Looking for a good book? Here are a few recent releases I’ve enjoyed reading over the past few weeks. All are currently available at your local book retailer:
In what is easily the coolest New York City guide book of recent memory, Spy Sites of New York City tracks down and maps out the city’s marvelous and mysterious connections with espionage — from the Revolutionary War to very, very recent events.
The richly researched entries are arranged chronologically with a list of maps in the back to chart your own afternoon adventure. Fans of the AMC series of Turn and even The Americans might find themselves reliving their favorite episodes. (Americans producers Joseph Weisberg an Joel Fields wrote the book’s forward.)
Since the first penny presses in the 1830s, newsboys (and girls) have been a ubiquitous presence upon the urban landscape. It can be said that the American news media was developed on the backs of children, and in Crying the News, they are collectively exalted as the embodiment of American spirit.
DiGirolamo’s extensive examination of the junior trade reveals the real faces behind the gritty stereotypes. Most newsboys came from disadvantaged backgrounds, working their way into this frequently abusive occupation to carve out a scrappy street-born freedom.
And Crying the News is also a side view of American history itself, seen from the perspective of those who touted breaking news from every street corner with a loud, unmistakable cry. Extra! Extra!
AMERICA’S FIRST FREEDOM RIDER Elizabeth Jennings, Chester A. Arthur and the Early Fight for Civil Rights By Jerry Mikorenda
In 1854 an African-American woman named Elizabeth Jennings (later Elizabeth Jennings Graham) was denied a seat on a lower Manhattan streetcar, forcibly removed due to the color of her skin.
Her tale is often compared to that of Rosa Parks, but in America’s First Freedom Rider, author Jerry Mikorenda makes the case that Jennings story should be seen on its own terms, as an electrifying show of bravery at the beginning of a long journey towards equality.
Part of what makes Jennings’ saga so curious is a surprising supporting character — Chester A. Arthur, the young lawyer (and future president) who takes her case to court. Mikorenda presents their stories side by side, but it’s the determination of Jennings that will stay with you.
PODCAST (EPISODE 310):New York’s 369th Infantry Regiment was America’s first black regiment engaged in World War I. The world knew them as the Harlem Hellfighters.
On February 17, 1919, the Hellfighters – who had spent much of the year 1918 on the frontline – marched up Fifth Avenue to an unbelievable show of support and love.
The Harlem Hellfighters were made up of young African-American men from New York City and the surrounding area, its enthusiastic recruits made up of those who had arrived in the city during a profound period of migration from the Reconstruction South to (only slightly) more tolerant Northern cities.
They were not able to serve in regular American military
units because of segregation, but because of an unusual series of events, the
regiment instead fought alongside the French in the trenches, for 191 days,
more than any other American unit.
They were known around the world for
their valor, ferocity and bravery. This is the story of New York musicians, red
caps, budding painters, chauffeurs and teenagers just out of school, serving
their country in a way that would become legendary.
FEATURING the voices of World War I veterans telling their own stories. PLUS some brilliant music and a story from Barack Obama (okay it’s just a clip of the former president but still.)
LISTEN NOW — THE HARLEM HELLFIGHTERS
Photograph shows group portrait of men recruited for the 15th New York National Guard Regiment, later known as the 369th Infantry Regiment (the Harlem Hellfighters), wearing armbands. Library of Congress.James Reese Europe, who both fought on the front lines AND brought jazz to France.Henry Johnson, whose skills on the battlefield earned him the French Croix de guerre in his lifetime — and a U.S. Medal of Honor many decades later.
Horace Pippin (American, West Chester, Pennsylvania 1888–1946 West Chester, Pennsylvania) Self-Portrait, 1944. Courtesy the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Bequest of Jane Kendall Gingrich, 1982 (1982.55.7) http://www.metmuseum.org/Collections/search-the-collections/482605
From the journal of Horace Pippin, featuring illustrations among his observations.US National ArchivesThe 369th were the first regiment to march beneath the Victory Arch, installed near Madison Square Park. Courtesy Museum of the City of New YorkUS National ArchivesUS National Archives
From the New York Times the following day after the parade:
“New York’s negro soldiers, bringing with them from France one of the bravest records achieved by any organization in the war, marched amidst waving flags and cheering crowds yesterday from Twenty-third Street and Fifth Avenue to 145th Street and Lenox Avenue.”
