Author: Bowery Boys

Categories
Adventures In Old New York

The Story of Bayard’s Mount, Lower Manhattan’s Missing Mountain

Bayard’s Mount, one of the highest points in Manhattan, has been gone for more than two hundred years. Where other hills and high points have been incorporated into the modern topography New York, this old hill was wiped from the map.

Bayard’s Mount used to sit at around where Mott and Grand Streets meet today, in today’s Little Italy. Indeed, back when nearby SoHo was but a dense thicket of oak and tulip trees, the Mount was the best place to view the waters of Collect Pond, the wild northern orchards, and the flat tidal creeks to the west.

A smaller hilltop, called Mount Pleasant, sat to its east and, with the introduction of Europeans, a farm road (Bowery) ran along it. Sitting atop Bayard’s Mount, a person could wile away the day watching travelers going along the Bowery, to and from the city.

A watercolor by artist Archibald Robertson in 1798, looking south, with Bayard’s Mount/Bunker Hill to the left and Collect Pond dead center.

Some reminiscences refer to Bayard’s Mount and Mount Pleasant as the same hill, and they were close enough they seem to be part of the same ridge.

After the territory went from Dutch to British hands in the mid-17th century, most of this property fell into the hands of Nicholas Bayard, and the “small, cone-shaped mount” took on the name of its landowner, who built his sturdy estate just to its north. Even by the early 18th century, Bayard’s family would still have few neighbors; swampy ground prevented much development west, while property to the east eventually belonged to James DeLancey, the governor of the colony.

Below: A later 19th century property map highlights the broken western border of Bayard’s farm. The wetlands known as Lispenard’s Meadow prevented the estate from developing further westward.

The mount took on a more serious purpose with the onset of the Revolutionary War. In March of 1776, “One third of the citizens were ordered out to erect new works; they began a fort upon Mr. Bayard’s Mount near the Bowery.” [source]

This fortification, built in anticipation of a messy battle with the British, was named after a critical battle the year previous at Bunker Hill in Boston; soon, the hill itself took on the name, and in most histories after 1776, this place at today’s Mott and Grand Streets is officially known as Bunker Hill. Notably stationed here at Bunker Hill was Nathan Hale.

There would be no significant altercations here between British troops and the Continental Army. No, in fact, the bloodshed would wait until after the war, when the hilltop would be known as a fashionable place to host your duel.

For instance, in 1787, a disagreement between two French men ended in a duel here and the death of one of them, a “Monsieur Chevalier de Longchamps” who was apparently no stranger to offense and violent response.

Below: From Montressor’s map of Manhattan, 1755, you can see Bayard’s property and both hills — Bayard’s Mount and Mount Pleasant, the elongated hill. The Bowery runs along the bottom right hand of the illustration, with Collect Pond in the bottom left corner. You can also see the grid plan of Bayard’s farm (which was ultimately adapted for the modern street plan of SoHo).


In July 1788, to celebrate the federal ratification of the Constitution, a procession marched through the city and ended its revelry at Bayard’s Mount/Bunker Hill, where “ten enormous tables laden with provisions” and hundreds of pounds of roasted ox were served to hungry patriots. Several years later, in 1795, a different gathering, angered by their governor John Jay over his (perceived) treasonous treaty with the British, burned his portrait in a bonfire here.

Another curious pastime at the hilltop was the British sport of ‘bull baiting’, where a bull would be tied to a stake and slowly tortured by angry dogs. Why this is of any visible amusement is beyond me, although its cousin ‘bear baiting’ is still sometimes practiced in Pakistan.

Below: A bit of this nasty little pastime out in Long Island as it was advertised in 1774

New York was outgrowing the southern point of Manhattan, and former deterrents for expansion — the marshes of Lispinard’s Meadow, polluted Collect Pond, and of course, Bayard’s Mount — were slated for elimination. The ponds and marshes would soon be drained, creating Canal Street, and Broadway expanded further north. (Listen to our podcast on Collect Pond and Canal Street for more information.) By then, Bayard’s was but a memory.

Beginning in 1802, workmen began levelling Bayard’s Mount and Mount Pleasant which also included moving the old Bayard family crypt which had its entrance at the bottom of the hill. Unfortunately, it was discovered that a “hermit or ragman” had moved into the vault and turned it into his very own macabre home. Remarkably, the man was allowed to live there — “he was somewhat feared and not much troubled by visitors” — until he was found one day dead in the vault.

By the time Collect Pond was completely drained (around 1811), the hills to its north had gone, replaced with land lots and the first hints of townhouses and new businesses.

Below: From an 1821 New York Evening Post, an advertisement for plots on the old Bayard farm — at Bayard Street and Mott Street, just a couple blocks south of the location of the Mount

Another clipping from an 1888 New York Evening World, recalling the landscape here:

 

Below: The approximate position of where Bayard’s Mount would have been:


View Larger Map

 

A version of this article originally ran in October 2010

Categories
Revolutionary History

The Martyr and the Traitor: Choosing Sides In The Revolutionary War

Courtesy

You may know Nathan Hale well from history books or from New York’s numerous memorials as a symbol of American patriotism, dying for his country long before anybody actually thought it would ever be a country.

The British hanged him in New York as a spy in the aftermath of the Great Fire of 1776. He had performed no great deed for George Washington and his army — his intel never made it back to the general — except for volunteering for the spy mission in the first place.  His gift to the future United States was in believing it would exist.

Courtesy NYPL

But what if things had been a little different in the life of Mr. Hale as a young man? What if, Sliding Doors-style, decisions made by him and his loved ones had sent him down a different path? What if his ardent patriotism had, instead, been in support of the British cause?

In a captivating new book by Virginia DeJohn Anderson, a professor of history at the University of Colorado in Boulder, we are presented with an actual historical example — a contrasting figure nearly forgotten — to use for this thought experiment.

THE MARTYR AND THE TRAITOR
Nathan Hale, Moses Dunbar, and the American Revolution
by Virginia DeJohn Anderson
Oxford University Press

The story of Moses Dunbar is the flip-side to the Hale legend. The two Connecticut men were similar in a great many ways (although Dunbar was older) but circumstances led them to different causes.

Dunbar’s story is far less known than Hale’s of course. Hale was proclaimed a true patriot early in the Revolutionary conflict, and those with documents and information about the young schoolmaster proudly preserved them. His story is richly documented and well embroidered.

