Author: Bowery Boys

Categories
Wartime New York

New York: The City of Forts

The vestiges of America’s oldest wars surround us to this day.

New York City has had more military fortifications contained within it than perhaps any other major American city. Part of this has to do with its roots in the American Revolution and the subsequent fears of a return invasion in the early 19th century.

Today’s existing forts — and those that remain in part or in ruin — make for a stark architectural contrast to the modern city. Their walls of stone and brick may conjure up a history far older than New York’s or images of a made-up fantasy world. You could pretend, for a few moments, to be a character on Game of Thrones while exploring places like Fort Wadsworth or Castle Williams on Governors Island

Here’s a list of some of the best known forts in the New York City area. Most are still around in some form. Some exist only in commemorative markers.  Others are completely gone but they leave their names as a reminder of their existence.  How many of these have you seen in person?

1 Fort Wadsworth
Location: Staten Island
Placed at a strategic site on the Narrows, Wadsworth and its associated defense buildings are perhaps the most dramatic military remains in New York City. It traces to an old Revolutionary War-era fort called Flagstaff Fort.  While it serves minor military functions to this day, Wadsworth has become a popular Staten Island attraction.

1979, photographed by Edmund V. Gillon, Museum of the City of New York
1979, photographed by Edmund V. Gillon, Museum of the City of New York


2 Fort Jay (formerly Fort Columbus) 
Location: Governor Island
A star fort constructed from an original 1776 earthen defense. In 1806 its name was changed to Fort Columbus and changed back in the 20th century.

1


3 Castle Williams
Location: Governors Island
Specifically designed in 1807-1811 to defend the harbor from probable British invasion. While the British did invade America during the battles of the War of 1812, New York was spared. Today, its maintained by the National Park Service, as is Fort Jay.

1936, by Samuel Gottscho, courtesy Museum of the City of New York
1936, by Samuel Gottscho, courtesy Museum of the City of New York


4 Fort Gibson (or Crown Fort)
Location: Ellis Island
Built by the Army in 1795 and greatly upgraded in 1809 as part of the beefing up of harbor defenses. It was dismantled by the 1860s although the island was used to hold naval munitions for decades before its transformation into Ellis Island Immigration Station.  Today you can find exposed ruins outside the main building.

Courtesy NPS
Courtesy NPS

5 Fort Wood
Location: Liberty Island
This too was completed during the 1810s and was later named for Eleazer Derby Wood, an officer killed at a battle at the Battle of Lake Erie in 1814. Today the Statue of Liberty and her pedestal are affixed atop of the old fort. You can see a trace of the original brickwork on an exposed wall near the exit.

New York Public Library
New York Public Library


6 Castle Clinton
Location: Manhattan (Battery Park)
Lower Manhattan was formerly guarded by Fort Amsterdam/Fort George, but that had been dismantled in 1790. (It stood where the Alexander Hamilton U.S. Custom House is today.) Castle Clinton — named for Governor DeWitt Clinton — was built in 1808-1811 to protect lower Manhattan.  It was originally set into the water and connected with a footbridge.  After stints as the performance hall Castle Garden, New York’s pre-Ellis Island immigration station and New  York Aquarium, it sits today as a national monument in its own right.

Library of Congress
Library of Congress


7 Fort Gansevoort
Location: Manhattan (Meat-Packing District)
Also called the White Fort, this forgotten redoubt once flanked the western waterfront, built at the same time as the harbor forts. It was named for General Peter Gansevoort (the grandfather of Herman Melville) and stood here until the 1850s. Nothing remains of this fort today but its name, found on the street which cuts through that area — Gansevoort Street.

New York Public Library
New York Public Library


8 Blockhouse No. 1
Location: Manhattan (Central Park)
This curious little structure stands on the northern end of Central Park, a fortification almost two hundred years old.  Its the oldest structure contained within Central Park (although obviously Cleopatra’s Needle, which was moved here, is much, much older.)

Library of Congress
Library of Congress

9 Fort Washington
Location: Manhattan (Washington Heights)
This fort predates most of the rest, built as a companion for Fort Lee on the New Jersey side. It was here that the Battle of Washington Heights was fought on November 16, 1776, and the fort was captured by the British. While this particular fort is no longer there, some stone walls and a plaque mark its former location. Fort Washington Avenue also pays tribute.

7

10 Fort Tryon
Location: Washington Heights
This was actually a northern redoubt that was an extension of Fort Washington. When the British took it over, they renamed it for William Tryon, New York’s last British governor. For some reason, the name just stuck! Its location in preserved in the breathtaking Fort Tryon Park, completed in 1935 and designed by the son of Frederick Law Olmsted.

1

 

11 Fort Sterling
Location: Brooklyn (Brooklyn Heights)
This fort, tracing to the Revolutionary Era, is unique it that it was almost immediately dismantled once the British left.  There was another fort nearby called Fort Brooklyn that lasted a bit longer,demolished by the 1820s to allow for the growth of Brooklyn’s first wealthy neighborhood. Today, near the Brooklyn Heights Promenade, stands small Fort Sterling Park, with a plaque and a flagpole commemorating the location of this critical defense.

12 Cobble Hill Fort
Location: Brooklyn (Cobble Hill neighborhood)
This unusual corkscrew shaped fort — which we talked about in one of our previous ghost story podcasts — is notable for receiving George Washington as he observed his troops during the Battle of Long Island in 1776.  A handsome plaque on the old bank-turned-Trader-Joe’s at Atlantic Avenue and Court Street marks the location of this forgotten fortification.

Courtesy the blog South Brooklyn
Courtesy the blog South Brooklyn

13 Fort Greene
Location: Brooklyn (Fort Greene neighborhood)
There really was a fort here in the area of Fort Greene Park today, on the highest point of the hill, a traditional five-point fortification similar to that on Governors Island. In the 1840s it was torn down to construct one of Brooklyn’s oldest parks — called Washington Park. Oddly enough, the original fort here was called Fort Putnam. There was a Fort Greene (named for Nathaniel Greene) but it was in another area of Brooklyn, closer to today’s area of Boerum Hill.

Museum of the City of New York
Museum of the City of New York

14 Fort Hamilton
Location: Brooklyn (Bay Ridge)
This is the last active military headquarters in the New York City area. Built in the late 1820s-30s, it was named for Alexander Hamilton who was an officer in the Revolutionary War. Although an active site, you can visit the Harbor Defense Museum which is housed here.

Robert Bracklow, Museum of the City of New York
Robert Bracklow, Museum of the City of New York


15 Fort Lafayette
Location: Off the coast of Brooklyn (Bay Ridge)
This imposing island fort was built in the 1810s and named for the Marquis De Lafayette. Like many of New York’s forts, it held Confederate and enemy prisoners during the Civil War. The fort was later dismantled for the construction of the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge. You can see where it would have stood as the bridge’s Brooklyn-side tower stands on the location today.

Fort-layafette


16 Fort Tilden
Location: Brooklyn (Rockaway Beach)
While defenses of various kinds have sat out on Rockaway Beach since the early 19th century, Fort Tilden was fully built up during World War I, named for Samuel J. Tilden. Today its ruins peering through overgrowth can be found near the beach as part of the Gateway National Recreation Area.

tilden


17 Fort Schuyler
Location: Bronx
Completed in the 1850s, this unique fortification protected New York for any possible attack from enemies approaching along the Long Island Sound. Abandoned for strictly military use in the 1920s, today it houses the State University of New York Maritime College and a maritime museum.

Museum of the City of New York
Museum of the City of New York


18 Fort Totten
Location: Queens
This fortification traces to worries relating to the Civil War. It was constructed in 1862 to protect the East River with its companion across the water Fort Schuyler.  You can still visit Fort Totten today as the area has been opened up as a public park with regular tours of the old buildings.

