property was but a short stroll from the original estate of Stephen Ailing Halsey, the founder of the original village of Hallets Cove. The village was later renamed Astoria in order entice John Jacob Astor to invest here. Barely interested, Astor did manage to give Halsey $500.

Franklin was later ingloriously renamed to 27th Avenue.

Happy Thanksgiving Masking: The pleasures of mischief, featureless masks and cross-dressing children!

2011-11-23T11:31:00.003-05:00

No, these children have not gotten their calendars confused. One early American Thanksgiving tradition amongst rascals and rowdies involved goofy costumes and disguised faces. Sometimes called 'Thanksgiving masking', the strange practice stemmed from a satirical perversion of poverty and an ancient tradition of 'mumming', where men in costumes floated from door to door, asking for food and money, sometimes in exchange for music. The annual Philadelphia Mummers Parade traces back to the original tradition which some believe began in the 17th century.

By the 1800s, those going door-to-door asking for handouts were most likely homeless and poor. This seems to have inspired a children's tradition not unlike modern trick-or-treat. "Every street had its band of children," proclaimed the 1901 Tribune, "dressed as ragamuffins, who kept in the open air for hours."

Newspapers advertised 'Thanksgiving masks' and 'lithographed character masks' for the tots. These featureless disguises were often sold in candy stores alongside holiday related treats like spiced jelly gums, opera drops, crystallized ginger and tinted hard candies.

"This play of masking is deeply rooted in the New York child," said Appleton's Magazine in 1909. "All toy shops carry a line of hideous and terrifying false faces or 'dough faces' as they are termed on the East Side."

Boys frequently wore girls clothing on this occasion, "tog[ging] themselves out in worn-out finery of their sisters" and spending their afternoon "gamboling in awkward mimicry of their sisters to the casual street piano."

The New York Times in 1899 found the streets filled with costumed tricksters that Thanksgiving. "There were Fausts, Filipinos, Mephistos, Boers, Uncle Sams, John Boers, Harlequins, bandits, sailors... In poorer quarters a smear of burned cork and a dab of vermilion sufficed for babbling celebrants."

Those that benefited most -- outside of the costumed children, obviously having a ball -- were the candy stores that both sold the masks and provided the sweets distributed to the little devils. In particular, Loft Candy stores, headquartered at the corner of West 42nd Street and Eighth Avenue, ran spectacular ads filled with Thanksgiving themed candy treats.

In general however it's difficult to find too much enthusiasm for this unsavory tradition in newspapers of the day. Thanksgiving was (and continues to be) one of the most austere holidays. Poor, cross-dressing, shoddy-garbed children in masks flew in the face of this perception and was generally discouraged. Editors preferred to focus on family gatherings, recipes and table placements, not only out of social convention but on the behest of advertisers, who made more money selling turkey and china than cheap masks.

While the chaotic tradition was associated with poverty and mischief, some educators saw a bright side to the tradition, especially in the waning years of World War I. One writer on early Kindergarten practices suggested that "the masking on the streets of Thanksgiving Day ... has its redeeming quality, in reminding the children of our dear soldiers' need for real masks." They would be referring to gas masks. Educational indeed!

Such mischief, not surprisingly, occasionally went out of control. For instance, the New York Tribune in 1907 reports a poor lad "in mask and fantastic garb" who was hit by a train and had his leg amputated.

With the rise and commercialization of Halloween, the practice of Thanksgiving masking seems to have died out. And the entrance of the Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade in 1924 certain gave focus to the city's need for costumed celebration.

NOTE: These photos are from the Library of Congress. As such, the locations are unmarked. Most likely they are all of New York children, but a few may be children from other cities in delirious states of costume. (The top photo is courtesy Shorpy)

Happy Thanksgiving!

Notes from the podcast (#131) The First Apartment Building

2011-11-22T12:17:00.001-05:00

The Stuyvesant Apartments in 1934, already being dwarfed with a newer structure on the right. Please note the ornate entrance to the Third Avenue elevated train to the left of the picture, as well as the streetcar tracks, no longer in use along East 18th Street in 1934, running down the cobblestone street. And I'm fairly sure that's a taxicab in the foreground.

Here are some notes on podcast #131: The First Apartment Building. To listen to the show, download it from iTunes or from here. And for those who have listened, thanks for making it one of iTunes top three individual programs in the travel/places podcasts section this weekend!

The Distinction of the 'First'
How did the Stuyvesant Apartment become known as the true 'first' apartment? After all, it's not like there was a banner over the door proclaiming "Welcome to the first apartment building ever! Come inside!" Urban dwellings were being developed of all shapes and sizes. As I mentioned, there's not much that technically separates a tenement from an apartment, if you subtract social class and building amenities. There were indeed 'fancy' tenements. Some of those buildings are still around today and serve as rather lovely renovated apartments.

Author Elizabeth Collins Cromley (more on her later) suggests there were a couple other buildings in New York City that could have held this title built earlier, including another that Richard Morris Hunt built on Wooster Street. Those candidates, however, were smaller and less profitable. (One was even refashioned as a hotel.) The Stuyvesant was ambitious in size, glorious in architecture and glittering in its notable residents.

Below: Original drawings of the Stuyvesant Apartments, done by the Historic American Buildings Survey, courtesy Library of Congress

The Other Stuyvesant?
The research for this show became trickier once I realized there was another apartment building that was sometimes referred to the Stuyvesant just a few blocks away, and some scholars have confused the two in their research. For instance, I was quite excited to learn that Clara Clemens, the daughter of Mark Twain, lived at the Stuyvesant until I realized it was most likely the other Stuyvesant. (This author erroneously combines the two structures.)

The second building is right off of Stuyvesant Square, originally addressed 17 Livingston Place. That street no longer exists. Or to quote the wonderful Old Streets blog: "On December 3, 1953, in one of the goofier acts of the City Council, it changed the name of Livingston Place (on the east side of Stuyvesant Square) to Nathan D. Perlman Place and simultaneously--perhaps to mollify any offended Livingston descendants--changed the name of Birmingham Street to Livingston Place. The compensation was short-lived. The new Livingston Place was demapped in 1962."

That building at 17 Livingston Place (valued at drastically less than the Stuyvesant) was apparently demolished too; Beth Israel Medical Center facilities have taken up that side of the square since the late 1910s.

That Stuyvesant Name!
The apartment structure was constructed on old Stuyvesant property. Check out this map of the borders of Stuyvesant farm, which consumes much of today's East Village and the area dominated by Stuyvesant Town/Peter Cooper Village.

Rutherford Stuyvesant, creator of this luxury apartment, died in Paris, on July 4, 1909. His first wife, a member of the influential Brooklyn clan the Pierreponts, died a few years after the construction of the Stuyvesant Apartments. In 1902 Rutherford took a second wife whose name certainly equaled his own in terms of drama -- the Countess Mathilde Elizabeth de Wassanaer [More bio details here]

Stuyvesant built a lavish mansion near Allamuchy, New Jersey called Tranquility Farms, populating the surrounding land with imported trees and animals. The mansion was consumed in fire in 1959. Although the ruins were demolished, many other ancient buildings on the property remain intact. Rusty Tagliareni has taken some fascinating, haunting photos earlier this year of the ruined area. Take a gander here.

Below: Inside the lobby of the Stuyvesant, circa 1934.

For further reading
There's a great many books on the history of New York real estate. Definitely invaluable to me this time was Elizabeth Collins Cromley's 'Alone Together: A History of New York's Early Apartments' and also Steven Gaines' 'The Sky's The Limit'. I learned about the inestimable Mrs. Custer from Shirley A. Leckie's book 'Elizabeth Bacon Custer and the Making of a Myth.'

Photos above courtesy the Library of Congress

"New York was his town, and it always would be...”

2011-11-21T10:59:00.002-05:00

I hope you all caught part one of PBS's Woody Allen documentary last night. Part of the American Masters series, it was a beautiful tribute, not just to the filmmaker, but to 70s New York, and in particular, Woody's old neighborhood -- Midwood, Brooklyn.

The second part concludes this evening at 9pm EST. I'll be on Twitter during the broadcast (@boweryboys) posting trivia and little pertinent factoids if you'd like to follow along.

Tomorrow I'll have notes, additional information and further reading regarding last week's podcast on the Stuyvesant Apartments.

The Stuyvesant, New York's first apartment building: Imported luxury style for a new middle class

2011-11-18T10:52:00.005-05:00

The creation of 'acceptable' communal living: The Stuyvesant Flats, at 142 East 18th Street, designed by Richard Morris Hunt, photographed by Berenice Abbott.

PODCAST Well, we're movin' on up....to the first New York apartment building ever constructed. New Yorkers of the emerging middle classes needed a place to live situated between the townhouse and the tenement, and the solution came from overseas -- a daring style of communal and affordable living called the 'apartment' or 'French flat'.

The city's first was financed by Rutherford Stuyvesant, an old-money heir with an unusual story to his name. He hired one of the upper class's hottest architects to create an apartment house, called the Stuyvesant Apartments, with many features that would have been shocking to more than a few New Yorkers of the day.

The building's first tenants were sometimes well-known, often artists and publishers, and almost all of them with a fascinating story to tell. Listen in to hear about the vanguard first renters of this classic, long-gone building.

