Author: Bowery Boys

Categories
Mysterious Stories

The Ghost with the Red Hair: Two Hauntings in Long Island City

Long Island City is really a confederation of small villages and hamlets along the northwestern shore of Long Island. The name began essentially as a re-branding of Hunter’s Point then grew to eventually include Astoria, Ravenswood, Sunnyside, Blissville and other communities after the development of the Long Island Railroad improved its land value.

“Fifteen years ago, outside of the village of Astoria, there was not a house in the limits of Long Island City, except the dwellings of half a dozen farmers and a line of palatial mansions fronting on the East River, from Hunter’s Point to Hell Gate,” said the New York Times in 1870 at the time of Long Island City’s charter.

It was an area of great change that still retained a rural character, even as two of America’s greatest cities rose to its south. The perfect setting — for a ghost story!

Haunted houses as often simply old mansions that look out of place on a changing landscape. By that definition, Long Island City in transition would have had its share of these. Interspersed within this article are a few old homes and mansions of northwestern Queens. Haunted or not, but still captivating!

I was looking through some newspaper archives looking for some old stories about Long Island when these two spooky stories popped up. Almost as if they wanted to be found and retold! Both are based on newspaper reporting of the day and were reported (albeit with a touch of skepticism) as fact:

Below: Bodine Castle at 4316 Vernon Boulevard

bodine

 

A Ghost In Long Island City 
January 29, 1874 [source]

There once was a home at Jackson Avenue and Dutch Kills Road that was quite haunted, so haunted that its landlord was unable to rent it out. Soon a fearless family with the last name of Daly decided to rent the house.

“They were informed that there would be other occupants besides themselves in the house, but that did not deter them.”

They were in the house for a week until one night they heard moans coming from the hallway. The father investigated the hall, then the kitchen. The sound seem to move away from him — into the parlor, then into dank cellar. But there was no evidence of any intruder, no reason for the noise.

“Shortly after this as if some heavy body were falling downstairs were heard.  Mrs. Daly, upon being interrogated, affirmed that the crockery in the cupboard was thrown down and broken, and declared the door was unopened.”

With a disturbing lack of empathy the newspaper then reports, “One child was so thoroughly frightened that it was thrown into violent convulsions and has since died.”

They stayed in the home the following evening to be awakened by horrific cries of ‘Murder! Murder!’ at midnight.  The following day the family finally moved out of this haunted house. “Today a rigid investigation will take place, and the hoax, if it is one, will probably be ventilated.”

No further information was found about this house.

Below: Vernon Boulevard, at the S.E. corner of Astoria Boulevard, showing the Cornelius Rapelye House, built about 1780. A garage was later erected on the site. Eugene L. Arabruster Collection 1922

Courtesy New York Public Library
Courtesy New York Public Library

A Red-Haired, Blue-Eyed Ghost
The Stoutest Hearted Citizens of Blissville Filled With Fear
March 10, 1884 [source]

“All the hair in Blissville, Long Island, is on end with terror and excitement, and even the stoutest-hearted citizens feared to sleep until they got to church yesterday, because the ghost cries “Oh, ho!” and “Ah, ha!“ and likewise “Humph, humph” still haunted the Calvary Cemetery, and all Saturday night gave vent to weird and mysterious moans and sighs.”

1

A hotel proprietor names John Powers was stumbling home at night — almost midnight — in some presumed state of inebriation. On the road he passed a very short woman dressed entirely in black, “mov[ing] along in a strange manner, looking neither to the right nor to the left.”

The little woman did not respond when Powers wished her good night.  Finally, “filled with strange forebodings,” he decided to look at the woman. But she had completely vanished.

“There were no houses, trees, nor fences near, nothing that even a cat could have concealed itself behind, and yet the weird apparition had disappeared and left not the slightest indication of its presence.”

Below: The old Payxtar Homestead, area of today’s Jackson Ave. and Queensboro Bridge Plaza, Long Island City

Courtesy Library of Congress
Courtesy Library of Congress

Another man named Thomas Culvert told a similar story that same evening. His description of the spirit is quite bizarre. “She was not more than three feet tall and had red hair, he said, and long curls hung down her back.”

His eyes lingered upon the woman a bit too long for she gazed up at him, making eye contact. “[H]er eyes were of a stony blue that chilled his very blood as she fixed them upon him for a single instant.” Culvert scurried immediately home and locked the door.

Throughout the night the townspeople of Blissville heard a series of shrieks and cries in the vicinity of an abandoned house.  “Numbers of persons, made brave by the daylight, visited the haunted house and locality yesterday afternoon, but shrank away when the shadows began to deepen.”

Efforts were made to disprove these spooky tales but no source was ever found. Thus the residents of Blissville lost many hours of rest. “There will be no peace until the grisly secret is explained.”

Below: 27th Avenue, no. 805, Astoria, taken in 1937

Courtesy Museum of the City of New York, photo by Berenice Abbott
Courtesy Museum of the City of New York, photo by Berenice Abbott

 

Categories
Podcasts Writers and Artists

Edgar Allan Poe in New York: Places where the master of gloom and horror made his mark

PODCAST Edgar Allan Poe was a wanderer — looking for work, for love, for meaning. That’s why so many American cities can lay claim to a small aspect of his legacy. Baltimore, Boston, Richmond and Philadelphia all have their own stories to tell about the great writer. In this show, we spotlight the imprint Poe made upon New York City.

Poe was in New York both on the year of his birth (as the child of two stage actors) and on the year of his death (fleeing his mournful, longtime home in Fordham). Throughout out his life he came back — again and again — discovering inspiration in the prosperous, growing city of the 1830s and 40s. He lived in Greenwich Village and the Lower East Side. And for a time, he also lived in the area of today’s Upper West Side, in a farmhouse where he conjured to vivid life his most successful poem — “The Raven”.

The Poe Cottage in the Bronx is the only extant building where Poe (and his young sickly wife Virginia) actually lived, a modest abode that’s a rare example of surviving working-class housing from the mid 19th century. Through tragedy, Poe sought solitude in the surrounding mounts and fields of Westchester County. The majestic High Bridge would be of a particular strange comfort.

This is a story both of Poe himself and the fragments of buildings and homes left behind with his name attached to them. In many neighborhoods of New York, you can linger with the ghost of Edgar Allan Poe himself.