New York Public Library
New York Public Library

 

At top: Fort Lafayette in a painting by Thomas Hicks (1861)

Categories
Friday Night Fever

The Slide and the Excise: NYC’s Most Notorious 19th Century Gay Bars

This article originally appeared in the 2015 NYC Pride Guide. You can check out the entire digital issue here or pick up pretty much anywhere in the West Village, Chelsea or Hell’s Kitchen this weekend!
Gay and lesbian life in 19th century America meant reading between the lines, latching on to known code words to locate a community buried deep under the mainstream. But you may not have had to look very far in the early 1890s to locate The Slide (at 157 Bleecker Street), once New York’s most notorious and flamboyant bars.

We know of its existence primarily due to the pearl-clutching reaction of moral-minded New Yorkers. While you can’t trust police blotters and morality crusaders to give an accurate depiction of what The Slide was truly like, an attempt to peel back the hyperbole provides a sight that would rival the bawdiest gay bars of Hell’s Kitchen.

1

The Slide was a basement dive, packed every night with men who fancied “male degenerates” and the occasional female looking for something outrageous. Music, drinking and laughter prevailed until the early morning; female prostitutes mingled with the boys to create what must have been a dizzying stew of genders, the air filled with cheap booze, wild sex (“orgies beyond description”) and tunes banged out on an old piano.

Newspapers described it as a “fairy resort.” Men openly wore drag to the delight of patrons, of which there were many, according to one scandalized report, “one to three hundred people, most of whom are males, but are unworthy the name of men.” Rouged and powdered waiters “sang filthy ditties” into all hours of the morning. The Slide’s most notable patrons went by such names as Princess Toto, Madam Fisher, Maggie Vickers, Phoebe Pinafore and Queen of the Slide.

Homosexual behavior of any stripe would have been condemned in this era. Such flagrant and open displays would have been unthinkable then.

The urges displayed at The Slide were “inhuman and unnatural.” The New York Evening World, owned by Joseph Pulitzer, was perhaps the most horrified, suggesting that “London, Paris or Berlin, with all their iniquity, have nothing to parallel this sink of vice and depravity.” A bar today might be honored to be strapped with such description!

Here’s the complete quote in all it’s scandalized glory:

3

Such abandon could not be allowed to exist for very long. Pulitzer’s paper went on a vendetta against The Slide and other Bleecker Street dives, and soon it was permanently shuttered.

But you couldn’t simply extinguish a scene as lively as that of The Slide. Its crowd simply moved to a dive called the Excise Exchange (336 Bowery), a place “frequented by the same painted, abandoned men and women, the surroundings are the same and the conversation quite as low and vulgar.” [New York Evening World, Jan 7, 1892]

“The ‘attractions’ at the Excise Exchange are not the women, but the class of men who frequent it. They imitate the dress and manner of women — paint their faces and eyebrows, bleach their hair, wear bracelets and address each other with female names.” [source]

New York Evening World

The building which housed The Slide still stands today at 157 Bleecker, now home to a far more respectable establishment.  (The bathrooms are in the basement is you want to stand in the place of the old ‘degenerate’ bar.) The Bowery Hotel sits directly across the street from the location of the old Excise Exchange. But the spirit of these two bars live on, down the Bowery, down Bleecker, through the Village and all around late-night New York.

 

Illustrations on this page are directly from contemporary reports in the New York Evening World.

Categories
Revolutionary History

Ten facts about Alexander Hamilton on the $10 bill

Big news in the world of numismatics — the U.S. Treasury Department has announced that Alexander Hamilton, long the solitary face on the $10 bill, will be joined by a woman. But who? His wife Eliza Schuyler? Harriet Tubman? Eleanor Roosevelt? And how will she featured?

Thankfully he’s not leaving the bill which he has graced since 1928. Here’s a few other interesting tidbits about his appearance on currency:

1) Why is Hamilton, who was never a president, on money in the first place? He was America’s first treasury secretary, of course, from 1789 to 1795. But in many ways he’s also the inventor of American money!

According to Ron Chernow, Hamilton encouraged the use of the dollar bill as the basic unit of currency and called for a series of coins broken into smaller values, a new concept in an age when bartering was the preferred method of transaction.  To encourage the new American spirit, he recommended putting presidential faces on the money. Since there was only one president at that time, this meant the basic unit currency went to Hamilton’s good friend George Washington.

1

2) Hamilton was the first Secretary of the Treasury, but he was NOT the first Treasurer of the United States. That honor went to Michael Hillegas, a wealthy Philadelphian who led the treasury through the duration of the American Revolution. His face was actually on an early version of the $10 well before Hamilton’s.

2

3) Hamilton was never in charge of actually making money.  While Hamilton is partly responsible for the creation of the U.S. Mint (established in 1792), it was placed under the job of Secretary of State Thomas Jefferson.  Chernow: “Unfortunately, Jefferson ran the mint poorly.  Hamilton later tried, in vain, to arrange a swap whereby the post office would go to State in exchange for the mint coming under Treasury control, where it belonged.”

The first director of the U.S. Mint was David Rittenhouse, on which Philadelphia’s Rittenhouse Square is named.

Below: The first U.S. Mint building in Philadelphia

Courtesy 1794largecents.com
Courtesy 1794largecents.com

4) Hamilton is only one of only three non-Presidents to currently grace American paper money, the others being Benjamin Franklin ($100) and Salmon P. Chase ($10,000).  But non-presidents have lived upon paper money since its invention.  William Tecumseh Sherman, George Meade and Lewis and Clark have all been on U.S. printed currency.

5)  For decades, Alexander Hamilton was actually the face of the $1,000 bill.

4

6) The current image of Hamilton on the $10 bill is based upon a portrait by John Trumbull which currently hangs in New York City Hall. That painting was completed posthumously in 1805; Hamilton had been shot and killed in a duel with Aaron Burr the year before.

7) Alexander faces left where the other members of the Faces On Money Club are turned right. There is a rarely used $100,000 bill with Woodrow Wilson which faces a similar direction but I doubt you will ever see that in your lifetime.

Hamilton Grange in 1895, courtesy Museum of the City of New York
Hamilton Grange in 1895, courtesy Museum of the City of New York

8) Having your face on money doesn’t mean that you had much. At the end of his life, Hamilton overspent on his new home in upper Manhattan (Hamilton Grange) and was nearly broke.  To William Cooper, he wrote, “I have been building a fine house and am very low in Cash; so that it will be amazingly convenient to me to touch your money as soon as possible”


 car

9) The most interesting thing about the that 1928 $10 bill with Alexander Hamilton on the front is actually a small detail which appears on the back — a very small automobile. According to the blog US Dollar Bill: “The car parked outside of the Treasury Department building is based on a number of different cars manufactured at the time and was the creation of the Bureau designer who developed the artwork that served as a model for the engraving, because government agencies were prohibited from endorsing any specific manufacturer or product, according to a bureau of engraving and printing pamphlet.”

 

10) There is already a woman on the $10 bill, or at least, part of her. On the redesigned 2006 bill, Hamilton breaks free of the oval which has traditionally confined the portrait. He is looking left towards the hand and torch of the Statue of Liberty.  Lady Liberty’s torch once sat in Madison Square Park for several years as a way to drum up funds for the statue’s pedestal.  The park’s namesake, James Madison, wrote the Federalist Papers with Alexander Hamilton and John Jay.

116

And a bonus fact – Aaron Burr has never been on the face of any currency. 

Below: Aaron Burr, to be found nowhere on money

2

 

 

At top of this post — Alexander Hamilton’s first $10 bill, gold certificate edition, printed in 1928

 

 

Categories
Landmarks Podcasts

Flatiron Building: A Three-Sided Story

PODCAST For our 8th anniversary episode, we’re revisiting one of New York City’s great treasures and a true architectural oddity — the Flatiron Building.

When they built this structure at the corner of Madison Square Park (and completed in 1902), did they realize it would be an architectural icon AND one of the most photographed buildings in New York City?

1

The George A. Fuller Company, one of the most powerful construction firms in Chicago, decided to locate their new New York office building in a flashy place — a neighborhood with no skyscrapers, on a plot of land that was thin and triangular in shape. They brought in Daniel Burnham, one of America’s greatest architects, to create a one-of-a-kind, three-sided marvel, presenting a romantic silhouette and a myriad of optical illusions.