The opposite is true of Dunbar; he was hung in disgrace after returning home from a mission to recruit British sympathizers among his countrymen. It’s said that Dunbar’s own father offered to provide the rope.

Detail of Amos Doolittle, Connecticut From the best Authorities, first printed by Matthew Carey, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, 1795. (Courtesy, Connecticut Historical Society via Chipstone.)

Anderson tells both of their stories in parallel, and for a time, the reader can experience this book as an excellent social history of life in Connecticut in the mid 18th century — the degrees in which religion, marriage, education and land ownership play a defining role in an individual’s fate.

Dunbar became an Anglican, tied to the Church of England in a time with anti-British fervor was sweeping the countryside. In fact, there are moments when Dunbar seems far more radical than Hale (who, with his Yale education, is exposed to other feisty young men and books full of eye-opening revolutionary beliefs).

Courtesy Brown University Digital Repository

The most vivid portions of Anderson’s well-researched and excellently paced history involve violent attempts by anti-British mobs. Writes Anderson:

“As the weeks passed, Anglicans in general, not just clergy, became target of attacks if they did not announce their opposition to Britain. In East Haddam  a seventy-year-old Anglican parish clerk was yanked out of bed on a cold night, stripped, and beaten …… Rumors began circulating that Anglican clergy, in league with the detested Samuel Peters and with the approval of their congregations, were plotting to enslave the colony.”

Below: Nathan Hale’s schoolhouse in East Haddam, CT

NYPL

Dunbar was radicalized by his environment and, observing such displays in his community, chose church (and, by extension, Great Britain) over country. His decision would destroy him and even lead his disgraced family into vigorously supporting the American cause.

In The Martyr and the Traitor, in putting Hale and Dunbar on equal footing, Anderson underscores the intensity of the moment and the uncertainty of its outcome. Hale’s patriotism seems all the more brave but so too does Dunbar’s intransigence.

Both men died on the noose away from loved ones; their ends embody the chaos and certain danger of the Revolutionary War.

 

 

Categories
Friday Night Fever

Webster Hall will return: The end of an era for NYC’s oldest party room

When news circulated this week that East Village nightclub Webster Hall would be closing for renovation in August, people understandably freaked out. It seems we’re losing historically significantly places at an alarming rate, places that seem to take a little bit of New York City’s personality with them when they disappear forever.

It was announced earlier this year that the venue was switching to new corporate owner Barclays/AEG/Bowery Presents in an effort to “bring them up to contemporary standards and add a few more customer features.” For many people, that’s code for stripping a place of its charm.

But don’t panic! This change is but the latest for this storied party venue. The hall has had many facelifts over the past 130 years, evolving to mirror the tastes of Greenwich Village residents. Indeed this corporate upgrade is a belated reflection of the neighborhood’s various sleek changes. (The projected renovations seem positively mild in comparison to the blistering reinvention of Astor Place.)

In 2008 Webster Hall was designated a New York City landmark for its impressive terra-cotta architecture and its status as a beacon of ethnic and social counter-culture during the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

As we wrote in our book Adventures In Old New York: “Opened in 1886, the hall hosted the annual Greenwich Village Ball from the 1910s to the 1930s, a bacchanalia where artists, bohemians, drag queens, and general reprobates of the best kind came to drink, dance, and seriously make merry until early morning. It worked hard to earn its nickname “the devil’s playhouse.”

Author Allan Church wrote, “So many dances-till-dawn and fancy dress balls were held there that one Villager said of himself and his wife: ‘We’ve sold our bed. Why sleep when there’s a dance every night at Webster Hall?’ ”

—————

In celebration of its new landmark status, we recorded an entire episode on the history of Webster Hall back in January 2009. In 2015, some additional material was added to the show.  Listen to it here or look for it in our Bowery Boys Archive feed (episode #73):

We look forward to visiting the new Webster Hall but of course we’ll be swinging by before August 5 to bid adieu to present incarnation.  Here’s a few clippings from old newspapers, giving you a few additional insights into Webster Hall’s spectacular history:

Webster Hall was rebellious before it even opened. St. Ann’s, the church which most vigorously decried its existence, has all been erased except for its entrance:

In 1887 Webster Hall played host to a private dance for wealthy black New Yorkers, members of the Doctors’ Drivers’ Association, “a band of athletic young gentlemen who are always on the alert to bear physicians on errands of mercy.”

A depiction of the baseball scoreboard that was installed by the New  York Evening World to ‘instantaneously’ update baseball scores from Boston in 1890. [The complete article is here.]

New York Evening World
New York Evening World

1

 

The party rages at a Webster Hall costume ball, in a photo by the great Jessie Tarbox Beals. Just click into this photo for a closer view and observe the bizarre costumes.

Courtesy Schlesinger Library
Courtesy Schlesinger Library

 

Garment workers meet out in front of Webster Hall, between 1910-1915.  The venue was a pivotal meeting spot for union groups, political activists and anarchist leaders like Emma Goldman.

Courtesy Library of Congress
Courtesy Library of Congress

 

Greek immigrants gather in front of Webster Hall as they prepare to return to their country to engage in the first Balkan war (October 1912).

Courtesy Library of Congress
Courtesy Library of Congress
Courtesy Library of Congress
Courtesy Library of Congress

From a 1930 article:

 

A 1933 poster advertising the annual Greenwich Village costume ball, designed by John Sloan

Courtesy Ephemeral New York
CourtesyLibrary of Congress

 

The cast of ‘How To Succeed In Business Without Really Trying’ recording the cast album at Webster Hall, 1961.

cast

 

Jefferson Airplane’s first New York concert, January 8, 1967, at Webster Hall

(Photo by Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images)
(Photo by Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images)

 

Run DMC performing at The Ritz, May 15, 1984

Photograph by Josh Cheuse/updownsmilefrown
Photograph by Josh Cheuse/updownsmilefrown

 

 

Categories
American History

How American Newspapers Reported the New York Blackout of 1977

Forty years ago today, New York City was plunged into darkness. The city has certainly seen longer blackouts in its history but none as violent or as deadly in its effects than the Blackout of 1977. The deteriorating city, in the midst of a withering heat wave, was ill-equipped for such emergencies. Hundreds of stores were looted and  fires ravaged many neighborhoods.

