Author: Bowery Boys

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Health and Living Know Your Mayors

Mayor Stephen Allen: A tragic end for New York’s sail-making leader

 

We’re just a couple months away from a new mayor in New York City so we think it is time that you Know Your Mayors! Become familiar with other men who’ve held the job, from the ultra-powerful to the political puppets, the most effective to the most useless leaders in New York City history.

This longtime feature of this website is being rebooted with new articles and newly researched and refreshed earlier entries in this series. Check back every other week for a new installment. Read past articles here.

Stephen Allen
Terms: 1821-1824

There once was a time when New Yorkers were told who their mayor was going to be. The power was all at the state level.

Imagine Governor Kathy Hochul with the power to install who she chose, or worse, a handful of Albany insiders entirely beholden to special political interests.

Governor In Charge

For most years until 1821 — and through all previous entries in the rebooted Know Your Mayor series — this was precisely the manner in which New York City adopted its mayors every year.

The Council of Appointments, four specially selected state senators, were in charge of hundreds of yearly state and local appointments, approving and (just as often) altering the wishes of the governor.

Those appointed to the job were either prominent citizens, figureheads, or politicians with strong connections to the governor. (And in the case of DeWitt Clinton, the actual nephew of a governor.)

From 1783 to 1821, the governors of New York were George Clinton, John Jay, George Clinton (again), Morgan Lewis, Daniel D. Tompkins and John Tayler (who served briefly after Tompkins became Vice President of the United States under James Monroe).

And at the time of our story in the summer of 1821, DeWitt Clinton had assumed the position of New York governor.

Power to the People(‘s Council)

After a groundswell of dissent over this and many other eccentricities of the New York constitution, the rules were finally amended in 1821.

“The mayor of all cities in this state shall be appointed annually by the common councils of their appointed cities.”

Among its changes were a new method of choosing a mayor — still appointed, but by the city’s Common Council (or city council).

Citizens voted for the aldermen who then, among their membership, voted on who would become mayor — indirect, imperfect, but seen at the time as a great step forward. It would not be until 1834 that New Yorkers could directly vote for a candidate.

But one peculiar trait of the mayor’s job was carried over — “annually.” In fact mayors would continue to serve one-year terms — sometimes serving consecutive one-year terms — until the year 1849.

New York Public Library

Allen Sets Sail

For their first appointment, city leaders did not stray from the successful formula of choosing one of the wealthiest, well-connected businessman among them.

In 1821, Stephen Allen became the first mayor appointed by the Common Council, ‘chosen’ by the people because he had first been elected to the council in the first place.

Allen was an inspired candidate, a self-made success story with roots in the American Revolution.

According to an 1848 biographical ‘sketch book’, Allen “affords another instance of what may be accomplished without money, without family connexions or friends. Mr. Allen commenced life, it is said, as a poor sailor boy.”

He was born in New York in 1767 and remained here with his family through the British occupation during the Revolutionary War.

New York Public Library

During that time he became an apprentice to a British Tory sail maker when he was only 12 years old. Times were rough for young Stephen in the stressed, over-crowded city; he lived with several other apprentices in a tiny ‘sail loft’, eating only bread and butter for supper.

The Continental Army couldn’t have won the war fast enough to young Allen’s liking.

A teenage Allen was witness to Washington’s return to the city in November 1783: “This was a happy day for the real friends of America and it was celebrated accordingly by young and old, particularly by those who had left the city at the commencement of the troubles and had now returned for the first time from an exile of eight long years.”

Allen worked his way into the sailmaking partnership of Hillson and Allen by age 22. Disgruntled with his partner’s lack of business acumen which, in his own words, tended to “irritate and promote altercation,” Allen launched his own sail-making business by the age of 30.

With the war ended, the British gone and New York becoming the dominant American port, Allen soon became one of the city’s wealthiest artisans by the 1810s.

As a member of the Tammany Society — he would eventually become grand sachem — he transitioned seamlessly into local politics, first as a member of the Common Council in April 1817 then finally as their first appointee for mayor in 1821.

Allen in later years. Courtesy New York Public Library

Water Troubles

For a man who made his fortunes from sails, it’s not surprising that his primary concern as mayor was water.

Clean drinking water was a scarcity; the city’s previous source for fresh water, Collect Pond, had been levelled just years due to pollution from local industry. What would replace it?

Allen’s focus on water was no paltry obsession. The city again faced smallpox and cholera epidemics and the mayor knew the problem would only get worse as foreign vessels came to dock at the city ports.

According to author David E. Gerber MD:

“Allen immediately turned his attention to the communicable qualities of the disease, focusing on sani- tation and quarantine laws. He questioned whether it made sense to quarantine foreign ships before they docked, while at the same time bringing the ships’ goods to the city’s wharves without inspection.”

He headed a committee that sought additional sources of drinking water, eventually focusing on Rye Pond in the future borough of the Bronx, and a potential canal to be built in Westchester.

Allen and the council were raring to move forward, but state bureaucracy, yellow fever outbreaks and focus on the Erie Canal would delay the development of a viable aqueduct for many years. It would take many more years for the city to get the Croton Aqueduct water system.

Allen also made a significant impact on New York’s prison system as a member of a state committee that inspected conditions at the first state prison in Auburn, New York. Their evaluations eventually led to the construction of Sing Sing prison.

He left office after three years as mayor, but he didn’t leave politics or Tammany behind, eventually becoming a state senator and helping raise money to build the first Tammany Hall.

Tragedy

He spent his latter days at home on Washington Square, but tragically, he did not end up dying peacefully in bed here as other future mayors would do.

He was aboard the steamship Henry Clay in July 28 1852 when, after an ill-advised race with another vessel, it caught fire and crashed on the Hudson River, killing dozens of passengers.

The terrible tragedy has drawn comparisons to the Titanic disaster as many who perished were well connected New Yorkers including Nathaniel Hawthorne’s sister Maria Hawthorne, famed landscapist Andrew Jackson Downing — and, sadly, our former mayor Allen.

From the Daily Eagle, July 31: “One of the peculiarities of the late steamboat disaster is the havoc which it made among persons widely known and greatly esteemed. We do not recollect any other catastrophe so remarkable in this respect.”

A slip of paper was allegedly found in his pocket, a list of thoughtful and hearty maxims which Allen read over “at least once a week.” Among his list:

— “Keep good company or none. Never be idle. If your hands cannot be usefully employed attend to the cultivation of your mind. Always speak the truth. Make few promises.”

from the Brooklyn Daily Eagle the following day:

Categories
Know Your Mayors Politics and Protest Queens History

Mayor Cadwallader D. Colden: Leading the city over 200 years ago

We’re just months away from a new mayor in New York City so we think it is time that you Know Your Mayors! Become familiar with other men who’ve held the job, from the ultra-powerful to the political puppets, the most effective to the most useless leaders in New York City history.

This longtime feature of this website is being rebooted with new articles and newly researched and refreshed earlier entries in this series. Check back every other week for a new installment. Read past articles here.

Cadwallader D. Colden
Terms: 1818-1821

The most remarkable thing about New York City having a mayor named Cadwallader Colden is the fact that he was not even the most famous New Yorker named Cadwallader Colden.

That distinction goes to his grandfather, an altogether different Cadwallader Colden than his grandson and a rather fascinating Renaissance man.

Well, despite the fact that he was also pro-British, stridently hated among the American rebels and the type of man that would have thrown most of us in jail on sight.

Grandpa Colden

Ole Cadwallader was an Irish physician who came to the American colonies in 1710 (at age 22) to practice medicine.

Establishing his practice in Philadelphia, he later came to New York and in 1743 wrote a now seemingly obvious treatise drawing a connection between New York’s unsanitary conditions and its frequent outbreaks of yellow fever.

Painting of the Elder Colden by John Wollaston the Younger. Wikimedia Commons

Elder Colden became governor of the New York colony in 1760 and later sparked ire among beleaguered New Yorkers, who burned his effigy over enactment of the Stamp Act.

Colden ultimately represented the losing side of the American Revolution, and due to that, his other accomplishments are often overlooked. He was the first in America to write about Newtonian scientific theories and the first colonist to act as ambassador to the Iroquois Confederacy, the union of five Native American tribes.

Grandson in a New County

Perhaps it’s fitting that Colden died in September 1776, the year of the conflict that would run the British out forever.

He might be scandalized to know that his grandson, born in 1769 in Flushing, Queens County, would become a model American. (The child’s father Cadwallader Colden II was more concerned with governing the family’s lush 3,000 acre estate in Queens and remained essentially neutral during the Revolutionary War.)

Born in the trappings of wealth, Cadwallader David Colden III was shipped off to London for a proper education and returned to New York in 1785 to become a lawyer.

With his high class connections, he quickly acquired an impressive client roster, in particular Robert Fulton and Robert Livingston, assisting in their control of ferry services in New York harbor. He became New York district attorney twice, 1798 and 1810.

Colden’s good pal DeWitt Clinton

Advantageous Friendships

Colden was a different man from his ancestor; he even fought against the British as a colonel of volunteers in the War of 1812. Surprising given his lineage, Colden was for many years considered a Federalist, the party of Alexander Hamilton. However, he considered as one of his closest friends a rather unlikely ally — anti-Federalist DeWitt Clinton.

How they met probably had less to do with political alliances than membership of a rather notable society — the Freemasons.

