Author: Bowery Boys

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Pop Culture

‘War Paint’ and ‘Indecent’: Two views of New York City history on Broadway

History has always been a critical component of theater, especially in musicals, where period sets and costumes assist in creating other worlds on stage quite unlike our normal one. But last year, with Hamilton: The Musical, the stage phenomenon which won the Tony Award for Best Musical (and a million other awards), history became a rock star.

Or rather, historical figures, even those with seemingly little contemporary vigor, had the ability to inspire a new generation, if reinterpreted by the right talents.

The musical categories for the 71st Annual Tony Awards, announced on Tuesday, are a bit more competitive this year than last, when Hamilton took home eleven awards.  The Best Musical category is an especially diverse cross-section of subjects in terms of time and place — one contemporary tale (Dear Evan Hansen), one from recent history (Come From Away, set right after September 11, 2001), a European historical fable (Natasha, Pierre and the Great Comet of 1812, based on Tolstoy) and, of course, a musical that is literally about not having any history (Groundhog Day, based on the movie).

Joan Marcus/Polk & Co

The new musical War Paint is this year’s musical representative of New York City history, replaying the story of Fifth Avenue’s most famous retail rivalry between cosmetics icons Elizabeth Arden and Helena Rubinstein. While War Paint didn’t make the Best Musical cut, its two main stars (Christine Ebersole as Arden, Patti Lupone as Rubinstein) are competing for Best Performance By An Actress In A Musical. Just as Arden and Rubinstein themselves would have wanted!

Arden, arriving from Canada, and Rubinstein, from Poland by way of Australia, set up their companies in New York in the 1910s. But the musical, with book by Doug Wright, music by Scott Frankel and lyrics by Michael Korie, actually starts in the 1930s with their careers firmly established on Fifth Avenue, their competing salons bustling with society women.

Why skip past their origin stories? War Paint is more of a showcase than a show, designed to do something very rare, providing an opportunity for two great female musical stars to take the stage at the same time.  (Quick: Name another musical with two female leads where they are not playing witches.)  Because, practically speaking, you want established stars in your musical, the story must start with Arden and Rubinstein already at the top of their game.

Joan Marcus/Polk and Co

The musical escorts the pair through the mid-century — past the changing roles of women in World War II, past the television revolution — as their once-chic brand names struggle to change with the times. On occasion the story pauses to infuse the grand, sweeping narrative with small biographical details.

If you heard our recent podcast on the subject, you’ll know that Arden and Rubinstein never actually met (at least, as the legend goes). This too works to the musical’s benefit, giving each star separate storylines that veer into each other just enough, never letting one upstage the other.

Lupone and Ebersole are tremendous. How could they not be? Lupone playfully transitions Rubinstein from a slinking figure of sophisticated grace to an irascible curmudgeon whose body language aches with history (and several dozen pounds of jewelry). Ebersole, with superbly fading cheer, slowly transformed Arden’s legendary confidence to wistfulness and then — in a fantasy coda where the two women actually do meet — into a graceful humility.

If you want to hear more about the story of Elizabeth Arden and Helena Rubinstein, listen to our podcast The Beauty Bosses of Fifth Avenue. Most of our show takes place before the events of the musical, so consider it a prequel of sorts.

There’s also a bit of New York City history in contention for the Tony Award for Best Play. Joining Oslo, Sweat and A Doll’s House, Part 2 in the category is an intriguing and unconventional transfer from the Off-Broadway stage — Indecent written by Paula Vogel.

Carol Rosegg/Indedent

This very musical play recounts the drama surrounding the 1923 Broadway production of God of Vengeance, a controversial Yiddish play that had been well received in downtown New York theaters, but scandalized audiences when it moved uptown. Its cast and crew were charged with obscenity — the show features lesbian protagonists — and its playwright Sholem Asch ostracized. (He spends his time cloistered in Staten Island.)

This artful production feels like a graphic novel brought to life, with projected text hovering over a barren stage and its players sometimes disintegrating into dust. (It’s a weird and spooky stage trick.) Despite feeling very abstract and removed from circumstances at times, Indecent makes a point to root God of Vengeance within Broadway history, vibrantly repeating a couple offending scenes from the play.

Below: A letter from the playwright which ran in the Brooklyn Daily Eagle on March 11, 1923

 

Hopefully the point isn’t lost on its audience; the original production was shut down on a similar stage at the old Apollo Theater (at 223 West 42nd Street), just a few blocks south of the Cort Theatre, Indecent‘s present home.  The cast, brilliantly directed by Rebecca Taichman (who scored a Tony nomination for Best Director), flaunts those very moments from Vengeance that proper society once thought offensive.

If you’re in the mood to hear more about scandalous Broadway shows from the 1920s, listen to our podcast Diamond Girl: Mae West — Sex on Broadway. West and the cast of Sex was arrested just a few years after God of Vengeance on similar charges.

 

 

 

 

Categories
Planes Trains and Automobiles Podcasts

The Hindenburg Over New York: The Airship Age Comes To An Abrupt End

PODCAST The era of the Zeppelin, how it shaped the New York skyline and the disastrous crash of the Hindenburg on an airfield in New Jersey.

On the afternoon of May 6, 1937, New Yorkers looked overhead at an astonishing sight — the arrival of the Hindenburg, the largest airship in the world, drifting calmly across the sky.

In size and prominence, the Hindenburg would prove to be the greatest airship of all. It was the Concorde of its day, providing luxurious transatlantic travel for the rich and famous. In Germany, the airship was used as a literal propaganda machine for the rising Nazi government of Adolf Hitler. New York City was already in the throes of ‘Zeppelin mania’ by then. These rigid gas-filled airships, largely manufactured by Germany, were experiencing a Jazz Age rediscovery thanks in part to the Graf Zeppelin, a glamorous commercial airship which first crossed the ocean in 1928. Its commander and crew even received two ticker-tape parades through lower Manhattan.