For more details on the blackout, we have a couple podcasts which explore certain aspects of the event. The third part of our Bronx Trilogy — The Bronx Was Burning — focuses on that particular borough during the Blackout of 1977. And believe it or not, our fifth-ever Bowery Boys podcast was also about the Blackout, recorded on the 30th anniversary:

Here’s how the blackout and subsequent riots were reported in newspapers across the country in the days that followed.

While the first day’s reports focused on the basic facts, most naturally chose to zero in on the looting by the second and third days. These images of the blackout would linger in the minds of Americans far longer than images of the darkened skyline.

Fort Myers, Florida

The Press Democrat — Santa Rosa, California

Pittsburgh Post Gazette — Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania

The Baltimore Sun — Baltimore, Maryland 

 

Fort Lauderdale News — Fort Lauderdale, Florida

 

Fairbanks Daily News-Miner — Fairbanks, Alaska

Honolulu Star-Advertiser — Honolulu, Hawaii

The Clarion-Ledger — Jackson, Mississippi

St. Louis Post-Dispatch — St. Louis, Missouri

Idaho State Journal — Pocatello, Idaho

 

Surveying a number of newspapers from across the country, I observed that the three wire-service photographs that appeared to be most frequently published were:

Corbis
AP

 

The PBS American Experience documentary on the Blackout of 1977 is streaming for free on their website.

Categories
Bowery Boys Bookshelf

Down The Up Staircase: A Century of Black Lives In A Crumbling Old House

The extraordinary house at the heart of Down the Up Staircase is currently for sale.  “411 Convent Avenue is a House located in the Hamilton Heights neighborhood in Manhattan, NY,” the blog Street Easy dryly notes.  “411 Convent Avenue was built in 1901 and has 3 stories and 1 unit.”

Bruce D. Haynes, a professor of sociology at the University of California, Davis, grew up in this house, observing the latter years of its steady, graceful decline. His grandparents had moved into the townhouse in 1944 and his parents had remained within it their entire lives, even through a contentious marriage. Bruce grew up there with his two brothers George and Alan. One of them would meet a tragic end during the fateful summer of 1976.

Down The Up Staircase:
Three Generations of a Harlem Family
by Bruce D. Haynes and Syma Solovitch
Columbia University Press

At the start of Haynes’ remarkable memoir and social history, the gracious house on Convent Avenue has become a homey nest of memory and quirk. “The water to the basin had been shut off,” writes Haynes, “and the pipes were concealed by a Japanese tapestry as a formal living room and our parents’ bedroom.”

The house has not simply been transformed by familial necessity; it has been changed by the history of Harlem itself. Down the Up Staircase (cowritten by Syma Solovitch) documents the lives of three families who seem to have felt every tumultuous shift and been present, in some form, in every major milestone in black American life.

Every page of this historical, often unapologetically nostalgic, narrative feels personal, never letting the detours into historical context bog it down with extraneous detail.

The authors have one true civil rights hero among its characters — Haynes’ grandfather George Edmund Haynes (pictured above), co-founder of the National Urban League — but it’s his flawed legacy as a husband and father that reverberate into the lives of those that follow his footsteps through the house on Convent Avenue.

More impactful to the author was a portrait of George Edmund, painted by Laura Wheeler Waring, found tucked away in the attic. “Why had [Bruce’s father] never spoken of it? Why was it consigned to the attic?”

And then there’s Daisy, Bruce’s mother, an individual who steps out from the pages and into your parlor, in her finest fur. “Everybody knew and loved Miss Daisy, as they called her, and treated her like a queen. She had the airs and manners of a grand lady, a Southern belle, and she carried herself like royalty.”

Daisy was a stunning product of upper Manhattan’s black bourgeoisie, upper and middle class African-Americans who matched their white Fifth Avenue counterparts in dress, demeanor and aspiration. Her sons would later reject this assimilation aesthetic, with the 1950s and 60s bringing about an empowered and politically engaged black identity separate from the mainstream.

My favorite section of Down the Up Staircase — a section I’ve re-read about four times now — involves the clash of these two identities at a place called Raymond’s Beauty Shop and the various street hustlers who collected on the street corner out front. As Haynes describes the establishment’s owner:

“Before the word disco became popularized or Patti LaBelle put on a gold and silver lamè spacesuit, Raymond would dazzle the denizens in his nighttime attire. In the photographs he hung up or passed around at his shop,  he looked as much the diva as Patti ever did, dressed in three-inch platform shoes, silver lamè cape and thick makeup.

But Disco Raymond only came out at night. By day, he played the role of Harlem ladies’ man. His nails were manicured and he wore Italian shoes and hip-hugging dress slacks under his apron.  He was charismatic, could carry a tune, and drew the attentions of men and women alike.”

Down The Up Staircase is more than a story of a family, far more than the chronology of a home. And yet the entire tale — the story of the black experience in the 20th century — feels like it’s being very intimately told to you  from the parlor.

 

 

Pictured at top: Convent Ave, south from 148th St., photographed by Thaddeus Wilkerson, courtesy the Museum of the City of New York

Categories
Bridges

Visit the glorious High Bridge, New York’s tribute to the ancient world

The thirst for water has transformed New York.

The Dutch were sold on the island’s placement in the harbor at the mouth of the mighty Hudson River, making it a convenient waypoint for explorers and traders. Soon its ports had built the foundation for New York’s and later America’s financial sector.

The city’s most influential nineteenth-century businessman, Cornelius Vanderbilt, got his feet wet in business first with ferries and steamships before building his mighty railroad empire. Manhattan is surrounded by water, and yet early New York would almost be undone due to a lack of it.

Traces of the city’s centuries-long quest for clean drinking water can be found from the island’s tip to its top from the site of spring water wells down in Bowling Green to the relics of old water systems..

But no monument to freshwater dominates quite like the High Bridge, the Romanesque wonder linking Manhattan to the Bronx over the Harlem River.

Courtesy NYPL

For many decades this majestic artifact, seemingly plucked from the hills of ancient Gaul, was a vital link in that great engineering triumph: the Croton Aqueduct.