In fact, Colden and Clinton were members of the city’s most influential — and still active — Holland Lodge. Within a few years, this affiliation would be political poison, with anti-Freemason candidates characterizing the secret organization as above the law and morally corrupt.

View of North Pearl Street just north of State Street in Albany (1800s), painting by James Eights

At Odds With Tammany Hall

Colden’s ascent into the mayor’s office caught him within some serious political crossfire. Cadwallader’s friend DeWitt became the governor of New York in 1817, making him the head of the Council of Appointments, which selected a mayor for New York, back in the heady days before elections.

Clinton would use his influence to install his friend in the job in 1818, but not without Colden sustaining a little political injury.

One evening, Colden was in Albany and was invited inside a tavern for a glass of wine. He suddenly realized he was in a room filled with members of Tammany Hall, political enemies of the Federalists.

Colden had once been a member of Tammany — during their less politically active days — and in 1793 had even spoke to an assemblage at Saint Paul’s Church.

He was now on the opposite side.

Immediately they pounced, urging him to not seek the mayor appointment. But no, he cried!

“He exclaimed energetically against the trickery, declaring that he had not asked for the office of Mayor, but would only accept it if offered.”

When Clinton did grant him the job, Tammany made sure to make life difficult for him. For the entirely of his three one-year terms, Colden became a pawn in the battle between Governor Clinton and the ascendant Democratic machine.

Colden began work in the spanking new City Hall, the fourth mayor for the new building after Jacob Radcliffe, John Ferguson and, of course, DeWitt Clinton.

Pigs and Prison Reform

First on Colden’s agenda: all those pigs running around.

He declared, “Our wives and daughters cannot walk through the streets of the city without encountering the most disgusting spectacles of these animals indulging the propensities of nature.”

Animals were penned up and steep fines charged to butchers who kept pigs unproperly supervised.

Colden also took a crack at the city’s deeper social problems. Indeed he was governing over a growing city, population 123,706 as of 1820. With a big city came big city problems — poverty, crime, homelessness.

Newgate Prison. Image courtesy New York Public Library

The New York Society for the Prevention of Pauperism, led by the mayor himself, investigated prison conditions throughout the young nation to come up with a local solution.

At the time, the state penitentiary lay in today’s West Village in a place called Newgate Prison. One of their findings was a need to separate younger delinquents from the adult criminals held there.

Colden proclaimed, “It must be obvious that under such circumstances it would be in vain to expect that their punishment will improve their morals: it can hardly fail to have a contrary effect.”

The House of Refuge in 1832 (pic courtesy NYPL)

The mayor set the stage for an innovative experiment: New York’s House of Refuge, in an arsenal at Broadway and 23rd Street, essentially a reform school, built to incarcerate children age 16 and younger.

It later opened in 1825 (after Colden left office) with six boys and three girls as its pupils, many of them guilty only of homelessness and essentially kept here until adulthood. By the early 1830s, the House of Refuge would receive over 1,600 teenagers.

A ‘Kindly’ Anecdote

Like many mayors to follow, Colden also clamped down on liquor sales, even carrying around a ‘red book’ to notate violations and overheard complaints of local tavern owners.

Naturally, Colden would rally behind Clinton’s most ardent cause — the Erie Canal. It opened in 1825, after Colden left office, but his support did indeed pave the way for New York to become, in his own words, “one of the greatest commercial cities in the world.”

He was aristocratic, class-oriented but ultimately open hearted, they say. A reminiscence in the 1843 journal New Mirror quotes this certainly apocryphal story about the mayor’s ‘kindness’.

One rainy night on his way to a dinner party, Cadwallader stepped up to a ‘hackman’, a type of carriage taxi, for a ride.

The driver, “who had some old grudge against Mr. Colden,” rudely sped away, leaving the passenger on the curb. He jotted down the cab driver’s number and summoned him to City Hall.

“Poor Pat (for of course he was Irish)” as the article indicates, “went up the stairs, trembling at the fate which awaited him. When the mayor demanded to know why he was treated so rudely, the driver proclaimed,”you see I looked in your face, and, faith, you looked so like a jontleman I drove twice before that never paid me, I was afraid to thrust him agin!”

Colden laughed, exclaiming, “Your wit has saved you this time!” and excused the driver.

A boat upon the Morris Canal (courtesy the Canal Society of New Jersey)

Colden’s Later Years

Aligning with Clinton eventually became a bad idea. When Clinton was turned out of the governor’s office, so too was Colden from the mayor’s office. But he still remained popular with New Yorkers, becoming a U.S. congressman, then a member of the New York state senate in 1825.

In later life, he engaged in a couple unusual endeavors. The first was the construction of the Morris Canal in northern New Jersey, a conveyor of coal that operated for over a century.

And in 1830, he briefly indulged in the hobby of horse racing, taking over the Union Course in Woodhaven, Queens. The closest you’ll get to visiting Colden’s racetrack is visiting Neir’s Tavern, the oldest tavern in the borough.

Colden died in 1834, in Jersey City.

For centuries his gravesite was unknown. But in 2011, historian (and friend of the show) Eric K. Washington discovered his grave at Trinity Church Cemetery.

Washington in front of the new stone in 2011, adding Cadwallader III’s name. (Courtesy Mariela Lombard  of theNew York Daily News)

Revision and expansion of an article which first ran on this website in 2009.

Categories
Those Were The Days Women's History

The New York Monkey Fad of 1907

In an absolutely inhumane and totally unwise moment in New York City history, wild and exotic animals were once considered pets, roaming around the city streets with their owners.

The wealthiest classes collected all sorts of unusual beasts for their amusement during the 19th century.  So many in fact that the Central Park Zoo — or Menagerie, as it was called then — was created as a repository for all those unusual creatures abandoned by their owners.

From the 1907 Sun article, a lady with her pet monkey (courtesy LOC)

Primal Luxury

A bizarre New York Sun article from March 1907 found an interesting correlation between elegant women and their companion monkeys. They were such hot commodities with finer New York ladies that year that the animals were almost considered luxuries.

Monkeys rode snugly amid the elegant furs and finery of a modern woman. “Out of ermine muffs, carried by smartly dressed women along Fifth Avenue, hideous grinning little faces peep out of you.”  

The best examples of woman-monkey companionship were the talk of the town; one New York lady had her monkey trained to “manicure himself, don the right clothes at the right hour, eat daintily with his fork, pretend to smoke his after dinner cigarette and go to bed in a little iron bedstead.”

“It is impossible to import enough monkeys to fill the present demand,” one animal importer told the Sun. “An installment of marmosets or ringtails no sooner reaches port than they are shipped to women all over the country.”

Actress Doris Keane with her pet monkey (Courtesy Wiener Museum)

Monkey See, Monkey Do

It was an unorthodox but very charismatic choice, popular with actresses, princesses and rich ladies of a certain progressive bent.  

The pet monkey was prepared to do the unthinkable in 1907 — replace the yapping dog as the woman’s preferred companion.  

From the same article: “To those who do not like monkeys, the popularity of the beast seems more objectionable than any other recent fad. The horse fad, the dog fad, the cat fad, the automobile fad, the ping pong fad, the bridge fad, the chameleon fad are more excusable to such people.”

The popularity of the pet monkey, once associated with immigrant organ grinders on the streets of Five Points in the late 19th century, arose from increased scholarship on the animal, from stories of African safaris, and from seeing them in action at the House of Primates in the Bronx Zoo.

Organ grinder and monkey in 1935. Mayor LaGuardia outlawed organ grinders shortly after this picture. Photograph by Samuel H. Gottscho. Courtesy Museum of the City of New York

The Monkey Business

The animals were brought over on trading ships, basketfuls scooped up off the coasts of South America or even as far away as South Africa. A boatload of 1,000 monkeys arrived in New York in 1909, a cargo which also included hundreds of exotic birds and a couple dozen pythons.

 If they survived, they were given to importers throughout the city or sometimes sold right of the dock.

Monkeys even found themselves in the service of New York area fire departments. In 1907, a Mercer Street crew enjoyed the alertness of a monkey named Jenny (pictured below), who once warned her fellow firefighters of a blaze by tossing pool balls down an iron stairway.

And a fire crew in Rockaway Beach was well-known for their monkey mascot Jocko (pictured at left, with fellow mascot, kitten Minnie) who occasionally attacked Italian peanut vendors.

Chimpanzee in a patriotic pose, 1910, Bronx Zoo postcard

Swingers

It seems impossible to comprehend how nonchalant pet owners were regarding disease and injury.

 The Sun article runs through some helpful hints about how to personally select your monkey from a writhing litter right off the boat:  “If the skin is yellow do not invest your money, for you may be quite sure that the monkey has tuberculosis. If the skin is black the monkey has blood poisoning.”

Inevitably, the more untamed of these creatures did cause mayhem. In just one example from 1907, a Sixth Avenue monkey named Pete hurled flower pots at pedestrians, almost killing a woman.  On July 4, 1908, a Brooklyn, monkey named Nimbo set a house on fire by lighting fireworks.

And sadly, the monkey too soon fell victim to the inevitability of a passing fad.  By 1908, the New York Times was already proclaiming the Pomeranian as the new “hot” pet.

Below: From the Nov. 17, 1907 New York Tribune, Jenny the pool ball-hurling monkey mascot of the Mercer Street fire crew.