The Bowery Boys: New York City History podcast is brought to you …. by you!

We are now producing a new Bowery Boys podcast every week. We’re also looking to improve the show in other ways and expand in other ways as well — through publishing, social media, live events and other forms of media. But we can only do this with your help!

We are now a member of Patreon, a patronage platform where you can support your favorite content creators for as little as a $1 a month.

Please visit our page on Patreon and watch a short video of us recording the show and talking about our expansion plans. If you’d like to help out, there are five different pledge levels (and with clever names too — Mannahatta, New Amsterdam, Five Points, Gilded Age, Jazz Age and Empire State). Check them out and consider being a sponsor.

We greatly appreciate our listeners and readers and thank you for joining us on this journey so far.

Title page of Poe’s first printed work in New York — Poems (1831) published by Elam Bliss.

Poe frequently read his works at the University of the City of New York (today’s New York University), especially following his successes with ‘The Raven’.

Courtesy Greenwich Village History blog

An illustration by Édouard Manet (1832 – 1883) for Le corbeau (The Raven), from The Morgan Library & Museum collection (and featured in their marvelous show from a few years ago Edgar Allan Poe: Terror of the Soul

Edgar Allan Poe on the High Bridge, an imagining made by illustrator Bernard (B. J.) Rosenmeyer, circa 1930

The Poe Cottage — as imagined in illustrations (courtesy the New York Public Library) and photographed in the decades following its occupants’ deaths.

NYPL

 

NYPL

 

“The century illustrated monthly magazine” (1882)

Before the cottage was moved to Poe Park (1898)…

Museum of the City of New York

..and after, in 1918.

Museum of the City of New York

The Brennan farmhouse, in the area of today’s Upper West Side (pictured here in 1879)

Museum of the City of New York

Mount Tom, the rocky patch where Poe often sat pondering the waters of the Hudson River. You can still find inspiration here; the mount is located in Riverside Park.

Flickr/Emily

A daguerreotype of Poe, 1848. Courtesy Library of Congress

The Raven, read by Vincent Price:

Images from the Poe Cottage from last weekend. Visit the cottage this fall! Check out their website for more information. They have an audio tour of the house and park, but we highly suggest you get in on one of their tours.

 

Categories
The Deuce

Eleven bits of historical trivia from this season of HBO’s ‘The Deuce’

So what do you all think of the HBO’s drama series The Deuce, set in Times Square in the early 1970s? Sexually explicit but literate, with a modern viewpoint that gives rich, nuanced characterizations to women, The Deuce performs a unique negotiation between romanticizing the 42nd Street sex trade and condemning it. Whether or not you connect with the narrative — not every beat hits; in the continuum of David Simon projects, this is more Treme and less The Wire — you can’t deny its excellent achievements in production and tone. And Maggie Gyllenhaal, in particular, gives one of the year’s best performances. (Props also to Gbenga Akinnagbe, bringing a harsh richness to his role of the pimp Larry Brown.)

We devoted an entire show a few weeks ago to this era as a tie-in to the series. Give it a listen if you haven’t already! We’re proud of that show. Some true ‘forgotten history’ needless to say.

The final episode broadcasts this Sunday. For the past few Sundays, I’ve been Tweeting along with the show, throwing out little facts and trivia of things that get referenced in the show. No plot spoilers though! The Tweets have mostly to do with historical context and production details.

Here are a handful of Tweets from prior episodes. Check in with @boweryboys this Sunday to see additional 1970s trivia relating to the show.

Categories
Bowery Boys Bookshelf

‘The Creative Destruction of New York City’: The Tools For Fighting Back Against Unwanted Change

Courtesy Cocktail Culture Magazine

Talk of hyper-gentrification, skyrocketing real estate and the ‘end of New York’ comes bundled with despair and helplessness. Walk down 59th Street and gaze as the super-talls blocking the sun, built for foreign investors who may never once step inside these luxury caverns.

Or stroll along Smith Street in Cobble Hill, observing the rows of boarded-up or vacant store fronts, their rents too high for most actual human retails. Or head to 125th Street to experience the amazing history of Harlem, only to be met with a smorgasbord of national brand retailers with few connections to locals.

What can I do about any of this?, you might think hopelessly. Activism, voting, speaking out — we must all do these things to protect the city we love. But the first step is education on the basic matters of rezoning and gentrification. Where do you even begin?

THE CREATIVE DESTRUCTION OF NEW YORK CITY
Engineering the City of the Elite
Alessandro Busà
Oxford University Press

In The Creative Destruction of New York City, a manual for the big-city activist, the critical urban scholar Busà lays out the current crisis in an explanatory, high-level inspection.  One must turn to points in the past — 9/11, the near-bankrupt ’70s, even the destructive shenanigans of Robert Moses — to understand the often soulless and demoralizing changes to the city in 2017. The most troubling development trends began as remedies for past urban decay.  In essence, the city is now choking on its former cures.

Courtesy brklyn is over/Flickr

As examples, Busà focuses on two neighborhoods in particular — Harlem and Coney Island.  Neither of these places were ‘gentrified’ in the traditional sense — as in, initially driven by artists and the artists-formerly-known-as ‘bohemians’ that staked out Williamsburg in the 1980s and 90s. (Unlike other, angrier screeds, Busà mostly steers clear from blanket condemnations of hipsters.)

Portions of Harlem were refitted for big-box retailers who quickly closed in on the mom-and-pop establishments of 125th Street, while luxury housing monopolized on Harlem’s rich history to attract wealthy urbanites looking a condo in a hip neighborhood. Coney Island’s redevelopment woes have eliminated parts of the iconic amusement district and wiped historic buildings from the map.

Below: Target opened in East Harlem in 2010. Today there are at least 15 Target stores throughout the five boroughs. 

ALFRED GIANCARLI/Daily News

At the core of both is that pesky, misunderstood implement known as rezoning. It’s a simple enough concept of course, the mechanism by which certain areas designated for one purpose (residential, commercial, industrial) switch to another. But as Busà says, “As of late, it has become the buzzword loaded with rather negative connotations in New York City. While for some residents it’s nothing more than some technocratic yaw-inducing mumbo-jumbo, for others this loathed word means a call to arms.”