You can tune into it below, download it for FREE from iTunes or other podcasting services, or get it straight from our satellite site.

Or listen to it here:
The Bowery Boys: The First Apartment Building

I have been unable to find any portraits of Mr. Rutherford Stuyvesant (aka Stuyvesant Rutherford), the man who financed the Stuyvesant for $100,000. However I have found a picture of Mrs. Rutherford Stuyvesant, who doesn't look like the kind of lady to mettle around in her husband's affairs. She would not have found the apartments which bore her name very accomodating. Many, many others did. (Courtesy LOC)

The tenacious Elizabeth 'Libby' Custer, photo taken in 1876, the year her husband was killed at the Battle of Little Bighorn. Mrs. Custer moved into Stuyvesant and successfully led her crusade to rehabilitate her husband's reputation.

Maggie Custer Calhoun, younger sister to General Custer, lived with her sister-in-law at the Stuyvesant before embarking on a successful career as an elocutionist.

The landscape painter Worthington Whittredge also resided here. In fact, he beamed about it in his autobiography: "I was one of the first to subscribe for an apartment in this house, which was to be erected in 18th Street near Third Avenue and Stuyvesant Square."

Earlier in his career, Whittredge posed as George Washington while Emanuel Leutze painted 'Washington Crossing The Delaware'. (Worthington is quite comfortable on both sides of the easel The painting below is by William Merritt Chase.)

In its later years, the Stuyvesant was used as the set for a pivotal scene in the Oscar-nominated film noir 'Kiss of Death' starring Richard Widmark. Needless to say, this sort of activity very rarely went on at the Stuyvesant.

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If you lived here, you'd be home by now....

2011-11-17T10:06:00.001-05:00

The Navarro Flats, once at Seventh Avenue and 59th Street, was an early pioneer of luxury apartment living along Central Park South. Although this stunner, by Spanish architect José Francisco de Navarro, is long gone, it set the pace for acceptable living on the park's outskirts. Tomorrow, I'll present another vanished classic of the apartment scene, one of the first buildings to indoctrinate New Yorkers on the joys of luxury communal living. The new podcast will be ready for download by this evening!

By the way, the Navarro had some very well-known financial troubles, more of which you can read about here.

Pic courtesy NYPL

Museum mania: the refurbished New York Historical Society, and a stunning debut at the Brooklyn Navy Yard

2011-11-15T11:40:00.003-05:00

Anchors Aweigh: A museum finally opens in one of Brooklyn's most restricted outposts

The Brooklyn Navy Yard finally got the museum it deserves this past weekend with the opening of BLDG 92: Brooklyn Navy Yard Center, a badly needed introduction to this long-restricted yet important component of New York history.

The environmentally-friendly new center is affixed to the 1858 Marine Commandant’s residence in one of the city's better old-new hybrids, and visitors are constantly and playfully reminded of the building's forward-thinking approach. (Bathrooms supplied with rainwater!) But it's the history of the Navy Yard -- within the context of Brooklyn's own history -- that's the main attraction here.

The first floor provides an exhaustive but well-spun timeline, weaving the Navy Yard's beginnings into the context of America's own naval history. On opening weekend, there was a sailor and a Rosie the Riveter-type on hand, and even they seemed delighted to play around with the interactive consoles. The second floor further describes the day-to-day workings, with kooky artifacts (old whiskey bottles!) and curious trivia (the Yard was once overrun with cats!) mounted to the walls.

On the third floor is a display on the Navy Yard in wartime, its closure in the 1960s and its transformation into an enclosed industrial park. While I hardly found its first-floor displays of modern products produced at the Yard to be awe inspiring, it's balanced by a moving, even disquieting display of photography on the third floor. The show 'War Photographers', is in memory of Tim Hetherington, the photojournalist (and co-director of the film Restrepo) killed in Libya several months ago. Both he and the gallery's curator Christopher Anderson have a unique connection to the Navy Yards that reinforces this once mysterious place as a vital part of the city today.

Given that admission is free (I believe for the next few weeks, but possibly longer, check their website for more info), this is pretty much a must-see for history buffs and a seamless blend of displays for adults and children. Imagine what this kind of ingenuity could do for the nearby Admirals Row?!

If any place needed a thorough renovation, it was the New York Historical Society. The museum, one of the city's longest enduring cultural institutions, contains New York's greatest treasures. Until recently, however, it's been a tad unpleasant to enjoy many of them.

Not that the Historical Society hasn't put on spectacular exhibits and lectures in the past. For instance, I consider Alexander Hamilton show from 2004 one of my inspirations for creating this podcast and blog in the first place. But the exhibit spaces were often stuffy with a lack of open space, with oversized exhibits twisting down corridors. The museum's prized artifacts were often hard to find or dimly presented.

The lavish new first-floor renovation dispenses with any further obscurity. Here in plain day are all the greatest hits of the museum, boldly presented on the wall or within nooks under foot. In fact, one modern treasure -- Keith Haring's whimsical ceiling from the Pop Shop -- hangs above the ticket booth. To find this just several feet from Gouverneur Morris's wooden leg and the dueling guns of Hamilton and Aaron Burr makes for a grand and innovative statement.

Finally, the NYHS makes a hard turn for the modern. The Robert H. Smith Auditorium now shows 'New York Story', whisking through New York history with lighting effects, constantly moving screens and a projection of almost IMAX-like proportions. (I was genuinely surprised we didn't get those 4-D effects like rain mist and soap bubbles, but then that would ruin the fancy new auditorium seating.)

A new 'sculpture court' showcases a spectacular rarity (a Revolutionary-War era Torah) while the children's museum downstairs has been heavily revised and seems a genuinely fun experience. A scarlet-hued first-floor gallery presents the NYHS's greatest paintings more accessibly than before. Upstairs are three new exhibitions, and of course, still on the fourth is the quirky, oddly charming Henry Luce III Center for the Study of American Culture, essentially the most meticulously arranged attic in the city.

For more information visit their website: New York Historical Society. The museum is open until 8pm on Friday nights and now you can dine at a Stephen Starr restaurant there, Caffe Storico.

J. Edgar Hoover parties at New York's hottest nightclub

2011-11-11T15:44:00.004-05:00

Work hard, play hard: The FBI director in his early days

There are at least three scenes in the new Clint Eastwood-directed J. Edgar Hoover biopic 'J. Edgar' set in New York, one of which might surprise you.

The first features Hoover on Ellis Island, but he's hardly there to greet new arrivals. The FBI director's early career was spent ferreting out and deporting anarchists, and his biggest target was Emma Goldman. On October 27, 1919, Goldman was put on trial at Ellis -- in the film, the Statue of Liberty stands at odds in the background -- and she was eventually expelled from the United Statues using a tenuous interpretation of the status of her American citizenship.

The second scene, depicting the rural Bronx of 1933, typified Hoover's career in the 1930s as a stiffly facaded embodiment of law enforcement. Here the movie envisions the arrest of Bruno Hauptmann, accused kidnapper of the child of Charles Lindburgh. Hoover's interest in the case represented an expansion of federal powers for the agency, even if Hoover's actual involvement is questionable.

But it's the third view of old New York that I found more intriguing. Hoover was a teetotaler early in life and demanded his agents aspire to clean, moral living. So its interesting that he -- and his companion Clyde Tolson -- were regular habitues at New York's hottest nightclub of the 1930s -- the Stork Club.

Sherman Billingsley, a former bootlegger, would have been made Hoover's enemy list during Prohibition. Instead, he regularly hosted the FBI director as his swanky club at 3 East 53rd Street (at Fifth Avenue).

Hoover schmoozed here with people who were useful to him, journalists like Walter Winchell who assisted with the capture of most-wanted criminals from his banquette in the Cub Room. The unscrupulous columnist was instrumental in the surrender of Louis "Lepke" Buchalter, leader of the mob's assassination unit Murder Inc., and helped play up the image of Hoover's G-Men to his millions of readers. In return, Hoover sometimes provided Winchell with FBI employees as bodyguards or drivers.

Winchell and others considered the Stork Club an invaluable nexus of social connections, and Hoover too made it his hangout when he was in town, often downing champagne and chatting with glitterati. The director was so associated with the nightclub in the 1930s, Tolson at his side, that adversaries sometimes called him 'the Stork Club detective'.

In a telling incident a few years later, in 1951, iconic entertainer Josephine Baker was denied service at the Stork Club. She filed a complaint with the police department, and supporters organized a protest outside the nightclub (pictured at right). When it was recommended that Hoover intervene on the behalf of Baker, he replied, "I don't consider this to be any of my business." [source]

Here's a collection of photos of the Stork Club with musical accompaniment. Mr. Hoover appears in one image around minute 2:40:

Stork Club logo courtesy Daddy O's Martini blog

The week New York smelled more awful than usual

2011-11-10T11:46:00.001-05:00

Above: a typical scene during the Garbage Strike of 1911

New York street cleaners and garbage workers (sometimes referred to as 'ashcart men') went on strike on November 8, 1911, over 2,000 men walking off their jobs in protest over staffing and work conditions.

More importantly, that April, the city relegated garbage pickup to nighttime shifts only, and cleaners often worked solo. This may have been acceptable in warmer weather, but winter was approaching. At a union rally that evening, a union representative proclaimed, "A 200-pound can was a mighty big load for one man to lift into a garbage wagon ....... [Our] men are already falling ill with pneumonia and rheumatism and ... they demanded the right to work in the sunlight and the warmer weather of the daytime."