A version of this article first appeared on this website in November 2012.

Categories
Neighborhoods Writers and Artists

Greenwich Village, through the eyes of Jean Shepherd

Jean Shepherd was born 100 years ago today in Chicago, so I’m bumping up this older post in tribute to this wonderful New Yorker. 

Jean Shepherd, probably best known today as the voice of ‘A Christmas Story‘, was a regular presence on New York radio in the 1950s and 60s thanks to his memorable program for the AM station WOR.

Although you might associate his voice with nostalgic tales from suburban Indiana, he was very much a Village raconteur for much of his professional career. Some of his radio programs were broadcast live from the Limelight Coffee House at 91 7th Avenue, and he spent his last years in New York in a West Village apartment at West 10th Street.

In this 1960 short film ‘Village Sunday‘, Shepherd describes life in the Village and around Washington Square Park. Its pretty much a light advertisement for the entirely neighborhood, a pretty lovely thing to behold considering the conflicts the area would face with encroaching development later that decade.

He then wanders over to the Festival of San Gennaro which seems to have changed very little. You can compare it yourself when this year’s festival begins in a couple weeks!

Categories
Parks and Recreation Sports

New York City loves the Olympics — despite never hosting them

Olympic gold medalist Jesse Owens receives a ticker-tape parade through lower Manhattan, September 3, 1936. (Photo by Transcendental Graphics/Getty Images)

OLYMPICS ROUNDUP Starting today Tokyo, the biggest city in the world, will host the Games of the XXXII Olympiad aka the Tokyo Olympics 2020 (in 2021). The Japanese city first hosted the games back in 1964.

New York City, the biggest city in the United States, has never hosted the Olympics Games.

The city did aim to host the 2012 Olympics in an ultimately unsuccessful bid back in 2005. Those games went to London. 

Alas.

A great many New Yorkers were quite happy to be without that international sporting event in the city. Personally, I would have loved to have seen New York become even more international for a few weeks, although I’m relieved that plans for that catastrophic Olympic Village in Queens were never realized.

Outside of that, the closest the city has ever gotten to the Olympics is a little under 300 miles — the distance from New York to Lake Placid, which hosted the 1980 Winter Olympics.

Those games featured the now-storied ‘Miracle on Ice‘ match between the USA and the USSR.

But did you know that the Russian team completely iced the US team just a few days earlier in an exhibition game played at Madison Square Garden? You can read more about that in my article ‘No Miracle on Ice’ from February 2010.

Although New York has never hosted the Games, when it comes to events before and after the Olympics, New York City’s all over them.

Randall’s Island

Randall’s Island has hosted several Olympic trials, including one of the most famous at all, the track and field events from 1936 which produced sports legend Jesse Owens.

You can hear all about it in one of our very early podcasts on the history of Randall’s Island and the 1936 Olympic Trials.

Astoria Pool

Around the same time, Robert Moses commissioned Astoria Pool with the explicit purpose of hosting Olympic swimming trials.

That 1936 event, featuring its dramatic diving platform, produced several American gold medalists. Two massive Olympic torches stood astride the pool as competitors fought for a spot on the Olympic team.

Olympics trials returned to Astoria Pool in 1952, and again in 1964, producing athletes that again nearly swept the diving events in the Tokyo games. 

Swimmer Don Schollander went on to win 4 golds that year, the most of any athlete in 1964 and the most medals won by an American athlete since Jesse Owens.

You can read more about Astoria Pool here — Nostalgia for Astoria Pool. 

The Counter Olympics

Of course, a great many New Yorkers were entirely unhappy with any participation in the 1936 Olympic Games, given that they were being held that year in Berlin, in the heart of Nazi Germany.

A concerted effort by politicians (including Fiorello LaGuardia), religious leaders and athletes to boycott the games was met with defeat, but in the summer of 1936, a group of Jewish athletes competed in a ‘counter-Olympics’.

For more information, check out our article Boycott the Olympic Games!

New York Welcomes Olympians

And finally, here are some pictures of two glorious receptions of American Olympians held in New York — after the 1908 games (in London) and the 1912 games (in Stockholm).

Photo showing an event in New York City related to the 4th Olympic Games, held in London, England, in 1908. Library of Congress
Photo showing an event in New York City outside City Hall, related to the 4th Olympic Games, held in London, England, in 1908. Library of Congress
Photo showing a parade in New York City related to the 5th Olympic Games, held in Stockholm, Sweden, in 1912. Library of Congress
Photo showing a parade in New York City related to the 5th Olympic Games, held in Stockholm, Sweden, in 1912. Library of Congress

And finally, here’s a swell photograph — no other adjective to describe it — of the U.S. Olympic team from 1908, posing with President Theodore Roosevelt at his home in Sagamore Hill, Long Island.

Categories
Know Your Mayors Politics and Protest

Meet The Mayors Who First Invited Tammany Hall to City Hall

We’re just months away from a new mayor in New York City so we think it is time that you Know Your Mayors! Become familiar with other men who’ve held the job, from the ultra-powerful to the political puppets, the most effective to the most useless leaders in New York City history.

This longtime feature of this website is being rebooted with new articles and newly researched and refreshed earlier entries in this series. Check back every other week for a new installment. Read past articles here.

The most influential political force in New York City history isn’t an individual but a group of men who wielded power in often corrupt, entirely self-enriching ways. They were elected again and again because — at various times in history — they were able to convince the public that they were a better option than the city’s elites.

And sometimes they actually were. Occasionally they even kept the city running smoothly and served with the needs of their constituents in mind.

Thus is the power of a political machine. And thus was the power of Tammany Hall.

Tammany Hall on 170 Nassau Street

What is Tammany Hall?

The year 1815 marks the real beginning of New York City’s Tammany Hall era. It was the year that the organization first realized its fullest political potential.

The legendary Democratic political machine had of course been around long before, founded in 1789 as the Tammany Society, a patriotic club formed around the legend of the Lenape leader Tamanend.

These white gentlemen war veterans participated in garish exaggerations of Native American ceremonies, forming a structure of command under a Grand Sachem (leader or, later, Boss).

The Benjamin West painting The Treaty of Penn depicting William Penn negotiating with Lenape chief Tamanend.

Being comprised of well-connected men in high society, the organization soon took on a political character. It would be Aaron Burr that first exploited its political potential as a mechanism to unite the city’s Democratic-Republicans against Alexander Hamilton and his Federalist forces.

In 1800, Burr became the Vice President after an unusual election outcome that almost handed him the presidency instead of Thomas Jefferson. Burr’s suspicious handling of the election put him on the wrong side of some fellow Democratic-Republicans like governor George Clinton.

And the governor’s ambitious nephew Dewitt Clinton.

This meant that the Clintons would gradually become political enemies to those of Burr’s new political tool — the Tammany Society (or Tammany Hall).

Burr would eventually be sidelined in all things political. (Shooting a Founding Father and attempting to form a new country out west will do that to you.) But the political machine he wielded was only just beginning.

Mayor DeWitt Clinton, Library of Congress

Clinton Entanglements

When Clinton finally became mayor of New York starting in 1803 — serving several consecutive one-year terms — Tammany waited for a moment of weakness to strike. (Read about Clinton’s days as mayor here.)

As stated in previous Know Your Mayor articles, the job of New York mayor was not an elected post at this time, but rather chosen by a state-run Council of Appointments, one year at a time.

The ambitious and well connected Clinton would be appointed to this position for several years, since 1803, excepting a single year when he was replaced by Revolutionary War hero Marinus Willett. (Read more about him here.)

He returned to the mayor’s seat in 1808 but his political entanglements had earned him many new enemies by this time.

Mayor Radcliff, courtesy New York Public Library

Mayor Jacob Radcliff

Most notably, Clinton, who was a lifelong Democratic-Republican, eventually became an enemy to most of New York’s disenfranchised faction of that party. He was the state’s most popular politician — except with a great many politicians.

Clinton’s political fortunes swung like a pendulum and in 1810 that pendulum swung to the Federalists on the state level.

According to author Oliver Allen, “Tammany plotted circuitously with its leaders to have the Council of Appointment remove Clinton from the mayoralty. The move succeeded but Clinton was only temporarily sidetracked.”

He was replaced with Jacob Radcliff, a former associate of Alexander Hamilton and a justice on the New York Supreme Court whose lasting claim of fame would be as a founding father of the city of Jersey City, New Jersey.

Radcliff was also openly aligned with the Tammany Society and well aware that his new position (more lucrative than a job on the bench) was entirely due to his associations with the nascent political machine.

But the pendulum swung back the following year and Clinton was placed back in the mayor’s seat in 1811. (You think this is confusing so far? Read on.)

Fort Clinton (later Castle Clinton), named for the mayor and built in anticipation of conflicts from the coming war. [source]

The Brewing War of 1812

Tammany Hall finally gained its more-than-a-century-long foothold over New York City politics with the international crisis known as the War of 1812 — which actually lasted until 1815.

On top of the usual partisan stew of a swiftly growing city, the conflict with England left party affiliations malleable, with Federalists opposing action (even suggesting secession from the United States!) and staunch Democratic-Republicans generally favoring war.

Thus, as you can imagine, it would be difficult to remain balanced in such unstable political waters, even for somebody as saavy and popular a career politician as Clinton.