Busà breaks down the major players in city government and civic life who control these decisions and identifies the tools those parties may use in transforming New York, often for less-than-altruistic ends. At times, during the administrations of Bloomberg and De Blasio, rezoning seems to have no more purpose than to create wealth for a few private players.

The Creative Destruction of New York City, written by an academic, is dispassionate and often dry; consider this a compliment. There are many outlets for well-meaning, instructive outrage. (Every time I want to do something — call a congressman or join a protest — I go to Jeremiah’s Vanishing New York first.) Busà‘s more academic take on the crisis will help you understand the rules of the game and those who move the pieces. It’s the book you reach for after you get angry.

Categories
Mysterious Stories Podcasts

The Ghosts of Greenwich Village: Four tales of haunted houses and forgotten graveyards

For this year’s annual Bowery Boys Halloween ghost stories podcast, we cautiously approach the dark secrets of Greenwich Village, best known for bohemians, shady and winding streets and a deeply unexpected history. You will never look at its parks and townhouses again after this show!

The stories featured on this year’s show:

— The hidden history of Washington Square Park featuring the oldest tree in New York — nicknamed the Hangman’s Elm — and some truly grave secrets beneath its lovely walkways

— The Brittany Residence Hall for New York University students has a very famous ghost, a child who experienced a horrible death and continued to haunt the halls of this former hotel, looking for friends to play with

— Mayor Jimmy Walker once lived across from an old burial ground in the West Village. But when its ancient plots were replaced with a city park (later renamed after the former nightlife mayor), the bodies and the tombstones were mostly paved over. To this day, a single grave marker sits astride the baseball field, a sole reminder of the area’s macabre past.

— And finally the ceiling of a old Bank Street townhouse reveals an unusual object. This is an epic ghost tale that stretches from the mid 1920s to the early 1980s. And from the haunted streets of the West Village to a peaceful respite in Northern California.

The Bowery Boys: New York City History podcast is brought to you …. by you!

We are now producing a new Bowery Boys podcast every week. We’re also looking to improve the show in other ways and expand in other ways as well — through publishing, social media, live events and other forms of media. But we can only do this with your help!

We are now a member of Patreon, a patronage platform where you can support your favorite content creators for as little as a $1 a month.

Please visit our page on Patreon and watch a short video of us recording the show and talking about our expansion plans. If you’d like to help out, there are five different pledge levels (and with clever names too — Mannahatta, New Amsterdam, Five Points, Gilded Age, Jazz Age and Empire State). Check them out and consider being a sponsor.

We greatly appreciate our listeners and readers and thank you for joining us on this journey so far.

In 2009 a complete headstone was found in Washington Square Park, near the area of the dog park.

Washington Square Park Blog

In 2015, while working on the water pipes underneath the park, workers discovered this grisly find.

Department of Design and Construction

A 1945 advertisement for the Hotel Brittany and a couple other ‘off the beaten path’ hotels.

The former St. John’s burial ground was turned into a park in the 1890s. “One Door that has been opened: St. John’s Park in Hudson Street, — once a graveyard,” says Jacob Riis in the caption for his image of the park.

MCNY

From the New York Times, Dec. 13, 1885:

This show joins our growing collection of Bowery Boys Halloween specials. Creep yourself out while listening to these spooky legends of New York City. From the haunted woods of Van Cortlandt Park to spirits haunting Captain Kidd’s treasure on Liberty Island. Psychics at Carnegie Hall, unsettling spirits in Cobble Hill, undead party animals at Grand Central!

Play them at the links below or find them on iTunes: [Main feed] [Archive feed]

mny221052

2016 Ghosts of the Gilded Age

Highlighting haunted tales from the period just after the Civil War when New York City became one of the richest cities in the world — rich in wealth and in ghosts! In the Bronx once stood a haunted house in the area of Hunts Point, a mansion of malevolent and disturbing mysteries. Then we turn to Manhattan to a rambunctious poltergeist on fashionable East 27th Street. Over in Queens, a lonely farmhouse in the area of today’s Calvary Cemetery is witness to not one, but two unsettling and confounding deaths. And finally, in Staten Island, we take a visit to the glorious Vanderbilt Mausoleum, a historic landmark and a location with a few strange secrets of its own.

5841855416_661144370a_o

2015 Haunted Landmarks of New York
Ghost stories associated with the city’s most popular and recognizable places from baby-faced spooks at the Dakota Apartments to spirited revelers at Grand Central Terminal. What’s still lurking in the hallways of the Chelsea Hotel? And whatever you do tonight, do not linger too long on the Brooklyn Bridge at night! A figure from the bridge’s past may still be looking for his head.

1

2014 Ghost Stories of Brooklyn
Four tales of spirits haunting Brooklyn back in the 19th century when it was still an independent city. A horrific gangly ghost on the railroad tracks, a historic Clinton Hill home with an invisible hand that would not stop knocking, a Coney Island hotel in 1894 with a secret in room 30, and the wacky wraiths of Bushwick’s Evergreens Cemetery.

2

2013 Ghost Stories of Old New York

Tales set mostly before the 1840s featuring sinister stories of murder, shipwreck and death by fright! Spirits of dead Lenape Indians may haunt the forest of Van Cortlandt Park. A romantic West Village restaurant finds its home inside the former carriage house of Aaron Burr. Might the vice president still be visiting? We bring you the legend of an old Brooklyn fort that once sat in Cobble Hill and terrified those who traveled along on old Red Hook Lane. And finally, over at St Paul’s Chapel, a respected old actor wanders the churchyard, looking for his body parts.

3

2012 Mysteries and Magicians of New York

Grab a drink at the Ear Inn, one of New York’s most historically interesting bars, and you might meet Mickey, the drunken sailor-ghost. A frightening story of secret love at old Melrose Hall conjures up one of Brooklyn’s most popular ghostly legends. A woman is possessed through a Ouija board, but while she accept the challenge by one of New York’s first ghostbusters? And a tale of Harry Houdini, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, and the line between the supernatural and mere sleight of hand.

2011 Haunted Histories of New York

What’s horrors are buried at the foot of the Statue of Liberty? What’s below a Brooklyn Catholic church that makes it so dreadfully haunted? What ghost performs above the heads of theatergoers at The Palace? And what is it about the Kreischer Mansion that makes it Staten Island’s most haunted home?

seance

2010 Supernatural Stories of New  York
The scary revelations of a New York medium, married Midtown ghosts who fight beyond the grave, a horrific haunting at a 14th Street boardinghouse, and the creepy tale of New York’s Hart Island.