But dreams of Zeppelin-filled skies were quickly vanquished in the early evening hours of May 6, 1937, over a landing field in Lakehurst, New Jersey. Its destruction would be one of the most widely seen disasters in the world, marking an end to this particular vision of the future.

But a mark of the Zeppelin age still exists on the New York City skyline, atop the city’s most famous building!

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!

An announcement in Scientific American of the first airship designed by Count von Zeppelin.

An early illustration from Scientific American (June 26, 1909) showing an early prototype of the Zeppelin airship.

Scientific American

In the 1920s people imagined putting mooring masts on everything!

Scientific American

The ZR3 Los Angeles, made for America by the Germans as part of post-war reparations, flies over New York, above the construction of the Empire State Building.

Dr Hugo Eckener and the crew of the Graf Zeppelin receive ticker tape parade in lower Manhattan.

Getty Images

People gather around the Graf Zeppelin in an old file photo. Perhaps they’re boarding or are simply gathering in awe to view the marvelous airship.

SDASM Archives

Video of the Graf Zeppelin entering over the skies of New York, photographing the city.

A diagram of the mooring mast atop the Empire State Building — at least as it was supposed to have worked.

In Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow, a retro-futuristic film, the mooring mast is effectively used to deposit Gwyneth Paltrow on top of the Empire State Building.

The Hindenburg flew over Manhattan on a few occasions. The photograph below is from August 8, 1936.

Courtesy AP

The Hindenburg had actually safely docked at the Lakehurst facility a few times in 1936. From the photo caption: “Various news crews covering the landing of the Hindenburg, in 1936, in Lakehurst, New Jersey. The man perched atop the vehicle on the left is Albert Emanuel ‘Al’ Gold, of Fox Movietone News, who would eventually capture footage of the famous Hindenburg disaster, in 1937.”

Source: Amanda Emily, Looking Back: The Lesson of Lakehurst, TV News Storytellers, August 5, 201

The Hindenburg ignites over Lakehurst and so hurtles to the ground in a horrifying burning mass.

Newsreels featuring the Hindenburg and Herbert Morrison’s distraught play-by-play.

Categories
Sports

The Wise Guy of Baseball: Getting To Know Leo ‘The Lip’ Durocher

BOOK REVIEW The history of sports is often written around its most revered role models, as though the noble character of the greatest players comes from the purest devotion to their game.

Leo Durocher, a sterling shortstop and manager for some of the greatest teams in baseball history, was no role model. In most ways, he was the very opposite, a combative player with a rock-star personality.  He’s famously attributed as saying “Nice guys finish last,” not because he actually said it, but because it seemed to be his life’s slogan.

In Paul Dickson‘s fast-paced and often amusing biography, Durocher’s extraordinary accomplishments on the field battle for prominence with the player’s indulgent and never-ending quest for the good life. Along the way, he became an iconic New York sports hero. As a player for the New York Yankees (1925, 1928-29), the Brooklyn Dodgers (1938-48) AND the New York Giants (1948-1955), his story plays out in New York’s greatest ballparks, as well as its most glamorous nightclubs and hotels.

Leo Durocher: Baseball’s Prodigal Son
by Paul Dickson
Bloomsbury Publishing

Durocher, born in Massachusetts to French Canadian parents, has had many nicknames through his career — Frenchy, “the All-American Out,” and a great number of four-letter ones. But “Leo the Lip” seemed to fit him best. His quarrels with other players, umpires and sportswriters are the stuff of legends.

Babe Ruth famously couldn’t stand him. At one point, he accused Durocher of stealing his watch, an alleged theft that would follow the players from the Yankees to the Dodgers. Writes Dickson: “As Leo said, in a half-angry, half-mocking tone, ‘Jesus Christ, if I was going to steal anything from him I’d steal his god-damned Packard.”

Brooklyn Dodgers Leo Durocher on dugout steps in 1939

His expletive-filled spats with teammates and managers tarred him early in his career; at one point, at age 24, Durocher was considered ‘washed out’, a toxic presence distracted by decadence and fame. As Dickson writes, “One rumored reason that all the teams in the American League passed on Durocher was that Babe Ruth let it be known he wanted Durocher out of the league.”

In New York, Durocher hops from the Cotton Club to the Stork Club in fancy suits, racking up debts at trendy hotels and acquiring a coterie of suspicious characters. His gambling addiction is now legendary; although many baseball players squandered their salaries this way, Durocher seemed to treat gambling as a second sport.

This led him into the circles of both mobsters and movie stars. And there, in the middle, was Durocher’s close friend George Raft, the Hollywood actor who frequently played gangsters on film. Durocher emulated Raft — often dressing and parting his hair in similar ways – and the actor, in turn, introduced the baseball player to the thrills of the entertainment world.

Below: Durocher with the stars of the TV show Mr. Ed

Courtesy Baseball Reliquary

Even during his greatest moments as a manager of the Dodgers, many believed Durocher might quit and become a radio comedian and actor. During World War II he even toured with the USO.

Yet he would always return to the game. With the Dodgers, he transitioned from player to manager, overseeing the team during some of its greatest moments. That included the years with Jackie Robinson, the first African-American player. (Of course, Robinson and Durocher would later public feud, almost a rite of passage for great baseball stars at this point.)

Dickson, a long-time chronicler of baseball history, finds a readable balance between Durocher’s on-field achievements and late-night scandals, revealing a charming and exceptionally scrappy, if not exactly likable, sportsman.

He’s harsh and mouthy to the end. But his talent was undeniable; the writer Bob Broeg, at Durocher’s death in 1991, said that “losing Leo Durocher was like losing either an old friend or an old enemy — you could take your pick.” Over the years, the writer had gotten into several fist-fights with Durocher.