As war broke out with England in 1812, all political parties and affiliations seemed to disintegrate entirely.

As James Renwick wrote in his biography of Clinton, “On this occasion the old party lines were completely obliterated; no trace of affection for Great Britain remained in any mind, and the very name of federalist only exists to be used as a mode of discrediting a political adversary in the minds of the ignorant.”

As a result, many Federalists jumped ship to join the surging Tammany Democrats. Among their number was the former mayor Radcliff, warmly greeted by Tammany head Grand Sachem John Ferguson.

He would be Tammany’s first ‘boss’ with genuine power.

Mayor Ferguson

John Ferguson, Mayor and Boss

A perfect storm brewed in 1815 when Tammany — in the first robust display of its powers — for the first time controlled the state senate and enjoyed great gains in local elections.

At last! Tammany could really do what it wanted. And what it wanted was to get rid of that old stalwart Clinton. Once and for all.

And who better to replace him than the head of Tammany himself — John Ferguson?

However, whether by intent or sudden whim, Ferguson stepped down after only three months in office to take on the far-more lucrative job of officer of the Port of New York custom house, according to one source, a major center “of federal revenue, political patronage and potential graft.”

And so he was replaced with — Jacob Radcliff again, now a mayoral appointee representing an entirely different political party from the first time he had the job! In 1815 he moved in the city’s new City Hall and would remain in the position until 1818.

New York City Hall was completed in 1812.

Clinton’s Revenge

Clinton had the last laugh in all of this.

Public support for Clinton was so high by this point that, for political sake alone, “Tammany …. took the utmost pains to represent the removal as only a political exigency” and issued a ‘vote of thanks’ to the former mayor via the Common Council (equivalent of today’s City Council).

Clinton became governor in 1817 and handily swept away his opponents.

Meanwhile, Radcliff was caught up in a scandal when, halfway into his term, he was caught distributing a list of potential Tammany replacements for all still-remaining Federalist Common Council members, a politically insensitive move which galvanized the Council and ensured that 1818 would be Radcliff’s last year ever as mayor.

But it would be tactics like this that would ensure the future of Tammany Hall in local politics.

The political machine was only getting warmed up.

This is an expanded and rewritten version of an article which first ran on this website in 2009.

Categories
Know Your Mayors Revolutionary History

Meet Mayor Marinus Willett, New York’s Warrior Mayor

With a new mayoral race on the horizon in New York City we think it is time that you Know Your Mayors! Become familiar with other men who’ve held the job, from the ultra-powerful to the political puppets, the most effective to the most useless leaders in New York City history.

This longtime feature of this website is being rebooted with new articles and newly researched and refreshed earlier entries in this series. Check back each week for a new installment.

Marinus Willett is easily one of the most distinguished New York mayors, one of the few whose tenure at City Hall is so dwarfed by his past achievements that it merits but a footnote in his biography.

However he has a fantastic connection with the job that makes his brief stint there all the more relevant.

Marinus served as city mayor from 1807-1808 — just a single year.

His great-grandfather Thomas Willett, however, was New York City very first mayor, appointed to guide the city of New Amsterdam through its official transformation as a British property in 1665.

The Fighter

His rascally great grandson would be less enamored of his British lineage. Born on July 31, 1740 in Jamaica, Long Island — in what would much, much later become the borough of Queens — Marinus would be the last appointed New York mayor with strong military connections to the Revolutionary War.

Willett served as a militiaman during the battles of the French and Indian War, where as a young man he participated in the failed campaign at Fort Ticonderoga.

By 1775, he was a fully engaged American rebel living in New York, foiling British troops at the very start of the Revolutionary War as one of the subversive Sons of Liberty.

Marinus Willett preventing removal of arms by the British, June 6th, 1775 / In a print of a painting by John Ward Dunsmore, 1907. Library of Congress

That same year, age 35, he became Lieutenant Colonel in George Washington’s Continental Army, working on the northern Canadian campaigns and distinguishing himself at the defense of Fort Stanwix in upstate New York, where he held off British and allied Indian forces.

Eventually in 1780 he was even given command of the entire Mohawk Valley, where his ragtag and sparse militia tenuously held the area against enemy foes.

According to author Frederick L. Bronner: “It is a possibility that Willett witnessed the first and last battle in New York during the Revolution.”

Today, Willett is remembered at Fort Stanwix National Monument by the Marinus Willett Center.

Choosing Sides

Willett’s reputation as a Revolutionary warrior would define him for the rest of his life.

But his return to post-war New York, employed as a merchant, was seemingly marked by skirmishes of a different sort, divorcing two different women before settling third wife in 1799, 35 years his junior. (All this on top of an illegitimate son he had fathered during the war!)

Despite his domestic troubles, he maneuvered through the ranks of local politics (thanks to his connections to Governor George Clinton and the anti-Federalists), eventually becoming the sheriff of New York from 1785-88 and four more years in 1792.

But by the start of the 1800s, Willett became associated with Aaron Burr which put him on the opposite side of many former political allies including DeWitt Clinton who became Mayor of New York in 1803.

Bronner writes: “Clinton saw to it that they [Burr sympathizers] got not so much ‘as a smallest crumb from the well-filled table.'”

Yet when Clinton fell out of political favor in Albany, his appointment as mayor (he served from 1803 to 1807) went to Willett.

A Brief Tenure

Simply put, Willett took the job for the money, which paid better than city sheriff. But as a rival of Clinton, he must have relished taking the position away from him.

He lasted for exactly one full term (i.e. a year). Clinton would return to the job in 1809. (Read Clinton’s Know Your Mayor entry here for more information.) And two years after that, when Willett ran for state lieutenant governor, he was defeated … by DeWitt Clinton.

Ever a feisty old man to the finish, Willett later rallied support for the war that would become the War of 1812. He died at age 90 on August 22, 1830.

Willett is still remembered today in the Lower East Side with two streets — Willett Street and possibly Sheriff Street. Both streets have been rather ungraciously neutered by the Williamsburg Bridge.

A version of this article originally ran on June 10, 2008 — as you can see from the comments below.

Categories
Podcasts Politics and Protest

Epicenter: The historic New York City Hall

City Hall, June 2021. Photo by Greg Young

PODCAST REWIND A story almost four hundred years in the making — and a place at the center of modern New York political life.

New York City Hall sits majestically inside a nostalgic, well-manicured park, topped with a beautiful old fountain straight out of gaslight-era New York.

But its serenity belies the frantic pace of government inside City Hall walls and disguises a tumultuous and vigorous history.

There have actually been two other city halls — one an actual tavern, the other a temporary seat of national government. The present city hall — first used in 1811 and completed the following year — is one of New York City’s greatest treasures.

Join us as we explore the unusual history of this building, through ill-executed fireworks, disgruntled architects and its near-destruction by city planners.

PLUS: We look at the park area itself, a common land that once catered to livestock, liberty poles, almshouses and a big, garish post office.

This is a reedited and remastered version of episode #93 featuring an all-new, very special ‘Choose Your Own Adventure’ challenge at the end.

Listen Now: The Historic New York City Hall

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

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

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

Please visit our page on Patreon and watch a short video of us recording the show and talking about our expansion plans. If you’d like to help out, there are six different pledge levels. Check them out and consider being a sponsor.

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

I’ll Drink To That: Stadt Huys, New Amsterdam’s town hall, was a multi-purpose stone building housing an inn, a tap room on the first floor and the workings of city government on the second floor. The building was the government center even when the British arrived and would only be replaced in 1700.

Today on Pearl Street (near Stone Street) one can find the exact spot where the Stadt Huys once stood, marked by beige-colored bricks.

Photo by Greg Young

Federal Style: The second city hall, made with stones from the actual ‘wall’ of Wall Street, would be a bustling overstuff building and central to the beginnings of American history.

For a couple years, as Federal Hall, it was the center of federal government; the votes for George Washington as the first president were counted here and he was sworn in from the balcony.

New York Public Library

The old City Hall/Federal Hall was torn down in 1812. Three decades later the U.S. Custom House was constructed here, and today it is called Federal Hall.

Photo by Greg Young

Park Purposes: Before City Hall arrives, the common ground held several buildings, includin almshouses and debtors prisons (depicted in the background) and an early version of the American Museum (which evolved to become Barnum’s American Museum).


There Goes The Neighborhood: The image below depicts life in the year 1820. With the introduction of a shiny new City Hall, lavish rowhouses begin springing around the park, housing New York’s elite. Just a few years before, they would have faced into almshouses.

D’oh!: Wanna know one really good reason why we don’t shoot off fireworks in the middle of the city anymore? One robust fireworks celebration, honoring the laying of the Atlantic cable, caught the roof of City Hall on fire in 1858, causing extensive damage.

New York Public Library

The City Grows Up: New York’s growth spurt starts around City Hall Park, with a few new skyscrapers becoming the tallest buildings of their times, including the World Building (pictured at center), the Park Row and St. Paul buildings (just south), and the Woolworth Building, on the park’s west side.

The Municipal Building joins it a few years later….

Post Haste: The City Hall Post Office sat on the southern end of City Hall Park.

ca. 1894, Manhattan, New York, New York, USA — Front of General Post Office in Manhattan — Image by © CORBIS

The front of the Post Office, entirely consuming the area that is today’s southern end of the park and adjoining traffic triangle.