With the dense river traffic below and the icky-brackish composition of the surrounding rivers, early New Yorkers had to look beyond their waterways for drinking water. They dug cisterns and hunted down springs, but these couldn’t support the growing city.

By the late eighteenth century, Collect Pond, a so-called freshwater source located northeast of today’s City Hall, had become polluted by the industries that surrounded it, and valiant efforts to bring water from other sources during the Colonial era were dampened by debt and war.

Courtesy MCNY

In 1799 future vice president/murderer Aaron Burr hatched a grand business plan to construct a reservoir system that would distribute water via an elaborate network of hollowed-out logs. (Above: The reservoir and grandest structure of the Manhattan Company system, pictured here in 1825.)

Unfortunately for parched New Yorkers, he ended up using most of the funding for his company to establish a successful bank instead. More than a century and a half later, Manhattan Company merged with Chase National Bank to become Chase Manhattan, known today simply as Chase, one of the largest banks in the world. But his water distribution efforts ended up being woefully inadequate, and left Manhattan high and dry.

NYPL

By the 1830s the city was on the verge of a health crisis, as putrid water, poor sanitation, and all-around squalid living conditions culminated in a series of health epidemics and breakouts—which only heightened the urgent need for clean water.

In April 1835 New Yorkers were so desperate for a freshwater supply that they voted in favor of a seemingly impossible plan: a pipeline that would bring the pure waters of the Croton River, forty miles north in Westchester County, down to city residents. Only underscoring the emergency, eight months later the Great Fire of 1835 would ravage the city. The aqueduct couldn’t be constructed quickly enough.

Wikipedia

The elaborate project employed thousands of mostly Irish immigrants for many years (1837-1842). They constructed a sophisticated system of iron piping and brick masonry, which drew upon gravity to run the water through pipes and over arches, across the lush terrain of Westchester, and through the small towns that would later form the nucleus of the Bronx.

But how would the water get into the island of Manhattan? The aqueduct’s architects would need to find a way to keep it flowing across the Harlem River. Drilling technologies were not advanced enough in the 1840s to allow for a tunnel, so planners thought bigger — and higher.

NYPL

The High Bridge, at an elegant 1,450 feet long, is the oldest surviving bridge in New York. Completed in 1848, it not only brought the Croton water into the city, but it also made one heck of a statement noticed around the world.

New Yorkers had pulled off a technological miracle, borrowing engineering and architecture principles not attempted, on this scale, since the glory days of the Roman Empire. They were changing the course of one river forty-one miles away and sending its waters high above another.

“Water! Water!” wrote diarist and former mayor Philip Hone on October 12, 1842, “is the universal note which is sounded through every part of the city, and infuses joy and exultation into the masses.”

When the water was finally turned on — flowing on October 14, 1842 — the city threw a bash bigger than any since the expulsion of the British in 1783.

The water flowed through pipes across the High Bridge and to a receiving reservoir in the area of today’s Central Park, and from there to a distributing reservoir at 42nd Street and Fifth Avenue.

From there it moved through the city, eventually to City Hall Park, where good, clean water shot high into the air and down into the City Hall fountain, to the delight of the public. Imagine— enough water to waste in a fountain!

(At the time of the celebration, the High Bridge had not yet been completed, so Croton water crossed a temporary low bridge. The lofty span replaced the modest one a few years later.)

Below: New Yorkers gathering at City Hall in celebration at the completion of the Croton water system. For more information, check out our podcast on the construction of the Croton Aqueduct

NYPL

But the celebrated new system struggled to keep up with the demands of the growing city. In 1872, as masses of new arrivals from far-off lands crammed into tenements, an attractive water tower was constructed near the High Bridge to help increase the water pressure into the city.

The High Bridge and tower in 1915

By this time the High Bridge itself had turned into an attraction, a festive promenade where young gentlemen and their parasol-clinging lady companions could stroll, taking in the striking views of the still-forested landscape that surrounded them, while millions of gallons of clean water coursed beneath their feet.

MCNY

But New York, growing larger every day, would need more water. Much, much more. The introduction of indoor plumbing would require an entirely new and much larger Croton system to be built, which opened in 1890 and employed the massive Jerome Park Reservoir in the Bronx to satisfy the demand.

But alas, with a million flushes came the end of the High Bridge as an active part of the water system. Its function replaced by unromantic pipes buried underground, the bridge and water tower were retired from service by 1949, and soon these structures modeled after antiquity became historical relics themselves.

Below: The High Bridge, lost in a haze, photographed in 1920

MCNY

In a surprising twist given the unforgiving tendencies of city planners of the day, it was probably the beauty of the bridge and the tower that kept them from being ripped down in a bit of “progress.” Motorists along the Major Deegan Expressway took moments from their traffic jams to reflect on the possible story behind these strange and magnificent artifacts, which grew more incongruous as the modern highway system developed around them.

MCNY

Two years ago this month, the High Bridge was restored, not for the movement of water but for those visitors and their parasols (replaced by headphones, we imagine) to enjoy a one-of-a-kind perspective on their buzzing metropolis.

If you go — or rather, when you go, because you really must see it — reflect upon the water that once passed below you. It helped this city grow.

HOW TO GET TO THE HIGH BRIDGE

Mass Transit: Take the A/C or the 1 train to 168th Street, get out and walk east. OR the M101 bus takes you right up to Highbridge Park

On the Bronx side, you can take the 4 train to Mt Eden Ave but it’s a bit of a walk west. Instead take the Bx11 or Bx13 bus

From the NYC Parks website:

“If you are entering the High Bridge from the Manhattan side, please enter Highbridge Park at West 172nd Street and Amsterdam Avenue and walk east to the High Bridge Water Tower Terrace staircase down to the bridge level. If entering from the Bronx side, enter at University Avenue and 170th Street in Highbridge, Bronx.”

Some images from my trip there in November. It’s three times as beautiful now!

The above is an excerpt from our book The Bowery Boys Adventures In Old New York, now available at bookstores everywhere.
Categories
Bowery Boys Bookshelf Queens History

The International Express: The Personality of the 7 Train

Flickr/Tarek Awad

The New York subway system has been a frightening place recently — derailments, stalled trains underground, agonizing delays.

Most of these interruptions are experienced in a unique way, a group of strangers coping with a  situation outside their control. After a few minutes of waiting, people get impatient, pace the train, grumble silently, turn up the volumes on their listening devices. Their spheres of comfort may change, allowing them to speak to a fellow passenger in a sign of solidarity.

