One of you may be related to Pietro, the boy in the picture. He was one of thousands of Italian immigrants who arrived in New York in the 1870s-80s. He seems to have been intelligent and even exceptional, weathering a set of truly dreary circumstances that would have defeated most men.
Pietro was not yet 13 years old when he was almost killed in a streetcar accident. He was permanently scarred and unable to support his family. If not for witnessing a shooting outside of his home, we might never know his name.
But in 1892, Pietro became a profoundly moving subject in a new book by one of the greatest social reformers of the Gilded Age.
Jacob Riis was a pioneer social activist who used journalism and photography to change the living conditions of thousands of poor New Yorkers. He took his bulky camera to the most decrepit nooks of lower Manhattan, documenting a world entirely unseen by most people.
In 1890 he published How The Other Half Lives, exposing the squalid living conditions of downtown Manhattan’s mostly immigrant population.
Riis did help to change the face of New York. In Five Points, the worst tenements were demolished and replaced with government buildings and one very manicured park. But his depictions of ethnic groups, in retrospect, could be very simplistic, even condescending. In his goals to highlight an overwhelmingly malignant condition, he often glossed over some telling details of some of his subjects.
Pietro (I haven’t been able to find his last name) is one of Riis’ favorite subjects. He makes his debut in The Children of the Poor, Riis’ 1892 follow-up to How The Other Half Lives, as a model ofthe striving young student. Pietro is an ambassador of sorts, an avatar of social improvement, bringing “[e]very lesson of cleanliness, of order, of English” taught to him in school back to his tenement life.
He was born sometime in the early 1878 or 1879, just as the sudden increase of southern Italians began to permanently change the nature of the old tenement neighborhoods.
He lived in a single room with his parents and four younger siblings. As a small boy, he attended classes at the school run by Old St. Patrick’s until “his education was considered to have sufficiently advanced to warrant his graduating into the ranks of the family wage- earners.”
Being the eldest son, he would have gone to work immediately. In this case, as a bootblack, the most common occupation for poor Italian immigrants in the 1880s.
1897 Yard in Jersey Street (now gone). A woman holding a child, and men sitting in a rear yard of a Jersey Street tenement. Pietro lived on Jersey Street and one of these buildings may have been his home.
Probably around age 11 or 12, Pietro began shining shoes in a saloon somewhere in the neighborhood. One day, while crossing Broadway, he was struck by a streetcar and mangled so badly that it was assumed he would not survive. “They thought he was killed but he was only crippled for life.”
He met Riis one dayat the police station at 300 Mulberry Street. He was there as a witness to a shooting which had occurred in front of his home. As Riis describes:
“With his rags, his dirty bare feet, and his shock of tousled hair, he seemed to fit in so entirely there of all places, and took so naturally to the ways of the police-station, that he might have escaped my notice altogether but for his maimed hand and his oddly grave but eager face, which no smile ever crossed despite his thirteen years.”
Riis gained the boy’s confidence and was invited into his home to document his life. Pietro was devoting his energies to education, improving both his Italian and English skills. It appears the accident left one or both of his hands impaired.
As Riis observes:
‘By ‘m by,’ said poor crippled Pietro to me, with a sober look, as he labored away on his writing lesson, holding down the paper with his maimed hand, ‘I learn t’ make an Englis’ letter; maybe my fadder he learn too.’
I had my doubts about the father. He sat watching Pietro with the pride in the achievement that was clearly proportionate to the struggle it cost, and mirrored in his own face every grimace and contortion the progress of education caused by the boy.
‘Si! si!’ he nodded eagerly. ‘Pietro he good a boy; make Englis’, Englis’!’ and he made a flourish with his clay-pipe, as if he too were making the English letter that was the subject of their common veneration.
Riis clearly views Pietro as a charity case burdened with the extraordinary responsibility of assimilating his family into American life.
At the maimed 13 year old eldest child of immigrants, his days of innocence were long gone. His situation had utterly defeated him. At least, that’s the image Riis very poignantly meant to convey in his final anecdote, turning to Pietro as he watched over his baby brother:
‘Pietro’,” I said with a sudden yearning to know, ‘did you ever laugh?’
The boy glanced from the baby to me with a wistful look.
‘I did wonst’, he said quietly and went on his way. And I would gladly have forgotten that I ever asked the question; even as Pietro had forgotten his laugh.’
We never see Pietro again. He’s used as a pitiful example of life in the Italian slums and then fades into the background, lost among the thousands of individuals who lived in the Mulberry Street slums.
Riis, however, does use the generic name ‘Pietro’ — now a stand-in for all disadvantaged Italian immigrants — in his 1902 book The Battle With the Slum.“
One of Riis’ photographs, illustrated for the book Children of the Poor.
Did Pietro ever make it out of the tenements? Did he get married, have children, begin a career? Did his physical condition ever improve? It’s rather likely that either he or one of his siblings had children, and one of those children might be your grandmother or grandfather.
You can read Jacob Riis’ Children of the Poor here.
Richmond Hill, the spacious mansion and 26-acre estate on the outskirts of town that had once been George Washington‘s headquarters and later the home of John Adams, was also home to another vice president — Aaron Burr. This was the place he lived on that fateful day, July 11, 1804, when he entered into a duel with Alexander Hamilton. Here’s a lovely description of the home from an 1861 biography of Burr by author James Parton:
“[Burr’s] style of living kept pace with his increasing income. In a few years we find him master of Richmond Hill, the mansion where Washington had lived in 1776, with grounds reaching to the Hudson, with ample gardens, and a considerable extent of grove and farm. Here he maintained a liberal establishment and exercised the hospitality which was then in vogue.
The one particular in which Richmond Hill surpassed the other houses of equal pretensions, was its library. From his college days, Colonel Burr had been a zealous buyer of books, and his stock had gone on increasing till, on attaining to the dignity of householder, he was able to give to his miscellaneous collection something of the completeness of a library.
It is evident enough, from his correspondence, that his favorite ethos were still those whom the ‘well-constituted minds’ of that day regarded with admiring horror. The volumes of Gibbon’s History [The Decline And Fall of the Roman Empire] were appearing in those years, striking the orthodox world with wonder and dismay. They had a very hearty welcome in the circle at Richmond Hill.”
After the duel, Burr liquidated his assets, selling Richmond Hill to John Jacob Astor. With the grounds heavily cut up and sold, he had the mansion rolled on logs to the newly carved street corner and turned into a theater and opera house. At this time, he also moved the carriage house further north, where it was later re-purposed and today houses the romantic restaurant One If By Land, Two If By Sea.
It made for a very sumptuous opera house, it appears. According to author Eric Homberger, “Boxes at the Richmond Hill were furnished as though they were an extension of the elegant parlors of St. John’s Park, with ‘light blue hangings, gilded panels and cornice, arm-chairs, and a sofa.'”
It was parallel in style, perhaps, to the Astor Place Opera House across town. Eventually it deteriorated into a lowly roadhouse and saloon — but certainly, the most gorgeous one in town — called the Tivoli Saloon before being torn down in 1849.
Today the site of Richmond Hill and its former ground are occupied by this building, currently the home of WNYC, and the surrounding blocks of this area of the far West Village.
Top image courtesy the Museum of the City of New York
When I hear of so-called “riots” on the Lower East Side during the late 19th century, my mind goes to disgruntled newsies or agitated garment workers, rising up for fair wages and employment.
Or maybe a vicious street gang like the Whyosprimed to wreck havoc.