Categories
The First

Josephine Cochrane and her Dazzling Dish-Washing Machine

THE FIRST PODCAST Of the tens of thousands of U.S. patents granted in the 19th century, only a small fraction were held by women. One of those women — Josephine Cochrane — would change the world by solving a simple household problem.

While throwing lavish dinner parties in her gracious home in Shelbyville, Illinois, Cochrane noticed that her fine china was being damaged while being washed. Certainly there was a better way of doing the dishes?

Cochrane’s extraordinary adventure would lead to places few women are allowed — into gritty mechanical workshops and the exclusive corridors of big business. Nobody could believe a woman responsible for such a sophisticated mechanical device.

In her own words: I couldn’t get men to do the things I wanted in my way until they had tried and failed on their own. They insisted on having their own way with my invention until they convinced themselves that my way was the better.

FEATURING: The voice of Beckett Graham from the History Chicks podcast, portraying the actual quotes of Mrs. Cochrane (or shouldn’t that be Cochran)?

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:
JOSEPHINE AND THE DISH-WASHING MACHINE

“The Garis-Cochran Dish Washing Machine having been in competition with both foreign and home inventions at the World’s Fair received a diploma and medal for best mechanical construction, durability and adaptation to its line of work and unrivaled for quantity and quality of work.”

Mrs. Cochrane in her later years:

Categories
Bowery Boys Bookshelf

‘The Gargoyle Hunters’ and the Architecture of Nostalgia

BOOK REVIEW The architects and builders of the post-Civil War period provided New York City with masterpieces of great beauty — cast-iron facades, modern emblems of trade rendered in marvelous stone, fanciful medieval gargoyles upon impressive towers. Gilded Age architecture and the ornate shapes of pre-modern design have nonetheless defined the timeless identity of the city.

In the 1970s lovers of this fading architectural landscape decided to protect its most treasured features. By liberating its details from the landscape entirely.

They were called ‘gargoyle hunters’, so passionate for the city’s magnificent beauty that they would rather steal aspects of it than see it destroyed.

The Gargoyle Hunters
by John Freeman Gill
Alfred A. Knopf

John Freeman Gill‘s new book The Gargoyle Hunters is obviously about one of these guerrilla collectors, working with a crew of thieves, chipping away at doomed architectural wonders falling into disrepair, scouring heaps of rubble for a bit of beauty in a city tumbling into financial ruin.

One of the thieves is the gargoyle hunter’s son. His name is Griffin.

Shortly into Gill’s captivating and exuberant novel, one realizes that architectural crimes are merely the backdrop. This is a story about all varieties of nostalgia. Formalized urban nostalgia, of course, of the kind that drives landmark preservation and podcasts about New York City history. But also the constant pining for recognizable moments in a person’s life, both for the pleasures of our childhood and for the relationships that once held us in safety.

Below: The World Trade Center, with the Woolworth Building peering through — two architectural contrasts in Gill’s novel (photo date 1973)

Gill, a New York-based journalist and New York Times contributor, is the son of a ‘gargoyle hunter’ who traipsed 1970s in search of aged, deteriorating treasures, and his adventure, while certainly fictionalized, has the immediacy of a memoir, laced with specific references to corner shops, restaurants and cheap snack foods.

Griffin’s parents are separated so he spends time between his home – a rustic, unrenovated brownstone on the Upper East Side — and his father’s workshop in a warehouse in Tribeca, many years before chic hotels and film festivals would arrive here. Griffin has accepted the separation, if mournfully, just as he assumes New York as a faded, withering place, the rubble upon which the foibles of his adolescence play out.

Below: Heaps of rubble abound in early 1970s New York. In The Gargoyle Hunter, they sometimes possess abandoned treasures. 

But those around him are not so complacent. His sister spends her time trying to piece her family back together in crafty ways. At one point, she smashes a window with a rock, knowing her father will have to come back and repair it.

Her father also vandalizes to repair the past, soon employing his son in wild and increasingly dangerous capers to remove carved detailing from old Gilded Age buildings, finding great spiritual urgency in his tasks.

“The bridge of time is very poignant,” he told me. “I think about the immigrant carvers who came over here and did this work on people’s home — itinerant nobodies, many of them, with no stable homes of their own — and I meet them across time.”

Their adventures soon lead to a startling heist — the theft of an entire building.

“No, not part of a building, son. What we’re going to steal is a building — the whole damn thing, cornice to curb. Just stop asking so many questions and you’ll see. Okay?

(NOTE: This sounds far-fetched, but Gill bases this on an actual event of a cast-iron structure win 1974.)

Below: The ramshackle streets of Tribeca, another vivid location from the book

I feel as though Gill is doing a bit of gargoyle hunting from his own life, the novel filled with charming and very specific anecdotes of teenage exuberance and wistful remembrance, dotted along the corridors of 1970s New York that you can almost follow along with on a dusty map.

There’s even a marvelously awkward experience atop the Statue of Liberty, one that feels gleefully unrestricted, with a major nod to modern cinema’s greatest ode to nostalgia — A Christmas Story.

The central crimes (or are they rescues?) of The Gargoyle Hunters feel realistic because they’re paired with the common trials and errors of teenage life, moments we all wish we could chip away and save forever.

 

Categories
Health and Living Podcasts

The Beauty Bosses of Fifth Avenue: Elizabeth Arden & Helena Rubinstein

PODCAST Fifth Avenue’s role in the ‘revolution’ of beauty, as led by Elizabeth Arden and Helena Rubinstein, New York’s boldest businesswomen of the Jazz Age.

The Midtown Manhattan stretch of Fifth Avenue, once known for its ensemble of extravagant mansions owned by the Gilded Age’s wealthiest families, went through an astonishing makeover one hundred years ago. Many lavish abodes of the rich were turned into exclusive retail boutiques, catering to the very sorts of people who once lived here.