The Flatiron Building was also known for the turbulent winds which sometimes blew out its windows and tossed up the skirts of women strolling to Ladies Mile. It’s a subject of great art and a symbol of the glamorous side of Manhattan.

In this show, we bring you all sides of this structure’s incredible story.

Below: A cleaned up look at the Flatiron Building, courtesy Shorpy. Click here for a look at the details!

Courtesy Shorpy
Courtesy Shorpy

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

Starting this month, we are doubling our number of episodes per month. Now you’ll hear 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!

A dramatic illustration of 23rd Street and Fifth Avenue, where the Flatiron Building would soon stand. From here you can see the taller Cumberland building which would be used for billboards.

5

The structures that pre-dated the Flatiron Building, pictured here in 1897.

Courtesy Museum of City of New York
Courtesy Museum of City of New York
1

The smaller buildings have already been cleared away for the construction of the Fuller/Flatiron Building, but the taller building remains to some promotion of Heinz products.

Courtesy vintageimages.com
Courtesy vintageimages.com

Construction of the Flatiron, picture from late 1901 or early 1902.

6
Courtesy Library of Congress

From every angle, the Flatiron takes on a new shape…..

Courtesy New York Public LIbrary
Courtesy New York Public LIbrary

…inspiring artists like Edward Steichen to frame the building in romantic and even mysterious ways (such as his iconic shot from 1904)

edward

A view, similar to the classic one above, of the Flatiron after a snowstorm in 1905

Courtesy New York Public Library
Courtesy New York Public Library

The Flatiron has inspired thousands of photo-mechanical post cards back in the day, highlighting its alluring shape-shifting form upon the changing New  York skyline.

2
Courtesy Museum of the City of New York
Courtesy Museum of the City of New York

The cigar store in the narrow ‘cowcatcher’ served as a recruitment office during World War I, topped with military weaponry.

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

Another postcard focused on the Flatiron’s particularly windy properties!

wind

American Mutoscope and Biography Co. filmed this humorous look at ladies in the wind on October 26, 1903:

A Max Ettlinger illustration from 1915 — Flatiron, you’re drunk!

Courtesy Museum of City of New York
Courtesy Museum of City of New York

A July 4th parade, passing up Fifth Avenue.

Courtesy Museum of the City of New York
Courtesy Museum of the City of New York

The Flatiron in 1935, from an angle that makes it appear almost two dimensional.

1935

The Flatiron — still a magnet for budding photographers everywhere! Here a couple modern images from photographers Jeffrey Zeldman, Thomas Hawk, Giandomenico Ricci, Anurag Yagnik, and eric molina.

Courtesy Jeffrey Zeldman/Flickr
Courtesy Jeffrey Zeldman/Flickr
Courtesy Jeffrey Zeldman/Flickr
Courtesy Jeffrey Zeldman/Flickr
Courtesy Thomas Hawk/flickr
Courtesy Thomas Hawk/flickr
Courtesy Giandomenico Ricci/Flickr
Courtesy Giandomenico Ricci/Flickr
Courtesy Anurag Yagnik/Flickr
Courtesy Anurag Yagnik/Flickr
Autosave-File vom d-lab2/3 der AgfaPhoto GmbH
Autosave-File vom d-lab2/3 der AgfaPhoto GmbH

CORRECTION: A small correction to this week’s show. The beautiful Madison Square Garden tower — with the nude Diana statue — is actually in a Spanish style, not an Italian style.

Categories
Wartime New York

The Arches of Madison Square Park

Memorial arches have been a dramatic way to honor military victories, dating back to the Roman times. Naturally, in a city with abundant Beaux-Arts classical-style architecture, New York has erected its share of grand archways. Two spectacular examples exist today — the Washington Square Arch and the Soldiers and Sailors and Sailors Memorial Arch in Brooklyn.

But the area which has been host to the most arches has been Madison Square Park. Sadly the only arches you can find near here are McDonalds Golden Arches on 23rd Street and Madison.

There are been four total arches here, all of them on Fifth Avenue near the park:

The George Washington Arches – 1889

Courtesy the Museum of the City of New York
Courtesy the Museum of the City of New York

Two arches celebrating the 100th anniversary of George Washington’s inauguration were on Fifth Avenue — one at 23rd Street at the southern side of the park, and another at 26th Street at the northern side.

These, of course, were accompanied by another arch further down Fifth Avenue at Washington Square Park. That arch, designed by Stanford White, was considerably better received than the Madison Square versions, so much so that White designed a permanent one in 1893.

Below: The 1889 arch up at the northern corner of Fifth Avenue and 26th Street

Courtesy the Museum of the City of New York
Courtesy the Museum of the City of New York

Courtesy Museum of the City of New York
Courtesy Museum of the City of New York

The Dewey Arch – 1899-1900

This ornate and exceptionally lavish structure was built to commemorate a then-recent event — the victory of Admiral George Dewey at the Battle of Manila Bay, which took place on May 1, 1898.

The Dewey Arch was far showier than the earlier arches: “The great triumphal arch to be erected in this city in honor of the return of Admiral Dewey will not only be worthy of the occasion, but will be the most elaborate and artistic structure of its kind ever attempted here or in Europe.” [NYT]

4

Madison Square Garden, just on the other corner of the park, was closed to construct the statue. For Dewey’s triumphant arrival in New York in late September 1899, the entire city was lit up with ‘fairy lamps‘ to greet the procession. The fireworks display for the event would be the greatest the city has ever seen.

It seems, however, that the Dewey Arch was massively rushed, built in “hot haste“ according to reports. Although a great many petitioned for a permanent Dewey Arch in its place that winter, people had moved on by the winter of 1900 when it was unceremoniously torn down.

Courtesy Library of Congress
Courtesy Library of Congress

Courtesy of Museum of City of New York
Courtesy of Museum of City of New York

Victory Arch — 1918-20

By 1918, the area around Madison Square Park was quite a transformed place with the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company Tower and the Flatiron Building now in attendance to witness the fourth arch, built to honor those in New York who had died thus far in the battles of World War I.

This arch was equally as ornate as the previous arch occupant, designed by Thomas Hastings (co-architect of the New York Public Library). It was built in wood and plaster and also, apparently, in haste.

Below: The ‘Altar of Jewels’ glowing to signal victory

6

At the completion of the war, It was the focal point of a gigantic parade greeting arriving troops on March 25, 1919, a parade which turned quite rowdy. “The greatest crowd that ever gathered in New York City upon any occasion, and the most difficult to handle,” was how the New York Times described it. “The worst point of disorder was the district around the Victory Arch at Twenty-Third Street, where thousands and thousands fought among themselves or combined against the police in an effort to get a vantage point.” [source]

This arch was not spared either. It was soon villified as an icon of wasteful spending by no less than future mayor Fiorello LaGuardia. “The Altar of Liberty was renamed the “Altar of Extravagance,” the Victory Arch “Wasteful Arch,” and the Altar of Jewels — the “Arch of Folly.”

It was ripped down in the summer of 1920, although the damage to the park would last throughout the year. [source]

Courtesy Museum of the City of New York
Courtesy Museum of the City of New York

Categories
The Knick

Checked In: On the set of ‘The Knick’

A couple weeks ago I was fortunate to be given a tour of the set of The Knick, the Cinemax’s historical drama set within the fictional Knickerbocker Hospital (which shares some traits with the actual Knickerbocker Hospital). Now, touring a TV or film set is pretty great in a normal situation. But touring a historical set is a bit like drifting through an old photograph.

Below: Production designer Howard Cummings introduces us to the room where all the lovely, gory magic happens — the operating theater.

IMG_7492 IMG_7494

The first season of The Knick filmed a few scenes on Broome Street. (Tom took some pictures of that experience which we posted here.) And now I got my turn to wander through a bit of dreamlike historical recreation, passing through ornate hospital and laboratory sets.