I don’t immediately think of the orthodox Jewish community.
But it was indeed dissatisfied members of this group that staged a bit of chaos on the corner of Canal and Division streets during Yom Kippur (the tenth day of Tishrei, or, in 1898, late September).
According to the New York Sun, the violence centered around a Russian Jewish coffee house owned by the Herrick brothers at141 Division Street, a popular gathering place for ‘political spell-binders and labor agitators’ with likely a more casual atmosphere than the many Jewish restaurants surrounding it and certainly popular with young men.
Here’s an advertisement for Herrick’s in a chess journal from 1904. By then the cafe was clearly a notable spot for chess players:
Herrick’s was in the heart of Jewish social life in New York City. The Yiddish theater hangout Schreiber’s Saloon was around the corner at 33 Canal Street and other Jewish-operated cafes were steps away.
Even as sundown approached and traditional Jewish places closed their doors for the holiday, Herrick’s cafe stayed open, with tables occupied with young men in apparent disregard for the custom of fasting.
The Sun article makes a point to label most offenders as ‘American-born’ and ’16 to 18 years old’ — as in rebellious, with an implied lack of respect towards tradition.
The Herricks had actually planned this display of defiance, going so far as to advertise in an ‘anarchistic‘ newspaper that they would remain open for the holiday. They were prepared for some opposition, certainly, but certainly not for what came next.
Below: Under the Division Street elevated, 1910
Courtesy Museum of the City of New York
According to the Sun, at sight of the violation, angry orthodox men mobbed the place, throwing stones and smashing the cafe windows.
The New York Times reportsthat ‘several thousand Hebrews’ soon arrived to protest in the surrounding streets. The police from the local Madison Street station were called to quell the violence and asked the proprietors to close their cafe for the evening.
But violence further escalated the following day, when one of the brothers reopened the cafe the next morning ‘for customers, Jewish and Gentile, all day, at the usual prices’.
Hat stores on Division Street, below the elevated train and a bit west of the action in this article. Picture is from around 1907 (NYPL)
Fearing a repeat of the evening’s disruptions, police cordoned off the street to no avail. When diners left the cafe this time, they were met by “several thousands* [who] gathered and threatened dire vengeance on those who would eat on the holy day.”
Many offenders were chased down the street for fear of their lives. Eventually, the angry protesters even managed to storm the restaurant again where they “overturned tables, smashed dishes and threw crockery at the proprietors.”
One diner was doused in hot tea. Another diner, with his three friends, happened to be military and ‘fired off a revolver to attract police’, scattered the crowd in fear. Police did arrive, with clubs drawn.
Soon the violence spilled into the streets and devolved, like so many riots of this type, into fisticuffs among angry young men.
By the end of the day, several rioters were taken into custody, and the neighborhood quickly returned to its peaceful celebration of the holiday.
As for Herrick’s, well, the advertisement at the top is from 1904, so they obviously continued stirring up ‘political spell-binders’ and controversy in the neighborhood for many more years.
*Early news reports are never very good at estimating crowd numbers, so ‘several thousands’ could also mean ‘several hundreds’. Given how crowded this neighborhood was in the 1890s, most could have simply been trying to figure out what was going on!
PODCASTREWIND The famous faces on the walls of Sardi’s Restaurant represent the entertainment elite of the 20th century, and all of them made this place on West 44th Street their unofficial home.
Known for its kooky caricatures and its Broadway opening-night traditions, Sardi’s fed the stars of the golden age and became a hotspot for producers, directors and writers — and, of course, those struggling to get their attention.
When Vincent Sardi opened his first restaurant in 1921, Prohibition had begun, and the midtown Broadway theater district was barely a couple decades old.
By the time the Italian-American restauranteur threw open its doors to its current locaton (thanks to the Shuberts) in 1927, Broadway’s stages were red hot, and Sardi found himself at the center of the New York City show business world.
We have some insider scoop from the old days — starring John Barrymore, Tallulah Bankhead, hatcheck girl Renee Carroll and a cast of thousands — and the scoop on those famous (and often unflattering) framed caricatures. So sidle up to the Little Bar, order yourself a stiff drink and eavesdrop in on this tale of Broadway’s longest dinner party.
PLUS: The birth of the Tony Awards!
FEATURING: Some 2022 updates including Sardi’s recent history.
LISTEN NOW: AN EVENING AT SARDI’S
Vincent Sardi and his world-famous wall behind him. (Courtesy NYT)
The outdoor garden cafe of the original Sardi’s, which opened in 1921 and was located two doors down from the current location. It was demolished to make way for the St. James Theatre.
The cover of the tell-all 1933 memoir by famed Sardi’s hatcheck girl Renee Carroll and illustrated by Sardi’s original caricaturist Alex Gard.
Tallulah Bankhead, Broadway diva and notorious Sardi’s customer. (Courtesy NYPL)
The failed experiment Sardi’s East, instantly problematic due to its distance from the theater district. Sardi Jr. attempted to solve the problem with a fun-filled double-decker bus — often accompanied by Broadway stars — that would zip diners to their shows after dinner. (source Flickr/edge and corner wear)
As we mentioned on the show, it’s difficult doing a history podcast on a private business without it sounding a bit like an advertisement, but hopefully we were able to execute past that. (We came across this odd feeling with other podcasts like Saks Fifth Avenue and The Plaza Hotel.)
We left a few details on the cutting-room floor, including Sardi’s lengthy involvement with the Dog Fanciers Club, which throws a congratulatory breakfast every year for the Best In Show winner of the Westminster Dog Show. Tom also did a rather nice job with reading an excerpt from Renee Caroll’s biography, but some sound problems forced us to cut it.
Tom mentioned the glory of Broadway in 1927. Show Boat is definitely the breakout show of that year, but theatergoers could also choose from one of these show that year — A Connecticut Yankee, Funny Face, Burlesque, Coquette, Hit The Deck, Rio Rita, Dracula and the hit play The Ivory Door, written by A.A. Milne of Winnie-the-Pooh fame. (Find a complete list here.)
Reading Recommendations: The best is Off The Wall by Vincent Sardi Jr. and Thomas Edward West, featuring full color representations of Sardi’s best known caricatures. Worth seeking out a copy at your used book stores. More difficult to find is Vincent Sardi Sr.’s own biography Sardi’s: A Story of a Restaurant, published in 1953 and well out of print. Carroll’s biography In Your Hat is also out-of-print, but you can find excerpts scattered online. You should seek out a physical copy if possible, as it features original artwork by original Sardi’s caricaturist Alex Gard.
The double-breasted, cigar-chewing gentlemen who gathered in the sumptuous rooms of the Fifth Avenue Hotel were occasional connoisseurs of New York City history, and in particular, these amateur historians spoke of the very street corner where their hotel stood.
Before Madison Square, when the area was a barren parade ground, one Corporal Thompson opened a roadhouse and stagecoach station in the area that was to become 23rd Street and and Fifth Avenue.
Many spoke fondly of Thompson’s establishment, called Madison Cottage, because they remembered the place as young boys. They recalled the area’s rural quality, with carved rectangular blocks carved into the land and a dirt-road Broadway meandering north.
But that was the 1840s.
Madison Cottage, Hitchcock, Darling & Co.
Forty years later, Madison Square Park was the center of New York, a focal point of class, business and luxury that stretched south to Union Square, through that attractive collection of fine stores known as Ladies Mile, and up Fifth Avenue into the fabulous mansions of the rich.