By Nov. 11, garbage was heaped along street corners, and coal ash swirled into the street, creating a blackened, smelly stew in the streets. The city brought in temporary workers to carry off the more egregious piles of filth away, but harangues and violence by union protesters required they be protected by police.

New Yorkers had lived through such a strike before, as recently as 1907, but strikers found little public support this time around. Newspapers, little sympathetic to the strikers, highlighted the growing threat of disease and the perceived selfishness of the workers. "The right to strike of public employees, who enjoy the advantage of being listed in the civil service, is more than doubtful," said the New York Times.

During bouts between strikebreakers and police, over two dozen people were injured and one man was even killed by a falling chimney. Meanwhile, Mayor William Jay Gaynor was resolute in rejecting the cleaners demands. The efforts of the workers failed, and many went back to their jobs the next week, some heavily penalized for their participation in the strike.

Below: the city shipped in workers from out of town to sweep the streets during the strike

Forgotten New York, city explorations, with a new look!

2011-11-09T12:45:00.000-05:00

I interrupt this blog to insert an endorsement for one of my favorite New York City resources. We got our start here at The Bowery Boys: NYC History over five years ago, and the folks over at Forgotten New York were the first to provide links to our website and podcasts. We are continually grateful for their support. Hopefully, if you've reading this, you're probably already familiar with their work (including their invaluable guide book, Forgotten New York: Views of a Lost Metropolis.) But they've recently redesigned and reorganized their website, so I encourage you to check them out again if it's been awhile.

Forgotten New York is an addictive urban archaeology source, with regular tours of neighborhoods and photo essays that cover the area's history, architecture and culture. I also highly consider trying out one of their guided tours -- comprehensive, exhaustive and fascinating, although not for the weak of sole. Their newest tour this weekend (more information here) explores Manhattan's Hudson Riverfront, from the Battery to the Intrepid!

Fight of the Century: Madison Square Garden, March 8, 1971

2011-11-08T10:35:00.003-05:00

It might have saturated the media with mountains of preemptive hype (such as the spectular Life Magazine cover above), but few would argue that the 'Fight of the Century' at Madison Square Garden didn't live up to its high expectations. On the date of that much anticipated battle, a packed Garden watched as Joe Frazier become the first man to beat Muhammad Ali. A recent countdown of the greatest moments in Madison Square Garden ranked the fight as the third greatest event in the venue's history.

Frazier recollected later: "At the time they believed he [Ali] was the greatest, but I was a little piece of leather well put together."

Frazier died yesterday in Philadelphia at age 67.

Courtesy LIFE Magazine

On 'The Band Wagon': Grand glamour in a Great Depression

2011-11-07T12:18:00.004-05:00

How about a little music for your Monday? I was flipping through some old photographs in the New York Public Library's Performing Arts/Billy Rose Theatre Division archive and came across some striking images from the musical 'The Band Wagon', which opened on Broadway eighty years ago.

The stage musical inspired a more famous Vincent Minnelli film, through the original was also a success when it debuted at the New Amsterdam Theatre in June 1931, a glittering, bejeweled distraction bowing in one of the worst years of the Great Depression. America was hit with staggering unemployment that year (15.9 percent), unsettled by a springtime banking crisis and paralyzed by a near-stagnant Congress. New York state was so badly hit that Governor Franklin Delano Roosevelt, using emergency powers, set up an $20 million unemployment fund, one of the first of its type in America and a harbinger of programs he would employ as president.

I mention this strangely familiar backdrop to underscore how spectacularly luxurious these 'Band Wagon' sets must have been to audiences in 1931. This was a time when entertainment was becoming ever more escapist, more refined. These sets reflected the allure of musical revue as a ravishing fantasy, echoed in the songs by Arthur Schwartz and Howard Dietz. Backstage, however, the show's producers were panicking. Theaters were closing and ticket prices were being slashed (primo orchestra seats for $2.50!) as the financial crisis infiltrated every aspect of the New York entertainment business. 'The Band Wagon' closed in January 1932; as did a great many Broadway productions that year, almost two-thirds of them.

But in 1931, Fred Astaire and his sister Adele were still hoofin' it here. Amongst the other dancing tuxedos of 'The Band Wagon' was another star, Frank Morgan, who would sweep off to Hollywood by the end of the decade to portray the Wizard of Oz.

These sets were designed by Albert R. Johnson, who decorated Broadway stages well into the 1960s.

Had you been one of those cashpoor audience members who scored a ticket to a performance, this song would have helped you forget your troubles:

Pictures courtesy the NYPL Billy Rose Theatre Division

'Stieglitz and His Artists' now at the Metropolitan Museum: New York City's obsession with modern art begins here

2011-11-04T12:04:00.001-04:00

At the Metropolitan Museum of Art, several feet from the galleries that once held the museum's colossally successful Alexander McQueen show, sits a fascinating new show that could be described as a hard sell. While exploring the galleries, I had many rooms to myself, a far cry from being sandwiched into the McQueen rooms with thousands of other people, gawking amazed at dresses made of feathers. 'Stieglitz and His Artists' will not inspire buzz, but it will delight New York history lovers.

Alfred Stieglitz (at right, photographed by Steichen) is one of America's great masters of photography, pairing reality and romanticism to frame our perception of modern life in the Gilded Age. His images of New York are iconic, severe, haunting, often luminous. But this isn't a show about these talents.

Stieglitz was also an early connoisseur and a patron of burgeoning new ideas about art. The Met's new show 'Stieglitz and His Artists: Matisse to O'Keeffe' bears witness to his bold curation of what would become modern art in its early incarnation.

It's so exact in its presentation that it makes for only a fair artistic experience. But as an abstract diorama of a particular moment in New York history, it's dynamic, the kind of show that demands you strap on an Audio Guide and take in everything within context. For a museum that excels in both art and history, this show combines both.

Most of the art here once hung in a small gallery owned by Stieglitz at 291 Fifth Avenue (at 31st Street), once the studio of photographer Edward Steichen, creator of my favorite photograph of New York City ever -- 1904's 'The Flatiron', of which two prints are on display here. Stieglitz wanted to both educate and dazzle, violently rebelling against common artistic tastes, dominated at this time by the Met itself. (The curators don't shy at poking fun at themselves in depicting Stieglitz's distaste for the museum.)

Stieglitz's gallery was the first in America to feature Pablo Picasso, Paul Cezanne, Henri Matisse and Auguste Rodin, pieces that in total would fetch billions of dollars on the art market today. Back then, they were hardly seen as financial opportunities. The art stunned and confused people, this being the days before the great Armory Show of 1913, which would permanently inject modern art into the lives of New Yorkers.

Despite the subtitle, the show primarily draws its focus onto Stieglitz's less famous contributors, with individual galleries devoted to Marsden Hartley, John Marin, and Arthur Dove. These may be less interesting to casual museum goers, but it's here that the show hits its stride as a historical document of early American taste and experimentation.

Despite the spacious rooms of the Met, it's with these lesser marquis names that you'll get the feel of what it might have been like to enter Stieglitz's galleries, the small revolutions that must have taken place with each new show. Some of this art isn't spectacular. The point of the show isn't to wow you with striking pieces but to describe a certain way of thinking at its contours. Upon his gallery walls, Stieglitz was literally asking himself, "How far can we push this? What sensibilities can we upturn?"

Not that there aren't a few well-known works mixed in here. Obviously my favorites are some of the early abstract depictions of New York, from Marin's broken-pose drawings of the Woolworth Building (one pictured at left) to Charles Demuth's mysterious 'I Saw the Figure 5 in Gold'.

Naturally the show ends with Stieglitz's greatest discovery, his own wife Georgia O'Keeffe. Known for her provocative floral and desert imagery, O'Keeffe was the subject of a number of Stieglitz gallery shows, and even the subject of her husband's own photography. The show ends with an O'Keefee painting you may not be familiar with -- her somber inspection of the East River, painted in 1928 from her room at the Hotel Shelton (at Lexington Ave and 49th Street).

As I mentioned, I'm an audio guide junkie, and this show definitely requires it unless you're well versed in the art scene of a hundred years ago. Throw on your favorite McQueen original and stroll through here some afternoon.

'Steiglitz and His Artists: Matisse to O'Keeffe' runs until January 2, 2012. Visit their site for more information.

Soooo, about that new HBO Robert Moses movie.....

2011-11-02T11:43:00.003-04:00

You've probably heard by now that Oliver Stone is preparing to make a film version of Robert Caro's 'The Power Broker', the iconic biography of New York's influential city planner Robert Moses. Several people have emailed us for our reaction to Moses's big-screen debut. (Well, small screen actually. It's an HBO film.) The 'master builder' is a regular foil in our podcasts. Our 100th episode is devoted to Moses' influence on the city.

But a movie? I'm cautiously optimistic to mildly apprehensive, as anybody should be when a classic book is adapted for the screen. 'The Power Broker' is over 1,100 pages long. For comparison sake, The Lord of the Rings is 1,216 pages, and director Peter Jackson stretched that over three long, epic films. The Caro book also charts about seven decades or so. Will the man's career -- not to mention the history of 20th century New York -- acceptably fit into a single movie?