Photo by Greg Young

The Jacob Wrey Mould Fountain, first placed in City Hall in 1871. During the 1920s it was dismantled and shipped to Bronx, but returned to the park in 2000.

Photo by Greg Young

Plaque on the western side of City Hall Park:

Stones mark the site of Bridewell Prison:

Photo by Greg Young

FURTHER LISTENING:

After listening to this show on the history of New York City Hall check out these shows with similar themes and historical moments mentioned in this show:

Categories
Know Your Mayors On The Waterfront Podcasts

Meet Mayor DeWitt Clinton, the man who built New York City’s future

With a new mayoral race on the horizon in New York City we think it is time that you Know Your Mayors! Become familiar with other men who’ve held the job, from the ultra-powerful to the political puppets, the most effective to the most useless leaders in New York City history.

This longtime feature of this website is being rebooted with new articles and newly researched and refreshed earlier entries in this series. Check back every other week for a new installment.

Dewitt Clinton was so much more than a mayor of New York City of course.

He also served as a two-term governor, ran for president against James Madison and helped oversee one of the greatest engineering projects in American history.

He negotiated the choppy waters of early American politics with dexterity, building upon the reputation of his family name to fuel economic and cultural growth in the state he called home.

His greatest achievement was the Erie Canal, the cross-state canal which linked the Hudson River and New York Harbor with the interior of the United States.

No other civic project — with the possible exception, at the start of the 20th century, of the subway system — would affect the fortunes of New York City in such a dramatic and unambiguous way.

Clinton in a portrait made by Rembrandt Peale

So, yes, the many accomplishments in Clinton’s storied career tend to overshadow his work as the mayor of New York.

Yet most historians place him among the greatest mayors the city has ever employed. He might even be the greatest in terms of his long-term impact.

Clinton served ten one-year terms non-consecutively — 1803-1807, 1808-1810 and 1811-1815 — weaving together an extraordinary period of city growth during tumultuous political times and a potentially deadly foreign war. (Why not consecutive terms? I’ll explain in the next Know Your Mayors column.)

Clinton on the Rise

Dewitt Clinton was born in Little Britain, New York, on March 2, 1769, into one of the most politically important families in America.

Major-General James Clinton, DeWitt’s father, fought next to George Washington during the Revolutionary War (and brutally killed hundreds of Iroquois people during the 1779 Sullivan Expedition). DeWitt’s uncle George Clinton rose the political ranks following the war to become the governor of New York (from 1777-1795 and again from 1801-1804).

By the 1890s, according to author Evan Cornog, “three families presided over New York State politics — the Schuylers, the Clintons and the Livingston.”

So DeWitt Clinton had easy access to the corridors of power — Uncle George even made him his secretary in a bold gesture of nepotism — but he built upon that privilege, instead of resting on it. More importantly, he’s often considered to have the genuine needs of New Yorkers in mind in his accumulation of power, believing the city’s cultural and economic prosperity could be worn as a badge of honor for himself.

His most influential job during this period was as a member of the Council of Appointment, the body charged with appointing all the governmental positions that were not elected. This included the mayor of New York. In fact, he helped appoint the last mayor in our Know Your Mayors series — Edward Livingston.

While the Clintons were aligned with Thomas Jefferson and the Democratic-Republicans, DeWitt held personal animus towards his party’s Aaron Burr, the Vice President, who many believed had attempted to steal the 1800 election from the preordained Jefferson. When Burr killed Alexander Hamilton in 1804, Jefferson replaced him — with George Clinton, DeWitt’s uncle.

By then, DeWitt himself had dabbled in federal office, serving as the Senator from New York for almost two years from 1802 to 1803. But he hated Washington D.C. — which was an unpleasant and barely developed swamp then — and wanted to return to the comforts of New York.

So he resigned and took a new job which was then offered to him — the mayor of New York City.

New York City Hall, dedicated in 1811 and opened for government business by 1812

Setting the Foundations

At first it appeared this was just another step in the political ladder for DeWitt. According to Gotham, Clinton told his uncle that “being mayor was the better job [than being a U.S. senator] because its influence in presidential elections made it ‘among the most important positions in the United States’.”

But he quickly fleshed out the mayor’s role in surprising ways, having the unique political connections that allowed him to expand local government’s role. In later years, these expanded powers would be reduced by the influence of political machines like Tammany Hall.

Among the fledgling organizations he either founded or vigorously supported during his time in office:

— New York Board of Health: Clinton entered office with yellow fever the city’s greatest enemy. According to NYC Health, “Led by Mayor De Witt Clinton, the board evacuated stricken neighborhoods and started collecting mortality statistics, to ‘furnish data for reflection and calculation.'”

From this department came a newly created role — city inspector — which expanded to collect data (births, marriages and deaths) on city residents.

— New-York Historical Society: Clinton believed in upgrading the city’s cultural life, and the Historical Society, essentially New York’s first museum, allowed the city to celebrate its role in the new American cause and exalt the New Yorkers who fought for independence (which naturally included Clinton’s family).

Clinton was a founding committee member in 1804 and even gave the institution some space at City Hall (then at Wall Street aka Federal Hall).

He also chaired both the American Academy of the Arts and the Literary and Philosophical Society in their early years.

— Free School Society: Clinton championed the social education model which eventually became the New York public school system.

According to Evan Cornog, “In 1805, two measures transformed primary education in New York. The first was the allotment by the legislature of 500,000 acres of state lands and three thousand shares of bank stock for the benefit of public school. The second was the establishment of the New York Free School Society, whose president, from its inception to his death, was DeWitt Clinton.”

— The Grid Plan: Seeing a need to plan the city’s growth as it galloped up Manhattan island, the city’s Common Council formed a committee — “doubtless at DeWitt Clinton’s instigation” — that would draft up ideas for a possible grid of streets and avenues.

By 1811 Clinton would sign the Commissioner’s Plan into operation.

— A System of Fortifications: In addition, Clinton faced the impending crisis of a new war with Great Britain. Although the War of 1812 never came to New York City, Clinton oversaw the construction of new fortifications through the city, including a new fort at the Battery which eventually bore his name — Castle Clinton.

Castle Garden (within the old Castle Clinton) courtesy the Museum of the City of New York

A Complicated Record

Clinton innovated a form of governance which can be seen either as forward thinking or incredibly opportunistic (and quite possibly both) — the improved rights of immigrants.

Christian Luswanger, a member of the city’s night watch, became the first officer killed in the line of duty in New York during a Christmas Day anti-Catholic riot in 1806, the most violent of a series of skirmishes aimed at immigrants. New Irish arrivals faced Nativist backlash in a heavily Protestant city.

DeWitt Clinton. Library of Congress

The mayor, however, was a supporter of the Irish, laying the groundwork for one of the most successful collaborations in 19th century New York City politics.

As a U.S. senator, Clinton had supported liberal immigration laws.  As mayor he also supported the elimination of a citizenship test oath for Catholics. As a result, his opponents quickly painted Clinton as a puppet of foreign influence.

But Clinton was no paragon of human rights reform. While he earlier supported the Gradual Emancipation Act of 1799 — and a second Emancipation Act passed in his first year as governor in 1817 — his family had kept enslaved people for decades. And DeWitt himself owned at least a couple people during his years as mayor, including a coachman named Henry.

And many decisions Clinton made did seem more bluntly opportunistic.

He directed that the city’s funds be held by the banks of Manhattan Company, formed in 1799 — by his foe Aaron Burr, no less — to build a water system for the city. But the Company never did fund a truly adequate system, existing only as a bank. (Clinton, by the way, was also a company director. Seems like a conflict of interest!)

Clinton ceremonially pours water from Lake Erie into the Atlantic Ocean, 1825

The Billion Dollar Idea

For decades, prominent New Yorkers had pondered the idea of an upstate canal system, and even Clinton had considered canal making schemes years before reaching any significant prominence, extending back to his days as a student at Columbia College.

His interest in a massive canal project was renewed during his tenure as mayor (and those years in between his non-consecutive terms). By the time he became the governor of New York in 1817, he was so associated with the canal project that it became known by detractors as Clinton’s Folly.

No folly at all. When the Erie Canal finally opened in 1825, the engineering marvel — one of America’s greatest early achievements — proved genius. It not only created new wealth of New York City, it boosted the economic strength of the entire country.

Clinton had created new opportunities for New York City. The rise of the city as an economic and cultural power begins with him.

DeWitt Clinton Park in Hell’s Kitchen, photography by Greg Young

For more information on DeWitt Clinton, we have an older show in our catalog on Clinton and his role in creating the Erie Canal:

Categories
Know Your Mayors Politics and Protest

Meet Mayor Edward Livingston: A Man of Second Chances

With a new mayoral race on the horizon in New York City we think it is time that you Know Your Mayors! Become familiar with other men who’ve held the job, from the ultra-powerful to the political puppets, the most effective to the most useless leaders in New York City history.

This longtime feature of this website is being rebooted with new articles and newly researched and refreshed earlier entries in this series. Check back each week for a new installment.

Edward Livingston
Term: 1801-1803
The Mayor Who Went On To Do Better Things

On the spectrum of interesting folks who have occupied the mayor’s seat, Edward Livingston must certainly be noted as the defining example of turning your life around.

In 1801 Livingston became the mayor of New York City. Two years later, he left the job in total disgrace, run out of the city due to a financial scandal. He would never work in this town again.