2009 Haunted Tales of New York: Urban Phantoms
The secrets of the restless spinster of the Merchants House, the jovial fright of the Gay Street Phantom, the legend of the devil at Spuyten Duyvil Creek, and the spirit of a dead folk singer.

ghost

2008 Spooky Stories of New York
The drunken spirits of the Algonquin, the mysteries of a hidden well in SoHo, the fires of the Witch of Staten Island, and ‘the most haunted brownstone in New York.’

1

2007 Ghost Stories of New York
The ghosts of a tragic Ziegfeld girl, a scandalous doyenne of old New York, a bossy theater impresario and the ghoulish bell-ringer of St. Mark’s-in-the-Bowery.

Here are the locations mentioned in all of our ghost podcasts:

Categories
Bowery Boys Bookshelf Revolutionary History

The Ghost Ship of Brooklyn: Uncovering New York’s darkest secrets of the Revolutionary War

The Brooklyn Navy Yard, no longer a bustling shipyard, lives on as a vibrant commercial compound of movie studios, bourbon distilleries and organic rooftop farms. Its waterfront, facing into Wallabout Bay, is relatively peaceful today. There are no remnants of its genuinely disturbing past.

During the Revolutionary War, New York was a British stronghold, and prisoners associated with George Washington and the Continental Army were often sent here for detainment. Soon the city’s make-shift prisons — sugar houses turned into decrepit jails — became too crowded, and the British needed to look for alternatives.

The answer arrived in the form of old naval vessels, previously used to transport supplies, that were moored off the coast of Brooklyn and turned into prison ships. For the duration of the war, hundreds of men and boys were thrown onto these wretched ships, forced to endure a litany of conditions so brutal and dire that they seem like tortures designed for a modern horror film.

And the worst of all of these was the HMS Jersey.

THE GHOST SHIP OF BROOKLYN
An Untold Story of the American Revolution
by Robert P. Watson
Da Capo Press

In Robert P. Watson‘s sharp and incisive new book, the author isolates the grim tale of the prison ships, often deemed a footnote in most Revolutionary War histories, from the actions of the conflict at large. It’s vividly narrow in scope, allowing the reader to experience the ship’s macabre trials in a sort of narrative entrapment. The prisoners themselves experienced the Jersey in such a way, trapped below deck with only the fleeting glimpse of New York across the water. For the damned, Wallabout Bay became an inescapable hell.

Watson weaves several first-hand accounts into the narrative, the tales of the lucky few who managed to escape. There’s a dash of Robert Louis Stevenson in the stories, plights regularly associated with swashbuckling tales of pirates. Except these horrid events took place just meters from the Brooklyn shoreline.

In fact, most prisoners who perished aboard the ship were buried on that shoreline, placed into the shallow ground by fellow prisoners, volunteering for burial duty as a way to say a final goodbye. Many days later, those bodies would be caught in the tide to eventually float out into the river.

But perhaps like a good swashbuckler, Ghost Ship of Brooklyn showcases several stories of impossible survival, daring prison breaks and even a couple surprising rescues. For every grim statistic, there’s a moment of desperate bravery. One of the most inspiring feats comes from the recollections of prisoner Thomas Dring who, seeing men around him dying of smallpox, decides to self-inoculate himself and others.

Several men managed to flee the death holds of the Jersey to later recount these thrilling escapes in memoirs. They were the lucky ones; according to reports of the day, 11,500 people died aboard the Jersey. As Watson notes, “over twice as many Americans were lost on that single, cursed than died in combat during the entirety of the long war!”

NYPL from Booth’s History of New York

(Today the city honors those who died in the bay with Prison Ship Martyr’s Monument, the central feature of Fort Greene Park.)

Categories
Mysterious Stories Podcasts

Murder at the Manhattan Well: A shocking crime and a legendary trial with Hamilton and Burr

PODCAST The murder of a young woman in 1799 and the ensuing trial involving two of America’s Founding Fathers

There once was a well just north of Collect Pond (New York’s fetid source of drinking water in the late 18th century) in a marshy place called Lispenard’s Meadow, in the area of today’s SoHo.

One cold day in December — in the year 1799 — a boy came across a lady’s article of clothing here matching that in the possession of a missing woman named Elma Sands. Upon looking into the old, boarded-up well, investigators discovered a horrifying sight — the lifeless body of Ms. Sands, which had been submerged in the well for several days.

Suspicion immediately shifted to the boarding house where she lived and worked, and the unusual tenants there all became suspects — including Levi Weeks, the brother of a prominent builder. Weeks was soon accused of her murder and thrown into jail.

This is the tale of the extraordinary trial that occurred in March of 1800 featuring two of the most prominent people in New York City — Alexander Hamilton and Aaron Burr. Years before their fateful duel in Weehawken, the two lawyers agreed to defend Weeks against charges of brutal murder.

But Hamilton and Burr were linked to the case in other ways. A banking institution borne from these early days still thrives today. And, believe it or not, the infamous Manhattan well still exists in the basement of a surprising place.

The Bowery Boys: New York City History podcast is brought to you …. by you!

We are now producing a new Bowery Boys podcast every week. We’re also looking to improve the show in other ways and expand in other ways as well — through publishing, social media, live events and other forms of media. But we can only do this with your help!

We are now a member of Patreon, a patronage platform where you can support your favorite content creators for as little as a $1 a month.

Please visit our page on Patreon and watch a short video of us recording the show and talking about our expansion plans. If you’d like to help out, there are five different pledge levels (and with clever names too — Mannahatta, New Amsterdam, Five Points, Gilded Age, Jazz Age and Empire State). Check them out and consider being a sponsor.

We greatly appreciate our listeners and readers and thank you for joining us on this journey so far.

1798 watercolor by Archibald Robertson of the hilly countryside north of Collect Pond. The well would have been located a short distance from here, off to the right.

Sketches of Lispenard’s Meadow by artist Alexander Anderson. The first is dated 1785, the second 1800.