“At Thirty-Fourth Street the men marched under a shower of cigarettes and candy, and such tokens were pitched at them at other points in the line, but the files did not waver for an instant.”
US National Archives
The complete version of the 1977 film Men of Bronze, detailing the story of the Harlem Hellfighters, directed by Bill Miles, is available to watch on YouTube.
President Obama awards the Medal of Honor posthumously to two World War I veterans, Private Henry Johnson (featured in this show) and Sergeant William Shemin.
READING LIST From Harlem to the Rhine by Arthur West Little Harlem Rattlers and the Great War by Jeffrey Sammons and John Howard Morrow A Life In Ragtime: A Biography of James Reese Europe by Reid Badger Lost Battalions by Richard Slotkin A More Unbending Battle by Peter Nelson We Return Fighting from the National Museum of African American History and Culture When Pride Met Courage by Walter Dean Myers
FURTHER LISTENING
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.
ALL patrons at all levels will receive many benefits include the next episode of the Bowery Boys Movie Club,
an exclusive podcast (released every 6-8 weeks) celebrating New York
City in the movies. And patrons at the Five Points ($5) level and up
will get our other exclusive podcast — The Bowery Boys: The Takeout — released every two weeks.
We greatly appreciate our listeners and readers and thank you for joining us on this journey so far.
Before it closed in 2011, the Coliseum Cinema in Washington Heights proclaimed itself to be the ‘New York City’s oldest operating movie theater’. When it was first constructed in 1920, its stage would have hosted vaudeville acts as well as silent motion pictures.
But few films that ever premiered at the Coliseum would depict events as torrent or as dramatic as those that took place in the structure that stood on this spot many, many decades before.
An old stone tavern once stood high upon the bluffs of Upper Manhattan, in an area many years later referred to as Washington Heights.
The Blue Bell Tavern sat off Bloomingdale Road nestled in a grove of trees, a modest two-story dwelling alight at all hours with wanderers. New York travelers often passed it as they headed towards the King’s Bridge, a toll bridge over Spuyten Duyvil Creek.
To truly envision this gothic place in its natural environment, you have to picture Washington Heights before there was ever a Washington there — a lush, high ridge thick with trees, a natural vantage offering unobstructed views of the entire region.
Like the skyscraper observation decks today, a visitor could seemingly see the entire world from here.
One cold, stormy night some evening in November 1783, a damp and exhausted figure strode up to the door, a young woman who had escaped from her home many miles away.
She was there to meet her lover who had already arrived at the Blue Bell, a man soaked, in disarray and wearing what certainly would have been a common sight for the day — a British uniform.
This man was a sergeant in the British military stationed in the Hudson River Valley. But the army was now retreating. Indeed, they were leaving New York that very month.
The sergeant had fallen in love with this woman, a resident of colonial New York, who (as these sort of stories go) we know little about. We do know her parents disapproved of the British sergeant and would only relent to their marriage if he agreed to desert the army and remain in the United States.
On that rainy evening, the sergeant and his beleaguered love took each other in their arms and were finally married — here at the Blue Bell Tavern. As the story goes, it was a Quaker ceremony, for there were no other officiators that night at the tavern.
The Blue Bell, once situated at today’s intersection of 181st Street and Broadway, was built in mid 1720s as a home and renovated into the type of pleasant inn that, by 1753, the venerable Cadwallader Colden (not the former mayor, but his grandfather and later governor of New York) could find “very comfortable” food and lodging here with his friend James Delancey, the state’s lieutenant governor.
The tavern might have faded peacefully into oblivion if not for the Revolutionary War. When angry New Yorkers attacked the King George statue in Bowling Greenat the foot of the island, his stone head ended up on a pole in front of the Blue Bell.