And this presumably wouldn't be a normal bio pic, because 'The Power Broker' isn't a normal bio. The book defined Moses in the public consciousness; it both sullied and mythologized him, during his lifetime. Caro's screed is part of the Robert Moses story now. People either support its view that Moses did more harm than good to New York City, or they rebel against it.

Now take that provocative text and hand it over to a director, born and raised in New York, who has proven, time and again, to create extraordinary cinema doused in an unashamed political point of view. Stone is fearless, if not consistent; after all, his last two forays into New York were 'World Trade Center' and the sequel to 'Wall Street', films as ambitious as they were mildly received. The combination of Caro's angst and Stone's audacity will certainly be combustible.

Why now? I suspect one element that will appeal to modern audiences is the image of Moses as a man who could get things done, a phrase that Caro applies as a double-edged slogan. Moses's agile political maneuvers and his use of funds (first from the federal government, then from various public authorities) to sculpt grand projects makes the stranglehold of modern politics seem truly anemic.

If HBO does a strict adaptation, don't expect to see Jane Jacobs. She appears nowhere in the book. But I suspect they'll insert a new section into the film, as the Robert Moses vs. Jane Jacobs trope is impossible to resist. Can't you already picture a scene with young Jacobs (perhaps played by Laura Linney or Robin Wright) leading a protest against LOMAX with picketers in Washington Square? Although if they really want to put the parks commissioner against a feisty female preservationist, there's plenty of material regarding his duels in the press with Eleanor Roosevelt.

On the subject of casting, I've heard the name Frank Langella tossed around for the lead role. But he's in his 70s. The most fiery and interesting scenes -- the most filmic ones -- take place with Robert Moses in his early to mid 40s. Revisit the scene with Moses scouring the beaches of the Long Island south shore, imagining a great public beach. What tall, brawny, 40ish actor fits the bill?

I'm almost more fascinated in seeing who gets cast as the two pivotal mayors of the book -- Fiorello LaGuardia and John Lindsay. Realistically, is there any human being (excepting Danny Devito) that fits the unusual physical requirements of LaGuardia?

But perhaps the most interesting depiction will be of New York itself, as we'll certainly be greeted with the construction of mighty projects like the Triborough Bridge and devastating neighborhood killers like the Cross Bronx Expressway. How will the film convey a public uprising against Moses-style urban growth that in reality took decades to effectively organize?

I do hope the movie indulges in a little fantasy as well, depicting the city of Moses's dreams, with lower Manhattan cut through with elevated highways, New York Harbor cleaved with a bridge from Battery to Brooklyn, and miles of glorious parking lots. After all, who doesn't love a good horror movie?

Autumn Illustrated: A publishing house in Union Square

2011-11-01T10:15:00.000-04:00

Have a little fall color, courtesy a 101-year-old edition of one of America's most important childrens literary magazines. St. Nicholas Illustrated Magazine, filled with full-color artwork, contests and short stories by prominent writers like Mark Twain and Louisa May Alcott, was created by Charles Scribner's publishing company in 1873, notable for employing one of the first powerful female editors -- Mary Mapes Dodge.

By 1910, it was distributed by the Century Company, another publishing house located on Union Square, next door to the once-great Everett House. The Century's swanky office building is still around today, as a retail space for Barnes & Noble.

Magazine cover courtesy NYPL

Watch out for those naked Brooklyn lady ghosts!

2011-10-30T19:39:00.001-04:00

Above: The unusual weather this weekend left my pumpkin with an unfortunate new hairstyle.

We hope you all have a fun and safe Halloween this year! In this year's ghost-story podcast, I talked about a haunted church in Bushwick, Brooklyn. Apparently, other spirits find the neighborhood desirable. I'm reprinting an article from three years ago about one such reported sighting. The original article is here
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While doing my ghost research this week, I came across an amusing article from an 1894 edition of the New York Times, back when ghost sightings might have merited a serious investigation. (Or, in this case, not so serious.)

The location of the haunting was Brooklyn's 27th Ward in today's Bushwick area.

After charting out the notion that Bushwick is an ideal place for ghost hauntings -- a "rocky, bleak, lonesome district" loaded with cemeteries and empty houses -- the article describes the ghost in strangely sensuous terms:

"The ghost which is at present disturbing the midnight rambles ... is that of a woman, who goes about in the scantiest attire, with disheveled hair and bare feet, and falls into a fit of hysterics as soon as anyone approaches."

The ghostly vixen spooked a set of women who ran home to tell their brothers, who then brandished revolvers and set out to, uh, do what? I'm not sure guns work too well with ghosts. The cocky search party came upon the apparition which "arose from the ground in front of them and waved its long, lean arms an uttered a weird cry that chilled their blood." The brothers dropped their guns and ran home.

The next night a bolder party of 200 men reportedly went out to the ghost location, around the cemeteries on the Brooklyn/Queens border (between Knickerbocker and Irving avenues). Having no luck in locating the spirit with the posse, one man braved it alone the next night. He returned home "with a face white with terror." He had not only glimpsed the spectre, but was privy to a "serpentine dance" and "moaning wail".

They time, the locals did what anyone would do when faced with supernatural entities -- they called the police. Apparently with nothing better to do, the precinct caption dispatched 300 officers, armed with everything from guns to rusty army swords, all in an effort to confront the spirit and, apparently challenge it to a duel. One officer even donned an ill-fitting suit of armor.

Given the dramatic response, it is no surprise that some officers remained skeptical. The theory of one officer Holliday: "I'll tell you what I think it is. I think it's whisky....it will make a man see anything -- ghosts, snakes or anything else."

The entire area was covered by dozens of armed ghost hunters. However, as the New York Times drolly states, "three or four times there were cries that [the ghost] was coming, but it didn't come."

It is then decided that police might has not only scared away this ghost, but has rid all of Brooklyn of any spectral activity.

"There used to be ghosts in Brooklyn but since Superintendent Campbell took charge of the police department they have all been driven away." He fears Brooklyn's impending consolidation with New York, for "anti-ghost orders would be rescinded and our streets would be haunted day and night."

But it appears that didn't happen when the consolidation with New York came in 1898. Really, when's the last time you've seen a ghost in Brookyn? Hmmm?

You can read the entire article in all its glorious tongue-in-cheekness here.

The location of this scantily dressed spirit was right around here:

View Larger Map

The Statue of Liberty turns 125 years old: Eleven facts about the almost-comic calamity that was her 1886 dedication

2011-10-27T12:11:00.005-04:00

The Statue of Liberty officially celebrates her 125th birthday tomorrow. Technically, I suppose, it's the anniversary of her dedication, a star-studded, pomp-laden ceremony that took place on Friday, October 28, 1886. But for many months previous, she was a fierce presence in the harbor, as the copper monument was arduously stitched together from far flung pieces -- including an arm which sat in Madison Square Park for many years -- upon a contentious new pedestal by Richard Morris Hunt.

The dedication ceremony was not the sterling event of pure American patriotism that one might expect. The reality of her debut proved far more interesting:

1) The weather was totally awful that day. Nasty weather, rainy and wet, nearly wrecked the day, with the statue surrounded in mist and then a 'regular London fog'.

2) It was as much a celebration of the French as it was of the statue. Despite the rain, a contingent of 20,000 men in French uniform marched down Fifth Avenue in the morning, and the French tricolor was waved alongside the flag of the United States from virtually every window and balcony.

3) The early action took place in Madison Square Park. The official ceremony began near the Worth Monument next to Madison Square Park, with President Grover Cleveland, the statue's creator Frederic Bartholdi and other luminaries in a parade reviewing stand, enjoying marching bands in the pouring rain. Apparently, Cleveland stood in the downpour for over two hours without an umbrella. (This is most peculiar behavior, considering what is popularly believed to have happened to President William Henry Harrison a few decades previous.)

4) No respect for veterans! A minor controversy erupted involving the participation of the three remaining living veterans of the War of 1812. They had been slated to join the parade, but somebody neglected to send a carriage for them. "The Memorial Committee of the Grand Army forgot us three times. We will never appear on a public occasion again," proclaimed 90-year-old General Abram Daly.

Below: The official invitation to the inauguration ceremony.

5) Lady Liberty was covered in a gigantic French flag. After the parade, all New Yorkers, en masse, rushed towards Battery Park, ostensibly to watch the dedication ceremony (but then, of course, it was too foggy to see anything). The dignitaries, meanwhile, maneuvered a boat through crowded waters over to Bedloe's Island. They were greeted by a looming, shadowy figure draped in a gigantic, wet French flag. The effect, according to the newspapers, was one of mystery and eeriness. "[T]he nearest of the men-of-war could be seen floating like phantoms on what might either have been fog or water so far as the eye could see." [source]

6) There's only room for one Lady at this ceremony. Despite being a celebration of a large, glorious woman, there were less than a dozen actual women invited to the Bedloe's Island ceremony, of the 2,500 or so that slowly made their way to their seats. (A boat of bold suffragists did navigate close to the island.) In one way, it was for the best; it took hours for people to arrive at the island. The bandleader, the estimable Patrick Gilmore, played a bevy of marches and French folk songs until he and his musicians was soaking wet.