NYPL

NYPL

The illustration above was later re-drawn:

NYPL

The reservoir of the Manhattan Company was built on Chambers Street but the Bank of the Manhattan Company — the real motivation behind starting the company — was at 40 Wall Street.

The scene of the trial — old Federal Hall, pictured here in 1797 in an illustration by Currier and Holland and drawn for D. T. Valentine’s Manual.

MCNY

Notice of Levi Week’s death found in the Mississippi Free Trader — Dec. 15, 1824.

The old Manhattan Well was rediscovered underneath the Manhattan Bistro in the 1980s. The bistro is now the clothing store COS.

Categories
Mysterious Stories

THE BOWERY BOYS MONTH OF MYSTERY!

For three straight weeks this October, the Bowery Boys will bring you brand new, mysterious podcasts that will send a shiver down your spine.

On Friday we present you with one of New York City’s greatest whodunits with an unbelievable cast of characters.

Then next Friday (October 20) it’s our 11th annual ghost stories podcast! Four more tales of a macabre mash-up of history and legend.

And finally, on Friday, October 27, a look at one of America’s most famous icons of mystery and suspense.

Make sure you are subscribed to the podcast to make sure you don’t miss a single one!

Categories
The First

The Plant Doctor: The Extraordinary Life Story of George Washington Carver

THE FIRST PODCAST How much do you know about George Washington Carver, the man born into slavery who became America’s most famous botanist in the first half of the 20th century? He didn’t discover the peanut, a legume commonplace in the human diet for thousands of years, nor did he invent peanut butter. What Carver did — and what he remains underappreciated for — was help reorient man’s relationship with plants for the modern world

He saw items like the sweet potato and the soybean for their unlimited potentials, not just to better the human condition but to improve the opportunities of American farmers. He saw plants as the secret to human health and well being.

And he did these things not merely as an African-American man in the Jim Crow South, but as a man of frequent ill health and eccentric character. He was as miraculous as his inventions. George Washington Carver as an artist of uncommon tools — both a literal artist, armed with plant-based paints of his own design, but a conceptual one, finding a world of new ideas within the palette grown from his garden. He became the world’s most famous proponent for organic eating.

CO-STARRING: Booker T. Washington, Henry Ford and — Mahatma Gandhi?!

To get this episode, simply download it for FREE from iTunes or other podcasting services. Check here for other ways to get the show.

Or listen to it straight from here:
THE PLANT DOCTOR: THE EXTRAORDINARY GEORGE WASHINGTON CARVER

Carver with his fellow professors at Tuskegee University in 1902

Frances Benjamin Johnston/Library of Congress

Several months before he died, Carver visited Henry Ford in Dearborn, Michigan, and was there for the unveiling of the replica of his log cabin birthplace at Greenfield Village.

Categories
Podcasts Queens History

The History of Astoria and Long Island City, Queens

Byron Company/Museum of City of New York
PODCAST The Bowery Boys head to northwestern Queens to uncover the origin of two close neighborhoods with divergent histories.

The borough of Queens has a history unlike any in the New York City region, but the story of its northwestern region — comprising Astoria, Long Island City and about a half dozen other, smaller neighborhoods — is particularly surprising. And there are basic aspects of these wonderful neighborhoods, fundamental to every day life here, that you may have never known.

How did Astoria get its name? John Jacob Astor is involved but not in the way you think.

Was Long Island City an actual city? Well, technically, yes. In the 19th century, it was certainly corrupt like a modern city!

How important to Astoria history is the Steinway Piano Factory? So important that modern Astoria would not exist in its present form without it.

In 2017, why is Long Island City full of new developments and Astoria almost none? The secret is imbedded in its history, in decisions that were made 150 years ago.

And it all begins with a brutal murder — in a little place called Hallets Cove.

The Bowery Boys: New York City History podcast is brought to you …. by you!

We are now producing a new Bowery Boys podcast every week. We’re also looking to improve the show in other ways and expand in other ways as well — through publishing, social media, live events and other forms of media. But we can only do this with your help!

We are now a member of Patreon, a patronage platform where you can support your favorite content creators for as little as a $1 a month.

Please visit our page on Patreon and watch a short video of us recording the show and talking about our expansion plans. If you’d like to help out, there are five different pledge levels (and with clever names too — Mannahatta, New Amsterdam, Five Points, Gilded Age, Jazz Age and Empire State). Check them out and consider being a sponsor.

We greatly appreciate our listeners and readers and thank you for joining us on this journey so far. And the best is yet to come!

From the 1882 History of Queens County: “The Williams Veneer-Mills. The village of Astoria is, like scores of others, a clump of vigorous shoots from the underlying business roots of the great city, that permeate the surrounding country in every direction. Among its most enterprising businessmen is William H. Williams, a cut of whose extensive veneer-mills is herewith presented. In the spring of 1875 he came to Astoria and put up a building 40 feet square, which was in running order by the ist of June.”

Flickr Commons

The bustling trolley system of Long Island City in 1899, a portion of which was controlled by the most corrupt mayor of Long Island! I’m not sure of the exact location but this is most likely near docks of Hunter’s Point (note Long Island Railroad ferry terminal which links to 34th Street in Manhattan).

Byron Company/Museum of City of New York
Byron Company/Museum of City of New York

Images of the Steinway Piano Factory from 1902 (and courtesy Byron Company/Museum of the City of New York)

MCNY

The Famous Players-Lasky film studio in the 1920s. TV and film are still produced here today as the Kaufman-Astoria Studios.

Museum of Moving Image

Meanwhile the mansions of Astoria were slowly being crowded out by new developments. Still a few hang on to this day. Unfortunately this rustic manor (seen here in 1937) which once sat at 805 27th Avenue is no longer there.

Berenice Abbott/NYPL

Long Island City, Queens, looking southwest from pier at 41st Road, with the Queensboro Bridge overhead.

NYPL

Tony Bennett’s 1990 album Portrait of the Artist pays homage to his birthplace.

The debut of P.S 1 in 1976 was featured in Artforum Magazine. The first show there (called Rooms) presented installations in the still-unfinished classrooms of the old school built in 1892.

The Pepsi Cola sign as it appeared on the actual bottling plant (which closed in 1999). The sign is now a decoration on the promenade astride the Hunters Point South development.

Wired New York

The Astoria swimming pool with Hell Gate Bridge in the distance.