A View of the Attack against Fort Washington and Rebel Redouts near New York on November 16, 1776
While the Continental Army fled from Manhattan during the month of September 1776, officers stationed here at the Blue Bell assessed their grim situation and coordinated the army’s next steps.
With the tavern located so close to a key pathway out of town, it also became a headquarters and lodging for British officers long after Washington’s army abandoned the city. At one point, even Colonel William Howe, head of the British forces, himself stayed here.
Flash forward to November of 1783 — Washington and his now victorious army were now preparing to re-enter New York, this time to push the British out of town and experience a new, free American nation from the vantage of the ravaged port city. “I remember well our march up the hill, and the noble appearance of George Washington as he sat on his big bay horse,” said a veteran of the war in Appleton’s Journal.
George would even stay for an evening at the Blue Bell, awakening early to prepare his army’s grand entry down Bloomingdale Road and into the city. (Another important tavern of the day, the Bull’s Head, would also play a prominent role in Washington’s arrival into the city.) But on that day, they would add two more people to their procession.
That British deserter and his new bride — the ones whose rendezvous at the Blue Bell led to their Quaker marriage — now emerged from behind the building and called out Washington’s name.
Given his rumpled British uniform, this certainly created quite an uproar among Washington’s attaché. The pair were taken into custody, and the British officer recounted his romantic tale to his captors. Washington and his men learned that:
“…the young man was a sergeant (which the chevron on his sleeve indicated) who had for some time loved and was betrothed to the young woman who was with him; that her parents, who lived in the city would not consent to her marriage unless he would stay in this country; that they had arranged a plan a few days before for a desertion on his part and an elopement on here; that they were to meet at the Blue Bell and be married, and there wait for the protection of approaching American troops. Their plan had worked well.
— Appleton’s Journal, 1873
The sergeant wished to desert the army and join the Americans if only they would provide protection for him and his young bride. Indeed, with so many Loyalists still in the city, the soldier’s betrayal would certainly have been met with retaliation.
In desperation, the sergeant and his new bride showed Washington’s men their newly inked marriage certificate and begged for mercy
In fact, the tale apparently amused Washington and his men, flush with the excitement of victory. “A bard” among Washington’s men even wrote a poem in the couple’s honor. You can read the whole thing here, though it begins:
“A soldier and a maiden fair,
Helped by shy little Cupid,
Fled from the camp and momma’s chair,
(Such guardians, how stupid!),
And to the Blue Bell did repair,
To have themselves a-looped.”
We can assume with the lighthearted tone of the poem that things turned out well for the happy couple. They were allowed to accompany Washington on his entry into the city the following day.
The Blue Bell miniature, displayed at the Museum of the City of New York when it opened the doors to its new Fifth Avenue home in 1930.
BThe old tavern passed through many owners (and many names) through the 19th century and eventually returned to its original purpose as a residence. One old source suggests that the building burned to the ground in 1876, though it may have survived this blaze into the new century.
Whatever structure stood here then was finally torn down by 1915. But tales of the Blue Bell entered nostalgic accounts of the Revolutionary War almost immediately, as 19th century historians struggled to piece together the American narrative from those who still remembered it.
The Blue Bell lived on long after its demolition in a most curious way — as a well-known miniature housed at the Museum of the City of New York.
An issue of Popular Science Magazine from 1930 observes the construction and installation of the Blue Bell exhibit, which made its debut that year in the museum’s new home on Fifth Avenue and 103rd Street.
The Coliseum in 1922, Museum of the City of New York
For many decades, you could go to the former spot of the Blue Bell Tavern and experience a Gothic romance of your own. Standing on that spot today is the abandoned RKO Coliseum, once one of Manhattan’s largest movie theaters.
The new episode of theBoweryBoysMovieClub explores the film The Warriors and its rich historical details. An exclusive podcast for those who support us on Patreon.
The new episode of theBoweryBoysMovieClub explores the film The Warriors and its rich historical details. An exclusive podcast for those who support us on Patreon.