Now take those regular mass-transit routines and observe them on the most unusual train in all of New York  City (if not the world) — the 7 train which travels from the Hudson Yards to Flushing, passing through a wide variety of ethnic neighborhoods. It’s affectionately called the International Express.

INTERNATIONAL EXPRESS
New Yorkers on the 7 Train
By Stéphane Tonnelat and William Kornblum
Columbia University Press

In International Express: New Yorkers on the 7 Train, two ethnographers Stéphane Tonnelat and William Kornblum study closely the daily routines of subway riders along this line, representatives from a dozen unique communities, some blissfully lost in their own worlds, others suppressing their own racial prejudices, creating a fascinating space of temporary urban cohabitation.

Flickr/Tarek Awad

As the two authors observe, there really is no experience on earth like riding the subway.

Their observations of human behavior can be read to include all experiences upon the New York subway, but the 7 train provides a very unique mix of languages and cultures, intensifying and sometimes complicating regular daily routines.

Riders in rich ethnic communities of one type may only interact with those of other communities while riding the subway. On the 7, this means sharing a space with people of many ethnic backgrounds at once.  “Riders are fascinated by the diversity they experience and take pride in learning in learning to read cues regarding the identities of strangers on the trains.”

Flickr/Doug Letterman

In a very blunt but incisive way, the authors identify various aspects of New York that often hard to quantify. “[A]fter paying the fare, we all have an equal right to be on the subway, to be in the city dressed however we please, and to be ready to defend ourselves against stereotyping and bigotry.”

And yet, as observed in interviews with countless 7-train riders, the train becomes a sort-of safe space as well, where individuality is not only allowed but even supported, as it allows every rider to express themselves personally within basic norms of decency. Not that riders don’t personally harbor hostile or racist views at times; but mostly, perhaps as preservation of the 7 train’s neutral space, they keep these thoughts to themselves.

The authors also explore the particular power of the 7 train itself in transforming Queens into the most diverse and second-most populous borough, allowing neighborhoods of specific ethnic character to thrive, even at moments in New York City history where the rest of the city stagnated.

The success of neighborhoods like Jackson Heights and Flushing ultimately depend on the train. The most illuminating sections of International Express seem almost like dire warnings in light of 2017’s recent mass-transit disasters.

Or, as the authors put it, “Despite overcrowding, construction and mechanical delays, sweltering platforms in the summer, and endlessly broken escalators, the physically and socially competent urbanite chooses the subway. Will that always be the case?”

Categories
Landmarks Podcasts Politics and Protest Pride Collection

Revisiting the Stonewall Riots: The Evolving Legacy of a Violent Night

PODCAST The legacy of the Stonewall Riots and their aftermath, in a podcast history told over nine years apart (May 2008, June 2017).

In the early morning hours of June 28, 1969, undercover police officers attempting to raid the Stonewall Inn, a mob-controlled gay bar with darkened windows on Christopher Street, were met with something unexpected — resistance.

That ‘altercation’ was a messy affair indeed — chaotic, violent, dangerous for all. Homeless youth fought against riot police along the twisting, crooked streets of the West Village. And yet, by the end, thousands from all walks of life met on those very same streets in the days and weeks to come in a new sense of empowerment.

In May of 2008, we recorded a podcast on the Stonewall Riots, an event that galvanized the LGBTQ community, giving birth to political organizations and a sense of unity and pride.

So much has changed within the LGBTQ community — and so much was left out of our original show — that’s we’ve decided to do something unique. In the first half, we present to you our original 2008 history on the Stonewall Riots, warts and all. In the second half, we present newly recorded material, exploring the effects of Stonewall on the crises that faced the gay community in the 1980s and 90s.

Now an official U.S. National Monument maintained by the National Park Service, the Stonewall National Monument preserves New York City’s role in the birth of the international LGBT movement.

And please forgive us in advance for being extra personal in this show near the end.

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An early advertisement put out by the Mattachine Society, urging people to look at homosexuals different.

NYPL

An example of the types of flyers circulating in the West Village following the Stonewall incident.

NYPL

The Stonewall Inn was closed shortly after the battle with police, not to be reopened again until 1990.

Photographer Diana Davies, courtesy NYPL

Photographer Diana Davies, courtesy NYPL

Photographer Diana Davies, courtesy NYPL

From the first parade (in 1970) to Central Park, the first of what would later be called the Pride Parade.

Diana Davies/NYPL

The parade ended with a gigantic rally in Sheep Meadow in Central Park.

Diana Davies/NYPL

From the parade the following year:

NYPL

NYPL

From a 1971 demonstration in front of St. Patrick’s Cathedral.

NYPL

….and another near Radio City Music Hall.

NYPL

Gay rights demonstrations from 1971 at the state capitol in Albany, NY, from an incredible collection of pictures by Diane Davies, courtesy the New York Public Library.

NYPL

The entrance to Christopher Park in 1975, photo by Edmund Vincent Gillon

MCNY

Gay Liberation, how the statues looked when they were first installed in 1992.

Edmund Gillon/MCNY

An early AIDS march from 1983 which began near Stonewall in Sheridan Square.

During the AIDS crisis of the 1980s and 90s, many turned to the example of Stonewall as a way to unite the community and fight back against homophobia.

Photographer Gran Fury, Courtesy NYPL

An ACT UP sign for the Stonewall 25 parade and rally “How many of us will be alive for Stonewall 35?” On the opposite side: “AIDS. Where is your rage? ACT UP.”

NYPL

A sobering ACT UP ‘welcome wagon’ message. “But remember, when you are back at home, the brave legacy of the rebellious queens and dykes who sometimes embarrass you when you see our marches on television.”

NYPL

In front of Stonewall in 2013 after the announcement of the Supreme Court verdict in United States v. Windsor, overturning the Defense of Marriage Act.

Photo by Greg Young

Stonewall Inn and Christopher Park, 2015

Photo by Greg Young

Outside the Stonewall in 2016, following the Pulse nightclub shooting in Orlando, Florida.

Photo by Greg Young

Stonewall 2016, now with police protection! Taken in August 2016, following the announcement of Stonewall as a National Monument.