And dead center of all that activity was the Fifth Avenue Hotel, not only the “finest [hotel] in this metropolis”, the “leading hotel of the world ,” but quite simply one of the most surprising stages for American politics of the mid and late 19th century.
New York’s Hotel Revolution
Hotels were fast becoming the center of New York life from at least the days of the Astor House, located near City Hall, in the 1830s. Within two decades, trendy new hotels (such as the St. Nicholas and the Metropolitan) spread up along Broadway and eventually clustered around Union Square.
The Fifth Avenue Hotel opened in 1859, the venture of wealthy merchant Amos Richards Eno, who accurately gambled that the center of city commerce would soon settle at 23rd Street. So confident a speculator was Eno that he moved from his brownstone at 74 Broadway (the first New Yorkbrownstone, he claimed) to a massive home nearby the hotel.
Some thought it unwise to build so far north, and when workers unearthed dozens of skeletons during construction — the area once being a potter’s field — the corner was even considered cursed. Eno defied the naysayers, pouring his wealth into the hotel to make it the most modern, most luxurious accommodation of the day.
The Fifth Avenue Hotel, 1879. Courtesy Wikimedia Commons
A Gilded Age Confection
The Italian exterior was awash in five stories of imported marble, while austere, carpeted interiors of French design drew comparisons to European palaces.
Guests enjoyed reading rooms, a luxurious bar, a barber shop, a dedicated telegraph office, and a variety of dining and drawing rooms, not to mention the first passenger elevator ever built in the United States, a steam-powered monstrosity whisking passengers to their floor.
The Fifth Avenue Hotel reading room, busy every weekend. (Boston: Fields, Osgood & Co.,)
Wheeling and Dealing
As the finest hotel in the city in the post Civil War years, it naturally became a magnet for politicians and financiers. Of all the ‘backrooms’ of American politics, none were as gleaming as the Fifth Avenue.
Bankers huddled in the legendary ‘parlor D. R.’ during the tense days of the financial panic of 1873. In particular, the hotel became a de facto headquarters for New York Republicans.
While often secondary to the city’s Democrats — this being the era of Tammany Hall‘s swelling power — Republicans were frequently in control of state government, and the Fifth Avenue Hotel became a smoky center of political wheeling and dealing.
During the 1870s, New York republicans became national power brokers and frequently hashed out crises here at the Fifth Avenue.
In the years before the Waldorf-Astoria, presidents and dignitaries all stayed here during visits. Seamier political maneuvers took place in the chambers of prominent politicians who held court here, including the inimitable Roscoe Conkling (at left), senator of New York and leader of the Republican faction known as the Stalwarts.
National Influence
When fractured Republicans at their convention in 1880 nominated non-Stalwart James Garfield for president, the nominee had to basically grovel for their support by symbolically ‘kissing the ring’ of the Stalwarts during a visit to the Fifth Avenue Hotel, partially agreeing to their system of patronage and taking Conkling ally Levi Morton as a member of his cabinet. (Garfield later backed out on this arrangement.)
Another frequent guest here was Chester A. Arthur, Garfield’s eventual vice president. When Arthur became president after Garfield’s assassination by Charles Guiteau (who had himself wandered the hotel’s hallways in delusion), he would set up his entire administration here during visits to his adopted city.
By the 1890s, a corridor of the hotel known as the ‘Amen Corner‘ was a famous congregation spot for Republican political bosses and reporters. As they frequently powwowed here on Sundays, gatherers would caustically shout ‘Amen!’ during heated discussions.
The Fifth Avenue Hotel in relation to the Flatiron Building
Checking Out
The hotel became a magnet for shenanigans of all varieties. In 1893, a couple hundred proponents of a U.S. monetary silver standard erupted into a riot that included two U.S. senators.
The bank robber Robert Montague was arrested here in 1896 thanks to a tip-off from a chambermaid. An early vestige of baseball’s National League met here annually, and the national pool competitions were held in the hotel’s billiard room.
By the new century, of course, the locus of New York activity was hastily moving uptown, and the Fifth Avenue Hotel was deemed a relic, even as a brand new structure across the street — the Flatiron Building — was being proclaimed the finest building in the city.
In 1908 the Fifth Avenue Hotel was torn down and replaced by the 16-story Toy Center (called the Fifth Avenue Building back in the day), the epicenter of toy manufacturing for much of the 20th century.
Clothing cutters, horseshoers, shoemakers, upholsterers, printers, house painters, freight handlers, cabinet makers, varnishers, cigar makers, bricklayers and piano makers.
The first American Labor Day began on September 5, 1882, with 10,000 workers from a wide variety of occupations circling Union Square, then parading up to the area of today’s Bryant Park. (A picnic ‘after party’ of sorts took place at a park at today’s Columbus Avenue and 92nd Street.)
Individual workers organizations had taken to the street before, sometimes violently. But this peaceful protest, this public solidarity, took the issues of New York laborers to the heart of the city in a way that could not be ignored.*
*New Yorkers got the Labor Day idea from Canada.Read more about the differences between May Day and Labor Day in this article
Illustration of the first Labor Day parade around Union Square, 1882
We take it for granted today. Labor Day is no more than a day off for most people today.
But looking at the original press notices from newspapers of the day (from the following day, September 6, 1882) suggest an event certain New Yorkers recognized as monumental.
Others considered it trivial, a nuisance or even a dangerous gathering of malicious intent.
Union Square would continue to be the location of Labor Day festivities for decades afterwards. The image below is of a parade from 1909 (courtesy LOC):
TheNewYork Tribune begins nice enough. “The men who took part in the labor parade generally appeared to be persons of no small intelligence.” The paper’s vitriol was saved for the leaders of the movement, in this case organizers from the Central Labor Union, “demagogues of the worst kind.”
“It is a pity that workingmen allow themselves to be so cheapened.” The Tribune accuse the organizers of an ulterior motive — political chest-thumping.
“But it is not at all unlikely that certain demagogues and dishonest leaders thought it a good time of year to show the two great political parties that there are ten thousand ballots in this city in the hands of men who … might be at the disposal of somebody — for a consideration.”
Indeed, there would be a statewide election exactly two months later, sweeping a host of Democrats into office, including Grover Cleveland into the governor’s office.
Even their reporting of the parade itself is tinged with a little condescension.
“The parade of workingmen yesterday morning was not nearly as large as was expected by the leaders. Â This is probably due to the unwillingness of many workmen to lose a day’s work.”
Labor Day parade in Union Square, 1887 (NYPL)
TheNew York Times seemed to find the parade slightly whimsical, almost superfluous. It echoed the disappointing turnout, but describes the event as calm, “conducted in an orderly and pleasant manner.”
The coverage focuses undue attention on the paraders’ fashionable attire.
“The great majority smoked cigars.” However they stress that the good behavior is attributable to the fact that organizers banned alcohol. This detail is mentioned in no other coverage that I read.
Where the Tribune attested the lower-than-expected turnout to men not leaving their posts, the Times found a different reason — “due to the fact that [laborers] preferred to enjoy the day in quiet excursions in Coney Island, Glen Island and elsewhere.”
Children at the Union Square Labor Day parade, 1909 (NYPL)
The enthusiasticNew York Sun describes it as a dry and brutal day. “[T]he rays of sun even in the early morning were very hot, and not a breath of wind brought relief from the oppressive heat.”
The same parade considered disappointing by the Tribune and the Times was conversely described by the Sun as a mob scene.