WARRIORS COME OUT TO PLAY-AY! In 1979, the intense action drama The Warriors, depicting a rather flamboyant view of New York City gang life, hit American movie theaters with great fanfare and controversy. But the film has aged very curiously over the past four decades, becoming a cult classic that feels like a surreal fantasia (in tight leather pants).
Listen in as Greg and Tom recap the story and explore the many real New York City settings of the film — from the long-dismantled rides of Steeplechase Park in Coney Island to the dark foreboding corners of Riverside Park.
Of course The Warriors is really a tale of the New York City subway in all its grime and glory. If you’ve ever had a long and unlucky subway ride, then you’ll feel a certain sympathy for Snow and the gang.
HowdoIlistentheBoweryBoysMovieClub? Once you’re signed in on Patreon, you’ll see a private RSS link that can be put directly into your favorite podcast player. Even easier, it can also be played directly from the Patreonapp if you’re signed in.
Your support on Patreon assists us in producing our podcast and website and it helps as we endeavor to share our love of New York City history with the world.
Shouldyouwatchthemoviebeforeyoulistentothisepisode? This podcast can be enjoyed both by those who have seen the film and those who’ve never even heard of it.
We think our take on The Warriors might inspire you to look for the film’s many fascinating (but easy to overlook) historical details, so if you don’t mind being spoiled on the plot, give it a listen first, then watch the movie! Otherwise, come back to the show after you’ve watched it.
And if you support us at the New Amsterdam level and would like to get more bonus audio, please consider bumping up to the Five Points level (and above) to receive The Takeout, the aftershow podcast from Tom and Greg further discussing that week’s new Bowery Boys: New York City History podcast.
The new episode of theBoweryBoysMovieClub explores the film The Warriors and its rich historical details. An exclusive podcast for those who support us on Patreon.
Consider this one of the America’s strangest national landmarks — Fort Conger, a scientific research post originally built in 1881 by an American expedition in a remote and frozen area of Nunavit, Canada.
Some might call it the world’s most northern haunted house.
Over two dozen men — fronted by Civil War vet Adolphus Greely — lived and worked here for two years, battling a hostile environment to conquer the so-called Farthest North, an almost mystical destination that, if reached, would hold both international glory and economic possibility.
Labyrinth of Ice
The Triumphant and Tragic Greely Polar Expedition
Buddy Levy
St. Martin’s Press
But Labyrinth of Ice, Buddy Levy’s immersive new history of the Greely Expedition, doesn’t bask in scientific particulars. This is a study of historical horror, a tale of dire circumstances, survival and determination in one of the most remote areas on the planet.
After two years of work and exploration — through months of icy darkness — Greely and his men slowly realize that no rescue expedition was coming to retrieve them. In fact, a frozen wall of ice (and even some frustrating bureaucratic delays in Washington D.C.) had sealed their fate.
Library of Congress
The men were on their own. Their only chance for survival meant a retreat south through desperate conditions — over ice floes, along frozen waters.
Levy displays a unique gift of evoking genuine immediacy with historical material. The reader is steeped in the adventurers’ stark, remote circumstances, a benefit of having journals and even photographs from the doomed expedition.
Labyrinth evokes the mystery and dread of fictional adventures like AMC’s The Terror (based on a 2007 Dan Simmons novel, inspired by an earlier far-north exploration), presenting maps of the various watery corridors that you will be required to use if you want to follow in Greely’s frozen footsteps.
EPISODE 309 They’re tearing down your favorite old building and putting up a condo in its place. How is this even possible? New York City is so over.
Before you plunge into fits of despair, you should know more about the tools of preservation that New Yorkers possess in their efforts to preserve the spirit and personality of the city.
In the 1960s, in the wake of the demolition of Pennsylvania Station and other beloved historic structures, the New York City Landmarks Law was enacted, granting the city powers to protect its most precious endangered places. Today the Landmarks Preservation Commission is the agency empowered with administering the law.