Their products — beauty! Creams, lotions, ointments and cleansers. Then later: eye-liners, rouges, lipsticks, mascaras. On the forefront of this transformation were two women from very different backgrounds. Elizabeth Arden was a Canadian entrepreneur, looking to establish her business in the growing city of New York. Helena Rubinstein, from Poland by way of Australia, already owned an established company and looked to Manhattan as a way to anchor her business in America.

In this episode we observe the growing independence of American woman and the changing beauty standards which arose in the 1910s and 20s, bringing ‘the painted face’ into the mainstream.

And it’s in large part thanks to these two extraordinary businesswomen, crafting two parallel empires in a corporate framework usually reserved for men.

ALSO: Theda Bara, Estee Lauder, Max Factor and a whole lot of sheep and horses!

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!

FURTHER LISTENING — Check out our spin-off podcast The First: Stories of Inventions and their Consequences, in particular, the episode on the invention of the bikini — The Itsy Bitsy Teeny Weeny Revolution

FURTHER READING AND VIEWING: If you liked this episode, you might also like:

Hope In A Jar: The Making of America’s Beauty Culture by Kathy Peiss

Helena Rubinstein: The Woman Who Invented Beauty by Michèle Fitoussi

“The Powder and the Glory” Documentary produced, written, and directed by Ann Carol Grossman & Arnie Reisman

War Paint: Madame Helena Rubinstein and Miss Elizabeth Arden, Their Lives, Their Times, Their Rivalry by Lindy Woodhead

A few images of Fifth Avenue between 50th and 57th, in the years of transition — from residential to retail.

1898

MCNY

1904

Museum of the City of New York

1922 — Fifth Avenue and 57th Street

The Collis Huntington mansion on 57th and Fifth Avenue. Helena Rubinstein moved her salon in here in the mid 1920s.

Helena Rubenstein, photo date 1924

An example of Helena’s Valaze cream, made from lanolin

A selection of Elizabeth Arden and Helena Rubinstein vintage ads, courtesy Vintage Ad Browser

 

A variety of facial treatments from a Helena Rubinstein salon, circa 1941

Nina Leen/Photography

Helena employed many of her family members. Mala Rubinstein, Helena Rubinstein’s niece, shows the ladies how beauty is done at the 715 Fifth Avenue salon

Courtesy NYT Photograph by Bradford Robotham

The commercial featured on this week’s show!

A very affected presentation, but this video does show Rubinstein in action!

The “beauty process” was in vogue by the 1930s as evidenced by this short film starring Hollywood film actress Constance Bennett.

Helena Rubinstein latched onto Hollywood celebrities both as a way to inspire beauty regiment — and, of course, to sell more products.

For Theda Bara, Helena even sold a line of ‘vamp’ make-up, tying into her scandalous reputation. (Read more about Theda Bara here.)

Even Marilyn Monroe was an Elizabeth Arden fan, frequently popping into the New York salon.

Categories
Neighborhoods Wartime New York

Two strange secrets of DeWitt Clinton Park in Hell’s Kitchen

NYPL

DeWitt Clinton Park, far west in Hell’s Kitchen between West 52nd and West 54th Streets, has two unusual features that harken to a time one hundred years ago — and millions of years ago!

The park’s most striking feature is an unusual rock formation that juts out just west of the sports field. This unique outcrop, dating back 450 million years (that’s right: read that again!), is called exotic terrane, meaning that a portion of the earth’s crust formed by two tectonic plates grafted together to create a rock composition unlike anything that surrounds it.

Horsing Around: Children daily play around one of the oldest exposed areas of Manhattan’s natural topography. At top, in the 1934 image, the same rocks (more exposed and treacherous) greeted other children. 

Courtesy Greg Young

Over the past couple of centuries, most of Manhattan’s unique geological features have been smoothed over by the city, which hired workers to push plows and drive dump trucks filled with dirt. Thankfully, this extraordinary feature was left in place during construction

But on the eastern end of the park sits a more somber reminder of the past –New York’s most touching World War I memorial, a lonely doughboy with a rifle slung over his shoulder holding, wait, what is that?

He’s offering up a handful of poppies, flowers that held a decidedly different meaning during the statue’s dedication in 1930 than they have today.

Poppies grew in abundance in the Flemish town of Ypres, site of multiple battles during the war, and the bright-red variety came to symbolize the fallen.

A quote from the famed World War I poem “In Flanders Fields” by poet- surgeon-Lieutenant Colonel John McCrae hugs the base, explaining the mysterious imagery:

In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.

(The bolded part above appears as an inscription on the memorial.)

But this sorrowful monument of Hell’s Kitchen has another tragic element. It was crafted by sculptor Burt Johnson, known for creating many statues of World War I doughboys (a nickname for American soldiers) across the country. You can find another example of his work in Doughboy Plaza in Woodside, Queens.

But Johnson died in 1927 while still modeling the memorial intended for the park. His widow made arrangements for the statue to be completed and eventually, in the fall of 1929, it was installed at De Witt Clinton Park.

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

OUR ISOLATION IS OVER: In ‘The Great War’, PBS presents a different take on America’s entry into World War I

One hundred years ago this week, the United States of America rose to assist its European allies and officially declared war on Germany.

This was an unprecedented moment in this country’s history, a signal of its rising importance on the world stage and a declaration of the United States as the standard bearer of democracy.

But this declaration was also a delayed reaction. In most ways, America was already at war.

PBS marks this important moment in history with an intense three-part mini-series The Great War, looking at this country’s involvement in the European conflict from vivid and surprisingly fresh angles.

Below: An exclusive clip from The Great War, of the initial influence of Tin Pan Alley on the early opinions of Americans:

My confession: I love great historical stories of war, but I do not always like war documentaries. There’s a certain uniformity to many of them that’s rather numbing — black-and-white stock footage of smoky battlefields, static maps of troop movement, battles without context. Wars are sometimes presented as impressive events, devoid of humanity.