“As far ahead as one could see and as far down the side streets as forms and faces could be distinguished, the windows and roofs and even the lamp posts and awning frames were occupied by people anxious to get a good view of the first parade in New York of workingmen of all trades united in one organization.”
Many newspapers outside New York mentioned the parade the following day. St. Paul’s Daily Globe in Minnesota said “the great labor demonstration today was a success,” quoting a number in attendance (20,000) almost double the actual projected number.
Trauma in Times Square: An electrical sign destroyed by the massive windstorm of February 22, 1912. One Times Square sits to the left, and the Hotel Astor is in the distance. [LOC] Shorpy has an another angle of this damaged storefront.
“The great gale that blew in with Washington’s birthday will not soon be forgotten. It was the biggest New York ever knew.” — New York Evening World, Feb. 23, 1912
On February 22, 1912, a catastrophic weather anomaly occurred in New York City, an event the New York Times referred to as ‘The Big Wind’.
This particular day has also been called “a significant day in the history of tall buildings,” although I doubt anybody today will be celebrating this rather vicious and sudden test of architectural endurance.
New Yorkers thought it might be worse. The storm system began the previous day as a blinding Midwestern blizzard, paralyzing the railroad and killing cattle. St. Louis received its greatest snowfall ever up to that time from this churning storm, and Chicago reported winds of up to 50 miles per hour.
If it held this pattern by the time it hit the East, New Yorkers feared another storm of the level of the Blizzard of 1888, which buried the city in snow, rendered transportation useless, and killed more than 200 people.
In one respect, the city was fortunate that snowfall was relegated to upstate New York. The grim meteorological trade off, unfortunately, was a day of powerful, otherworldly wind gusts, almost double the strength of those during the infamous 1888 storm.
The worst of it came after midnight, when a terrifying frozen bluster “swooped down on the city with all its length and breadth” at speeds of 96 miles per hour.
At one point, devices in Central Park registered an unthinkable 110 miles per hour. By morning it had settled to 70 miles per hour and held that speed steady for much of the day. [source]
Some called this “giant among gales” a day-long cyclone, and it certainly acted like one — uprooting trees, destroying rooftops and even depositing whole houses into the river. People were blown off their feet, carts went flying and pedestrians dodged falling telephone poles in terror.
Most leaving home wearing hats ran back inside without them. If any of those women from yesterday’s Astor Place post were trekking through the plaza with their home-work today, they most likely lost it to the wind.
Foremost on the minds of most New Yorkers was the fate of its skyline. In 1888, during the last harsh storm, there were no skyscrapers. In 1912, there were several over 30 floors, including the city’s tallest, the 50-floor Metropolitan Life Insurance Tower off Madison Square.
Although most buildings were designed to withstand significant wind trauma, none of them were prepared for winds above 70 miles per hour. And the building slated to become the next tallest in New York — the Woolworth Building — was still under construction, its metal skeleton now a potential arsenal of deadly debris.
Panes of glass shattered throughout the city, but it appears most of New York’s tallest structures survived without significant damage. In fact, it was the shorter, older structures that fared worst, many of them designed with little protection from powerful winds.
Below: the downtown Manhattan skyline in 1912. Most of these buildings survived the ‘Big Wind’ with only damage to their windows. [pic]
Not that modern invention came away unscathed that day. The electrical signs of Times Square, many no more than a few months old, were no match for the powerful gusts. Several were destroyed, including a one provocative sign at 47th Street, featuring “two scantily clad electric boys who box nightly in Summer underwear.” [source]
Next to the Hotel Knickerbocker, a 200-foot electric sign crumbled to the sidewalk below in front of Hepners Hair Emporium, a police officer racing into the establishment a minute before the sign crashed into the plate glass window of the railroad ticket office next door.
Across the street, at the Times Building, a drug store window exploded, and “many bottles of perfume and drugs” were hurled at passers-by.
Most boats all along the waterfront were either damaged or untethered. Predictably, beach houses on Rockaway Beach and other quieter locales fared the worst. The luckiest structures survived with nary a window remaining; those less fortunate were found floating offshore. In Astoria, Queens, the roof to the jail was taken off, to the fright of the occupants inside.
At right: Times Square in August 1912. The White Rock sign was probably not around for the February wind storm. The ‘electric boys’ sign described above sat at this intersection.
In Red Hook, Brooklyn, turbulent winds kept a raging fire alive at a brick manufacturing plant, distributing flaming pitch shrapnel to several buildings across the street, including a hay and horse feed dealership! (One of many reasons they don’t keep hay dealerships in crowded cities today.) The brick factory, which took several hours to control, was about three blocks from the location of today’s IKEA store.
February 22, 1912, happened to be the 180th anniversary of George Washington‘s birth, and hundreds of veterans tried marching from Jefferson Market to Union Square. Flags raised aloft in celebration were torn to ribbons. Nobody was injured, although the gusts caused major inconvenience, “Salvation Army object lessons and banner bearers bowled over by the wind.” [source]
Others were not as fortunate. The Times attributed at least one death to the storm and over a dozen concussions from flying debris, messenger boys and seamstresses blown into windows or railings or hit by signs or dislodged cornices.
One man, waiting for his wife at St. Patrick’s Cathedral, had his neck slashed by flying glass. Where physical harm was avoided, humiliation took its place. A society woman on Riverside Drive, wearing “superabundantly costly furs,” was picked up and thrown into a horse.
Meanwhile, down at the Battery, Frank Coffyn was preparing for another takeoff off the water on his pontoon-equipped airplane. The wind had other plans, ripping the wings off the plane and spoiling Coffyn’s flight. Later that day, Coffyn wired his old boss Wilbur Wright for replacement parts. (See my previous post for more information of Coffyn’s harbor flights..)
By the late evening, winds had died down to a mere 44 miles per hour. (For comparison, New York City’s average wind speed today is just 12.2 miles per hour.) In the morning, things were back to normal — except for huge mess of metal and glass left scattered on the streets.
PODCAST The tale of the Black Tom Explosion which sent shrapnel into the Statue of Liberty and rocked the region around New York harbor.
On July 30, 1916, at just after 2 in the morning, a massive explosion ripped apart the island of Black Tom on the shoreline near Jersey City, sending a shockwave through the region and thousands of pounds of wartime shrapnel into the neighboring Ellis Island and Bedloe’s Island (home to the Statue of Liberty).
Thousands of windows were shattered in the region, and millions woke up wondering what horrible thing had just happened.
The terrifying disaster was no accident; this was the sabotage of German agents, bent on eliminating tons of munitions that were being sent to the Allied powers during World War I. Although America had not yet entered the war, the United States was considered an enemy combatant thanks to weapons manufactures in the New York region and around the country.
But the surprising epicenter of German spy activity was in a simple townhouse in the neighborhood of Chelsea.
ALSO: New Yorkers still feel the ramifications of the Black Tom Explosion today at one of America’s top tourist attractions.
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The location of Black Tom Island in relation to Jersey City, circa 1880.
Courtesy New Jersey City University/Â Prepared for the National Board of Health, Washington, D.C.(Hoboken, N.J.: Spielmann & Brush, 1880)
The Statue of Liberty in relation to Black Tom (situated in the background) in 1912
New York Public Library
The view of Jersey City from a skyscraper in downtown Manhattan, 1918.
Courtesy Museum of the City of New York
Images of the grim aftermath of the explosion (courtesy Liberty State Park):
Associated Press
This series of photos (courtesy Library of Congress) shows the efforts of divers and salvagers looking for remaining munitions that had sunk into the harbor!