Walter Daran/Hulton Archive/Getty Images
Walking down the beautiful street and see a brown street sign instead of the usual green? You’re in a historic district.
But preservation can be a tricky business; after all, the city is basically imposing rules about how someone else’s private property, in most cases, should look and be maintained. How do you preserve the past amid a rapidly changing metropolis.
Image of Upper East Side Historic District signage, courtesy Ephemeral New York
In this episode, we present a sort of ‘landmarking 101’, mapping the history of the New York City preservation movement and looking at the surprising and sometimes mysterious process of landmarking. It’s everything you’ve wanted to know about landmarks (but were afraid to ask)!
For more information on historic districts, please visit our friends over at the Historic Districts Council, celebrating their 50th anniversary this year. Check out their website for ways to get involved with present (and future) historic districts.
Visit the searchable New York City Landmarks map to locate landmarks and historic districts near your home or work. Here’s a screenshot of midtown Manhattan, as mentioned by Tom on the show:
From the New York Evening Post, April 24, 1832:
Some of the places mentioned on our show:
The Brokaw Mansion c. 1900, photo by Irving Underhill / Museum of the City of New York
St. John’s Chapel, 1895. Photo by Byron Company. Courtesy the Museum of the City of New York
New York Aquarium in Castle Clinton in the Battery Federal Hall, courtesy New York Public Library Hamilton Grange, photo by Thaddeus Wilkerson, 1889. Museum of the City of New York.
FURTHER LISTENING
After listening to our show on the New York City preservation, check out these episodes with similar themes —
The Rescue of Grand Central: The most important moment in New York City preservation history. Featuring an interview with preservation icon Kent Barwick.
Tales from Tribeca: The Manhattan neighborhood of Tribeca has several landmarks and historic districts, but one notable classic — St. John’s Chapel — was wiped away over 100 years ago.
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.
ALL patrons at all levels will receive many benefits include the next episode of the Bowery Boys Movie Club, an exclusive podcast (released every 6-8 weeks) celebrating New York City in the movies. And patrons at the Five Points ($5) level and up will get our other exclusive podcast — The Bowery Boys: The Takeout — released every two weeks.
We greatly appreciate our listeners and readers and thank you for joining us on this journey so far.
“The Raven” was first published in the New York Evening Mirror on January 29, 1845, and would come to define the morbid brilliance of its author Edgar Allan Poe.
Poe and his sickly young wife Virginia arrived in New York in 1844, lodging at a dairy farm at today’s West 84th Street, between Broadway and St. Nicolas Blvd. (While blocks would have been marked by the Commissioners Plan in the 1810s, there would have been little development here.) It’s widely believed that Poe “composed, or at very least, perfected” the poem in New York.
Believed to be the Brennan farm. Photo courtesy New York Public Library
Here’s another angle of the house in a fanciful illustration highlighting the very bucolic nature of the area then.
The blog Manhattan Past has an excellent post on the supposed whereabouts of the Brennan farm. Although he lived here for a short time, the street today is ceremonially referred to as Edgar Allan Poe Street. The street was officially given that distinction in 1980 and for many years presented misspelled street signs — “Edgar Allen Poe Street.”
A few days later after the poem’s debut in the Evening Mirror, on February 4, the New York Daily Tribunealso published “The Raven”. Here’s how it first appeared in the Tribune:
It was then published in the Broadway Journal, a couple of weeks before Poe became editor of that publication. The venture however was a financial failure. In 1846, he and Virginia moved to a farm-house in the area of Fordham (in the Bronx) which is still preserved today.
Poe hoped living far from the bustle of New York would help his wife; but she died here in on January 30, 1847 — almost two years to the day after the publication of “The Raven.”
Poe’s home in the Bronx, as it appeared in the 1910s. Courtesy Library of Congress
EPISODE 308 In the final decades of his life, steel tycoon Andrew Carnegie — one of the richest Americans to ever live — began giving his money away.
The Scots American had worked his way up from a railroad telegraph office to amass an unimaginable fortune, acquired in a variety of industries — railroads, bridge building, iron and steel.