A few impressions:

1) My pictures aren’t that good because, well, I’m not really a great photographer. But also because everything is lit with those Edison-style lightbulbs, creating a warm and sometimes ominous glow. The show films using only these light sources. I’m pretty sure I ate at a restaurant on the Bowery last week that had a similar lighting scheme.

IMG_7515 IMG_7518

2) As there are no huge pieces of equipment following Steven Soderbergh with his camera around the sets, they’re designed with more realistic dimensions. The production designer Howard Cummings walked us through the labyrinth of darkened set pieces that at times felt like the cleanest haunted house in the world.  The various hospital rooms actually look like they could admit patients.  The notorious operating theater really felt like a small classroom.

IMG_7495 IMG_7496

3) I’m certain that Cinemax could turn the sets into a popular nightclub during the off-season. Since it films in Brooklyn, this might not be a bad investment idea.

IMG_7524 IMG_7526

4) The show’s medical adviser is Dr. Stanley Burns who has an almost frightful depth of knowledge and an amazing trove of materials from  which to draw inspiration.  Check out the Burns Archives (which has some digital assets available) to peer into the plot possibilities.

IMG_7501 IMG_7504

 

5) When the show returns, be sure to pay extra-special attention to the wardrobe. We met the costume designer Ellen Mirojnick who walked us through a literal warehouse of historical pieces. My first thought was that I want her to design all the outfits for my wedding one day. Her domain was like the world’s best thrift store, occupied only by garments from the Gilded Age. Corsets, boiler hats, ball gowns, medical robes. The show’s unsettling feel (transmitted through music, tone and set color schemes) is subtly interpreted through each character’s dress. Probably an obvious point to make, but again, startling to see in period costumes.

Below: Racks and racks of coats, suits and hats that could literally clothe thousands of hipsters.

IMG_7489

 

6) Finally I could have talked for hours to the writers who we met at the end of our tour – Jack Amiel, Michael Begler and Steven Katz. The show has a pretty high degree of difficulty (set in the past and in a hospital) so it was interesting to explore how they craft a plot around historical events and unusual medical practices.

And, no, I didn’t get to see Clive Owen, but I did get to see all of his hats!

The show returns to Cinemax later this fall. As usual I’ll be Tweeting along with the show during its initial broadcast, even through those portions of blood-soaked medical surgeries that make me feel like I’m going to vomit.

IMG_7499 IMG_7500


IMG_7520

IMG_7533

Categories
Bowery Boys Bookshelf

‘Spectacle’: The Story of Ota Benga

In 1906, visitors to the Bronx Zoo observed a rather bizarre sight in the Monkey House — the exhibition of a man in African dress, often accompanied by a parrot or an orangutan.


An African pygmy, so read the sign, “Age, 23, Height, 4 feet 11 inches, Weight 103 pounds, Brought from the Kasai River, Congo Free State, South Central Africa.” Displayed in one of America’s foremost institutions devoted to the display and care of exotic animals. Elephants, tigers, polar bears, snow leopards, bison. And one young man named Ota Benga.

2

He is the subject of Pamela Newkirk’s engaging new book Spectacle: The Astonishing Life of Ota Benga, both a sincere ode to his tragic life and a contemporary accusation of the terrible forces that exploited him over a century ago.

But the story is really about the ghost of Ota Benga.

He spoke little English and there are no accounts from his perspective. Almost everything we know is from the perspective of a jaundiced press and the glare of condescending authority. He was the subject of great fabrications over the years; the truth is almost impossible to extricate from hyperbole.

While his story is front and center in Spectacle, but he barely raises his voice. He never had one.

1906 photograph of Ota Benga, described as being taken at Bronx Zoo. (Wikimedia) Title: Ota Bengi Creator(s): Bain News Service, publisher Date Created/Published: [no date recorded on caption card] Medium: 1 negative : glass ; 5 x 7 in. or smaller. Reproduction Number: LC-DIG-ggbain-22741 (digital file from original negative) Rights Advisory: No known restrictions on publication. Call Number: LC-B2- 3971-2 [P&P] Repository: Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division Washington, D.C. 20540 USA http://hdl.loc.gov/loc.pnp/pp.print Notes: Title from unverified data provided by the Bain News Service on the negatives or caption cards. Forms part of: George Grantham Bain Collection (Library of Congress). General information about the Bain Collection is available at http://hdl.loc.gov/loc.pnp/pp.ggbain Format: Glass negatives. Collections: Bain Collection Bookmark This Record: http://www.loc.gov/pictures/item/ggb2005022751/
1906 photograph of Ota Benga, described as being taken at Bronx Zoo. (Wikimedia)
Creator(s): Bain News Service, publisher 
Ota Benga is probably not even his real name. And even then, it’s twisted and distorted mercilessly, sometimes by the man himself. (When he died in 1916, he was known as Ota Bingo.)  In 1904 he was rescued from captivity in the Congo by the explorer and would-be scientist Samuel Phillips Verner.

This is probably true although Verner is an unreliable source, often changing his own biography to burnish his reputation in the science community.  Verner was the product of his age, seeing Africans as inferior beings but seeing their continent as a source of revenue. Verner sought to profit handsomely from his ‘explorations’ both by currying favor with the Belgian King Leopold II (the ruthless leader who exploited the people of the Congo) and by snatching human specimens for display in America.

Ota Benga first arrived with a group of other men and boys for an exhibition at the 1904 St. Louis World’s Fair.  People delighted at his mischievous nature and unusual appearance. His teeth were filed into points, a decorative trait that exhibitors (including Verner) proclaimed were the product of a cannibalistic nature.

Below: Ota Benga at the St. Louis World’s Fair with other men taken from Africa 

1

He went back with Verner to Africa only to arrive back in America by 1906 where he was placed in the care of the American Museum of Natural History. Ota Benga actually lived inside the museum, subject to more than a few indignities. “I have bought a duck suit for the Pigmy,” wrote Hermon Carey Bumpus, the director of the museum, to Verner. “He is around the museum, apparently perfectly happy and more or less a favorite of the men.”

Ota Benga’s removal to the Bronx Zoo and subsequent display in the Monkey House has certainly been a blight to that institution’s history. The decision reveals the outmoded and racist philosophies that pervaded scientific thinking of the day.

At best, Ota Benga was simply an object in an exotic diorama with audiences prodding him to do tricks. His humanity was barely considered. At worst, the exhibition lays bare the racism of the day in the most baldy sinister way possible, corroding even the most esteemed institutions of the day.

It’s a small relief to hear of the many criticisms the zoo received in the press back in 1906. Sanity soon prevailed and Ota Benga left the zoo to live in an orphanage in Weeksville, Brooklyn.

2Newkirk gives the life of Ota Benga a proper eulogy. She crafts an intriguing tale around the many uncertainties of his biography, sometimes even stopping to analyze his state of mind.  I greatly credit the author for parsing through volumes of inaccurate news reports in search of even the smallest grains of truth.

His story ends with an unsatisfying hollowness, outside New York and far from the Congo. Few in his life ever treated him as an equal. In fact, due to his size, he was frequently treated like a boy, although he mostly like ended his life in his early 30s.  He never found a place to fit in.

There’s only a single moment in the book where Newkirk lets us in on his marvelous potential, on a life that could have been under more fair and enlightened circumstances.

He becomes, for a moment, “a father figure and hero” to a group of small African-American boys in Lynchburg, Virginia.  “In Benga they found an open and patient teacher, a beloved companion, and a remarkably agile athlete who sprinted and leaped over logs like a boy. And with his young companions Benga could uninhibitedly relive memories of a lost and longed-for life and retreat to woods that recalled home.”

Spectacle: The Astonishing Life of Ota Benga

Amistad, HarperCollinsPublishers

by Pamela Newkirk

 

Other recently reviewed books on the Bowery Boys Bookshelf:

Categories
Neighborhoods Podcasts

The Grand Tale of Orchard Street and Life on the Lower East Side

Courtesy Museum of the City of New York

PODCAST The Lower East Side is one of the most important neighborhoods in America with a rich history as dense as its former living quarters. Thousands of immigrants experienced American life on these many crowded streets. In this podcast, we look at this extraordinary cultural phenomenon through the lens of one of those — Orchard Street.