And then things got really interesting.

Edward Livingston. Wellmore, E (Engravor) &Longacre, J. L. (Illustrator) Courtesy Library of Congress
Life With The Livingstons

Livingston, born in 1764, was a member of the rich and powerful Livingston clan. There were Livingstons in all aspects of American life — political, social, financial. It was as close as you got to a brand name in the Colonial era.

Edward benefited from this common ancestry. He was just eleven years old when his father Peter Van Brugh Livingston became president of New York’s First Provincial Congress in 1775. Another relation Philip Livingston signed the Declaration of Independence in 1776. And Edward’s older brother Robert Livingston (pictured below) would become New York chancellor.

Robert R. Livingston, in a painting by Gilbert Stuart

Young Edward barreled into his career, an ambitious lawyer who settled in New York following the Revolutionary War. Everybody knew his name; he was unsurprisingly a great success. What could go wrong?

Rising Star

In 1795, Beau Ned (as he was called) was elected to represent New York in the U.S. House of Representatives, aligned with the ascendent Democratic-Republican Party, putting him in good graces with Thomas Jefferson, New York Governor George Clinton and various politicians in opposition to the Federalists.

The mayor of New York at that time — Ricard Varick — was a Federalist.

When Jefferson won the presidency in a hotly contested election in 1800, Edward Livingston found himself on the right side of many lucrative political appointments.

In 1801, the governor chose him for U.S district attorney and then, a few months later, Livingston was also appointed mayor. (See entries on Varick and James Duane to understand why these men were even allowed to hold multiple jobs.)

An 1801 map of New York, overlaid with a grid plan proposed by Casimir Goerck and Joseph-François Mangin. This plan was never carried out but it would inspire the Commissioners Plan of 1811.
A Hot Time In The Old Town

Suddenly, Livingston had become mayor of the biggest city in the new nation — a whopping 60,482 according to that year’s census. His opposition to the policies of former president John Adams served him well for a time under the new auspices of a Jefferson presidency.

But the year 1801 in New York was undeniably a volatile one and post-war optimism had given way to bitter skepticism and political chicanery.

New York senator Aaron Burr, Jefferson’s running mate, was nearly voted president in an electoral-college snafu.

Jefferson’s nemesis Alexander Hamilton — who would later be shot and killed by said running mate — would baste his thoughts in the newly created New York Evening Post.

Nearby, a young aide named Washington Irving worked in a law office.

In 1799 New York City built a quarantine station in Staten Island for the treatment of people afflicted by yellow fever and other illnesses. (Image courtesy New York Public Library)
A City Sickness

Unfortunately for Livingston the early 1800s were simply not a great time to be living in New York City. In fact, during his tenure, Edward Livingston almost died of yellow fever.

New York was hit ferociously by a yellow fever epidemic in 1798 and the affliction returned almost annually, never fully dissipating.  

In 1803, a second epidemic hits New York and hits hard. Hundreds would die, thousands would flee. The stoic Livingston would manage to keep the city operating, even as he himself would become sick and nearly die.

In Disgrace

He recovered only to meet with a scandal that would nearly ruin him.

In the summer of 1803, it was discovered that $45,000 had gone missing from the city’s custom-house fund. While it was determined that a clerk from the district attorney’s office had actually stolen the money, it was Edward Livingston who took the hit politically.

“Although his own integrity was not in question,” according to the book Gotham, the ensuing scandal not only forced Livingston to give up both the state attorney job and the mayor’s seat, but he actually had to sell his property to repay the government.

Livingston had disgraced the family name.

1803 view of New Orleans, looking upriver from the Marigny Plantation House, by J. L. Bouquet de Woiseri
The Ultimate Second Act

Nearly penniless and humiliated, Edward decided to leave New York for good in 1803.

Penniless but not, of course, without family connections.

In 1804 moved to New Orleans, recently purchased from the French by the federal government as part of the Louisiana Purchase. The team negotiating that deal included James Monroe — and Edward’s older brother Robert Livingston.

During the War of 1812, Edward was active in the defense of New Orleans and even served as the aide-de-camp to General Andrew Jackson. The two became close friends.

By 1826, Livingston was successful enough again with his own law practice in New Orleans that he was able to pay back the government all the money he owed plus interest — or almost $100,000, no petty sum back then.

Livingston in 1827. Painting by Anson Dickinson

That same year, Livingston would shape American civil policy with a series of influential penal and judiciary codes for the treatment of prisoners, now referred to as the Livingston Code. While rejected by the State of Louisiana, the legal reforms would live on to shape ideals about incarceration and the death penalty.

Because of these reform codes, Edward Livingston is considered one of the great American legal geniuses of the early 19th century.

After notable stints as representative and a Senator for the State of Louisiana, he became a persuasive Secretary of State for President Jackson from 1831-1833. Edward Livingston died on May 23, 1836.

Categories
Long Island Podcasts

Long Island Gothic: A Journey to Grey Gardens

PODCAST The historical backstory of one of the most famous documentaries ever made – Grey Gardens.

The classic film Grey Gardens, made by brother directing team Albert and David Maysles, looks at the lives of two former society women leading a life of seclusion in a rundown old mansion in the Hamptons.

Those of you who have seen the film – or the Broadway musical or the HBO film inspired by the documentary – know that it possesses a strange, timeless quality. Mrs Edith Bouvier Beale (aka Big Edie) and her daughter Miss Edith Bouvier Beale (aka Little Edie) live in a pocket universe, in deteriorating circumstances, but they themselves remain poised, witty, well read.

But if our histories truly make us who we are, then to understand these two extraordinary and eccentric women, we need to understand the historical moments that put them on this path.

And that is a story of New York City – of debutante balls, Fifth Avenue, Tin Pan Alley and the changing roles of women. And it’s a story of the Bouviers, who represent here the hundreds of wealthy, upwardly mobile families, trying to maintain their status in a fluctuating world of social registers and stock market crashes.

This is story about keeping up appearances and the consequences of following your heart.

FEATURING: A very special guest! The Marble Faun himself — Jerry Torre, who swings by the show to share his recollection of these fascinating women.

Listen Now: A Journey to Grey Gardens

_________________________________________________________

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

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

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

Please visit our page on Patreon and watch a short video of us recording the show and talking about our expansion plans. If you’d like to help out, there are six different pledge levels. Check them out and consider being a sponsor.

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

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The Bouvier family did indeed have ‘French genes’, connected to cabinetmakers who immigrated to the United States in the 1810s.

NYPL

The Bouvier family’s listings in the 1899 New York Social Register.

Big Edie’s great uncle Michel Charles ‘M.C.’ Bouvier and her three unmarried great aunts Zenaide, Alexine and Mary all lived in a fine brownstone at 14 W. 46th Street.

Edith Ewing Bouvier Beale

Grey Gardens Official

The wedding photo of Edith Ewing Bouvier Beale.

Grey Gardens Official

The ballroom of Sherry’s (44th and 5th Avenue) where Edith had her debutante ball.

MCNY

An invitation for a 1928 debutante ball at the Hotel Pierre (where Little Edie would have her own fête).

Museum of the City of New York

Sixteen year old Jacqueline Bouvier attending Miss Porter’s finishing school in Farmington, Connecticut. Both Big Edie and Little Edie went here as well.

East Hampton was the first English settlement in the area that would eventually become New York state.

NYPL

An early image of Grey Gardens mansion.

Little Edie posing in front of the house in the film Grey Gardens.

Images of Little Edie in her youth, a beautiful, confident young woman who echoed her mother’s love of music and performance. The two retreated into a reclusive life even as their family become national prominent.

Grey Gardens Official

Little Edie in New York, possibly from the period of the late 40s/early 50s.

Grey Gardens Official

Little Edie’s big-city refuge for a time — the Barbizon Hotel for Women:

Museum of the City of New York/Samuel Gottscho

Little Edie performing at Reno Sweeney in the West Village.

Getty

Big Edie in her familiar perch, flanked with kittens and memories.

Getty

Many thanks to Jerry Torre for stopping by the studio to chat!

CORRECTION TO THE SHOW: The Great Gatsby is set in 1922, but the book was released in 1925.

FURTHER READING
The Marble Faun of Grey Gardens by Jerry Torre and Tony Maietta
The Bouviers: Portrait of an American Family by John H. Davis
Gail Sheehy’s New York Magazine profile from January 1972 — The Secrets of Grey Gardens
Grey Gardens Online — “The one-stop source for all things Grey Gardens”

FURTHER LISTENING
Some of the themes and subjects referenced in this episode have been spoken about in past shows. After you’ve finished listening to Journey to Grey Gardens, give these a try.

And if you enjoyed the show, you might enjoy the soundtrack! Here’s a Spotify playlist of songs from the show and inspired by this story:

Categories
Know Your Mayors Politics and Protest

Meet Mayor Richard Varick, New York’s ‘forgotten Founding Father’

With a new mayoral race on the horizon in New York City we think its time that you Know Your Mayors! Become familiar with other men who’ve held the job, from the ultra-powerful to the political puppets, the most effective to the most useless leaders in New York City history.

This longtime feature of this website is being rebooted with new articles and newly researched and refreshed earlier entries in this series. Check back each week for a new installment.