7) It was really too loud to be having a ceremony at all. Explosions and whistles, the "impish screech" of steamships and tugboats, filled the harbor in celebration, and nobody on Bedloe's Island could really signal to anybody to get them to stop. The dedication prayer and several speeches were drowned out. Ferdinand de Lessups, developer of the Suez Canal and head of the French delegation, dryly remarked of the noisy steamships, "Steam, which has done so much good in the world, is just now doing us a good deal of injury."

8) Unveiling fiasco! At the close of a very grand speech by New York senator William Evarts, a series of signals was to be sent to Bartholdi, holding a cord which would pull away the gigantic flag. There was a miscommunication however -- in the middle of Evarts speech -- and the cover was pulled off of Lady Liberty too early. This elicited a deafening, celebratory cry of horns, cannons and shouts from all around the harbor. Evarts, however, was still speaking. Nobody could hear him, and thus people at the ceremony actually began dispersing. Everts ended by turning to President Cleveland, who sat nearby, and uncomfortably finished his prepared remarks. Awkward!

9) No 'Enlightening the World' today. The weather was so bad that the Statue of Liberty's torch could not be illuminated, so plans for an elaborate 'pyrotechnic display' were scrapped.

10) The disaster that almost was: There were so many boats in the water -- with fog and mist still impeding visibility (as pictured above) -- that it is actually quite incredible that President Cleveland and the French dignitaries made it off of Bedloe's Island alive. In fact, the president had to transfer to a smaller boat which successfully got him to the Penn Railroad station on the New Jersey side.

11) Occupy Wall Street? The celebration didn't stop there. Parades and marching bands marched well into the evening, with apparently little crowd control. At around Broadway and Wall Street and further south to Maiden Lane, streets were so clogged that there was literally no movement for over an hour. Overhead, people shouted from rooftops and even shot off pistols. Meanwhile, further north on Canal Street, somebody actually had the wise idea of placing a cannon on a rooftop and firing it in celebration. (No word on any suspected damage.) The city's grand fireworks display did eventually take place, on November 1st.

For more information on the history of the Statue of Liberty, check out our podcast, recorded in October 2008! Download it here.

Photos courtesy Library of Congress digital archive

Was New York not haunted enough for Alfred Hitchcock?

2011-10-26T12:04:00.004-04:00

A still from 'The Wrong Man', a crime drama shot in New York in 1956. (Courtesy Empire Magainze.)

Alfred Hitchcock's innovative anthology series 'Alfred Hitchcock Presents' debuted on CBS in the fall on 1955. As a filmed dramatic series (vs. the live camera TV hits like 'I Love Lucy' and 'The Honeymooners'), the weekly mystery program brought serious cache to the medium and set the bar high for genre anthology television, to be raised four years later by 'The Twilight Zone'.

Many episodes were filmed in New York, using Broadway's rich pool of stars. The city would itself be a star of several Hitchcock films, including one released the next year in 1956. The Henry Fonda crime drama 'The Wrong Man', based on real events, concerned a jazz musician from the Stork Club falsely accused of a robbery. Most notable were its scenes shot on location at Queens City Prison in Kew Gardens.

Before beginning production on 'The Wrong Man', Hitchcock wanted to wow Warner's studio executives and reporters with a fabulous New York soiree in March, done up Hitchcock-style. That meant conjuring up many of the mystery and horror themes the director was most famous for. So, on that note, Hitch requested his publicist look for an actual New York haunted house.

Now I can tell you from doing our annual Halloween podcasts that there are no shortage of 'haunted' New York locations. But it seems the publicists had a bit of a problem locating a suitable venue -- one that could host both ambassadors from the afterworld and a haughty contingent from the film world.

According to reports, Hitchcock loved some 'abandoned wine cellars' beneath the Manhattan end of the Brooklyn Bridge. (The article doesn't clarify where these are. Perhaps they were part of George Washington's old home?) But costs to install plumbing were prohibitive. Hitchcock "wanted women among his guests in the haunted quarters and women would want washrooms," according to reports.

He next turned to a very familiar haunted home -- the Merchant's House, allegedly possessed by its former owner Gertrude Tredwell. It was ideal, but the home owners were less than thrilled at hosting a saucy industry party and rebuffed the offer.

Frustrated, Hitchcock's publicists even put an ad in the paper, looking for ghost-filled venues. After a few disappointing offers -- including one in Jackson Heights, Queens, but the master of suspense feared his party guests would never venture that far -- he settled on a rustic old townhouse at 7 East 80th Street, right off the park. Not haunted, but plenty 'cobwebby', according to the press.

The party went off, with Hitch, without a hitch. The 'haunted-house' party included tombstone-shaped 'Carte de Mort' menus with a variety of macabre selections, including Corpse Croquette, Vicious-Soisse, Suicide Suzettes, Gibbeted Giblets, Ghoulish Goulash and "Fresh-cut Lady Fingers (in season)". (Revel in the rest of the menu here.)

Hitchcock received a true fright at the end of the year when 'The Wrong Man' was finally released and promptly flopped at the box office. It would be his final film for Warner Bros., whose executives at least got a kooky party out of the deal.

Notes from the Podcast (#130) Haunted Histories of NYC

2011-10-25T11:14:00.004-04:00

We had a terrific time recording this year's ghost-story show -- Haunted Histories of New York. Here's some extra details about our four subjects that were left out of this week's show.

(By the way, if you wouldn't mind, please vote for us in this year's 2011 Podcast Awards. We're in the Best Travel Podcast section. Thanks!)

Liberty Island and the Captain Kidd's treasure
If indeed there was treasure buried on Bedloe's Island (today's Liberty Island), William Kidd and his motley crew would have concealed it there under the gaze of the island's owner. In the 1690s, when Kidd would have lived in New York, the island was owned by a woman -- Mary Bedlow Smith.

The small island property was originally owned by a Dutchman Isaack Bedloo, who remained in the harbor after New Amsterdam became New York in 1664. He even Anglicized his name, as evidenced by his daughter's name. She sold the island in 1732 to one of the most wealthy and powerful men in all the British colony -- Adolphe Philipse. From there, the island was often used as a quarantine station or 'pest house' to shelter those with communicative disease. Many hundreds of afflicted were thrown here in the mid-17th century, and many died here.

Below: A map of Bedloe's Island in 1766, before the construction of Fort Wood. The map is strangely situated, but I believe that the stone where Kidd's treasure was allegedly buried would have near the pointed end. (Courtesy the National Park Service.)

The Holy Ghost -- Most Holy Trinity, Bushwick, Brooklyn
Some believe that Most Holy Trinity's beloved Monsignor Michael May haunts the present halls of the church. On the occasion of May's funeral in 1895 -- he had died on the second floor of the adjoining rectory -- the church nearly experienced a tragedy from which it would have surely never recovered.

A New York Times article from February 1895 reveals that a chronic weakness was discovered to the building's architecture. As I mentioned in the podcast, vast, old passages exist underneath the church, extending to adjacent buildings. These passages had been used for safety during anti-Catholic attacks in the 1850s and even as safe havens for escaping Southern slaves on the Underground Railroad in the 1860s.

Monsignor May was so beloved that almost 5,000 people arrived for his funeral, the most the church had ever seen at one time. I'll let the article reveal the potential horror of this situation: "Carpenters and masons at work on the vault in the basement discovered that the floor above them had sunk several inches in the centre, and that the cross beams had split, as had the big girders supporting the cross beams."

The floor actually begin to sway in front of the masons. Within moments, the crowded church would have caved in, easily killing hundreds. What became one of the biggest gatherings in the church history would have instead become an unspeakable catastrophe.

The workmen advised the clergy to evacuate the center aisle and then worked briskly to create temporary braces. The crisis, thankfully, was averted.

The Lonely Acrobat -- Ghosts At The Palace Theatre

The tragic acrobatic act at the Palace Theatre that inspired the venue's most famous ghost story is veiled in mystery and misunderstanding. There's many falsehoods about the incident that Tom successfully dispelled, but there's one he missed. Most modern retellings call the acrobat in question Louis Borsolino. His actual name, according to local papers in the troupe's hometown of Reading, PA, list hims as Louis Bossalina, pictured at right.By the way, the name of the particular trick that Bossolina was doing at the Palace Theatre that fateful day? It was called the Death Loop. He is popularly rumored to have died from the accident, an unsurprising assumption considering how many people saw the fall, knowing the name of the failed trick. In reality, Bassolina survived the ordeal and was released from the hospital nine days later. To be clear, he didn't die at the Palace; he went on to perform with the troupe until they disbanded in 1937.

He lived a perfectly normal life outside the spotlight, for over three more decades, before dying at age 61, in August 1963. If he truly haunts the Palace today, then the torment must have possessed him so greatly during life that he continually returns for repeat performances!

As you heard in the podcast, joining Louis' ghost at the Palace is an apparition of one of the theater's greatest stars. Here's a recording of Judy Garland's curtain call from her very last performance at the Palace Theatre on August 26, 1967. Judy would be dead within two years of a drug overdose. I wonder if anybody has ever seen the ghosts of Louis and Judy on the same night?

The Tale of Two Houses -- Kreischer Mansion
The famously haunted Kreischer Mansion was built for a son of brick mogul Balthazar Kreischer. He made his wealth using Staten Island clay to produce the building materials for a growing city, and he created a company town (appropriately called Kreischerville) near the Arthur Kill. But Kreischer got his start in the Lower East Side -- on a street that is no longer there.