Categories
The Deuce

Returning to Times Square in the 1970s with HBO and two James Francos

"The Deuce Pilot HBO Productions 2015 1114 Avenue of the Americas New York City 10036 Characters: James Franco- Vincent Gary Carr- C.C. Margarita Leveiva- Abby Amber Skye Noyes- Ellen Don Harvey- Flanagan

Will The Deuce succeed where Vinyl failed? I was disappointed that HBO’s luxury period series about the 1970s music industry quickly faded after only one season, but it appears the network is going back into New York City history with a hotter, sleazier concept. (And Vinyl was very, very sleazy.)

The Deuce takes aim at Times Square, strolling past the legitimate theaters and restaurants and heading into the porn houses. According to their official description, the show “follows the story of the legalization and subsequent rise of the porn industry in New York’s Times Square from the early 1970s through the mid-1980s, exploring the rough-and-tumble world at the pioneering moments of what would become the billion-dollar American sex industry.”

I’m intrigued, even though the concept of two James Francos, as twin porn kingpins Vincent and Frankie Martino, sounds exhausting. (But with his voluminous output of work recently, perhaps there have always been two James Francos.)

However there are a few reasons why I think this might actually take off:

1) The show has been developed by George Pelecanos and David Simon, the makers of The Wire, possibly the most intense and literate show ever about urban life.  Simon’s last project Show Me A Hero was a precise and well-observed drama about Yonkers in the 1980s.

Below: Gary Carr and Tarik Trotter

2) New York City in the 1970s provides a treasure trove of dramatic possibilities if done straight. I quite liked Netflix’s The Get-Down but it was hardly literal. Times Square should provide suitable visual properties provided it’s not too over-the-top. (Fans of Simon’s Treme will know that he handles flashy settings very well.)

HBO

3) Maggie Gyllenhaal is in this. We’re in good hands. But let’s hope that wig translates better on film.

The Deuce debuts on HBO on September 12.

Here’s the trailer. What do you think?

 

Categories
Health and Living The First

The Secret History of Soft Drinks: A Tale in Four Flavors

THE FIRST PODCAST There is something very, very bizarre about a can of soda. 

How did this sugary, bubbly beverage – dark brown, or neon orange, or grape, or whatever color Mountain Dew is – how did THIS become such an influential force in American culture?

This is the strange and inconceivable story of how the modern soft drink was created. It’s a story in four parts —

1) At the start of the 19th century, two dueling soda fountains in lower Manhattan would set the stage for a century of mass consumption.

2) Soft drinks weren’t just tasty. For over a century, many believed they could provide a litany of cures to some of man’s most vexing ills. It’s from this snake-oil salesmanship that we get many of today’s top soft-drink brands.

3) Coca-Cola may pride itself on its ‘secret formula’, but in fact that formula has frequently changed since the 1880s, when a Confederate war veteran first invented this magical brew mixing three exotic ingredients — cocaine, wine and kola nut.

4) Soft drinks have professed to relieve many physical ills. By the 1950s they even attempted to promote weight loss. But the rise of diet drinks sparked a marketing war with manufacturers of one of their most reliable (and delicious) ingredients.

To get this episode, simply download it for FREE from iTunes or other podcasting services.

Subscribe to The First here so that you don’t miss future episodes!

You can also listen to the show on Stitcher streaming radio from your mobile device.

Or listen to it straight from here:
THE SECRET HISTORY OF SOFT DRINKS: A TALE IN FOUR FLAVORS

Joseph Priestley’s mechanism for artificially carbonating water.

For many decades Moxie advertisements featured a medical professional as the defining image of their product.

Dr. Pepper once proudly advertised that it was free from caffeine. This ad is from the 1910s in the wake of Coca-Cola’s battles with the federal government over caffeine.

Dr Pepper Museum

Picture at top is a detail from this great shot from Shorpy, circa 1920, of the People’s Drug Store, 14th & U Streets, in Washington D.C.

The inspiration for Coca-Cola — coca wine from coca leaves.

Internet Archive Book Images

In the 1890s there were reportedly more soda fountains than there were taverns in New York City. Below — a later fountain stocked with sodas in Staten Island

This unsuccessful campaign tried to convince people that hot soft drinks were also a taste treat.

Advertisements used on this week’s show:

A Coca-Cola advertisement from Australia!

 

 

 

Categories
Bowery Boys Bookshelf

‘Incendiary’: The Mad Bomber Terrorizes 1950s New York

Judd Mehlman/New York Daily News via Getty Images

George Metesky was just your average working joe with a unique and understandable beef against his former employer Con Edison. He was injured on the job, eventually fired and denied workers compensation for what appear to be purely bureaucratic reasons.

But any sympathies one might find for Metesky, however, are quickly abandoned.

In retaliation, he began a meticulously sustained crime spree in New York City within its most famous and most bustling landmarks.

For sixteen years (from 1940 until his arrest in January 1957), this disturbed man placed explosive devices throughout the city, a chilling swath of discord meant to send a message while endangering the lives of thousands of New Yorkers. Grand Central, Penn Station, the New York Public Library and a variety of theaters (including Radio City Music Hall) were all targeted by the man who the press would eventually label ‘the Mad Bomber’.

INCENDIARY
The Psychiatrist, The Mad  Bomber and the Invention of Criminal Profiling
By Michael Cannell
Minotaur Books/Macmillan Publishers

In Incendiary, the brisk new page-turner by Michael Cannell, these disturbing events and the race to capture Metesky are given a bold, true-crime retelling, an immersive non-fiction thriller with cinematic pacing.

Metesky operated a bit like a comic-book villain, sending letters to the New York Journal-American, taunting the police, all the while setting devices in places where they would receive the most attention. But, strangely enough, the ‘Mad Bomber’ never meant to seriously take lives; indeed, of the dozens of explosive devices set off over the city, nobody was actually killed. (But there were a number of serious injuries.)

Given the nature of Metesky’s crime spree, investigators were able to use ground-breaking criminal profiling methods. A disturbed individual like Metesky almost demanded such an investigation, his psyche on full display in his newspaper letters.

Key to his eventual capture was psychiatrist James Brussel who worked closely with the police in constructing a profile of Metesky that was extraordinarily detailed — and mostly accurate.

Even down to outfit he wore when he eventually confronted the police on a cold evening in January of 1957.