Richard Varick
Term: 1789-1801
The Federalist Mayor

La Guardia Airport. Van Wyck Expressway. The Ed Koch Queensboro Bridge. Duane Street.

While most old mayors of New York City fade into obscurity, a few leave their legacies on landmarks and street names.

In Lower Manhattan lies little Varick Street, linking the West Village to Tribeca. Drivers entering the Holland Tunnel are very familiar with Varick Street. It’s named for the man who once owned property here — Richard Varick.

He served as mayor of New York City for eleven consecutive terms — one year terms, from the fall of 1789 to 1801, making him the first New York mayor of the 19th century.

Biographer Paul Cushman calls Varick a “forgotten Founding Father” of the United States, an officer in the Continental Army and confidante of George Washington.

But perhaps his legacy had been slightly tarnished by another close association — with Benedict Arnold.

Richard Varick, painted in 1787 by Ralph Earl
Associations with a Traitor

Richard Varick, born in Hackensack, NJ, on March 15, 1753, was the descendent of Dutch settlers, and his family history is deeply intertwined with that of early colonial New Jersey.

Richard’s fate would lie in New York where he would get his law degree in 1774 at King’s College (Columbia University), naturally becoming compatriots with those who would become revolutionaries against the British Crown.

Varick had a virtually unblemished military record during the Revolutionary War but for one unfortunate association.

During the early days of battle he served as secretary to General Philip Schuyler, later father-in-law to Varick’s friend Alexander Hamilton. He swiftly moved on as inspector-general of the newly formed military base at West Point (it wouldn’t become a military academy until 1802) where he would become entangled with a potential political albatross — Benedict Arnold.

Arnold in a 1776 painting by Thomas Hart

Serving as Arnold’s loyal aide-de-camp, he was unaware that his friend was selling West Point — and the American cause — down the river, plotting to trade the base’s secrets to the British.

Arnold’s treachery was found out, and it comes as no surprise that Varick too was suspected of treason, but was later exonerated. The stench of rumored betrayal was alleviated when Varick was appointed Washington’s personal secretary in the later days of the Revolutionary War.

Varick and his signature
The Ultimate Multi-tasker

Not one to let one sticky political association bog him down, Varick was appointed a recorder of New York City once the British were swept out of town. But that’s not all.

In those days, with so many positions in the newly formed government and so few men with experience, Varick soon held other jobs concurrently — including speaker of the New York State assembly and even the state attorney general!

“A simple explanation of the prevalence of a few public-spirited civic servants holding multiple offices in these times,” writes Paul Cushman, “might relate to the fact that these were unusual and non-recurring moments in the development of government. The offices in the evolving government were still quite malleable. “

The amount of ink and parchment used by Varick in these various jobs — not to mention his wartime correspondence — must have been astounding. Indeed forty-four folio volumes known as the Varick Transcripts, collecting his various papers from 1775 to 1785 (including his correspondence with Washington), are housed at the Library of Congress.

But in 1789 came his most intriguing government appointment — mayor of New York, a role in which he was appointed eleven consecutive times by the Council of Appointment. (Previous mayor James Duane stepped down to become a judge. See the previous article of Duane for a breakdown on the appointment process.)

How could one man with so many jobs take on this responsibility as well? Cushman explains: “A part-time occupant as mayor, not yet burdened with a host of defined civic duties or a subordinate staff to manage, could carry out several tasks simultaneously, with the mayoral duties being just one of many.“

Richard Varick, in an 1805 painting by John Trumbull
A City In Crisis

The city population doubled under his administration, so naturally basic civic neccessities like water and disease control became the focus of his attentions. So what were his governing views?

Like Hamilton and John Jay, Varick was a staunch Federalist, believing in a strong centralized government and a robust national banking system. Federalists were also aristocratic and often elitist, and Varick was frequently at odds with the city’s rising artisan class who favored the more democratic leanings of national politicians like Thomas Jefferson and James Madison.

Varick used his position to punish anti-Federalist New Yorkers. In 1791 he threatened to revoke the licenses of any cartmen who voted against Federalist candidates in future elections.

In fact, due to his support of the quite unpopular Jay Treaty in 1794, the “arrogant and elitist” Varick was almost literally driven out of City Hall by a mad riot.

His political posturing insured that New Yorkers would never really like Varick. Still he continued to be appointed to the job year after year — by both Republican governors (George Clinton) and Federal ones (John Jay), most likely based on his reputation during the war.

The political bickering between factions failed to stunt the growth of the city, both in terms of its physical size and its prominence as the financial center of the new nation, of which Varick played no small part. (He was the director of a few small fledgling banks, including Alexander Hamilton’s special project the Bank of New York.)

Another change during Varick’s term would alter the course of New York politics forever.

In 1797, New York state government responsibilities moved out of the city to Albany, allowing the city bureaucracy to grow but setting the stage for future animosities between state and local leaders. In other words, the roots of Andrew Cuomo vs. Bill De Blasio begin here.

Painting by Henry Inman
Founding Father of Jersey City

With the ascent of the Democratic-Republican Thomas Jefferson to nationwide office, Federalists were on the wane, and Varick was replaced by the more amenable Edward Livingston.

Varick, on the outs in New York, returned to New Jersey where he helped found Jersey City. Varick died there on July 30, 1831. For the residents of NJ’s second-largest city, Varick is most certainly not forgotten.

And thousands everyday take lower Manhattan’s Varick Street to the Holland Tunnel which arrives on its New Jersey side into the city which Varick founded.

This article is newly written and expanded from an earlier version published in 2007.

Categories
Know Your Mayors Revolutionary History

Meet James Duane, New York’s first mayor after the American Revolution

With a new mayoral race on the horizon in New York City we think its time that you Know Your Mayors! Become familiar with other men who’ve held the job, from the ultra-powerful to the political puppets, the most effective to the most useless leaders in New York City history.

This longtime feature of this website is being rebooted with new articles and newly researched and refreshed earlier entries in this series. Check back each week for a new installment.

James Duane
Term: 1784-1789
The First Post-War Mayor

New York officially had 44 men prior to James Duane filling the seat of city mayor in 1784. So why do I consider Duane New York City’s official first mayor?

Although America declared its independence from England in 1776, England did not declare its independence from New York City until 1783, when they were driven out at the end of the Revolutionary War.

British appointed mayor David Mathews governed Manhattan throughout the entire war until he and other Loyalists fled to Canada in the conflict’s waning days. Which is probably a good thing since he was implicated in a specific attempt to kidnap and murder the commander of the Continental Army George Washington.

Duane is the first American New York mayor, the first to lead the city newly broken from its colonial shackles.

However, it should be noted that he is not New York’s first elected mayor. Like the many mayors of the Colonial era before him — and the many men who would hold this office well into the 19th century — James Duane was appointed to the job.

As painted by John Trumbull in 1805, long after his death.

James Duane, born in New York in 1733, was destined for great things, a respected attorney and statesman who would become what we might call a minor Founding Father.

Orphaned as a teen, young Duane became the charge of Robert Livingston, a prominent lawyer in a socially important New York family. Naturally he pursued a career in law as well, his natural skills bolstered by his social privilege.

In 1759 Duane married Robert’s daughter Mary Livingston and would grow up alongside Robert Jr. who would go on to draft the Declaration of Independence. Through tenacity, family wealth and de facto family influence through the Livingstons, Duane became New York state attorney general at age 34.

Mary Livingston in a painting by Ralph Earl. Original image courtesy the New-York Historical Society

Duane was also part of New York’s delegation to the First Congressional Congress in 1774, alongside John Jay and another Livingston, Philip, who would eventually sign the Declaration of Independence. (Duane, alas, was serving in New York’s Provincial Congress in the summer of 1776 or else he too would have John Hancock’d the founding document.)

Duane had originally agreed with general notions of appeasement with the British, not favoring a separation from England.

In fact author Edward P. Alexander calls him a ‘moderate rebel‘. “Duane strove with common sense and moderation to cling to the golden mean which would protect gentlemen of his station from both British taxation and domestic social upheaval.”

In other words he was for the cause of American liberty but not all that rabblerousing.

James Duane’s New York City, 1776

Regardless, he would be a member of Second Continental Congress all the way through the end of the war and on behalf of New York would even be a signer of the Articles of Confederation, precursor to the Constitution.

During the British occupation of New York, Duane lived at Livingston Manor, a vast estate which today includes modern-day Livingston, New York.

New York during British occupation 1776

Its Loyalists freshly evacuated, the city needed a new leader.

In 1784 Duane was appointed Mayor of New York by a slate of state officials called the Council of Appointment, led by Governor George Clinton.

This council didn’t just select the city’s mayors; it selected every office in the state. It would be decades before mayors were actually elected into office by the people.

Duane moved his family to a family estate right outside the city — a farm that would become Gramercy Park thirty years after his death.

According to A Godchild of Washington by Katherine Schuyler Baxter (written in 1897):

“In a letter of James Duane to his wife, after the Revolution, he alludes to this farm and the beautiful grounds with the fish pond and fountains. The house having been occupied by British officers during the War the letter says ‘you will find the cellars in most excellent condition and the wine bins in good repair, the house has suffered but little.’“

City Hall became Federal Hall.

The new mayor oversaw a massive shift in Manhattan’s well-being; while the evacuation of the British and their sympathizers left a serious economic vacuum, the city also took its first steps win defining its urban character.