Balthazar arrived in New York in 1836 and quickly excelled in construction, in the years following the Great Fire which destroyed hundreds of structures in the heart of the old city. By 1845, Kreischer entered into the brick-making business with one Charles Mumpeson. Although they had already discovered the potential of Staten Island clay -- their company was called New York and Staten Island Fire Brick and Clay Retort Works -- their original factory was at 58 Goerck Street at Delancey Street.

The odd little street, which ran parallel to the East River from Grand Street to East 3rd, was a vestige of an abandoned city plan, well before the great Commissioners Plan of 1811. Casimir Goerck was the surveyor for the failed plan, working with renown designer Joseph-Francois Mangin, best known for working on New York's new City Hall building. The plan was discarded, but two small Lower East Side streets from the plan were eventually used -- Goerck Street and Mangin Street.

At right: The corner of Goerck Street and Rivington Street in 1939 (NYPL)

Kreischer maintained his brick factory here for years before moving the bulk of his operations to Staten Island. Goerck Street would disappear entirely with the construction of housing developments in the 1940s. A tiny vestige of Mangin Street, however, still hangs on, underneath the Williamsburg Bridge.

Haunted Histories of New York: What horrors lie beneath the foundations of the city's treasured landmarks?

2011-10-21T11:10:00.003-04:00

Most Holy Trinity in Bushwick, Brooklyn, shrouded in shadow, a place where the ghosts of former clergy are alleged to lurk the halls and other spirits may torment the nearby school.

PODCAST What mischievous phantoms and malevolent spirits haunt the streets of New York City today? In our fifth annual podcast of local ghost stories, we bring you the histories of four very haunted places from three boroughs and a small island in the harbor.

The legend of Captain Kidd's buried treasure -- alleged to be buried in the New York region -- inspires our first ghost tale of two ambitious soldiers on a quest during a full moon, on an island that today contains the Statue of Liberty! Meanwhile, out in Brooklyn, a congregation gathers at a new Catholic church, but maybe they shouldn't have built it over a graveyard. Do the spirits of dead clergy haunt the halls today?

The Palace Theatre in Manhattan has hosted the greatest names in entertainment -- and continues to play host to the undead. And finally, we hesitate to bring you the malevolent events at the Kreischer Mansion in Staten Island. What is it about this house that has inspired stories for over a hundred years, and did ghosts from a century ago have something to do with a horrifying and gory crime that took place here just a few years ago?

You can tune into it below, download it for FREE from iTunes or other podcasting services, or get it straight from our satellite site.

Or listen to it here:
The Bowery Boys: Haunted Histories of New York

Click here for more notes on this podcast.

Bedloe's Island: Below is a depiction of its southern shore in 1831. It was on the northern end during this period that two sentries at Fort Wood had a most unfortunate encounter while searching for buried treasure. (Image courtesy NYPL)

Legends of Captain Kidd's treasure have possessed New Yorkers for centuries. It's rumored that he killed one or two of his men and buried their bodies with the treasure to 'guard' it. Do these bodies lurk underneath the shadow of the Statue of Liberty? (NYPL)

Most Holy Trinity in Bushwick, Brooklyn, site of alleged hauntings from a variety of spirits.

The Palace Theater rises over Times Square, hosting the greats of vaudeville. But the stage has also attracted its share of ghost sightings over the year, including that of one very tenacious acrobat.

The legendary Judy Garland appeared here in the 1960s. Does she still lurk backstage today?

The Tale of Two Houses: The Kreischer Mansion in southern Staten Island, famous among generations of children as being an iconic haunted house, was actually once two houses. Or rather, a parallel house, mirroring the other in every way, once stood nearby, home built for the sons of a prominent German brick maker.

The mansion in the mid 1980s (Courtesy Flickr/Revup67)

Video filmed of the Kreischer Mansion in 1983:

In 2003, some amateur ghost hunters were allowed to photograph the property, escorted by the house's caretaker at the time. From description, I believe the caretaker is the same person who committed a gory and terrible murder here just a few years later!

Home & Garden 1691: Captain Kidd's home on Pearl Street

2011-10-20T10:46:00.001-04:00

Kidd's swanky new home on Pearl Street, which he shared with his high society wife and two lovely daughters. It was near the eastern gate to New York's northern wall, later to become Wall Street. In later years, landfill will would extend east, removing old Pearl Street residences from the waterfront.

Tomorrow's podcast will feature a spooky urban folktale about the buried treasure of Captain William Kidd. For a little background on Kidd's life, I'm reprinting this article from January 2010. (Original is here.)

In our 2009 podcast on Trinity Church, I refer to New Yorker and Trinity Church benefactor William Kidd as one of the most notorious pirates of the Atlantic Ocean. Now I feel that might have been a bit of slander.

It is true that Kidd, forever known to generations of seafarers as Captain Kidd, was vilified by the British for illicit profiteering and eventually hanged in London on May 23, 1701. But Kidd himself fought off the charges voraciously, and today historians believe Kidd was scapegoated and was himself following orders of the governor of the New York colony himself -- Richard Coote, the Earl of Bellomont. Yes, the man who tried to annul the charter of Trinity Church!

I'll save the details of Kidd's exploits for various pirate-themed blogs. Kidd may have been prosecuted unfairly, but the legend that arose around his real or imagined exploits makes him one of New York City's most notorious residents of the 17th century. Not only was Kidd one of early New York's most wealthy residents, but almost without question he had one of the best views in the city from his bedroom.

According to historian Richard Zacks, New York was "the pirate port of choice in the English colonies in North America" in 1690s, with its rich harbor and its relatively multi-cultural port. Still a volatile colony amongst England's land possessions, it was easy to walk around without harassment and recruit other like minded scallywags for upcoming jobs.

Below: A fanciful sketch by artist Howard Pile (dated Nov. 1894) for Harpers Magazine, with fort and windmill also in background [source NYPL]

Kidd was an employee of the Crown, a privateer essentially hired to capture pirates and any foreign vessels that got in England's way. He was based in New York for many of the same reasons more illicit sea captains were here -- opportunities, money and a suitable harbor for his vessel (Kidd's was called the Adventure Galley).

He came to New York in 1691 and soon married Sarah Oort, a woman with extraordinary bad luck. Her first two husbands had died, one at sea, and after Kidd's execution, she would then marry a fourth time. William and Sarah would have two daughters who would marry well into New York society despite their father's notoriety.

Despite his career, Kidd was considered a respectable New York gentleman -- much, I imagine, because of his wife's standing from her prior two marriages. Also, their digs weren't bad. Although the Kidds owned several properties (again, thanks to Sarah), their primary residence was at the 119 Pearl Street (pictured at top), at the corner of Hanover and Pearl streets, a location which would have been waterfront property back in the day. It was also closely situated to Hanover Square, New York's retail district and later home of the colony's first newspapers.

The sizable home was located next to New York's old wall, a fortification that would be ripped down within the decade and replaced with the street named after it.
The Kidds home was especially lavish for the time, with "104 ounces of silverware," a healthy wine cellar and the biggest Turkish carpet in the city. Their wealth would have made them candidates for a pew at the newly built Trinity Church in 1696. Although Kidd provided equipment to help build the church, it appears Kidd himself never worshipped there. (His wife Sarah most likely did.)

Virtually no traces of this era exist in downtown Manhattan today, and the land extension east and the skyscrapers built there eradicate the view the Kidds would have had from their home.

Over a hundred years later, at the same address lived a man named Jean Victor Marie Moreau who would also influence world history: he's best known as one-time right-hand-man of Napoleon Bonaparte, banished for betrayal in 1804 and sent to America, where he lived for a time at 119 Pearl.

You can read a nice, lengthy piece about Kidd and his New York connections here at Maritime History.

Podcast Rewind: Spooky Stories of New York

2011-10-18T09:53:00.001-04:00

Above: the Algonquin Hotel, home to those bawdy rakes of the Round Table during the 1920s. You may find yourself meeting one of them even today.

A special illustrated version of our ghost-story podcast, Spooky Stories of New York (Episode #65). is now available on our NYC History Archive feed. Just hit play and images of our topic will appear on any compatible media player

By popular demand, we return to the creepier tales of New York City history, ghost tales and stories of murder and mayhem, all of them at some point involving great American icons -- Alexander Hamilton, P.T. Barnum, Dorothy Parker and Mark Twain. Featuring a murder at a Manhattan well, a bloody slaying in rural Staten Island, the lingerings of New York's most fabulous undead, and the most haunted home in Greenwich Village!

Download it for FREE from iTunes or other podcasting services, or you can listen to the cleaned up audio version (without visuals) right here: Spooky Stories of New York

Original version released Oct. 10, 2008. Picture above courtesy the New York Public Library/Wurts Brothers.
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AND ARRIVING THIS FRIDAY: Our fifth annual 'haunted' podcast, retelling famous folklore and stories of the supernatural, all with a basis in actual New York City history. Our prior shows include the one listed above, as well as the original Ghost Stories of New York, Haunted Tales of New York, and last year's Supernatural Stories of New York.

Open House NY: Ten unique destinations, no reservations

2011-10-14T09:09:00.002-04:00

Open House New York, throwing wide the doors of dozens of previously unavailable landmarks, begins its tenth year this Saturday morning. And if you're like me, you've once again forgot to make any reservations to any of the hottest tickets. Several of them are already sold out.