Its name traces itself to a literal orchard, owned by James De Lancey, a wealthy landowner and Loyalist during the Revolutionary War. By the 1840s the former orchard and farm was divided up into lots, and a brand new form of housing — the tenement — served new Irish and German communities who had just arrived in the United States.

A few decades later those residents were replaced by Russian and Eastern European newcomers, brought to the neighborhood due to its affordability and its established Jewish character.

Living conditions were poor and most tenement apartment doubled as workspaces. Meanwhile, in the streets, tight conditions required a unique retail solution — the push cart, a form of independent enterprise that has given us some businesses that still thrive on Orchard Street today.

You can see this century-old life along Orchard Street today, if you know where to look. Luckily that’s what we’re here for! With some help from Adam Steinberg at the Tenement Museum, where the best place to interact with a preserved view of the old days.

Below: “Imported Americans” — from a photo card, courtesy Library of Congress

imported

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

Starting this month, we are doubling our number of episodes per month. Now you’ll hear 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!

A look at the property of James De Lancey and his sophisticated plans to turn his farm into a wealthy neighborhood, probably in the spirit of St. John’s Park. The blog Manhattan Unlocked goes really deep into the story of De Lancey’s land holdings here.

1

I’m not sure where this picture was taken but it illustrates a cluster of buildings constructed before the advent of tenement construction.

11

Here’s a selection of photographs from the archives of the Museum of the City of New York, illustrating the clogged streets of Orchard and Hester Streets, busy with the commerce of the day. All of these are from 1898.

1
2
3
5

The home sweatshops, cramming an industry and several people into the parlor of a tenement building. Here’s a necktie ‘factory’ on Division Street in 1890.

Courtesy the Museum of the City of New York
Courtesy the Museum of the City of New York

And another from 1911. Child labor in full view!

MNY8435

Ridley’s Department Store on the corner of Grand and Orchard Streets. They’ve really cleaned up the streets in this advertisement, haven’t they?

Courtesy the Tenement Museum
Courtesy the Tenement Museum

Here’s what all that mess on Orchard Street looks like in the winter! Pictured here in 1926.

Courtesy New York Daily News
Courtesy New York Daily News

An Allen Street tenement fire escape from 1890, obviously used for more purposes than emergencies! [source]

Courtesy Museum of City of New York
Courtesy Museum of City of New York

This photo was taken in 1908 (or somewhere around that date) showing a bit of the expansion of Delancey Street. Workers labor in the street while a Jewish boy looks on. (Department of Records)

12

An overhead view of the intersection of East Broadway, Essex Street, Division Street and Canal Street, showing Seward Park and the library, both built to provide air and education to the Lower East Side. Photo is from 1928. [source]

9

An extraordinary view of Delancey Street in 1904 during the widening process for access to the Wililamsburg Bridge.

Courtesy Museum of the City of New York
Courtesy Museum of the City of New York

And here’s what Delancey looked like in 1928. This is from the top of a hotel from Delancey and Chrystie. You can see the elevated train that went down Allen Street. Orchard Street is the next block in the distance. Allen Street too was subject to expansion. And see the building labeled Bank of the United States? Here’s a little bit more about its fascinating history.

delancey

Hyman Moscot stands outside of his shop at 94 Rivington Street sometime in 1934. He began his business selling eyeglasses out of a pushcart.

Courtesy Sol Moscot
Courtesy Sol Moscot

A men’s tie peddler has some success selling his ties on the street corner at Orchard Street and Delancey. Courtesy New York Public Library. Click here for more historic views of this corner.

Courtesy New York Public Library
Courtesy New York Public Library

The Lower East Side in the 1930s — less crowded in the streets with very active storefronts.

Courtesy Trace Work
Courtesy Trace Work

 

Jarmulowsky’s Bank at Orchard and Canal. The perch at top is no longer on the building. It was originally built there because Sender Jarmulowsky wanted to have the tallest building in the Lower East Side.

bank

The interior of 97 Orchard Street (today’s Tenement Museum) in 1988.

Courtesy the Tenement Museum
Courtesy the Tenement Museum

A big thanks to Adam Steinberg at the Tenement Museum! Visit their website for more information.

Categories
Neighborhoods

Gotham Court and the lost neighborhood of Cherry Hill

Yesterday I went searching for remnants of the old Cherry Hill neighborhood. There are none, as far as I could tell.

It’s not the first New York City neighborhood to entirely vanish in the rush of progress — is it, Robert Moses ? — however it may be the one that began with the most impressive pedigree.

Cherry and Catherine streets, looking towards the Manhattan Bridge anchorage, in the once glorious Cherry Hill neighborhood. Pic courtesy Knickerbocker Village, who guesses photo to be from 1920s)

I’m not referring to the part of Central Park called Cherry Hill or even the upstate farm of Cherry Hill, best known for the prominent New York family the Van Rensselaers.

Downtown Manhattan’s Cherry Hill once lay near the waterfront in the area more literally called Two Bridges today, between the Brooklyn Bridge and the area just northeast of the Manhattan Bridge.

The Two Bridges Historical District was created in 2003, just to the north of the site of old Cherry Hill. Indeed there is nothing much left of the Cherry Hill neighborhood at all.

In 1890 Jacob Riis, in documenting what the neighborhood had become, referred to its early days as the “proud and fashionable Cherry Hill.” (pictured below)

Named for a Dutch cherry orchard, Cherry Hill featured a row of homes with a beautiful vista of the East River and hosted no less than George Washington‘s during his first term as president, at 1 Cherry Street.

Although he later moved to 39 Broadway, the neighborhood remained high on the list of the rich and important, including John Hancock (at 5 Cherry Street) and DeWitt Clinton (who moved into Washington’s old home).

Below: An illustration of the more genteel days of Cherry Hill, taken from the book When Old New York Was Young (written in 1902)

Courtesy Internet Archives Book Images
Courtesy Internet Archives Book Images

Even as late as the 1824, the area featured fine homes such as that of Samuel Leggett, founder of the New York Gas Light Company (later Con Edison), who enjoyed New York’s first interior gas lighting.

Here’s a picture of the first gas-lit home at 7 Cherry Street. (More information here)

louisa-leggett-001

If you’re looking for a symbolic date of Cherry Hill’s demise, look no further than April 3, 1823, birth date of William ‘Boss’ Tweed, who was born here and worked at a Cherry Hill chair shop in his early years.

Below: Mullen’s Alley in Cherry Hill, picture taken by Jacob Riis in 1890. Courtesy the Museum of the City of New York

1

As many well-to-do neighborhoods would later do, Cherry Hill devolved into a slum, paralleling the decline of nearby Five Points. Its well-intentioned tenements soon became the worst in the city.

Located in the Fourth Ward, Cherry Hill abutted the saloons, boarding houses and brothels along Water Street, including the legendary Hole In The Wall (the former Bridge Cafe).

None of this would assist the neighborhood in escaping its fate.

Below: Blindman’s Alley at 22 Cherry Street, taken by Jacob Riis

Courtesy Museum of the City of New York
Courtesy Museum of the City of New York

Cherry Hill is most unfortunately known for its most horrific slum — Gotham Court, “one of the worst tenements along the East River.”

It would later be made infamous in Jacob Riis’ renown 1890 blistering survey of How The Other Half Lives.  According to Riis:

“It is curious to find that this notorious block, whose name was so long synonymous with all that was desperately bad, was originally built (in 1851) by a benevolent Quaker for the express purpose of rescuing the poor people from the dreadful rookeries they were then living in.”

Below: photo from Gotham Court by Jacob Riis, 1890. “Minding the baby; Baby yells a Whirlwind Scream, Gotham Court.”

MNY200983

How long Gotham Court continued to be a so-called model tenement is not on record. It could not have been very long, for already in 1862, ten years after it was finished, a sanitary official counted 146 cases of sickness in the court, including “all kinds of infectious disease from small-pox down.”