The front page of the New York Tribune the following day:
The Kingsland munitions explosion of January 11, 1917, caused millions of dollars in damage, but no lives were lost thanks to the efforts of a single switchboard operator named Tessie McNamara who stayed at her post throughout the disaster.
To give you some idea of the size of the Statue of Liberty’s torch, here’s a picture of its replacement during the 1984 renovation. It can only be accessed via a very narrow stairway.
The summer blockbuster Spider-Man: Homecoming may be the greatest New York City superhero movie ever.
It doesn’t treat New York like a series of famous backdrops (although there certainly are a couple); it has a familiar landscape and there’s a particular care given to depicting Queens, the home of Peter Parker. There’s even a couple scenes with a mangy deli cat; you can almost smell it! (We will over look one major flaw that anybody riding the Staten Island Ferry will immediatelynotice.)
The film reinforces the notion of Spidey as the premier urban heroic figure. Indeed, in when faced maneuvering through a suburban neighborhood, he’s virtually useless, ripping through trees, tumbling into backyards.
In tribute I thought I would update my tribute to Spider-Man, New York City’s ultimate hero.
A shorter version of this article originally ran ten years ago at the start of that other reboot of the Spider-Man movie franchise. The following article was also inspired by a box of old comics books which have followed me around to various apartments for the past two decades. Last week I moved to yet another new apartment and the boxes are still with me.
From Amazing Spider-man #176
THE KING OF QUEENS
Spider-Man might be considered the superhero version of the New York Mets. Ever in the shadow of stronger, older, perhaps stodgier renditions from a different league (Superman, the Yankees), both Spider-Man and the Mets have origin stories which begin in Queens in the 1960s and are often considered New York underdogs. Their fans call them Amazing.
No modern fictional character inhabits a city quite like Spider-Man does with New York City.
Like other creations from the stable of Stan Lee, Spider-Man was meant to reflect a normal human being in a familiar setting, unlike the characters of DC Comics, who were space aliens, amazons or billionaires.
Yet it’s only Peter Parker’s humble beginnings as a teen from Forest Hills, Queens, that seem ordinary; as Spider-Man, he nimbly darts over the city, never in need of public transportation, elevators or a taxicab.
BITTEN BY THE BUG
Writer Steve Ditko** fleshed out Lee’s vision of an awkward teenager-turned-acrobat who could virtually sail through the streets outside their window.
The locations of Marvel’s offices and studios — formerly in the Empire State Building, but at 635 Madison Avenue by 1962 — certainly played a role in developing Marvel’s early characters as urbanites.
Most all his adventures take place in New York, and the city plays backdrop to these melodramatic, often cataclysmic events.
Upon the covers of hundreds of comics books that Spider-Man has appeared since his debut in August 1962, the webslinger has perilously dangled over the grid, either swinging down the avenues or bouncing super villains against an endless number of brick walls. (Like more than a few fashionistas, he sometimes even wears all black to work.)
If superheroes existed, New York City’s maintenance and security costs would well exceed its annual budget, and nobody would dare build a new skyscraper. Why, the budget to clean buildings of Spidey’s used webbing would reach into the thousands each year! (Ed. note: I’ve since been informed that the hero’s webbing is basically biodegradable. Great for the environment!)
Most structures depicted in his greatest adventures are mere abstractions, simple ledges for perching and windows for smashing. We rarely see pedestrians fleeing the falling debris or the contractors assessing the damage for disgruntled landlords.
YOUR FRIENDLY NEIGHBORHOOD TOUR GUIDE
Spider-Man doesn’t fly. The superhero and the city have a symbiotic relationship; he needs the city’s height to swing around, and the city needs him to protect it. And so New York landmarks have frequently popped up on Spider-Man comic book covers, perhaps more than any other superhero creation. He gathers his strength from the famous skyline itself.
You can actually take a tour of the city through Spider-Man covers, from the 1960s to today. Below are several examples of New York’s guest appearances.
Swing along with him as he takes you past 1) the East Village, 2) Federal Hall, 3) the subway, 4-5) the Roosevelt Island tram, 6-7) the Statue of Liberty, 8) Cleopatra’s Needle, 9) the George Washington Bridge, 10) the American Museum of Natural History 11) the New York Marathon, 12-13) the Empire State Building, 14) the New York Public Library, 15) a vehicle from the New York Police Department, 16) a yellow cab, 17) the Brooklyn Bridge, 18) Rockefeller Center, 19) Times Square, 20) the Chrysler Building, 21) the Metropolitan Museum of Art, 22) Grand Central Terminal, 23) One Times Square. (Not pictured: the Flatiron Building, where the Daily Bugle is located in the earlier films.)
**Note: There is some controversy over whether legendary artist Jack Kirby might also have been involved in the creation of Spider-Man. I have re-edited the story above, however I send you to i09’s 2009 article Who Created Spider-Man? which discusses artist’s possible involvement. (7/9/12)
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And finally, Marvel and the creators of Spider-Man did pay tribute to the attack on the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001. Appropriately, for a comic book that often wantonly celebrates the crumbling of random structures in high-flying battles with super villains, the creators chose to use no image:
Top image courtesy IGN. A couple of these are from Sam Ruby, a couple of them are my own scan! You can see the complete collection of Spider-Man covers over at Cover Browser where I borrowed a couple of these as well.
All art, images and characters on this page are courtesy Marvel Comics.
PODCASTThe history of the New York City taxicab, from the handsome hansoms of old to the modern issues facing the modern taxi fleet today.
In this episode, we recount almost 175 years of getting around New York in a private ride. The hansom, the romantic rendition of the horse and carriage, took New Yorkers around during the Gilded Age. But unregulated conduct by — nighthawks — and the messy conditions of streets due to horses demanded a solution.
At first it seemed the electric car would save the day but the technology proved inadequate. In 1907 came the first gas-propelled automobile cabs to New York, officially — taxis — due to a French invention installed in the front seat.
By the 1930s the streets were filled with thousands of taxicabs. During the Great Depression, cab drivers fought against plunging fare and even waged a strike in Times Square. In 1937, Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia debuted the medallion system as a way to keep the streets regulated.
By the 1970s many cabdrivers faced an upswing of crime that made picking up passengers even more dangerous than bad traffic. Drivers began ignoring certain fares — mainly from African-Americans — which gave rise to the neighborhood livery cab system.
Today New York taxicab fleets face a different threat — Uber and the rise of private app-based transportation services. Will the taxi industry rise to the challenge in time for the debut of their taxi of tomorrow.
Listen Today: The Story of the Yellow Taxi Cab
Albert Fenn/Office of War Information, cleaned up image courtesy Shorpy
A snugly dressed cabbie awaiting some fares at the Battery Park elevated train station — 1895. Note that the poor horse too is swaddled up for a bad winter.
Courtesy Museum of the City of New York
A hack from 1896.
New York Public Library
A hansom cab from 1906. This was still the dominant cab ride in New York during the period despite the introduction of the ‘horseless carriage’ onto the city streets.
Courtesy Museum of the City of New York
A fleet of electric cars in 1896, and a couple Electrobats in action outside the Metropolitan Opera House 1898. Compare these with the picture of the hansom above.
Courtesy New York Public Library
Courtesy Museum of Modern Art
Johanne Marie Rogn/Pinteresst
A taxicab waiting outside Alwyn Court (West 58th Street/7th Avenue)
Museum of the City of New York
A cab waiting passengers at West 150th Street.