But do not fret! There actually seem to be many more free, no-reservation places involved this year, so many one need only visit Open House's interactive map to plan out a day of free events.

Better still, with some creativity and possibly an unlimited Metrocard, you can observe the city as you've never seen it. Not as skyscrapers, but a city of lighthouses, country homes, and endless beautiful vistas with nary a ticketholders-only line in sight.

NOTE: While there are no 'reservations' per se, there is 'pre-registration' for some venues in order to get into them for free. Visit Open House New York's website for more information.

1 Wave Hill (Bronx)
Not the easiest place to get to, but well worth a couple subway transfers. Wave Hill in the Bronx is one of my favorite places in New York. (I don't know why, but I always feel like I'm visiting the set of an English costume drama when I'm here.) This sumptuous mid-19th century manor (a summer home for Mark Twain) has a beautiful grounds and gardens, but it's the view of the Hudson River and the Palisades that are worth the trip.
Saturday, October 15: 09:00 am - 04:30 pm
Sunday, October 16: 09:00 am - 04:30 pm
Guided tours do need a reservation. Information here.

2 TWA Flight Center, JFK Airport (Queens)
If you're willing to brave JFK Airport on a Sunday afternoon, Eero Saarinen's fanciful terminal is open for viewing. Get in touch with your inner stewardess and check out the fantastic architecture here (and lament the passing of the nearby I.M. Pei-designed terminal, soon to be demolished.)
Sunday, October 16: 01:00 pm - 04:00 pm

3 Lighthouse Tender LILAC (Manhattan)
Moored to a dock near Tribeca, this former Coast Guard steamship from 1933 is open for exploration, ready for you to pose for your newest Facebook picture, standing gallantly in its wheelhouse.
Saturday, October 15: 01:00 pm - 06:00 pm
Sunday, October 16: 01:00 pm - 04:00 pm
Information here

4 Seguine Mansion (Staten Island)
If you really want to feel like you're getting out of the city, the Seguine Mansion in southern Staten Island offers a dislocating voyage to the bucolic 19th century. There are many great old homes open for viewing this year (including previous recommends like the Morris-Jumel Mansion and the Bartel-Pell Mansion) and the Seguine, home of a former railroad baron, is among the best preserved and most secluded. They also have horses!
Saturday, October 15 : 10:00 am, 1:00 pm, 3:00 pm
Information here

5 The Arsenal (Manhattan)
I feel like the Arsenal, older than the Central Park which surrounds it, never gets its proper due. This Sunday gives you a good excuse to give this Gothic Revival castle -- and home to both New York's first menagerie and natural history museum -- a little attention.
Sunday, October 16: 10:00 am - 04:00 pm
Information here

6 Church Of St. Paul & St. Andrew (Manhattan)
There are a great many historic churches open for viewing this weekend, but if you haven't seen this building's almost whimsical Renaissance architecture (designed by R. H Robinson, early skyscraper architect), it's worthy of the stop.
Saturday, October 15: 12:30 pm - 05:00 pm
Information here

7 Henrick I. Lott House (Brooklyn)
What's the newest, oldest house in New York? Get a little sneak peek at this newly refurbished home, virtually unchanged since most of it was constructed in 1800, incorporating an even older structure from 1720. This building's been around longer than most of the stuff I write about on this blog. Take a look before it officially opens to the public.
Saturday, October 15: 11:00 am - 03:00 pm
Sunday, October 16: 11:00 am - 03:00 pm
Information here

8 Prison Ship Martyr's Monument (Brooklyn)
Sure, you can visit this memorial to the Revolutionary War anytime you like here in Fort Greene Park. But this weekend, there'll be somebody on hand to give you some insight into this Stanford White-designed marvel, honoring the American patriots who were kept, tortured and killed in decrepit prison vessels in nearby Wallabout Bay during the war.
Saturday, October 15: 11:00 am - 03:00 pm
Sunday, October 16: 11:00 am - 03:00 pm
Information here

9 Brotherhood Synagogue (Manhattan)
This beautiful building has always been a tad disorienting. Still looking as it did in the mid-19th century as a Quaker Meeting House, it's now a stunning synagogue, right off of Gramercy Park.
Sunday, October 16: 12:00 pm - 04:00 pm
Information here

10 Maple Grove Cemetery (Queens)
Just in time for Halloween, this quiet, landmarked cemetery in Kew Gardens will play host to Spirits Alive on Saturday, featuring people in period costume, depicting residents of the cemetery. People in period costume -- in a graveyard, via a self-guided tour -- is always a must-see for me. I will push you out of the way to get to this. (Just kidding. There's plenty of room at ole Maple Grove!)
Saturday afternoon 2 pm - 4 pm (other sources say it lasts until 6pm)
Also: reservations for tours on Sunday
Information here

Park life: The anniversary of a name change in Chinatown

2011-10-13T10:31:00.002-04:00

Next week begins 'ghost stories' week on the blog, but I need to make one more trip to Chinatown, the topic of the last podcast. As I just wrote about Columbus Day last week, I would be remiss if I skipped this very coincidental date in history. It was exactly one hundred years ago yesterday that the name of Mulberry Bend Park was officially changed to Columbus Park.

The park, of course, originally replaced the most decrepit of Five Points' slums, allowing a sliver of greenery and sunlight to slip into the overly dense neighborhood. It took the city years to wrestle the original rundown tenements from their owners. "In its place will come trees and grass and flowers," proclaimed its chief proponent Jacob Riis. The placid, English design by Calvert Vaux, typical for its day, insured a park so formal that people weren't even allowed on the grass. (Today, located at the cusp of Chinatown and the Civic Center, the park is so busy and cluttered that it appears to almost have no grass at all.)

Mulberry Bend Park, named for the infamous hook in Mulberry Street to the park's east side, opened in 1897. By this time, the area was populated by a mixture of immigrants, the largest group from Italy. Italian Americans soon defined the culture of the park's surrounding streets, with obvious exception of those streets to the east dominated by Chinese businesses.

In 1911, the city explicitly declared the neighborhood's changing character, at the behest of the Italian community, by renaming the park for America's most famous Italian connection, the explorer Christopher Columbus. A crowd of 8,000 people gathered on Columbus Day that year to reopen the park under its new name.

The park now took on a more athletic character, with new track and field facilities, and on that first day with its new name, Columbus Park hosted competitions between boys from local playgrounds. "There were dashes, relay, half mile and potato races, shot puts and high jumps," reported the Sun. "Five thousand more or less enthusiastic mamas and babies and papas and little mosquitolike boys insinuated their way to the very bars of the park enclosure...and looked on at the games."

Above: Mulberry Bend Park in 1900

Podcast Awards: Cast your vote for the Bowery Boys!

2011-10-12T08:30:00.001-04:00

We were nominated this year for Best Travel Podcast in the 2011 People's Choice Podcast Awards. Thanks to everybody who submitted our show for consideration!

The voting for the awards begins today. You can visit once a day between now and next Friday, October 21. Just visit their website and click on the Bowery Boys at the bottom of the list in the category of Travel.

Of course, while you're there, support your other favorite podcasts with a vote in several other categories. There are several history themed shows in the Education category, including The History Chicks and Hardcore History.

Tom and I really, really appreciate your support. There's not a huge prize attached with this honor, but every little bit of recognition helps as I try to expand the Bowery Boys into other realms beyond the podcast and the website. Plus, you know, voting for stuff is fun!

You can cast our ballot here: Podcast Awards

(You'll be interested to note that we are up against five podcasts that are Walt Disney themed. But where would Disney be without New York, hmm?)

Above: New York women voting for the very first time, 1917. Picture courtesy the Library of Congress

That time Christopher Columbus annoyed Robert Moses

2011-10-07T13:02:00.000-04:00

Above: Columbus Circle in 1913. Robert Moses wasn't annoyed with this statue of the explorer, as far as I know, but in 1956, he placed the hideous New York Coluseum convention center next to it, marring the area for decades. (Pic by Irving Underhill, courtesy NYPL)

Christopher Columbus is among the most honored figures in New York statuary, appearing abundantly throughout the five boroughs -- standing prominently, nestled in parks and squares, peering from building features.

I've located a seemingly complete list of New York Columbus monuments, strangely enough, on a German website, inclusive even of Chris's appearance of 8th Avenue subway tiles.

While the one perched atop the column at Columbus Circle is the most famous, perhaps the most interesting one sits in Columbus Park, in Astoria, Queens. Depicting a young, robust explorer, the statue was erected here in 1941 in recognition of the area's growing Italian population. But youthful Chris was almost immediately removed to the basement of Queens Borough Hall, for fears it would get melted down in wartime scrap-metal programs. It was returned to dignity by the end of the war and has commanded the crossroads here ever since.

Had Parks Commissioner Robert Moses had his way, however, the striking, romantic monument would never have seen light of day. "We don’t think the statue looks like anything we have read about Columbus, or that as a piece of symbolism it represents anything associated with Columbus," Moses complained.

“Anything Moses doesn’t design himself, he thinks is no good.” replied Queens Borough President George U. Harvey.

Nearby you'll find a dedication plaque from the Italian Chamber of Commerce. Your eyes aren't deceiving you; it lists a dedication date of 1937. Although sculptor Angelo Racioppi had completed the work by then, the community couldn't afford the base until a few years later!