The Great War is rather unique (and potentially frustrating for some true war-history fanatics), easing deliberately into discussion of the conflict in the same way that Americans would have learned of it themselves during the summer of 1914.

The assassination of Franz Ferdinand, heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne, by members of the revolutionary movement Young Bosnia, did not seem like the sort of event that would concern the dinner conversations of regular Americans. Many believed themselves isolated from those sorts of conflicts by an ocean; if anything, the Gilded Age proved that the United States was equal, if not greater, to those foreign cultures.

At yet, as the situation escalated, bringing in Germany, Russia, France and eventually Great Britain into the conflict, it would seem the United States would be dragged in as well — whether its leaders admitted it or not.

The Flatiron Building, for a time, became a war recruitment office.

The first part of The Great War (airing Monday night) takes the temperature of America from 1914 to 1917, a country torn into sympathizers and pacifists.

Because of this country’s unique make-up of immigrants, the European struggle ignites a thousand smaller conflicts here. Many race to their old homelands. Suffragists, in a struggle for their basic rights, ignite an anti-war movement. President Wilson, in a fierce re-election bid in 1916, brandishes the slogan ‘He Kept Us Out of War’.

A campaign vehicle for Thomas Woodrow Wilson candidacy in the 1916 American elections. 1916 USA

But in fact, America was already engaged in the conflict — on both sides of the battle, depending on who you were and where you lived in America. German immigrants felt embattled and rallied for peace. But events such as the sinking of the Lusitania and the explosion at Black Tom Island soon turned the opinions of most American to the cause of war. How then could a powerful nation enter such a conflict from thousands of miles away?

A faux battleship was constructed in Union Square in 1917 to encourage participation in the war effort:

Library of Congress

Part Two (airing Tuesday, April 11) explores the mobilization and training of American forces. But while the documentary does follow a set of individual stories of men going to war (such as that of Alan Seeger, a Greenwich Village poet ), it spends a significant time on American shores, observing the efforts of many (led by Wilson’s propaganda chief George Creel) to drum up excitement and patriotism — and others whose opposition to war remains steadfast.

We do follow the journey of one entire squad of soldiers, and it’s a truly amazing tale — the Harlem Hellfighters, the first African-American regiment to engage in the conflict. They were assigned to the French Army as many American troops refused to fight alongside them. What the French got was a well-trained, precise and sometimes vicious squadron. (Thanks to the under appreciated James Reese Europe, they also had a renown military band.)

Below: An exclusive clip from The Great War, of national outrage in 1918 of ‘slackers’ and an extraordinary raid in New York City.

It’s not until Part Three (airing Wednesday) that American forces, led by General John J. Pershing, are fully engaged along the Western Front.

By this time, tens of thousands of Allied soldiers had been killed, The film’s unique point of view can be unsettling at times; there are so many perspectives to tell — and the filmmakers should be credited with this uniquely 21st century approach — that the larger canvas of war and its cruel atrocities often leaves center stage for a time, only to come crashing into the narrative with jarring force.

There’s no escape in Part Three. The battles of the Hundred Day Offensive are depicted in ominous, almost otherworldly detail. Meanwhile, back in the United States, campaigns to drive ‘slackers’ and anti-war agitators into the open tramples upon basic constitutional rights and escalates the fears of regular Americans.

Over six hours, The Great War leaves you sorrowful, exhilarated and hungry to learn more.  I’d recommend pairing this with another Europe-focused film series — the BBC’s The First World War or, for something older, the epic 1964 series produced by England, Canada and Australia — also called The Great War.

During the live broadcast, please following along with me on Twitter @BoweryBoys where I’ll be sharing trivia about American and its involvement in World War I throughout the show.

THE GREAT WAR
PBS, American Experience
Debuting April 10, 9/8C
Check your local listings

 

Categories
Museums

The Crystal Palace: A new gallery show brings its marvels to life

Bryant Park is a rather remarkable physical space. During the winter it becomes a skating rink and outdoor market, while in the summer, its lawn host hundreds of movie buffs every Monday for the park’s popular outdoor film festival. Its neighbor — the main branch of the New York Public Library — keeps millions of volumes within rooms below the park. And once, long ago, Americans came to this spot to witness the technological marvels of the age.

Courtesy Museum of the City of New York

The Exhibition of the Industry of All Nations was the first major industrial fair in the United States, showcasing the rising manufacturing prowess of the young country. It was housed in a jewel box of an exhibition center, the extraordinary Crystal Palace, a wonder of glass and steel, modeled after a similar structure in London. When fire eventually took the building in 1858, New York City lost its most valued tourist attraction.

A new show at the Bard Graduate Center Gallery (18 West 86th Street,  just steps from Central Park) reanimates a bit of the Crystal Palace Exhibition, bringing the wonder of visiting this wondrous place to life with displays of original artifacts and an absolutely sensational interactive component.

New York Crystal Palace 1853
Bard Graduate Gallery
18 West 86th Street, Upper West Side
On View March 24 – July 30, 2017
Tues, Fri-Sat 11-5pm; Wed-Thurs 11-8pm

Your season ticket to the Crystal Palace! Appropriately displayed at the entrance to the gallery.

The gallery features a selection of items both displayed at the fair and used to promote it. Americans were so enthralled by the exhibition that they decorated their homes with promotional items include one example featured in the gallery of an ornate parlor clock affixed with an image of the Crystal Palace. High end tchotchkes, indeed!

The fair displayed fine art and experimental technologies alongside examples of American craftsmanship.  Featured in the gallery are samples of American-made items from the 1850s proudly shown at the fair — porcelain, glassware, furniture, pottery and sculpture.