Photography by Charles Von Urban, courtesy Museum of the City of New York
A view of the bustling street life of Herald Square, 1935. The horses are off the street but there are many other kinds of transportation options joining the taxicab.
Courtesy New York Public Library
Grabbing a Checker Cab on Park Avenue 1944
Courtesy Life Magazine/Getty Images
A row of Checker Taxis, sitting idle during a taxicab strike in 1940.
: Keystone/Getty Images)
Some vivid 1960s photography by Ernst Haas capturing the mystery and allure of the New York taxi.
Courtesy Ernst Haas / Getty Images
Some scenes from the 1970s…
Courtesy City Noise
The Bowery Boys: New York City History podcast is brought to you …. by you!
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In honor of the 100th birthday of television icon Norman Lear (creator of All in the Family, The Jeffersons, Good Times and many, many more) I’ve revised and re-edited this, yes, rather strange round-up originally published in 2013 about New York City and television intros and theme songs.
Please play the TV themes as you scroll through this article. Note that a few of the videos can only be watched on YouTube directly.
And now, on with the show….
The camera zooms over the New York City skyline as an earnest pop tune — usually devoid of any rhythm or edginess, but insanely catchy — descends as though sent from outer space.
The next shot focuses on one particular landmark, a bridge or a park, letting you know, see we’re not in some television studio in L.A., we’re really here, the Big Apple!
We meet the rest of the cast, a wacky bunch of people, urban people, who find themselves in comedic situations. The city appears again in the background, but we’re already off with our new friends — the stars of 1970s prime time.
From Rhoda with the great Nancy Walker and Valerie Harper
That’s how a great many television programs began during the 1970s. New York City was heavily represented on television during the decade, an easily identified setting that could be depicted in two or three establishing shots before moving on to introduce the stars.
It popped up in no-nonsense crime dramas and sitcoms alike, an almost singular destination for television characters. After the ‘rural purge‘ of folksy TV shows likeBeverly Hillbilliesand Green Acres(two shows which lampooned the urban snob), there was little room for small-town America; places like Cincinnati, Milwaukee, Chicago and of courseLos Angeles filled out the schedule.
In reality, New York was entering a dark period of deteriorating public services, high crime and financial woes. While television news would often dramatically reflect this image out to America, television entertainment would do the opposite.
Few TV series of the period accurately reflected New York’s troubles outside of a few occasional crime dramas and action shows (like 1977’s Amazing Spiderman).
Of course, most television shows about New York City in the 1970s were actually filmed in Los Angeles. And you couldn’t fault sitcom creators for wanting to eschew real-life troubles that would distract from their clean and cheerful worlds of comic misunderstandings.
Even great detective shows like Kojak pulled their punches, largely because reality was often too graphic to present in prime time.
That doesn’t look like a New York City public phone.
But an alternate world emerges from watching a series of television intros from the 1970s, pulled from top sitcom and dramas of the period. New York City is essentially Midtown and Central Park (but for the few shows that ventured into the other boroughs), glamorous and utterly harmless, without edge.
And in those few shows that did exploit the city’s dangerous side, the intros made clear — through artistically rendered graphics — that the danger was merely of the pulp variety.
A Woman’s Playground
Many shows of the decade presented Manhattan as an aspirational destination, especially for women, even as thousands of people in real life fled the city. Television was finally focusing on the adventures of single women, but to do so, New York had to be depicted as nearly flawless.
The iconic example of this is That Girl starring Marlo Thomas. In this 1970 opener, New York is nothing but glamour, shopping, Lincoln Center and Broadway.
The lousy sitcom On Our Own, New York’s variant of Laverne & Shirley, opens with a couple of crazy gals heading to their job at an advertising agency. The intro actually features a bit of physical violence against one woman, played up for laughs!
Not every show was so blind to the rough edges of New York. But it required a tough lady like Rhoda, a native New Yorker, to maneuver all those sliding locks and tough-talking cabbies. (The third season intro is below, but the first season intro is probably the more memorable one.)
The Hustle-and-Bustle
As with the On Our Own intro, many workplace comedies chose to contrast their wacky interior antics with the frenetic urban rhythms of New York City. It’s as though the comedy you were about to see generates from walking through the crazy, chaotic streets of Midtown.
The intro to the Garment District comedy Needles and Pinsratchets the enthusiasm of That Girl‘s intro down to a quiet, confident strut. Yeah, I work here.
A variation of the buzzing energy of New York City being a impetus for comedy is seen in the intros for Saturday Night Live, even to this day.
The Taxi City
One identifying symbol of New York is the taxicab or, more specifically, the cabbie. While films like Taxi Driver were putting an ominous spin on this image, television still relied on the cab as shorthand for the modern urban experience.
And if you could somehow combine it with a basketball court — as with Busting Loose — then you know it’s really, really New York.
The taxi is a vehicle of love in the romantic comedy Bridget Loves Bernie. There’s no way to see this today as anything other than slightly creepy especially in light of Martin Scorsese’s Taxi Driver (which came out a few years later). This extended intro ticks off all the boxes — cabs, school yards, the Queensboro Bridge, Central Park….
Taxis were so representative of the New York experience that one of the era’s greatest sitcoms was centered around the industry. Taxi survived well into the 1980s showing a more realistic version of New York than other shows of the day.
It also features the Queensboro Bridge, a heavily used symbol for the expanse of the city. Since shows of the period rarely went downtown, the Queensboro could sit in for the Brooklyn Bridge when long vistas of the East River were required. (Taxi actually did go downtown; it was set in a garage at Charles and Hudson Streets.)
The Outer Borough
Television shows often went to the other boroughs when they wanted to express the clashes of modern life, contrasted against a more suburban backdrop which many Americans could more easily identify.
Most everybody knows the iconic theme song from All In The Family as delivered by Carroll O’Connor and Jean Stapleton. What you may not remember is yet another establishing shot of Manhattan, used to contrast with the rows of Queens homes. In these few seconds, the intro excellently sets up the conflicts of modernity, a quiet residential present, and a duo that seem stuck in a sheltered past.
The same sort of pull-away from Manhattan is used in O’Connor’s follow-up series, Archie Bunker’s Place, which yanks the viewer away from the skyline, back over the Queensboro Bridge and down Northern Boulevard. Archie has changed since those years at the piano, and so have his surroundings. The blocks of uniform homes have been replaced with subway graffiti and bustling street life.
13 Queens Blvd went even deeper into Queens but still relied on the establishing shot of Manhattan to let viewers know how far we are from real urban issues. The show’s situations were driven by the comic misunderstandings within an apartment complex, a little like One Day At A Time (set in Indianapolis) or Three’s Company (set in Santa Monica) perhaps. The show didn’t last long.
Brooklyn was represented in the 1970s by Welcome Back Kotter. Set in a fictional high school, it is New Utrecht High School that’s used in the opening. While other sitcoms used a Manhattan establishing shot, Kotter prefers a beat-up sign that announces Brooklyn as the 4th largest city in America. With its painted trains and lines of laundry, this might be the grittiest depiction of New York in a sitcom, even as its high school students (the Sweathogs) were incredibly unrealistic.
Movin’ On Up
Mostly though, sitcoms preferred the fantasy, Manhattan as an Emerald City. (It was literally depicted as such in the 1970s musicalThe Wiz.) No amount of deterioration seemed to supplant the image of Manhattan as having ‘made it’, especially when dealing with African-American television characters.
Taxis are again the vehicle of transformation in The Jeffersons, plucking George and Louise Jefferson from the land of Archie Bunker — again, using the Queensboro Bridge — and putting them in a luxury accommodation on the Upper East Side.