Courtesy Museum of the City of New York
Courtesy Museum of the City of New York

In 1894, the New York Tribune went as far as to make several attempts to describe Gotham Court as a prison. From the piece ‘Life in Gotham Court’:

The side alleys are narrower. They are not more than three or four feet wide. In order to enter either of these alleys one has to pass through an iron arch. The gate has been taken away, but enough remains to give unpleasant suggestions of a penitentiary..

The idea is not dissipated by the appearance of the houses inside the alley. The small windows with tiny panes of glass, the low, dark doors, through which iron gratings can be seen, and the bare brick walls are like those of a prison. The people move about free, as the prisoners do during exercise hour at the Tombs. All the doors are alike, all the windows are alike, and all are dilapidated, forlorn and forbidding.

Gotham Court and the rest of Cherry Hill were not long for this world. In the wake of Riis expose, Gotham Court was demolished in 1897.

By that time, efforts were made to construct more amenable tenements, including those built at 340, 342 and 344 Cherry Street in 1888. (See below, courtesy of Maggie Blanck)

By that time, the anchorage to the Brooklyn Bridge — and in 1909, with the Manhattan Bridge anchorage — would block in the neighborhood from the circulation of the city. The construction of traffic ramps to the Brooklyn Bridge and the downtown section of the FDR Drive (opened in 1942) obliterated much of what remained.

In its place would be more ambitious housing “super projects,” most notably one in the form of the Alfred E. Smith Houses, built in 1953 and named for the governor and saavy politico born very close by, at 25 Oliver Street.

His old street and a couple around it may give you the closest idea of what some areas of Cherry Hill may have looked like in earlier years.

Two maps — one block of tenements in Cherry Hill in 1890 (from a map by Jacob Riis) and a Google map of the same block today:

2
1

Given its rather uniform appearance, I found it quite impossible to picture Cherry Hill’s early days here.

A shortened version of this article originally ran August 18, 2008. I’ve left the comments from that original run as they relate to the history.

Categories
Neighborhoods

The hole that swallowed Greenpoint and other treasures at Old NYC

The New York Public Library‘s Old NYC interface is pretty much one of the best things to happen to New York City history this year. It selects photographs from their extensive archives and maps them out — all five boroughs and pretty much most major intersections.  It’s like a Google Maps street-view of the past.

It’s been a true delight (and a major distraction) to revisit random avenues and see what things looked like over 75-100 years ago.  Try it out. Pick a street, any street.

While stumbling through Brooklyn history, I can upon a startling sight at Clay Street and Commercial Street in Greenpoint.  According to the caption, the photos show “operations on a W. P. A. sewer project.”

Here’s another view (and check out the others here):

2

 

An in-depth plunge through this resource finds all sorts of unusual items from the past. Here are a few more that I discovered but, by all means, go hunt around for yourself!

A spooky cemetery in Woodside, Queens, at 32nd Avenue and the northwest corner of 54th Street (or this intersection):

3

Back when one could just park your jalopy at the foot of West Street, 1920s. Here’s that view today. [source]

4

Edison Electric Company wants to encourage you to ‘COOK ELECTRICALLY’ from the vantage of a Ferris Street sign in Red Hook, Brooklyn. [source]

8

Before Ulysses S. Grant was interred in the monument that bears his name, he was kept in a temporary tomb near the same spot.  This picture is from the 1880s. [source]

9

A rustic view of the Alice Austin House in Staten Island from 1926. Here’s that same view today:

5

 

Graceful and long-gone Zborowski Mansion which once sat in Claremont Park in the Bronx. More information about this house here.

 

6

 

New York Central Railroad cars, just sailing down the street, at the corner of Hudson and Vestry Streets, in Manhattan. [source]

7

 

 

Categories
It's Showtime Podcasts

Diamond Girl: How Mae West Brought ‘Sex’ and Scandal to Broadway

PODCAST Mae West (star of I’m No Angel and She Done Him Wrong) would come to revolutionize the idea of American sexuality, challenging and lampooning ideas of femininity while wielding a suggestive and vicious wit. But before she was America’s diamond girl, she was the pride of Brooklyn! In this podcast, we bring you the origin story of this icon and the wacky events of 1927 that brought her brand of swagger to the attention of the world.

1The Brooklyn girl started on the vaudeville stage early, inspired by the influences of performers like Eva Tanguay. She soon proved too smart for the small stuff and set her aim towards Broadway — but on her terms.

West’s play Sex introduced her devastating allure in the service of a shocking tale of prostitution. It immediately found an audience in 1926 even if the critics were less than enamored. But it’s when she devised an even more shocking play — The Drag — that city leaders became morally outraged and vowed to shut her down forever.

From Bushwick to Midtown, from the boards of Broadway to the workhouse of Welfare Island — this is the story of New York’s ultimate Sex scandal.

Picture at top: Mae West in a publicity still for her Broadway hit Diamond Lil. (Courtesy Museum of City of New York)

Inset: The poster for Sex by Jane Mast (aka Mae West)

Special thanks to Esther Belle from The West (a Mae West-inspired coffeehouse and bar in Williamsburg). We recorded an interview with her about the legacy of Mae West but weren’t able to use it. But it will be available for Patreon supporters!

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

Starting this month, we are doubling our number of episodes per month. Now you’ll hear 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!

A young Mae West, already a seasoned performer by her teenage years.

Courtesy Notes On The Road
Courtesy Notes On The Road

From Mae West’s vaudeville days, a piece of Tin Pan Alley sheet-music she performed in the stage:

Courtesy New York Public Library
Courtesy New York Public Library

A saucy promotional still from Sex

4

From the original program for Sex:

Courtesy Playbill Vault
Courtesy Playbill Vault

1

Mae West at the Jefferson Market courthouse:

Original caption: Cast of Tried By Jury. New York, New York: Photo shows scene in courtroom of general sessions part II at start of members of company. Mae West and Barry O'Niel, in productions leading roles, can be seen at extreme left. March 28, 1927 New York, New York, USA
Original caption: Cast of Tried By Jury. New York, New York: Photo shows scene in courtroom of general sessions part II at start of members of company. Mae West and Barry O’Niel, in productions leading roles, can be seen at extreme left. March 28, 1927 New York, New York, USA

Mae West in the original photography for the 1928 production of Diamond Lil. She attempted during this period to open the controversial show The Pleasure Man but it was shut down after two days. (Courtesy New York Public Library)

1

Another odd shot from Diamond Lil, of Mae reclining in a golden swan bed. (source)

Courtesy New York Public Library
Courtesy New York Public Library

5

Mae West in the 1949 Broadway revival of Diamond Lil. Once a provocateur of the stage, she settled into her larger-than-life personae in later years, formed mostly from her successes in this role (and its film version She Done Him Wrong). (Courtesy Museum of the City of New York)

Courtesy the Museum of the City of New York
Courtesy the Museum of the City of New York

Members of the cast of The Pleasure Man being arrested by police, 1928.

Courtesy Queer Music Heritage -- http://queermusicheritage.com/fem-arts6.html
Courtesy Queer Music Heritage — http://queermusicheritage.com/fem-arts6.html

Courtesy New York Daily News
Courtesy New York Daily News

Mae West (and a young Cary Grant) in She Done Him Wrong

In the hilarious I’m No Angel:

Ladies and gentlemen, Mae West and Mr. Ed:

And her last film — the camp classic Sextette

Categories
Mad Men

Timeless: How ‘Mad Men’ changed history on television

In 1972 the Robert Altman film M*A*S*H was turned into a weekly half-hour situation comedy series. In retrospect I’m stunned that anybody thought to make this. The landscape of television comedy was cluttered with novelty premises and perfect families dealing with contrived scenarios which always, always resolved in a happy freeze-frame.

There was no sense of reality to television before 1972. Westerns set in the 19th century had no historical sense to them.  Gunsmoke and Bonanza rarely if ever referenced an understandable place and time. The Ponderosa was somewhere in Nevada, set vaguely in the 1860s.