A fascinating business on 42nd Street near the elevated train.

St. Demetrios Cathedral, during construction and how it looks today.

The restaurant Mombar in the ‘Little Egypt’ section of Astoria

Flickr/Mark Dodge Medlin
FURTHER READING
The Fall of Ravenswood, Old Aristocratic Queens
https://www.boweryboyshistory.com/2012/05/nostalgia-for-astoria-pool-early-robert.html
https://www.boweryboyshistory.com/2015/10/the-ghost-with-red-hair-two-hauntings-in-long-island-city.html

FURTHER LISTENING:

For more information on the Steinway’s origins, check out episode #92 —

The Museum of the Moving Image was featured in the Bowery Boys episode focusing on the city’s history with video games:

The late, departed Five Pointz, a graffiti space in Long Island City recently demolished to make way for condos, was featured in the Bowery Boys episode on the city’s history with graffiti art.

Categories
Queens History

The Fall of Ravenswood, Old Aristocratic Queens

Ravenswood is a dramatic name for a New York City neighborhood and certainly wasted on its primary resident today — Big Allis, the Con Edison generating power station that provides the Queens waterfront with its most unattractive feature.

This pocket district is situated on the western edge of Queens just north of Hunter’s Point. Situated near the power station are two quiet parks — Queensbridge Park and Rainey Park which pay homage to the neighborhoods most striking landmark — the Queensboro Bridge — and the bridge’s most ardent proponent Dr. Thomas Rainey.

There’s little indication of it today, but over 150 years ago, this narrow ridge of land on the East River waterfront was once the most exclusive neighborhood on Long Island. It was indeed a ‘narrow’ stretch for the eastern side was hemmed in by a massive swamp. (The Ravenswood Houses sits on the spot of the old swamp.)

Among the first English settlers, the land was originally owned by Captain John Manning, then by Robert Blackwell. Both men also owned the island in the East River, today’s Roosevelt Island. (In fact, the island wore Blackwell’s name for over two centuries. Listen to our show on Roosevelt Island for more information.) It wasn’t until 1814 that a US mineralogist named Col. George Gibbs bought up this property and begin chopping up the lots for sale to wealthy merchants who desired large estates with a waterfront vista.

Nobody knows definitely where the name came from. One theory suggests it was named for the bishop of North Carolina — John S. Ravenscroft — and later altered. Author Vincent Seyfried gives a couple more romantic suggestions, “that there were a lot of native American ravens in the neighborhood, and that Ravenswood is a name figuring prominently in Sir Walter Scott’s “Bride of Lammermoor”, a historical romance popular in that day.”

Below: From the David Ramsey Map Collection — a 1836 view of Blackwell’s Island and Ravenswood

By the 1850s, both Blackwell’s Island and Ravenswood were frantic with new construction — Blackwell with new public institutions like the almshouse, Ravenwood with sumptuous estates. From a local newspaper in 1852: “Buildings are going up in every direction and much taste is manifested by the owners in arranging and decorating their grounds. “

Below: The Delafield house which was owned by George Gibbs

Queens Archives

Most of the new residents were New York merchants enriched with the city’s growing fortunes, stimulated large by the construction of the Erie Canal. Almost none of them came from old families (who had manors in other parts of the region). Looking though a list of Ravenwood landowners from the 1850s, you’ll find mirror manufacturers, grocers, meat packers, doctors, insurance salesmen and Wall Street bankers.

Below: An example of a Ravenswood property, from an engraving by Alexander Jackson Davis (ca. 1836)

From the Queens Gazette, 1953: “Ravenswood —  That beautiful village, so picturesquely located on the banks of the river, is improving rapidly and its present rate of increase will soon complete the chain of city and village which stretches almost from the Narrows to beyond Hell Gate.”

A unique feature of these new development was the public promenade (seen in the map image above). While lots were granted to the edge of the East River, a public walkway was carved into the properties so that neighbors could enjoy the impressive views.

Below: Ravenswood and its promenade, from an engraving by Alexander Jackson Davis (1850)

Courtesy Museum of the City of New York

Of course you might ask — wasn’t the back of Blackwell’s Island an unsightly mess by the late 19th century? It became the home of penitentiaries, asylums, workhouses and various hospitals. Well, by the time it got it got too unfortunate, the era of aristocratic Ravenswood was over.

Hunter’s Point, south of Ravenswood, was rapidly becoming a dense, industrial zone by the 1860s, endangering any bucolic peace that this new mansion row would have enjoyed. The swamp to the east — called Sunswick Swamp or Ravenswood Swamp — and the mosquitos it attracted created a serious health crisis with frequent malaria outbreaks.

Below: A last holdout at Vernon Boulevard and 30th Road (ca. 1937)

Berenice Abbott, courtesy MCNY

In 1870, Ravenswood was absorbed into the district of Long Island City, encompassing all the village and hamlets of northwestern Queens, including Astoria and the new company village of Steinway & Sons. While this incorporation was a great benefit to the region overall — rapidly bringing utilities and municipal support — it eventually destroyed the small residential haven of Ravenswood.

A gas works was constructed in 1875 on the waterfront at 37th and 38th Avenues, the precise spot today of Big Allis. Residents almost immediately began fleeing.

In 1877, the Newtown Register lamented, “The aristocratic neighborhood of Ravenswood is beginning to be invaded by factories. We observe a large brick structure run up which will be devoted to canning fruits. The location of this factory is at the southern end of the neighborhood. The gas house on the water’s edge near the old Blackwell house may be considered another invasion, and like Union Square, New York, we may suppose these temples of industry to be ‘the beginning of the end’. [This is reference to New York’s Gas House District, on the spot of today’s Stuyvesant Town – Peter Cooper Village.]

Already one aristocratic mansion is converted into a summer hotel and restaurant. Such is change, such is life.”

By 1905 even the promenade was gone. All traces of Ravenswood were eliminated save one — Bodine Castle at Vernon Boulevard and 43rd Avenue (pictured below). It too was demolished in 1966.

The area is now best known for this:

Courtesy Harald Kleims/Wikimedia

[My thanks to Vincent F. Seyfried and the Greater Astoria Historical Society for help with this research.]