“I know why you fellows are here. You think I’m the Mad Bomber.”

Metesky conducted his frightening crimes with an alarming theatricality — indeed, Brussel’s criminal profiling methods would inspire millions of hours of evening television — which is why Cannell’s gripping procedural feels immediate and particularly terrifying.  This is the stuff of modern nightmares.

 

At top: A portion of one of Metesky’s letter. Below: the Mad Bomber in jail

Judd Mehlman/New York Daily News via Getty Images

Categories
Podcasts The First

The Devil and the First Broadway Musical (“The Black Crook”)

THE FIRST PODCAST The Black Crook is considered the first-ever Broadway musical, a dizzying, epic-length extravaganza of ballerinas, mechanical sets, lavish costumes and a storyline about the Devil straight out of a twisted hallucination.

The show took New York by storm when it debuted on September 12, 1866. This is the story of how this completely weird, virtually unstageable production came to pass. Modern musicals like Phantom of the Opera, Wicked, and Hamilton wouldn’t quite be what they are today without this curious little relic.

WARNING: You may leave this show humming a little tune called “You Naughty, Naughty Men.”

Featuring music by Adam Roberts and Libby Dees, courtesy the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts.

And the voice of Ben Rimalower reading the original reviews of the Black Crook.

With grateful thanks to Doug Reside whose online resources have been most invaluable with my research.

For more information, there’s an entire Bowery Boys podcast on the history of Niblo’s Garden:

The actress and dancer Pauline Markham, performing as Stalacta, Queen of the Golden Realm

NYPL

“Celebrated dancer and composer, David Costa, wearing tights, trunks, shirt and long cape with a satin sheen, and a crown on his head featuring horns. He has one foot on the seat of a round-seat chair with heavy fringe, his thigh resting on the back of the chair as he rests his elbow on his knee and his chin on his hand.”

La Biche au Bois from which sprung the Black Crook

From an 1867 book of songs from the Black Crook (although many of the songs were likely never in the show!)

NYPL

Versions of the show popped up across the country in almost every major city. There was no real consistency aside from Barras’ story.

NYPL

Thomas Baker wrote many of the songs in The Black Crook. He was also a song writer for Laura Keene whose show The Seven Sisters is sometimes noted as an early proto-musical.

NYPL

Each number was so elaborate that it would take several minutes to move scenery and get the cast into new costumes. This was one of the key reasons the show had so many unrelated songs which were sung as scenes were shifted.

NYPL
Operetta Research Center

Illustrations from Charles Barras novel The Black Crook: A Most Wonderful History, published in 1866

The audio of Leonard Bernstein was taken from this episode of Omnibus:

“You Naughty, Naughty Men” performed by Adam Roberts and Libby Dees

“Les Grelots d’amour” performed by Adam Roberts

Some intrepid theater folk brought back a version of The Black Crook and performed it last year at Abrons Arts Center. Hopefully they will remount the show in the future!

Categories
Podcasts

The Bowery Boys Live in Brooklyn! Celebrating Ten Years of Podcasting

PODCAST The Bowery Boys podcast turns ten years old in June. Greg and Tom take the celebration to the Bell House for a live show.

In early June of 2007, Tom Meyers and Greg Young sat around a laptop and a karaoke microphone, looked out over Canal Street in the Lower East Side and began recording the very first Bowery Boys: New York City History Podcast.

For ten years the Bowery Boys podcast has brought the history of this extraordinary city to life — the people, places and events which have helped shape our modern metropolis.

In celebration of this anniversary, join them for their very first podcast event in front of a live audience as a part of the 2017 NYC Podfest festival. This show was recorded on April 9, 2017, at the Bell House, in Gowanus, Brooklyn.

They talk about how they met, how they came up with the idea for their show and run through a list of their favorite and most notable podcasts.

The Bowery Boys are joined by moderator Nat Towsen, host of the Nat Towsen Downtown Variety Hour every month at UCB Theater in the East Village. And stay tuned until the end! An unexpected guest arrives to present the Bowery Boys with a special gift.

FEATURING: Stories of Eartha Kitt, Boss Tweed, ABBA, Evelyn Nesbit, P. T. Barnum, Talulah Bankhead, Donald Trump, Varla Jean Merman, the musical Rent and, of course, Robert Moses and Jane Jacobs.

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

We are now producing a new Bowery Boys podcast every two weeks. 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!

Our big big thanks to NYC Podfest, to the Bell House and to Julie Menin, Commissioner of the Mayor’s Office of Media and Entertainment!

NOTES: The Revolutionary War site that Greg mentions is being excavated will be built over by a school, not a condo. Here’s more on that story.

You can catch the newest installment of Nat Towson’s Downtown Variety Hour on June 5 at UCBT East Village

Nat Towson with Greg Young and Tom Meyers. Photo is by Mindy Tucker who took a whole host of images from NYC Podfest. Check them all out here.

Our special surprise is revealed before our show starts….

Photo by Mitch Paluszek

For listeners: Here are some of the visuals that were used during the live show and the Bowery Boys podcasts they correspond to:

Collect Pond (Episode #50)

NYPL

P.T. Barnum’s American Museum (Episode #46)

NYPL

Ghost Stories of New York (complete list here)

LOC

Great Fire of 1835 (Episode #78)

Boss Tweed and Tammany Hall (Episode #86)

New York City Subway (Episode #109)

Shorpy/Library of Congress

Sardi’s Restaurant (Episode #125)

Life Magazine

Rockaway Beach (Episode #140)

A Snapshot of Hurricane Sandy, Nov. 2, 2012

The Murder of Stanford White (Episode #188)

Library of Congress

The Disappearance of Dorothy Arnold (Episode #205)

NYPL

West Side Story: the Making of Lincoln Center (Episode #218)

Museum of the City of New York

Robert Moses (Episode #100) and Jane Jacobs (Episode #200)

A Short History of TRUMP (Episode #123)

Categories
Planes Trains and Automobiles

The story of how Idlewild Airport was renamed for John F. Kennedy

JFK International Airport Chamber of Commerce

John F. Kennedy, the 35th president of the United States, was memorialized in dozens of ways following his assassination on November 22, 1963. None of these are more vital to the daily lives of New Yorkers than John F. Kennedy International Airport — or Kennedy Airport or simply JFK — the business airport in the northeast.