At right: Racioppi works on Astoria's Columbus as part of the WPA program.

The phantom of a great fire in Bryant Park

2011-10-06T10:49:00.000-04:00

Were you in Bryant Park yesterday? Did you happen to imagine that you sniffed a very slight whiff of smoke? It was just a ghostly reminder of one of the most famous fires in all of New York history -- the destruction of the legendary Crystal Palace exhibition hall, which sat here for five glorious years until its consumption in flame on October 5, 1858.

One of New York's most spectacular and famous buildings (modeled after a similar structure in London), the Crystal Palace housed the marvels of American technological might for display, a glimmering temple to the industrial age. Some historians speculate that the Crystal Palace was the first American building to be photographed. Inside, one could find the a model of the first operating elevator here, or cable wires that would later be used with success on the Brooklyn Bridge.

And to the area before fire safety. Amount of time it took for the Crystal Palace to be entirely destroyed? Twenty-five minutes.

Illustration courtesy NYPL

Jack Finney's 'Time And Again', preservation by sci-fi

2011-10-04T11:35:00.003-04:00

The Dakota Apartment circa the 1890s: If you arranged everything just right, could you go back to it?

The writer Jack Finney, who was born a hundred years ago this week, on October 2, 1911, turned the Dakota Apartments into a time machine in his 1970 novel 'Time And Again'. He inspired a legion of New York City history lovers (including myself) and a simple (if scientifically absurd) way of traveling in time, technically obtainable by anybody with adroit attention to detail.

Finney was hardly a New York literary figure of note. Born in Wisconsin, Finney moved to New York in the 1940s to work in advertising but detoured in to a successful short-story writer. He had already moved from New York in 1954 when a set of his serialized stories were compiled for the novel The Body Snatchers, which inspired the classic film Invasion of the Body Snatchers and its many derivatives.

Time travel and New York were common themes in his work. In the 1950 tale 'The Third Level', a man finds a mysterious concourse at Grand Central Terminal and a train that carries him to the year 1894. Almost two decades later he wrote 'The Woodrow Wilson Dime' about a bored advertising executive who enters an alternate New York universe (imagine 'Mad Men' as a science fiction.)

But Time And Again, first published in 1970, was his greatest success, a time-shifting novel short on scientific rationale, but large in nostalgia and architectural romance. The plot involves a curious scientific experiment that delivers a man back to the date January 21, 1882, to locate the sender of a mysterious letter that foretells "the destruction by fire of the entire World."

The key to the novel's success were its illustrations and photographic reproductions. Pick up an old copy today and you'll wonder why the smudged, sometimes darkened reprinted photographs would excite anyone. When I first picked it up, probably twenty years ago, that was part of the allure. The book itself had a creaky, dated presentation and a wide-open earnestness about it. It was ideal for burgeoning history lovers, never lecturing its readers. You felt you were joining Finney himself as he excitedly flipped through a stack of old photographs and imagined a reason for stepping into the images.

Perhaps that's because the science fiction behind it almost blushingly simplistic. Essentially, anyone can go back in time. All you have to do is recreate a situation exactly as it might have been at a selected date, then hypnotize yourself into thinking it into reality.

For this reason, the Dakota Apartments are chosen for the time experiment. Finney certainly chose the location due to the building's pristine, unchanged condition. (Meanwhile, as he wrote, Roman Polanski would film 'Rosemary's Baby' here, placing the structure into a far darker fantasy context.)

"We know exactly when all the apartments facing the park have stood empty, and for how long," proclaims a scientist. "Picture one of those upper apartmenets standing empty for two months in the summer of 1894. As it did. Picture our arraging -- as we are -- to sublet that very apartment for those identical months during the coming summer....I believe it may be possible this summer, just barely possible, you understand, for a man to walk out of that unchanged apartment and into that other summer."

Simply by bringing a structure and its surroundings into physical replica of the past can one actually get there. Keep in mind when this was written. Pennsylvania Station had been destroyed seven years before the publication of 'Time And Again'. The New York Landmark Preservation Commision was but a few years old. People were beginning to fight for their neighborhoods and protect aging city relics.

'Time And Again' was a manifesto for preservation. In essense, keeping an area locked in a certain place in history created some kind of metaphysical bridge. Or, more easily put, magic.

Having returned to 1882, the main character wanders the city and marvels in wonder. His adventures take him the offices of the New York World, the old City Hall Post Office and Gramercy Park.. The plot, involving jealous lovers and blackmail, incorporates actual historical detail into the adventure, although not in anyway one would consider subtle. For instance, my favorite detail of the book is easily the disembodied arm of the Statue of Liberty, sitting in Madison Square Park years before it was attached its body.

'Time And Again' is written with awe while keeping a certain distance. (Finney was no historian.) The story takes place within a snowglobe of New York more than an actual depiction of it. In other words, there are no visits to Five Points or the Lower East Side, for that matter. Later books, like Caleb Carr's 'The Alienist', would take a more technical, tour-guide approach to its descriptions. 'Time And Again' is simple in its tintype illustration of old New York but leaving someting to the imagination makes it an inspiring read, even today.

By the way, Finney wrote a sequel called From Time To Time that was published in 1996, a year after his death. The book takes place in 1911, the year of Finney's birth.

Top picture courtesy NYPL

Crazy Sober: Hatchet lady Carrie Nation vs. New York City

2011-10-03T12:53:00.006-04:00

I enjoyed the first part of the Ken Burns and Lynn Novak documentary series 'Prohibition' which debuted last night. But let's be honest, the second part -- introducing the Roaring 20s and the godfathers of organized crime -- should be far more provocative. After all, morally righteous reformers did what they believed was right for their day, but few had dynamic personalities that resonate in our imaginations today.

That is, except for Carrie Nation, that hatchet-wielding temperance terror whose unorthodox and non-peaceful displays of protest made her a national celebrity. Literally taking directives from God, Nation battle-axed her way through small Midwestern towns, protesting the sale of liquor with violent force, chopping at bartops, bottles and furniture with her signature hatchet, accompanied by a righteous choir of church ladies belting hymns while dodging splinters.

Nation was regularly arrested and fined, but under the cover of doing God's duty -- and riding a swell of anti-liquor sentiment -- she managed to continue her vicious tirade across the country, becoming the temperance movement's most colorful star. She even sold minature replicas of her well-known weapon to fund her cross-country adventures.

Nation's reputation had obviously preceded her when she arrived in New York on August 28, 1901. Law enforcement and nervous saloon owners braced for the worst. After freshening up in a suite of rooms arranged for her at the Victoria Hotel on 27th Street and Broadway, Mrs. Nation headed down to police headquarters on Mulberry Street to address the general drunkenness conditions of the city directly with police commissioner Michael Murphy.

Their exchange was not pleasant. Nation demanded to know why the city kept saloons open on Sunday. Murphy replied that it was legal to do so. She bitterly lectured back with a Bible verse; Murphy replied, "Don't quote scripture at me, Madame. Go back to Kansas and get that off on your husband."

After a few more volatile exchanges, Nation was forcefully removed from police headquarters. (Certainly, this result was one she had intended. Her press agent was waiting outside with a throng of curious onlookers.) Nation next decided to harangue the mayor and prepared to visit City Hall. When message was sent that the mayor didn't care to meet with the fiery reformer, Nation decided to do what came most naturally -- she headed for a bar, hatchet in hand.

The unfortunate establishment in her crosshairs was that owned by famed boxer John L. Sullivan, himself a celebrity of some flamboyance. Having spent the 1880s as one of America's most legendary bare-knuckle fighters, he was famously brought down (in a gloved match) by 'Gentleman' Jim Corbett in 1892. Like many boxing stars before him, Sullivan ended up in New York as a saloon owner, at 1177 Broadway, between 27th and 28th streets (at right). And right near the hotel hosting Carrie Nation!

In a bit of braggadocio, Sullivan had proclaimed to the press that if Nation ever bothered to stop by, he would "thrust her into a sewer hole."

Nation accepted the invitation, arriving by carriage and demanding Sullivan meet her out front. The famed boxer, however, refused to come outside, the New York Times even mentioning, "A shutter in one of the blinds in the room usually occupied by Mr. Sullivan was seen to move."

The mighty athlete was certainly fearful of his property being chopped to ribbons. This wasn't some Bowery dive bar, after all. But while the authorities were certainly no friends of Nation, she was a very popular symbol among New York's temperance supporters. Arresting such a known figure would have actually played into Nation's intentions.

Best to wait out the storm, I suppose. By that afternoon, Nation has left town via Grand Central, off to more wily stunts in the Midwest. Drinkers and cops alike raised a toast in relief.

---
BY THE WAY: This summer I took a trip back to Ozarks (where I'm originally from) and spent an evening in marvelous Eureka Springs, Arkansas. Carrie Nation spent her final years here, appropriately opening a boardinghouse for widows and proper ladies called Hatchet Hall. The Hall is still preserved near the center of town (pictured below) and across from a boarded-up water spring that was also named in Nation's honor. She collapsed during heated speech right up the road from Hatchet Hall in 1911 and died shortly thereafter in a Kansas hospital.

Picture of Sullivan's courtesy Sepiatown. Picture of Hatchet Hall courtesy me.