You’re perhaps used to seeing such items in a museum; the things you’re seeing here, however, weren’t originally displayed for their historical worth. At the opening of the Crystal Palace in 1853, they were literally the embodiment of a growing country.

An early sewing machine from I.M. Singer, 1856. While perhaps it seems almost medieval today, this would have been considered a modern marvel in the 1850s.

 

And here, in this intimate space, there are little delights behind tiny thick curtains — daguerreotypes and photographic salt prints from the fair itself, so delicate that they must be protected from even the gallery’s gentle light.

As always with Bard’s historical exhibitions, they accompany their physical displays with rich, detailed interactive displays and online material.  Take a stroll through the Crystal Palace along a meticulously labeled panorama or click through a replica of a tourist guide suggesting things to do around the city. 

In fact, I would highly suggest getting lost in their digital resources before heading over to see the physical objects. (You’ll be able to play around with them at interactive displays at the exhibit as well.) There are also some engaging audio ‘walking tours’ from three different perspectives of people visiting the fair.

(Personally, I would also recommend listening to our podcast on the Crystal Palace which we recorded exactly two years ago. Putting it all together with the gallery show will the closest thing to boarding a time machine!)

Categories
Bowery Boys

Come to our first live recorded show — NYC Podfest, April 9th in Brooklyn!

This April we will be recording a show in front of a live audience that will be released as an upcoming podcast — in honor of the 10th anniversary of recording the first episode of the Bowery Boys: New York City History. And we would really, really love for you to be a part of it.

Yes, believe it or not, the first episode of our podcast came out in the middle of June 2007!

On April 9th we will be making our debut appearance in the fifth annual NYC Podfest, a weekend of live podcast extravaganzas, hosted by the Bell House, the Gowanus, Brooklyn, venue best known to New York podcast lovers for hosting events for shows like Stuff You Should Know and Slate Political Gabfest.

The Bowery Boys 10th Anniversary Celebration will be our biggest live show to date. We’ll be on stage talking about how we managed to make it an entire decade, giving you some hilarious back stories on some of your favorite episodes, with some fun and games thrown in. We’ll be talking about Peter Stuyvesant, Billie Holiday, Boss Tweed, P.T. Barnum, Jane Jacobs, Stanford White and of course Robert Moses!

And the show will be hosted by Nat Towsen, the debonair East Village comedy impresario and host of the Nat Towsen’s Downtown Variety Hour at UCB East.

So please join us! Get your tickets now at the Bell House website.

SUN, APRIL 9, 2017

Doors: 3:30 pm / Show: 4:00 pm

$15 adv / $20 dos

 

(By the way, can you guess where the picture at the top of this post was taken?)

Categories
Pop Culture

I Called Him Morgan: The Murder of a Jazz Star in wintry 1970s New York

Kasper Collin Produktion AB / Francis Wolff © Mosaic Images LLC

It was during one of those terrible February nights — blizzard winds with the streets packed tight with snow — at a jazz club in the East Village named Slug’s Saloon, packed with people haloed in cigarette smoke, that a woman named Helen Morgan walked up to one of the performers, her common-law husband, a rising jazz trumpeter named Lee Morgan, and shot him dead.

This tragedy had entered into jazz music mythology. Lee Morgan was a prodigy Blue Note Records recording star of the late 1950s and ’60s who was very nearly waylaid by heroin addiction. But by the early 1970s he was clean. And that was because of Helen.

So why did she kill him?

The new documentary I Called Him Morgan, directed by Kasper Collin, is a tranquil and lyrical retelling of Morgan’s bright, brief career and the influences that led to his redemption and death. It also shows off a cool, raw backdrop of 1960s New York grit and shadow, rendered not from acres of stock footage (although there is some) but from abstract re-creation and creative editing. The film itself is very much like a tune Lee Morgan himself would have played.

The film’s driving force is a cassette tape. In the 1990s, Helen Morgan, long released from prison, enrolled in an adult education class in Wilmington, NC, where she met jazz aficionado and former radio host Larry Reni Thomas. Familiar with Morgan’s story, he asked if he could interview her and record the session on cassette tape. She died the following month.

A music documentarian could not dream of a better plot device. Helen talks about her life and her first meeting with the young, impressionable jazz star at her apartment on West 53rd Street, near the legendary Birdland jazz club.

They were an unusual pair — she was older and streetwise, he was an adorable ball of energy and creativity — but they clicked, for a time. She even managed to get him back on his feet after a stint with heroin addiction.

Kasper Collin Produktion AB / Courtesy of the Afro-American Newspaper Archives and Research Center

Helen exists in the film only in a few fleeting photographs. She hated getting her picture taken, and in those that exist, she never looks thrilled. Lee Morgan, however, comes alive in archival footage and black-and-white photographs. Yet we hear her voice and never his — only through his forceful and vibrant music, sounding as crisp and present in the film as though it were being heard live.

The film’s dreamlike, filtered quality pairs exquisitely with the music, creating a tight-focused look at New York and the Lower East Side in particular. Slug’s Saloon was at 242 East 3rd Street, between Avenue B and C, and the entire street, clogged with snow, is shot with grainy foreboding.

Morgan’s musician friends avoided walking the street after his death; the club closed many months later. This may be a street you’ve lithely walked down many times in the past. After watching I Called Him Morgan, you may feel a sense of gloom the next time you walk past.

I CALLED HIM MORGAN
Directed by Kaspar Collin

In theaters now — Playing at the Metrograph and Lincoln Center in New York City this week

Check your local listings for showtimes and visit the website for screening dates

 

Top image courtesy Kasper Collin Produktion AB / Francis Wolff © Mosaic Images LLC

 

Categories
Amusements and Thrills Podcasts

Barnum and the Greatest Show on Earth: NYC and the American Circus

PODCAST The story of Phineas Taylor “P. T.” Barnum and his world-famous circus extravaganza.

Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls of all ages — the Bowery Boys present to you the tale of P. T. Barnum and his “Greatest Show on Earth,” the world’s most famous circus!

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You can’t even bring up the discussion of circuses without mentioning the name of Barnum. But in fact, he only entered the circus business in his later years, after decades of success with bizarre museums, traveling curiosities, touring opera divas and all manner of fabricated ‘humbugs’.

In the late 19th century, in order for circuses to survive, innovators like Barnum needed to come up with startling new ways to get the attentions of audiences.

Although his circus — which would eventually merge with that of James Bailey and, later, the Ringling Brothers — was a sensation which toured across the United States, it always began each season in New York, specifically situated on the northeast corner of Madison Square.

Tune in to find out how New York institutions owned by Barnum became imprinted on the basic structure of the classic American circus.

 And join us as we visit the Barnum Museum in Bridgeport, CT, to gather some insight on Barnum’s unique genius.

CO-STARRING: Jumbo the Elephant, the Cardiff Man, Annie Oakley and Buffalo Bill, the Cardiff Giant and Tom Thumb!

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

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Barnum in an illustration from 1861.

Courtesy NYPL

And a photograph of older Barnum, impresario of the circus.

New York Public Library

An 1848 daguerreotype of Jenny Lind, two years before her triumphant American tour.

Undated picture of the circus caravan, 1880s.

NYPL
NYPL
NYPL

Preparing for the circus as Madison Square Garden — March 21, 1913 (Library of Congress)

Some images from the Barnum Museum —

Tom interviewing Kathleen Maher, executive director at the Barnum Museum, in front of the Feejee Mermaid!

P. T. Barnum’s top hat, a treasure in the Barnum Museum archives.

And the little suit of Tom Thumb!

The bones of a centaur — half man, half horse.

At the graves of PT Barnum and Charles Stratton aka Tom Thumb.

Categories
The First

Nikola Tesla and the Wireless World: The Invention of Remote Control

THE FIRST: STORIES OF INVENTIONS AND THEIR CONSEQUENCES The Serbian inventor Nikola Tesla is known as one of the fathers of electricity, the curious genius behind alternating current (AC), the victor in the so-called War of the Currents. But in this episode of The First, starting in the year 1893, Tesla begins conceiving an even grander scheme — the usage of electromagnetic waves to distribute power.

Today we benefit from the electromagnetic spectrum in a variety of ways — Wi-Fi, X-rays, radio, satellites. One of the roads to these inventions begins with Tesla and his experiments with remote control, using radio waves to operate a mechanical object.

But you may be surprised to discover Tesla’s initial application of remote control. Far from inventing an children’s toy, Tesla’s remote controlled device would be used as a weapon of war.

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!

Or listen to it straight from here:
11 NIKOLA TESLA AND THE WIRELESS WORLD

Below — A sampling of newspaper headlines involving Nikola Tesla, specifically from the mid and late 1890s (when he first began thinking and experimenting with wireless) and one from 1901.

HE LIVES ON ELECTRICITY

Nikola Tesla Acts Like a Broken-Hearted Man, and Hasn’t a Definite Opinion Upon Anything

Electricity is Nikola Tesla’s life. Without it he is as miserable as Paul Verlaine and his absinthe stomach would be in a Maine temperance town.

July 18, 1895, The Morning News (Wilmington, Delaware)

DEATH LURKS IN LIVE WIRES

A Famous Electrician Discusses a Vital Topic

CHIEF POINTS OF PERIL

Nikola Tesla Tells the Non-Expert How to Avoid Dangers — Metallic Paint is a Conductor — Scienties Seeking to Save Life

August 5, 1898, Democrat and Chronicle (Rochester, New York)

TO USE THE EARTH’S FORCE

Nikola Tesla’s Amazing Plan to Harness Free Currents

March 15, 1896, St. Louis Post Dispatch (St. Louis, Missouri)

THE FUTURE BATH

Nikola Tesla has invented a way of cleaning the skin

Electricity a Substitute for Soap and Suds — Before and After Pictures — What He Calls the Busy Man’s Bath — More Invigorating Than Hot Water

October 25, 1898, The Plain Speaker (Hazleton, Pennsylvania)

TESLA’S SHIP DESTROYER

Invention for Directing Movements of Torpedo-Boats, Etc.

Electrical Device for Controlling Speed, Direction and Explosive Power at Any Distance Through Natural Media of Space

November 8, 1898, The Indianapolis News (Indianapolis, Indiana)

NAVAL WARFARE TO BE REVOLUTIONIZED

Wizard Tesla’s Brain Has Given Birth to a Device That Will Sweep the Seas of Battleships

ELECTRICAL CURRENT SENT THROUGH SPACE

November 8, 1898, St. Louis Post-Dispatch (St. Louis, Missouri)

NIKOLA TESLA’S LATEST INVENTION

“We have recently been informed by the public press in flamboyant rhetoric that Nikola Tesla has devised a boat which is destined to revolutionize the art of warfare.”

Scientific American, November 19, 1898

THAT MESSAGE FROM MARS

Scientific American, January 19, 1901

Categories
Landmarks

Going Up: New York got its first commercial elevator 160 years ago

Cast-iron construction, pioneered in America by architect James Bogardus in the 1850s, became the preferred method of building large dry goods shops and department stores in the mid- and late nineteenth century, thanks to the speed with which these enormous buildings could go up and the savings they presented over heavier, more cumbersome construction methods.

Today SoHo contains the largest surviving collection of cast-iron buildings in the world. Wandering through these streets in the late afternoon, sun ignites their white- and cream-colored exteriors. It’s magical—and the stuff of a million postcards, album covers, and selfies.

But SoHo contains another secret. It’s the location of New York City’s very first commercial elevator.