You may not realize how quickly it was renamed for the fallen president. On November 15, 1963, President Kennedy left Idlewild Airport (the airport’s former name) after a short stay in the city. Six weeks later, that airport would be named after him.

New York joined the nation in mourning following the televised funeral of President Kennedy on November 25, 1963. Thousands watched the ceremony from a large television screen hanging in Grand Central Terminal. Traffic stopped in Times Square and buglers played taps from atop the old Hotel Astor. All airport traffic at Idlewild stopped at noon.

New York Like A Vast Church ran the headline in the New York Times.

Calls immediately rose to memorialize the president in the city. On December 4, less than two weeks after Kennedy’s death, Mayor Robert Wagner announced that he would submit a bill to the city council to honor Kennedy with a name change to the Idlewild.

Unfortunately, these ultimately successful calls to rename New York’s largest airport came at the cost of obliterating the memory of another great American.

Wired New York

Idlewild was the popular name for the airport which opened on July 1, 1948, because it was built upon a former golf course and luxury accommodation of that name. According to the Times, “The name Idlewild is believed to have been inspired by the fact that the site at that time was wild and that the hotel and park constituted a recreational facility for the idle rich.”

But its full, official name was New York International Airport, Anderson Field, named for Major General Alexander E. Anderson, a decorated World War I veteran and Queens businessman. Unfortunately Anderson had few proponents fighting to keep his name on the airport by 1963.

The following week, “[i]n an action marked by solemnity and silent prayer, the City Council voted unanimously yesterday to change the name of New York International Airport at Idlewild, Queens, to the John F. Kennedy International Airport.” [source]

It was revealed then that city officials wished to name the airport after Kennedy even more quickly than that. Indeed, the idea had been unofficially approved hours after Kennedy’s assassination but it had taken the extra time to get the official approval from his widow (and future New York City resident) Jackie Kennedy.

Photographer Meyer Liebowitz/The New York Times

By Wednesday, December 18, the name change had been formally approved and workman busily rushed to change all the signs at the airport. Idlewild officially became John F. Kennedy Airport in a ceremony held on Christmas Eve 1963.

The president’s younger brother Edward Kennedy was in attendance, helping to unveil a 242-foot-long sign emblazoned with the new name. Their brother Robert F. Kennedy was scheduled to attend but canceled.

You would think such a name change to be relatively uncontroversial but this was not the case.

In an editorial which ran a few days after the ceremony, the New York Times remarked: “The speedy change of name — whether it be of an airport or a bridge or a park or a cape — reflects the love that millions of people all over the world had for Present Kennedy; but, as we have previously stated, it is only debasing the subject of our grief to attach his name so hastily to a miscellaneous collection of public works, almost as if we were afraid that without these tangible reminders he would be soon forgotten. “

Meyer Liebowitz/The New York Times

And President Kennedy almost got his name upon a newly built bridge in the New York City area, too.

That same month, a Staten Island politician filed a bill to the New York state legislature to name a new bridge being built in the Narrows after Kennedy. “Assemblyman Edward J. Amann Jr … profiled at Albany for introduction into the Legislature in January a bill calling for changing the name of the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge to the John. F. Kennedy Memorial Bridge.” [source]

The Verrazano kept its tribute to the 16th century European explorer. But New York does have a bridge named for a Kennedy — the Robert F. Kennedy Bridge (the former Triborough Bridge).

Below: A month after the dedication, Robert did stop by the airport named after his brother. 

JFK International Airport Chamber of Commerce

Categories
Bowery Boys Bookshelf Wartime New York

The marks of World War I, scattered throughout the five boroughs

Library of Congress

Echoes of the first World War, one hundred years behind us, can still be found in virtually every neighborhood of New York City.

In Kevin C. Fitzpatrick’s revealing and compact guidebook World War I New York: A Guide to the City’s Enduring Ties to the Great War, these memories linger in familiar landmarks and obscure monuments alike. The effect of assembling these reminders in one book is eye-opening; collecting them brings a new sense of poignancy to markers often ignored.

Fitzpatrick organizes these marvelous finds by subject, but in my opinion the most helpful section is near the end, where all entries are arranged by borough and neighborhood.  It’s a book designed for American history buffs and locals who just want to make new connections with their neighborhoods. (There’s even a few maps for those who enjoy self-guided walking tours.)

A few of my favorite World War I related artifacts featured in the book:

Pilot Albert S. Heinrich on Governors Island July 4, 1914. Heinrich built airplanes for the war effort during WWI. (Library of Congress)

Fort Jay Airfield and the Early Birds

Sure, Governors Island is a veritable pleasure garden now, but back in 1916-17, it was a pivotal location for wartime flight training, the spot of one of America’s first airfields.

Writes Fitzpatrick: “More than two dozen pioneer aviators trained here, and many shipped out as America’s first combat pilots.”

Library of Congress

James Montgomery Flagg and Howard Chandler Christy Studios

Two artists most associated with the war propaganda effort worked and lived on the same block on the Upper West Side.

Fitzpatrick: “Christy is remembered for his luscious palette and fetching women, often dressed in men’s uniforms, next to slogans such as ‘Gee! If I Were A Man I’d Join The Navy.’ But Flagg created the real icon, instantly recognizable a century later: Uncle Sam pointing to the viewer over ‘I Want You.'”

Photo by Jim Henderson/Wikimedia

The Red Hook Doughboy

There are Doughboy statues all over New York but they are not always well highlighted. The Brooklyn neighborhood of Red Hook holds one of these treasures which once sat in a local park.

Fitzpatrick: “It was vandalized, the bronze plaques stolen, and the memorial ruined. In 1972 it was hauled to Veterans of Foreign Wars Post 5195, where today it is locked up behind a steel fence next to 325 Van Brunt Street. It was repaired and memorial plaques replaced.”

World War I New York:
A Guide to the City’s Enduring Ties to the Great War
Kevin C. Fitzpatrick
Globe Pequot Press

 

NOTE: Fitzpatrick also has a book on the Algonquin Round Table and joined us for our podcast on the subject back in March.

AT TOP: The Victory Arch which once sat astride Madison Square Park. While the arch is no longer there, dozens of other memorials still grace the streets of the city.