Categories
Pop Culture

The Bowery Boys at New York Comic Con: Talking the history of comics and the legacy of Jack Kirby

The Bowery Boys’ Greg Young, an aficionado of comic strip and comic book history, will be appearing at two events this week tied to New York Comic Con.  The first event on Monday is general admission in the East Village, so come on out to kick off the week. The second event is at NYCC itself, held at the Javits Center, on Sunday, the convention’s last day.

Downtown Variety: Special New York Comic Con 2017 Edition!

October 2, 2017, 7:30PM – 8:30PM

UCB East Village (153 E. 3rd Street)

Hey there, culture lovers! It’s time for another enticing installment of your favorite variety show with that loquacious local, Nat Towsen (host of the Bowery Boys live show this past April). This month, Nat’s teaming up with the gregarious geeks at New York Comic Con to bring you an enlightening, educational episode all about how New York City created our favorite much-maligned medium — the comic book.

We’ve gathered a pulchritudinous panel of the foremost fanatics on the topic, as well as some expert entertainers. There will be laughter, drama, and you just might learn something too! In this issue: Myq Kaplan (Late Show, CONAN), Lorraine Cink (Marvel, Hero Complex), Greg Young (The Bowery Boys) and Peter Sanderson (comic book historian, researcher at DC and Marvel).

With New York City trivia and with special prizes from the show’s sponsors Two Boots Pizza, Forbidden Planet NYC & New York Comic Con.  Tickets just $7! (A NYCC ticket is NOT required to attend.)

Get tickets here: bit.ly/NTDVH52

 

Peter Sanderson appeared with Greg on episode 187 of the Bowery Boys podcast — SUPER CITY: New York and the History of Comic Books. Listen to it here:

 

 

During the show Greg talked about the legacy of creator Jack Kirby. And he’ll be doing it live at New York Comic Con!

CELEBRATING 100 YEARS OF JACK KIRBY: THE KING’S NEW YORK

October 07, 2017, 4PM – 5PM

Throughout 50+ years of Marvel Comics, one of the most important characters to grace its pages has been the city of New York itself. Someone who realized this, perhaps the most, was Jack Kirby.  Born in the Lower East Side, Jack applied his experiences of life in the city that never sleeps to the Marvel Universe in numerous iconic ways – from Yancy Street to the coming of Galactus, to the scrawny kid from New York Steve Rogers.  Join a host of Mighty Marvel Guests along with famed New York podcaster & historian Greg Young of the Bowery Boys to trace the history of the King’s New York and its impact on the Marvel Universe in this can’t-miss panel.

You’ll need an NYCC ticket to get into this event.

Nat Towson postcard design by Alyssa Varner. Comic art courtesy Marvel Comics
Categories
Neighborhoods Podcasts

The History of Columbus Circle: A Century of Controversy

Columbus Circle, a center of media and shopping at the entrance to Central Park, has a history that, well, runs against the grain. Counter-clockwise, if you will.

LISTEN TO OUR NEW EPISODE HERE:

When the park was completed in the mid 19th century, a ‘Grand Circle’ was planned for a busy thoroughfare of horse-drawn carriages. A monument to the Italian explorer Christopher Columbus was placed at its center in 1892, bought and paid for by New York’s new Italian community.

But the circle had awkwardly adjusted to modern development, and architecture which has graced its perimeter had been uniquely scorned — from the ‘confusing’ Maine Monument’ to Robert Moses’ Coliseum, a dated convention center which eliminated a street from the city’s grid.

Join us for a look at this unusual section of New York City, a place of both music history and real estate headaches. And what should the city do about that Columbus statute, embroiled in a modern controversy?

STARRING: William Phelps Enos, Donald Trump, Sophie Tucker and a man with the extraordinary name of Teunis Somerindyke.

To download this episode and subscribe to our show for free, visit iTunes or other podcasting services or get it straight from our satellite site.

You can also listen to the show on Stitcher streaming radio or your favorite podcast players

___________________________________________________________________________

The Bowery Boys: New York City History podcast is brought to you …. by you!

We are now producing a new Bowery Boys podcast every week. We’re also looking to improve and expand the show in other ways — publishing, social media, live events and other forms of media. But we can only do this with your help!

We are now a creator on Patreon, a patronage platform where you can support your favorite content creators.

Please visit our page on Patreon and watch a short video of us recording the show and talking about our expansion plans.

If you’d like to help out, there are six different pledge levels. Check them out and consider being a sponsor.

We greatly appreciate our listeners and readers and thank you for joining us on this journey so far.

________________________________________________________________________

The Teunis Somerindyke farm. From this print, you can see Broadway (Bloomingdales Road) to the left and Eighth Avenue to the right, with a young Central Park on the far right side.

A model made of the Columbus Circle monument by its sculptor Gaetano Russo.

MCNY

The monument in 1895, a few years after its prominent debut at this pivotal intersection.

MCNY

On the southwest side of the circle in 1903, one could find both the Majestic Theatre and the Pabst Grand Circle Hotel

MCNY

The Circle in 1905 and 1913, before and after the Maine Monument is installed. These images gives perfect illustration to the chaotic scene around the circle. People could just go wherever they liked!

Library of Congress/George Hall
MCNY/Irving Underhill

Images of the unveiling of the Maine Monument in May 1913 (courtesy Library of Congress/Bain Collection)

The entrance to Reisenweber’s in 1910. The place was packed through most of the decade with diners and cabaret lovers.

MCNY

The staff and musicians of Reisenweber’s (dated 1905):

From the roof of the Century Apartments, early 1930s. Only the Columbus statue and the Maine Monument stand here today.

MCNY/Samuel H. Gottscho

Looking north from Columbus Circle from the top of the General Motors building, circa 1936. The triangular building sits on the site of the old Somerindyke farm.  (Image courtesy Shorpy. Click into their site to zoom in to some amazing detail.)

The New York Coliseum in the 1970s, a rather dour and uninspired component of Columbus Circle.

MCNY/Edmund Vincent Gillon

Behold — the Edward Durrell Stone-designed home of the Gallery of Modern Art

The newly redesigned 2 Columbus Circle — home of the Museum of Arts and Design — presents a more pleasant face to the intersection. In the background, the area is dwarfed by the super-tall skyscrapers of 57th Street.

The Columbus statue has no contextual marker explaining its importance to the Italian-American community; only text on two sides of the monument give it meaningful explanation.