Two African-American boys are saved by a wealthy white man in Diff’rent Strokes.For emphasis in the intro, Arnold and Willis are playing basketball, the de facto symbol in 1970s television of the inner city.
I don’t know if the show was any good, but the intro to the 1970 sitcom Barefoot In The Park seems refreshing in retrospect. The show, based on the Broadway show, features a young black couple trying to make it though the first years of marriage in Manhattan. It seems to handle the subject with the same euphoria used in ‘That Girl’.
They’re riding a horse-and-carriage drinking champagne! It literally does not get cheesier.
Unvarnished New York
There were a few shows that felt embedded within the actual New York experience. Their intros reflect a certain melancholy, a feeling that perhaps the city was not always a whirlwind of breezy excitement. The champagne remains corked.
Barney Miller is one of the few shows actually set in Greenwich Village. Perhaps as a result, its establishing shot of Manhattan is moody, even dreary, a perfect backdrop for a comedy television show about criminal behavior.
In the opening to The Odd Couple, New York is an embodiment of its characters’ anxieties and differences. There is no establishing shot of Manhattan, no attempt to glamorize the big city. These two are actually at odds with the city, not each other, as presented here. The intro ends with a rare pan-up of the two characters with the city looming behind them.
The Wild East
In an opposite reaction to rural shows like Green Acres (where people fled New York), a maverick sensibility came to New York in the 1970s, especially in the detective genre, with iconoclastic characters bringing foreign forms of justice to an ungoverned city.
On McCloud, a New Mexico detective wrangles up a few pimps and car thieves, bringing fun but clumsy cowboy tropes to Times Square. Unlike sitcoms, detective dramas actually went to 70s Times Square all the time for obvious reasons. Although most did not bring stagecoaches with them.
Another bizarre crime-fighter to the New York skyline was the Amazing Spider-Man. We get a Manhattan establishing shot here, comically interrupted by Spiderman’s awful costume. They spend a great amount of time with Spidey on the Empire State Building; in fact most of the show was filmed in L.A.
You didn’t even need a reason to bring in a cowboy. In the 1970 sitcom Mr Deeds Goes To Town, a folksy newspaper editor takes on the big city. The intro lays it on thick.
Groovy 70s Noir
A few crime dramas of the 1970s were actually filmed in New York City and thus could highlight the city a bit more fully in their intros.
The short-lived television version of Serpico features numerous places throughout the city, from the Battery to Times Square. And, yes, the Queensboro Bridge is again represented here via its subway stop.
New York’s greatest television crime fighter of the 1970s was Kojak, so cool that the city is given a trippy noir vibe, peeking from the nooks of swirling graphics. Of course most of Kojak was filmed in Los Angeles, but, according to writer Burton Armus, the production crew went to New York on occasion for “surrounding shots, background shots, one or two scenes.”
Taking its cue from Kojak in its tone, Eischied was also a bit of a cowboy, bringing some Southern swagger to the mean streets of Manhattan. Its credit sequence is a confused mess.
The city was in the midst of a devastating heatwave gripping in the entire Northeast during the first two weeks of July 1911. There was little escape from the scorching temperatures among the cramped tenements. New York’s beaches offered some respite, but you had to cram into a sweltering train cabin to get there. Rudimentary air conditioning had only been invented a few years before and was hardly widespread.
Oh baby, it’s hot! Some tots seek shady shelter during the July 1911 heat wave.
In New York, the thermometer never broke a 100 degreeslike it did in Washington or Boston. But the humidity was deadly, and the city too crowded and ill-prepared for such withering conditions.
Below: A disturbing infographic from the Tribune
Naturally, the brand new subway was not the place to be either.
Riders going from the Brooklyn Bridge to Grand Central suffered a 45 minute ride, and a few passengers passed out. But others underground found relief from the heat; workers drilling the Penn Railroad tunnels under the Hudson River reported luxuriously cool temperatures in the 60s.
Below: Dozens slept underneath the shady trees in Battery Park at the hottest point of the heat wave.
The sizzling conditions literally drove people insane.
One drunken fool, “partly crazed by the heat,” attacked a policeman with a meat clever. A child on Tenth Avenue, escaping to the rooftop for relief, tumbled down an air shaft. The hospital was filled to capacity. Staten Island’s fire commissioner succumbed to the heat and died in his home.
Some levity as a boy takes off his cap to cool off in a park fountain:
Library of Congress
After July 7th, the temperatures dipped to normal levels but the humidity kept the city in sweaty discomfort. Or as the Tribune dramatically states: “The monstrous devil that had pressed New York under his burning thumb for five days could not go without one last curse, and when the temperature dropped called humidity to its aid.”
By the time rain came to relieve the city, a reported 211 people had fallen to heat-related deaths. But the largest number of victims came from New York’s army of horses, trudging by the thousands through the city’s busy, stagnant streets.
The New York Times estimates that over 600 animals died during the heat wave, so many that the city was unable to pick up all the bodies from the streets. Frequently seen were dead animals pushed to the sides of the road. Add in the oppressive humidity, and I’ll leave you to imagine how horrific it would have been to experience.
The superstar and civil rights activist Lena Horne had such a dynamic, multi-faceted and enduring career — starting in 1933, she worked regularly well into the late 1990s — that we all may have different views of who she was.
Horne was one of the first African-American women to break through in Hollywood in the 1940s though it was her successes on stage and in nightclub acts that would cement her reputation as a sterling jazz voice of uncommon elegance.
In 1958 she became the first African-American woman to be nominated for a Tony Award.
If you’re a ’70s and ’80s kid, you probably remember Horne for her television work on Sesame Street, the Muppet Show or the Cosby Show.
By this point she was already a musical icon; as a kid, I was transfixed watching her on Sesame Street, never understanding the political undertones of a seemingly simple performance such as “Bein’ Green,” sung here with Kermit the Frog.
Lena Mary Calhoun Horne was born 105 years ago today in Brooklyn. As a tribute, here are a few addresses around New York City that helped play a role in her development, her career and her legacy.
A tour of Lena Horne’s life begins in the Brooklyn neighborhood of Bedford-Stuyvesant, home of the ‘black bourgeoisie‘ of the 1930s, middle and upper class African-Americans whose wealth and professional careers set them apart from black enclaves in other parts of the city.
It was here that Horne was born on June 30, 1917 at 189 Chauncey Street. (And for a time she also lived at 519 Macon Street, a house that was recently on the market). She lived there with her grandparents for only a short time before traveling to Georgia for many years, returning to Brooklyn as a teenager.
Horne enjoyed her time at Girls High School (later Boys and Girls High School), a towering institution where Shirley Chisholm would attend school just a decade later. But Lena’s mother Edna pulled her from school before she could finish, making her attend a secretarial school instead.
But Lena wouldn’t waste too much time dictating and typing. In 1933, at just 16 years of age, she made her debut as a chorus girl at The Cotton Club, the segregated music club which had helped define Harlem as a pivotal nightlife destination during Prohibition.
As much as it may horrify us today thinking of a 16-year-old girl in a rowdy nightclub, Lena was well protected (chiefly by the guys in Cab Calloway‘s orchestra who nicknamed her ‘Brooklyn’) and her charm, beauty and crystal voice soon got her engagements with traveling musicians (notably Noble Sissle, best known for the musical Shuffle Along).
It would be at the Cotton Club that the song “Stormy Weather” would make its debut — but sung by Ethel Waters.