Television’s M*A*S*H broke both of these molds. It was real life, affected by real history. It was in a recognizable place, and its characters were changed by events that were vividly real. For the first time it felt like a show was operating by the same cosmic rules as its viewers.

The year that Altman’s film was released is the year that the last season of Mad Men, which finishes its run this Sunday, is set.  We know this because creator Matthew Weiner and his writing team make very sure to watermark almost every scene.

Every detail — from the buttons on Joan’s dresses to the brand of cigarette in Betty’s hand — speaks to the show’s obsessive need to plant its coordinates into the narrative.

Mad Men has re-envisioned the historical television show in exactly the same way that M*A*S*H reinvented the sitcom. You can no longer make a television show set in the past without following (or rebelling against) the example set by the adventures of Don Draper and crew.

Cognizant of the harsh mistress of social media, Mad Men has created a flawless timeline, leaving a masterful, rarely obvious path of breadcrumbs that have led viewers through the 1960s. The first episode “Smoke Gets In Your Eyes,” is set in March 1960. The last episode, named “Person To Person,” will be set in either November or (most likely) December 1970. 

Episodes are crammed with historical and pop cultural references, but very rarely are they front and center. Don ate and drank his way through the finest restaurants in New York. Joan made out with somebody at the Electric Circus, while Peggy went to a happening at Washington Market. Kinsey joined the Hare Krishnas!

Shock treatment, LSD, race riots, Weight Watchers, moon landings, assassinations — the entirety of America in the 1960s was fully and richly presented, in far greater volume and diversity than perhaps even a college course would provide.

But not once — not a single time in its seven seasons — did the events of this tumultuous decade overtake the storyline. The characters, their lives, were always front and center.

It has been an extraordinary pleasure the past few years to Tweet along with live viewings of Mad Men on Sunday night. I’m not paid to do it. It’s just a total blast. I just love a good scavenger hunt.

Weiner and the Mad Men production team can infuse entirely new themes, sometimes with traces of irony, that only reside within the borders of an episode. Far from history being a binding and limiting framework, Mad Men has turned it into a set of playground monkey-bars from which to playfully swing.

Setting the show in New York, but not filming it here, seemed, at first, like a troubling and even annoying decision. But it worked because the Manhattan skyline is a dead giveaway, like the rings of a tree.

And Mad Men‘s not the kind of show that uses CGI. (A New York-filmed show might have been tempted to have Don swagger down the street with the under-construction World Trade Center in the background. Thank god Mad Men is not that show.)

History has been a vivid hue on Mad Men, as vivid as one of Pete Campbell’s most flamboyant ties. They don’t just plan episodes “in the spring of 1967.” There are usually clues that accurately pinpoint a scene to an actual day and, sometimes, an actual minute. You never had to be consciously aware of this information. It sits like a juicy footnote at the bottom of the page, waiting to reveal another facet of the story.

Will this formula work for future historically based television programs? Mad Men had the luxury of a cast of fictional characters, so history can coalesce around them with convenience.

Shows like Turn or Boardwalk Empire, on the other hand, have characters based on real-life individuals, and negotiation around historical events is trickier.

I wonder where the Mad Men effect will turn up next. The Knick, set in 1900s New York, makes obvious nods to Weiner’s precise use of historical detail, but understandably, it’s not consistent. (Being set over a century ago, it has a higher degree of difficulty.)

The writers of Downton Abbey love their history, but it’s often an interloper.  It invades more than informs. Outlander would probably not be a good show if characters stopped to wonder what day it was.  Halt and Catch Fire could be a successor to Mad Men if it pulls its storylines together in the next season.  

Farewell Mad Men! And thank you for the best time-traveling adventure on television. Throughout this article is a sampling of a few of my Mad Men Tweets over the past few years to illustrate some of the details that the production team has incorporated into its shows.

You can find the complete list of my Mad Men Tweets right here!  And for other Bowery Boys articles on Mad Men, you can check them out here.

 

Categories
True Crime

‘Days of Rage’ and Nights of Terror

Greenwich Village Townhouse Explosion 1970

Right before noon on March 6, 1970, an explosion tore open a lovely Greenwich Village townhouse at 18 West 11th Street and awoke New York City to a violent new threat.

The remains of three bodies were discovered in the smoking debris but they weren’t residents of this quiet neighborhood. They were members of The Weather Underground, a radical underground unit absorbing the counter-culture spirit of the 1960s and unleashing it — oftentimes randomly and irrationally —  onto a new decade.

Below: Oddly enough, the townhouse explosion occurred next door to the home of Dustin Hoffman and his wife.

Courtesy AP file photo
Courtesy AP file photo

Less than two years later, two New York police officers were brutally assassinated in the East Village, among the most brutal and shocking crimes against the NYPD in its history.  This wasn’t a random crime but a hit placed upon the officers by members of the Black Liberation Army, wielding some of the philosophies of the Black Panthers to dangerous ends.

Almost three years later, a bomb exploded inside the historic Fraunces Tavern during in the middle of a busy weekday lunch. Four men were killed in the sudden attack, made by the Armed Forces of Puerto Rican National Liberation (or FALN).

Below: Aftermath of the explosion at Fraunces Tavern (courtesy New York Daily News)

faln

In between these terrible disasters were several other bombings of other significant buildings, here in New York and in other cities through the United States.  All of them indicative of a violent (and ultimately failed) form of protest, as turbulently described by Bryan Burrough in his new book Days of Rage: America’s Radical Underground, The FBI, and the Forgotten Age of Revolutionary Violence.

This is probably one of the most frightening non-fiction books I’ve read in recent memory, a broad and exquisitely told tale that loosely links together a variety of American revolutionary action groups from the 1970s.

Some of the principal players of these groups are recognizable (Bill Ayers and Bernadine Dohrn,  Patty Hearst), but the breadths of their actions has been seldom studied. Through interviews with members who’ve never spoken, Burroughs patches together connections among these disparate groups — even if those connections are more philosophical than physical.

Below: The mugshot of Bernadine Dohrn, 1970

Bernardine_Dohrn_published_1970

 

Most shared the belief that violence, disruption and chaos would lead America to a new revolutionary age. As Burrough points out, most were inspired by civil rights movement and the plight of black Americans, taking their anger and frustration into far more radical directions than the mainstream leaders who advocated non-violence and change through the law.

While the vulgar and gut-wrenching violence was often doused with machismo, many of these groups were led or operated by women.

The title comes from a series of demonstrations that occurred in Chicago in the fall of 1969, seen as a sort of kick off to this festering revolutionary movement.  Much of the book details the ‘underground’ hideouts and escape routes of these organization, whether holed up in Manhattan’s Chinatown or San Francisco (as the Weathermen were, often dressed in silly disguises) or running from capture through rural Georgia.

Burrough does not flinch from the horror, graphically describing the aftermath of many of the more loathsome crimes.  The 1972 deaths of two NYPD officers in the East Village is especially grim. (You can read news of the original account here.)

patty

In particular, I found the tale of the Symbionese Liberation Army especially gripping, notable less for their violent actions (although there certainly was some) than for the somewhat random notion to kidnap the granddaughter of William Randolph Hearst.  Many of these stories will replay in your memory as a reel of black-and-white news footage or a set of iconic photographs (such as the one above of Hearst).  Days of Rage offers a vivid and refreshing new context.

Burrough — a Vanity Fair writer perhaps best known for Barbarians At The Gate — is a thorough story-teller, conjuring fully blown narratives from the sometimes untrustworthy recollections of the surviving participants.  He’s often too thorough, sometimes including superfluous details because they’ve “never before been told.”

Chaos was an organizing principal for these groups which is partially way they were ultimately unsuccessful. As shocking as some of these horrifying attacks seem today, it’s a wonder many of them were successful orchestrated at all, given the tentative organizational structure and often incompetent leadership of these groups.

 

 

 

Top photograph courtesy Marty Lederhandler/AP Images.