For Duane’s entire tenure, New York would be the new country’s seat of federal government — first as home of the Confederation Congress, then as the location of the new government under the U.S. Constitution.

In fact Duane’s legacy as mayor would be largely overshadowed as the foundations of the United States were built around him.

City Hall would become Federal Hall in these years and the overcrowded government building — over 75 years old already by the time Duane took office — was hastily enlarged in 1788 to accommodate these extra politicians.

Angry New Yorkers storm the hospital. Wood engraving by William Allen Rogers

Meanwhile in the spring of that year, Duane intervened in one chilling incident involving grave robbers and medical students at New York Hospital, an incident today known as the Doctor’s Riot.

An angry mob, enraged that the local cemetery had been pillaged for cadavers, stormed the hospital and, eventually, Columbia College. Several officials, including Duane, urged restraint. When the mob attacked the officials — injuring John Jay in the process — Duane took action.

According to Gotham by Edwin G. Burrows and Mike Wallace, “Duane summoned a troop of militia to disperse the crowd and was met with another shower of missiles. Baron von Steuben, also struck in the head and bleeding profusely, shouted, ‘Fire, Duane! Fire!’ Duane, or perhaps [Governor] Clinton, gave the order. The first volley killed three rioters outright and wounded many others. Before a second could be fired, the crowd had scattered.“

Governor George Clinton who possessed most of the power in post-Colonial New York.

While Duane threw himself into the job — he was praised by his critics for his charity and “good judgement” — his power was limited. Governor Clinton and his Common Council (an early version of City Council) controlled his salary and could veto his decisions on a whim.

In 1785 he was also a founding member of the New-York Manumission Society, an abolition organization headed by John Jay that eventually included Alexander Hamilton and Governor Clinton.

This despite the fact that Duane would own at least one enslaved person after this date:

“His 1790 census record, in New York City, shows his family consisting of 2 Free White Males aged 16 and older, 2 FWM under 16, 6 Free White Females, and 1 slave.” [wiki]

(Most of the members were slaveholders including Jay and Clinton. In 1799, Jay, as governor of New York, would sign the Act for the Gradual Abolition of Slavery into law.)

James Duane — February 6, 1773 – February 1, 1797

By the end of administration in 1789, Duane was governing over a city of 25,000 citizens. After the wounds of war, New York was at last recovering.

After Duane’s five one-year terms, the mayor’s seat went to another attorney with even greater ties to the Revolutionary War — Richard Varick.

Duane’s next appointment was more prestigious — one of the nation’s first federal judges on US Circuit Court in New York, nominated for the position by President George Washington himself. (It helped to rub elbows with the new president in the cramped quarters of Federal Hall.)

Duane died on February 1, 1797, on an inherited land grant in upstate New York that he had developed into a township and where he spent his final years. Its name, appropriately, is Duanesburg.

Most New Yorkers are familiar with James Duane today — not for his accomplishments but for the street named after him. Duane Street runs through lower Manhattan today just a couple blocks north of today’s City Hall.

The drug store Duane Reade takes its name from Duane Street.

This article is based on an original post from December 2007.

Categories
Amusements and Thrills Podcasts

The Landmarks of Coney Island (Extended Funhouse Mix)

PODCAST Coney Island is back! After being closed for 2020 due to the pandemic, the unusual attractions, the thrilling rides and stands selling beer and hot dog have finally reopened.

So we are releasing a very special version of our 2018 show called Landmarks of Coney Island — special, because this is an extended version of that show — an extended remix, if you will — featuring the tales of two more Coney Island landmarks which were left out of the original show.

And this episode is dedicated to the Wonder Wheel which was to celebrate its 100th year of operation last year. So go show them some love this year!

The Coney Island Boardwalk — officially the Riegelmann Boardwalk — became an official New York City scenic landmark in 2018, and to celebrate, the Bowery Boys are headed to Brooklyn’s amusement capital to toast its most famous and long-lasting icons.

Recorded live on location, this week’s show features the backstories of these Coney Island classics:

— The Wonder Wheel, the graceful, eccentric Ferris wheel preparing to celebrate for its 100th year of operation;

— The Spook-o-Rama, a dark ride full of old-school thrills;

— The Cyclone, perhaps America’s most famous roller-coaster with a history that harkens back to Coney Island’s wild coaster craze;

— Nathan’s Famous, the king of hot dogs which has fed millions from the same corner for over a century;

— Coney Island Terminal, a critical transportation hub that ushered in the amusement area’s famous nickname — the Nickel Empire

PLUS: An interview with Dick Zigun, the unofficial mayor of Coney Island and founder of Coney Island USA, who recounts the origin of the Mermaid Parade and the Sideshow by the Seashore

Listen Now: Landmarks of Coney Island (Extended Funhouse Mix)

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A big thanks to the amazing Dick Zigun for being on the show!

The Mermaid Parade is returning to Coney Island later this year! Check out the website for Coney Island USA for updates.


And we’d also like to thank Deno’s Wonder Wheel Amusement Park for graciously allowing us to record on the Wonder Wheel itself.

Here are the seven official landmarks within the old Coney Island amusement area. 

1) Coney Island Boardwalk

Museum of the City of New York

2)  Wonder Wheel

1944, Museum of the City of New York

3) The Cyclone

1935, Courtesy Museum of the City of New York

4) Parachute Jump — pictured here at its original home at the 1939 New York World’s Fair at Flushing Meadows

Wurts Brothers, courtesy Museum of the City of New York

The Parachute Jump and the boardwalk on a windy summer’s day in 2017.

Greg Young

5) Childs Restaurant on the Boardwalk

Forgotten NY

A nice hazy day in 2017. The former Childs Restaurant can be seen in the distance. This image was taken from the Steeplechase Pier.

Greg Young

6) Childs Restaurant on Surf Avenue (now the home of the Coney Island Museum)

Courtesy Alex Rush

Inside the museum:

7) Shore Theatre on Surf Avenue

Brooklyn Public Library

And while Nathan’s Famous may not be a landmark, nobody can argue with the fact that its a genuine Coney Island classic.

1939, Andrew Herman Federal Art Project, Museum of the City of New York
From our 2018 adventure through Coney Island

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

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

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

Please visit our page on Patreon and watch a short video of us recording the show and talking about our expansion plans. If you’d like to help out, there are six different pledge levels. Check them out and consider being a sponsor.

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

Categories
Podcasts Science

Dr. Hosack’s Enchanted Garden: A Tale of Botany, Medicine and Discovery in Old New York

PODCAST: Dr. David Hosack was no ordinary doctor in early 19th-century New York.


His patients included some of the city’s most notable citizens, including Alexander Hamilton and Aaron Burr, both of whom he counted as close friends — and both of whom decided to bring him along to their fateful duel.

But it was Dr. Hosack’s love and appreciation for the field of botany that would eventually make him famous in his time. In 1801 he opened his Elgin Botanic Garden on 20 acres of land located three miles north of the city on Manhattan Island.

Engraving circa 1802 of a drawing by L. Simond, titled View of the Botanic Garden at Elgin in the vicinity of the City of New York, frontispiece of a pamphlet by David Hosack

In this first public botanical garden in the country, Hosack would spend a decade planting one of the most extraordinary collections of medicinal plants, along with native and exotic plants that could further the young nation’s agriculture and manufacturing industries.

And yet, he also spent a decade looking for funding for this important project, and for validation that this kind of work was even important.

In this episode we discuss Hosack’s life and surprising legacy withVictoria Johnson, author of the 2018 book, American Eden, David Hosack, Botany, and Medicine in the Garden of the Early Republic, a New York Times Notable Book of 2018, a finalist for the 2018 National Book Award in Nonfiction, and a finalist for the 2019 Pulitzer Prize in History.

LISTEN NOW — DR. HOSACK’S ENCHANTED GARDEN

The esteemed Dr. David Hosack

Courtesy New-York Historical Society

Elgin Botanic Garden, painted in 1910, artist unknown

Tom and special guest Victoria Johnson with a copy of her book American Eden

PLACES TO VISIT

Rockefeller Center — See if you can find the plaque in honor of David Hosack and the Elgin Botanic Garden. It’s located along the way in the Channel Gardens.

FURTHER LISTENING:

Listen to these shows in our back catalog for more information on subjects mentioned in this show —

DUEL! Aaron Burr vs Alexander Hamilton presents a pivotal moment in American history and one that would forever change Hosack.

Our DeWitt Clinton and the Erie Canal show from many years ago gives further insight into the man much admired by Hosack, so much so that he wrote the man’s memoir

What was medical care like in the early 19th century? Look no further than our show on one of the most prominent medical institutions of the day — Bellevue Hospital:

FURTHER READING FROM THE WEBSITE:

Our book review of Victoria Johnson’s book American Eden

Aaron Burr’s Cousin Built the First Bridge Over the Hudson River

100 Years Ago: The Brooklyn Botanic Gardens Opens

The Cow and the Country Boy: The Story of the First Vaccine

The Plant Doctor: The Extraordinary Life of George Washington Carver

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

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

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

Please visit our page on Patreon and watch a short video of us recording the show and talking about our expansion plans. If you’d like to help out, there are six different pledge levels. Check them out and consider being a sponsor.

And join us for the next episode of the Bowery Boys Movie Club, an exclusive podcast provided to our supporters on Patreon.

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

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