During the 1930s she became a modest presence of the stage and screen. She received her first mention in a New York Times review by Brooks Atkinson in February 13, 1939, for a show called Blackbirds of 1939: “Among those present is a radiantly beautiful sepia girl, Lena Horne, who sings “Thursday” and “You’re So Indifferent” in an attractive style, and who will be a winner when she has proper direction.”
Below: “Lena Horne Conserves Fuel” — A wartime public service announcement she filmed for the Office of Emergency Management
The club was explicitly political. According to its proprietor Barney Josephson: “I wanted a club where blacks and whites worked together behind the footlights and sat together out front. There wasn’t, so far as I know, a place like that in New York or in the whole country.”
Read more about Cafe Society here or check out the Bowery Boys podcast on the life of Billie Holiday for more information (Episode #174)
6) Waldorf-Astoria, 301 Park Avenue, Manhattan
Perhaps no other music venue in New York is more important to Horne’s legacy than the Empire Room at the Waldorf-Astoria.
Her New Year’s Eve debut on December 31, 1956, captured her at the height of her talents. From the New York World-Telegram:
“The woman is so stunningly gowned to accent a beautiful figure that this, in itself, would catch an audience’s attention. But the ultimate hypnotic effect is the music, the arrangements and an intensity of delivery that finds its essence in eyes that seem to bore into you.“
Her performances there would inspire an album Lena Horne At The Waldorf-Astoria (1957), becoming the highest selling album by a female RCA recording artist up to that time.
Despite her fame, Horne (as well as many other famous African-Americans) found it difficult to find apartment owners who would rent to her due to her race.
Harry Belafonte had ran into a similar problem in the late 1950s but found a unique solution, simply buying an entire building on West End Avenue. He rented the penthouse to Horne.
“[W]e [she and her husband Lennie Hayton] went through the hysteria of trying to find an apartment “ all those stupid problems“ and when we finally found a place that would admit both me and Lennie, we put our roots down.”
Horne got a late career boost in 1981 when the wildly successful musical revue Lena Horne: The Lady and Her Music which garnered her a Tony Award and a world tour.
From the New York Times review: Miss Horne is out to prove something in this revue, and it’s not merely that her talents and looks are unbruised by the years that have passed since she first danced across a Cotton Club stage an era ago.
She doesn’t simply present herself as a survivor – a favorite device of older stars who come back to Broadway – but as an artist who is still growing, who is only now reaching the peak of her powers.
Here’s Horne accepting her Tony Award for the performance:
9) Brooks Atkinson Theatre Lena Horne Theater (256 W. 47th Street)
This month it was announced that the Brooks Atkinson Theatre — currently home to the musical Six — will be renamed the Lena Horne Theater starting in the fall. The Broadway playhouse, which first opened in 1926, was originally called the Mansfield Theatre, named for British Shakespearean star Richard Mansfield.
This article originally ran five years ago on the 100th anniversary of her birth
The story of New York’s most prominent abortionist of the 19th century and the unique environment of morality and secrecy which accommodated her rise on the fringes of society.
Ann Lohman aka Madame Restell was one of the most vilified women of the 19th century, an abortion practitioner that dodged the law to become one of the wealthiest self-made women in the Gilded Age. But is her wicked reputation justified?
Thoughts on abortion and birth control were quite different in the 1830s, the era in which Madame Restell got her start. It was societal decorum and marital morality — not science and religion — that played a substantial role in New Yorkers’ views on the termination of pregnancy. Restell and countless imitators offers a wide range of potions, pills and powders to customers, provided for in veiled wording in newspaper advertisements.
By the 1860s Restell was insulated from serious interrogation and flaunted her unique position in society by planting her Fifth Avenue mansion in a very controversial place. But she soon became a target of New York’s most dogged reformer, a man who considered her pure evil and the source of society’s most illicit sins.
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!
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Ann Lohman aka Madame Restell, featured in the National Police Gazette for the crime that would get her sent to Blackwell’s Island, March 13, 1847
A drawing of Madame Restell made in 1888, long after her death.
The New York Illustrated News, 1878, heralding the arrest of Madame Restell by Anthony Comstock (and, later in the issue, Restell in the Tombs):
Thanks to Victorian Gothic for this image!
A few choice pages from an 1896 scandal novelization about the life of Madame Restell by Rev. Bishop Huntington:
Courtesy Hathi Trust
A sampling of ‘abortion pill’ advertisements from the late 1830s and early 1840s, from Madame Restell and her impersonators. NOTE: It’s hard to discern if these so-called medicines were for abortions or for other “female issues” given the vagueness of language:
Even before Madame Restell, there was the ‘Widow Welch’s Female Pills’. Both these ads ran in the New York Morning Herald on November 8, 1837:
Library of Congress
An early Madame Restell advertisement, New York Morning Herald, December 9, 1839:
A successful rival of Madame Restell was Madame Costello who worked off of Lispenard Street. Her ad from the Herald, October 10, 1842:
A series of advertisements for an assortment of female ‘solutions,’ New York Herald, August 4, 1867:
Madame Restell’s Fifth Avenue mansion (at 52nd Street), an area so newly developed in 1857 that there was nothing else around — except for the construction site of St. Patrick’s Cathedral.
The mansion in later years after Restell’s death. The apartment building next to the mansion was also commissioned by Restell because nobody else would buy the property!
Courtesy NYPL
An illustration of the death of Madame Restell as imagined in Recollections of a New York Chief of Police by George P. Walling.
A big thanks to our special guest — author Nicholas Syrett, Associate Professor of History at the University of Northern Colorado!
Welfare Island (once the more enticingly named Blackwell’s Island) was New York’s depository of human services, once a dour place of horrifying asylums and miserable workhouses.
In the 1960s Mayor John Lindsay was preparing to revitalize the East River island with new housing and increased support for the hospitals there. Architects Philip Johnson and John Burgee were brought in to rethink the urban space as a largely automobile-free community.
For this grand experiment, all they needed was a name. Luckily there seemed be a couple prominent figures being egregiously ignored in the city — Franklin Delano Roosevelt and his wife Eleanor:
“It is astonishing, and becomes more disgraceful with every passing year, that within the city there is still no memorial to this great New Yorker (except for FDR Drive, a dubious honor).
The opportunity is, however, immediately at hand. Welfare Island, now slowly undergoing a total reconstruction and rebirth, would take on a new symbolic significance if its name were changed to Franklin D. Roosevelt Island — or, better yet, to Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt Island in honor of that extraordinary woman who was even more closely identified with New York City than was the president himself.”
By the following year Mayor Lindsay submitted a proposal to re-name Welfare Island for the president and the first lady.
From Jan. 21, 1973:
It was officially approved later that summer but with a revised name — Franklin Roosevelt Island.
To the Council, “a witness testified that the name of Welfare Island should be dropped because plans were under way to start marketing this September the thousands of apartments already built and still under construction as part of a $300-million ‘new town’ designed to replace outdated medical facilities.” [source]
Below: The island in April 1961, photo courtesy the New York Fire Department
She finally did get her own memorial in New York City — an understated statue tucked away in Riverside Park.
It was unveiled on October 5, 1996 by Hillary Rodham Clinton.
Oddly enough, Hillary regaled the crowd with a story of imaginary conversations she liked to have with Eleanor. “When I last spoke to Mrs. Roosevelt, she wanted me to tell all of you how pleased she is by this great, great new statue.”
Top picture courtesy Museum of the City of New York
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