Columbus next to the Time Warner Center:

Categories
Bowery Boys Bookshelf

At the Strangers’ Gate: Becoming a New Yorker on the streets of 80s SoHo

Janet Delaney/Business Insider

The 1980s in New York City were defined by glossy magazines and gallery shows, the earnest giving way to irony, the facile passed off as profound. What would ring hollow in the following decade might have seemed still crisp and dangerous in the Ed Koch years.

At the Strangers’ Gate
Arrivals In New York
by Adam Gopnik
Penguin Random House

Many chroniclers of this period fall victim to its excesses, treating guest lists like poems. Not Adam Gopnik, the New Yorker writer who resides within his written settings retaining a voice of wonder and restraint.  At the Strangers’ Gate: Arrivals in New York, Gopnik’s lovely recollection of New York during this heady, escapist decade, recounts tales of tiny studio apartments and dinners with iconic photographers with equal measures of joy and admiration.

The book is divided into two parts, named for two separate apartments which housed the writer and his wife Martha. The Blue Room was an uncomfortably small studio on the Upper East Side. The Big Store was a serviceable loft space in SoHo that happened to leak molasses. (It was located in an old candy factory.) It’s through these two awkward spaces and via the extraordinary professional connections Gopnik makes in those neighborhoods that the author and his wife — two Canadians — become New Yorkers.

I admired the first section, detailing Gopnik’s first jobs at the Frick Art Reference Library and the Museum of Modern Art (where he gave tours), as well as his absurd responsibilities at GQ Magazine, conjuring grooming advice from thin air. (“Yet, having invented a rule about, say shaving in the shower, I followed it religiously. I became a true believer in a faith I fabricated.”)

But I loved the second section as Gopnik takes the reader on an impassioned tour of SoHo, leading us through restaurants and lofts, detailing a Saturday gallery stroll with such vivid specifics that you can probably use that chapter as a virtual, self-guided walking tour. We also get a glimpse of TriBeCa, its prominence as a chic art and food destination on the rise.

Certainly he glamorizes SoHo’s rich art scene, already in decline by the time he and Martha moved there, but he doesn’t oversell it. “The SoHo we moved into in 1983 was still a village, a village of art ….. The sense of art in process, being made — canvases arriving, and sculpture being anchored — was still evident.”

But he makes sure to elaborate on the capitalism fueling the scene and the odd motivations of its many players including profiles of critic Robert Hughes and artist Jeff Koons, best known for his works of life-size pop cultural objects. The bemused, fascinated tone of At the Strangers’ Gate is best illustrated in this detail about Koons:

“One night, at dinner, he politely and enthusiastically asked Martha, ‘What is irony? People keep telling me that my art has it, and I really don’t understand what it is.’ She stumbled, taken aback, ‘I don’t know, Jeff, I think you should tell me.’ ….. He really didn’t know what irony was, and was hoping, politely, that someone would tell him.”

Romance is a principal theme, not merely with the city but with the rarest of companions — an actual person who is willing to live with you in a micro-sized apartment, a lover whose fascinated with New York’s rugged realities, a partner up for going on an adventure with you and legendary photographer Richard Avedon. Most of us imagine a life as interesting as Gopnik’s; fortunately At the Strangers’ Gate is written invitingly, an 80’s spectacle without a guest list, without irony.

 

Top image of SoHo in the early 1980s courtesy photographer Janet Delaney. You can see other examples of her work here. 

Categories
Those Were The Days

Pabst Blue Ribbon architecture from Old New York

MCNY

Pabst Brewing Company, the Milwaukee beer dynasty founded in 1844 by Jacob Best (and his son-in-law Frederick Pabst), became one of America’s best known beer beverage distributors in the 20th century. Part of their strategy for popularizing their brand was by cracking into a market well saturated with beer at the start of the century — New York City.

In New York, the Milwaukee based company was at a disadvantage; saloons sold only locally made products (storage and transport technologies not being quite as sophisticated as they are today) and New York had dozens of its own brewers.

No matter! In 1896, Pabst opened a brewery here at 606 West 49th Street. And, starting in 1900,  they simply built their own operations to sell that beer in the centers of New York’s thriving entertainment districts. Here are four Pabst locations where one could sample their product:

 

  1. PABST LOOP HOTEL, Surf Avenue, Coney Island

Opened in 1900, known as Frank Clayton’s Pabst Loop Hotel.

On July 9, 1908, the hotel burned to the ground. From Billboard Magazine: “In ten minutes, Clayton Pabst Loop Hotel, with its great once hall and roller skating rink, the Culver line station of the Brooklyn Rapid Transit Company and Vanderveer’s Hotel were a mass of seething, roaring flames.”

Before:

After:

 

MCNY

2. PABST HOTEL, 42nd Street and 7th Avenue, Midtown

Built in 1899 and perfectly situated at 42nd Street — right as the Broadway theater scene was arriving to the area — the Pabst Hotel used space in a surprising way. Its second floor restaurant was built out over the sidewalk while its ‘rathskeller‘ stretched below the street. Unfortunately it was no match for the influence of New York Times owner Adolph Ochs who desired the unique triangular space for his own newspaper.

In 1902, the hotel was torn down and One Times Square, the Times’ new headquarters, would help define the entire district.

MCNY

 

 

MCNY

3. PABST GRAND CIRCLE HOTEL, Columbus Circle

Back when the traffic roundabout at the southwest corner of Central Park was called simply the Grand Circle, Pabst built another hotel in 1902 after the 42nd Street location was sold and torn down.  It was connected to the Majestic Theatre, the largest theater in the circle, a stage which would have great successes the following years with The Wizard of Oz and Babes In Toyland.  The structure graced the edge of Columbus Circle for many decades before being torn down in the 1950s and replaced with the New York Coliseum.

MCNY

 

 

4. PABST HARLEM MUSIC HALL AND RESTAURANT, 243 West 124th St., Harlem

Back with Harlem’s 125th Street was a vaudeville haven of upper Manhattan, this hall, which opened in September 1900, was billed as the largest restaurant in the United States with a capacity for 1,400 diners. It closed in 1917 just before the Prohibition era.

Unlike the other Pabst properties, the building still remains. Unrecognizable from he 125th Street, you’ll have to go around to the 124th side to get a look at its former glory.

MCNY