There had been so-called ‘hoisting elevators’ — crude platforms elevated by man power — but they were dangerous and their cords easily snapped. Elisha Otis, an inventor from Yonkers, New York, perfected the safety break which allowed a large containment to be moved up and down without fear of plummeting. He debuted this device to enthusiastic acclaim at the 1854 Crystal Palace Exposition. And soon, after some savvy newspaper advertisements, Otis finally found his first major client.

Library of Congress

That would be the magical emporium of E. V. Haughwout, at Broadway and Broome Street, a luxury store which sold fine china and glassware. The corner building’s two-sided cast-iron construction and facade was the first of its kind when it was completed in 1857, and soon inspired blocks lined with similar construction throughout SoHo.

Below: The department store — and the elevator — were first opened ‘for public inspection’ on March 23, 1857.

New York Times

But its most important contribution was placed inside—a passenger elevator, installed the same year, which lifted and lowered its wealthy clients to its various exotic departments.

According to the website of OTIS elevators themselves: “On March 23, 1857, Otis’ first commercial passenger elevator was installed in the E.V. Haughwout and Company…….The price of the elevator was US $300. The unit rose at a speed of 40 feet per minute (0.2 meters per second).”

From the New York Tribune: “Among the novelties we noticed is an elevator to be worked by steam, which is to be furnished with a sofa and carriage to carry ladies from one floor to the other. The steam engine and boiler are located on the rear lot disconnected from the main edifice.”

Museum of the City of New York

The grand opening on March 23, 1857, drew thousands of curiosity seekers throughout the entire day. Although the time to visit would have been right around 7:30 when all the lights went on at once spontaneously, “in all the windows of the six stories. The view from lower Broadway and Broome Street will be truly grand.“

Haughwout’s Emporium was also famed for its French champagne and for the fine flutes that it was drunk from. Surprised? While the neighborhood today still pops more than its share of bubbly, SoHo was never more glamorous than during the Haughwout years. And part of the reason for its acclaim was its marvelous, state-of-the-art elevator.

More pictures of the Haughwout Building, courtesy the Library of Congress, via the Historic American Buildings Survey, Cervin Robinson, Photographer March 1967.

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

The New York Riots of 1964: Violent history with a haunting familiarity

Dick DeMarsico, New York World Telegraph & Sun

One hot summer’s morning, in the neighborhood of Yorkville on the Upper East Side, high school student James Powell was shot and killed by police officer James Gilligan.

Powell either attempted to stab the officer or else the unarmed boy was brutally set upon by a man with violent tendencies. Gilligan, a war veteran, was either defending himself from a troubled delinquent or else he gunned down the teenager with little remorse.

There were few actual witnesses but dozens of bystanders. The incident took place across the street from a high school, and the students, incensed by rumors and the fear of blood running in the streets, began panicking.

The year was 1964.

It’s hard not to read the opening pages to Michael W. Flamm’s gripping In The Heat Of The Summer: The New York Riots of 1964 and the War on Crime (University of Pennsylvania Press) and not see the parallels to modern police brutality cases.  So many different testimonies obscure the truth that it’s hard to know what really did happen in front of 215 East 76th Street that day. (Video footage might not have even cleared it up.)

Yet Flamm’s book isn’t specifically about the crime, but the chaos which ensued — the New York Riots of 1964 (with the most violent night often referred to as the Harlem Riot of 1964). For several evenings following the shooting, a host of speculations and false rumors — mixing with grief and despair on a series of hot summer evenings — led to roaming violence and looting in Harlem (with some also reported in the Brooklyn neighborhood of Bedford-Stuyvesant).

The incidents which occurred that summer stem from hostilities which had built up within the black community for decades. A great distrust between the police and African-Americans played a part in the rising crime rate in poor neighborhoods like Harlem in the 1960s.

Courtesy the New York Daily News

Fearful residents felt powerless against increasing criminal behavior and drug abuse in their streets but didn’t risk involving law enforcement, who most considered corrupt and racist.

White residents avoided black neighborhoods — and vice versa — due to wildly dramatic reports in the press. Black power movements like the Nation of Islam escalated talk of violence while, in some neighborhoods, white vigilantes stopped and interrogated every black person found in the streets.

Writes Flamm: “New York sounded to the rest of the country like some frontier town helpless before the uncontrollable violence stalking its streets.”

Dick DeMarsico, New York World Telegraph & Sun

Flamm follows two parallel threads, both coming together in raw, unexpected ways. The first is a terrifying minute-by-minute account of the late-night street riots, the chaotic protests and the rallies organized by those who wished to funnel that rage into a mechanism of change. The second is the reactions of politicians and civil rights leaders to New York’s race and law enforcement problems.

The author’s meticulous research finds microcosms of hate and fear at nearly ever corner — of the kind which will make nobody particularly nostalgic for the period. “Central Harlem seemed like a war zone, with screams from people and cracks from bullets as they ricocheted off brick walls and cement sidewalks.”

New York World-Telegram and the Sun staff photographer: Wolfson, Stanley, photographer.

At the center of the story is civil rights leader Bayard Rustin (pictured above) and the Congress for Racial Equality (CORE), often caught between keeping and promoting the peace and quelling the concerns of angry residents.

At one point, Rustin was literally disarming people. “The toll might have gone much higher if not for Rustin, who personally disposed of three cases of dynamite — enough to destroy a city block — after two young black men agreed to give it to him instead of using it.”

Few history books I’ve read in the past twelve months have felt as immediate as In the Heat of the Summer, with anecdotes that seem to speak pointedly to the events of today’s headlines.

For example, some police authorities applauded television coverage of the riots. Said one commissioner: “It’s the best answer we have to the cries of police brutality. The camera, after all, cannot distort or lie; the worst that can happen is that the film is edited. But what you see on the home screen is the actual occurrence.”