Categories
On The Waterfront

A Haunting Look Inside the Lusitania

The Lusitania gets dwarfed by recollections of the Titanic.  But in many ways, the destruction of the Cunard Line’s premier ocean liner on May 7, 1915, was a deeper tragedy than that of the White Star liner.

As a casualty of war — sunk by a German U-boat off the coast of southern Ireland — the Lusitania disaster began a slow but inevitable march towards the United States’ entry into World War I. Â Its destruction send a shockwave through Americans and Britons alike. Nobody sailing the Atlantic was safe.

Almost 1,200 people died that afternoon of May 7th. Among the deceased were millionaires (Alfred Gwynne Vanderbilt),  impresarios (Charles Frohman), writers, scientists,  nurses and soldiers.

The ship itself was a major loss both for Cunard and the British military as the ship was fitted for active service. Here are a selection of images from 1905 (courtesy SMU Central University) of the Lusitania in all her glory, years before her demise.

Interspersed are some newspaper clippings from its initial launch in 1906 and some from 1907, the year the vessel first sailed to New York.

For more information on the Lusitania, check out our podcast on the Chelsea Piers or read my book review of Dead Wake, the latest by Erik Larson.

1

From the Lusitania’s debut in Scottish waters, New York Times June 08, 1906:

“GLASGOW, Scotland, June 7. — The new Cunard Line steamer Lusitania, the world’s largest liner, was successfully launched at Clydebank to-day, and was named by Dowager Lady Inverclyde. Hundreds of visitors from all parts of the country, besides thousands of the local population, witnessed the ceremony.

The Lusitania is the first of the giant Cunarders to be launched, and her sister, the Mauretania, will follow her into the sea a month ago.  The Lusitania is 790 feet long, and her greatest breadth is 88 feet, while her depth molded is 60 1/2 feet.”

2

Cabin accommodations:  552 first class, 460 second class, 1,186 third class. 2,198 total

Second class entrance
Second class entrance

NYT , July 31, 1907:  “LUXURIOUS OCEAN TRAVEL. The new Cunarder Lusitania is now afloat, and will soon be on her way to New York. She is at the present moment the largest and most richly appointed ocean steamship in the world, though she may take second place within a year or so.”

Side view of Lusitania showing the launching cradle and the propellers
Side view of Lusitania showing the launching cradle and the propellers
Interior staircase and elevator
Interior staircase and elevator

Headline from the New York Times, September 7, 1907:

LUSITANIA STARTS FIRST TRIP TO-DAY; Will Race the Lusitania Across in an Effort for a New Record. BOTH BOATS ARE FULL Colossal Ferries Groomed for the Event — Lusitania Will Burn 1,000 Tons of Coal Daily.

First class promenade deck
First class promenade deck
2

From the New York Tribune, October 10, 1907

1

Third class:

1

The kitchen:

2

Second-Class Ladies Lounge:

3

Officers smoking lounge:

4

From the New York Tribune, October 14, 1907

1

 

First class smoking room, music lounge, and library entranceway:

5
6
7

And pictures of the ‘regal suite’, the nicest rooms on the boat:

1
2

An officer atop the navigation bridge:

1

And finally — the navigation bridge

bridge

You can find many more images at Flickr Commons, courtesy Southern Methodist University, Central University Libraries, DeGolyer Library

Categories
Brooklyn History Podcasts

Park Slope and the Story of Brownstone Brooklyn

PODCAST Park Slope — or simply the park slope, as they used to say — is best known for its spectacular Victorian-era mansions and brownstones, one of the most romantic neighborhoods in all of Brooklyn. It’s also a leading example of the gentrifying forces that are currently changing the make-up of the borough of Brooklyn to this day.

During the 18th century this sloping land was subject to one of the most demoralizing battles of the Revolutionary War, embodied today by the Old Stone House, an anchor of this changing neighborhood. In the 1850s, the railroad baron Edwin Clark Litchfield brought the first real estate development to this area in the form of his fabulous villa on the hill. By the 1890s the blocks were stacked with charming house, mostly for occupancy by wealthy families.

Circumstances during the Great Depression and World War II reconfigured most of these old (and old fashioned) homes into boarding houses and working-class housing. Then a funny thing happens, something of a surprising development in the 1960s: the arrival of the brownstoners, self-proclaimed — pioneers — who refurbished deteriorating homes.

The revitalization of Park Slope has been a mixed blessing as later waves of gentrification and rising prices threaten to push out both older residents and original gentrifiers alike.

PLUS: The terrifying details of one of the worst plane crashes in American history, a disaster that almost took out one of the oldest corners of the neighborhood.

And a special thanks to our guests on this show — Kim Maier from the Old Stone House; Julie Golia, Director of Public History, Brooklyn Historical Society; and  John Casson and Michael Cairl, both of Park Slope Civic Council.

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

Starting this month, we are doubling our number of episodes per month. Now you’ll hear 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!

The Vechte Cortelyou House (aka the Old Stone House) depicted as it looked in 1699 (from a hand colored lithograph by the firm of Nathaniel Currier, MCNY)

MNY144935
 
The old Litchfield Village, today located within the borders of Prospect Park. (Postcard dated 1926, MCNY)
M3Y43643
 
One of the most famous 19th century pictures of the park slope area, showing the streets after the Blizzard of 1888. (MCNY)
MNY227561
 
Down on 9th Street and 5th Avenue was the great old B.F. Keith Prospect Theater, a former film and vaudeville house. This post card is from the 1910s; the theater originally opened in 1914. This type of establishment might not have been welcomed further up the avenues. (MCNY)
M3Y60956-1
 
 
The Ansonia Clock Factory — “the world’s largest clock factory” — was located in the South Slope, between Seventh and Eighth Avenues, obviously a distance away from the old mansions. Today it’s been converted, like so many things, to luxury condos. (MCNY)
M3Y43673
 
 
Park Slope in 1915. “The corner of Prospect Park West and 9th Street at the entrance to Prospect Park. Two women with a baby carriage are visible to the right and a mailbox and an apartment building are visible to the left.” (MCNY)
MNY53298
 
 
 
The Montauk Club, playground of Brooklyn’s wealthiest residents. Illustrated here from 1905. (Courtesy Museum of City of New York)
M3Y43820
 
 
The Warwick Arms on 8th Avenue and 2nd Street, one of the first luxury apartment complexes that moved to Park Slope. (Photo by the Wurts Brothers, courtesy )
MNY323785

A collection of classified ads from the December 1, 1912 issue of the Brooklyn Daily Eagle, offering several living options in the park slope area.

Screen Shot 2015-05-01 at 9.03.50 AM
 
The stark Fourteenth Street Armory, located in the South Slope, depicted here as it looked in 1906 — “a pretty place” (MCNY)
M3Y44090
 
 
Congregation Beth Elohim, pictured here on September 16, 1929, located at Garfield Place and 8th Avenue. (MCNY)
MNY195546

The horrific place crash of December 16, 1960 — United Airlines Flight 826, bound for Idlewild Airport, colliding with Trans World Airlines Flight 266, heading to LaGuardia Airport. 128 passengers were killed, along with six people on the ground. (Top picture courtesy New York Daily News; the two after are from the New York Fire Deparment. You can find further images here)

park-slope-plane-crash-1960
6523090255_8a5f5ab891_b
6523086749_f7564b2665_o

Some images from 1961 by John Morrell from the archives of the Brooklyn Historical Society:

A view along Prospect Park West at and 16th Street and Windsor Place.

V19749246

View of east side of 8th Avenue between 15th and 16th Streets looking north. n.e. cor. 16th Street (right) & 8th Avenue.

V19749250

Prospect Park West looking south toward Prospect Park/branch, U.S. Post Office (at northeast corner of Prospect Park W. & 16th Street).

V19749245

By the 1970s so mansions and brownstones close to the park were getting renovated by ‘pioneers’ with the means to restore these homes to their original splendor.

Landscape

In 1969, New York Magazine touted the ‘radical’ alternative of moving to Brooklyn in an article by Pete Hamill:

1969-0714-cover-250

TOP PHOTOGRAPH by Luci West from Moving Postcard