Andrew Carnegie, 1913. (Library of Congress)
In the age of the monopoly, Gilded Age moguls often made their money in ways we might consider unethical and illegal today. But Carnegie’s view of his wealth was quite different than that of his rarefied clubhouse peers.
Carnegie devoted his latter years to philanthropy, primarily devoting his energies to the creation of libraries across the country.
Researchers at the Carnegie 135th Street library in 1938. (Courtesy The New York Public Library, Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture)
By the late 19th century, the New York City area already had dozens of libraries and reading rooms throughout the future five boroughs. But they were certainly not welcoming to every person. And those circulating libraries that were available were limited and woefully overburdened.
Carnegie’s unprecedented financial gift to the city would jump start the city’s nascent library systems (the New York Public Library, the Brooklyn Public Library and the Queens Borough Public Library) and broaden their reach into communities with the development of dozens of new branch libraries.
The Red Hook Carnegie library, 1915. Unfortunately this branch library was damaged in a 1946 fire and demolished. (Courtesy Brooklyn Public Library)
In this episode, we are joined by Adwoa Adusei and Krissa Corbett Cavouras, hosts of the Brooklyn Public Library podcast Borrowed, who give the Bowery Boys a tour of one of Carnegie’s most popular New York City libraries.
In the winter of 1908, thousands stood in line to visit the new Brownsville branch library. How do treasured structures like Brownsville continue to serve the needs of the neighborhood in the 21st century? Are Carnegie libraries, most of which still stand, prepared for the future?
LISTEN NOW — CARNEGIE AND NEW YORK’S PUBLIC LIBRARIES
After listening to our show, head on over to the Borrowed podcast to hear the other half of the story. Greg and Tom make an appearance on their show, speaking further with Krissa and Adwoa about Carnegie’s legacy in New York City, in the United States and around the world.
The Ottendorfer branch of the New York Public Library, pictured here in 1917. It actually predates the Carnegie library, the most lavish example of a building from the New York Free Circulating Library days.
New York Public LIbrary
FURTHER LISTENING
After listening to our show on the Holland Tunnel, check out these episodes with similar themes:
Carnegie Hall would probably be Carnegie’s best known gift to New York City, aimed not to the working class but to the city’s elite. By the early 20th century, however, it would be a stage for all New Yorkers … and for a variety of presentations
The Rise of the Fifth Avenue Mansions: Even as Carnegie was giving away his money, he comforted himself within a glorious Fifth Avenue mansion on 51st Street, literally across the street from Vanderbilts and Astors.
From the Borrowed podcast: The story of the Brownsville Stone Avenue branch of the Brooklyn Public Library, one of the first dedicated children’s libraries in the United States.
Below is a picture, facing east, of Seward Park Library in the Lower East Side at 192 E. Broadway (picture taken in 1911). This spectacular branch library, funded by Andrew Carnegie, opened in November 1909, two years before the 42nd Street main branch opened. All of the housing behind the library to the east has since been demolished.
Courtesy New York Public Library
The nearby park in the foreground is still there. Inn fact, it’s recently been renovated! But the small extension of Jefferson Street which separate the park from the library has been turned into a paved, closed off pedestrian plaza. The streets seen in the left of the photograph are completely gone.
The library was built by the firm Babb, Cook and Welch, whose accomplishments from the Gilded Age are seldomly still found today.
But, in fact, one of the firm’s lead architects William Cook was part of a committee which included Charles McKim (of McKim, Mead and White) and John Carerre (of Carerre and Hastings, who ultimately designed the famous 42nd Street branch) to standardize branch library designs in the city.
Those two better known firms got most of the commissions; however the Seward Park library remains one of Babb, Cook and Welch’s best known remaining public works.
During the library’s first years, readers were actually allowed onto a “roof garden.” According to a New York Times article from 1910, “There will be awnings over the top to shield from sun and the occasional shower; tables around which the readers can congregate, and a network of electric bulbs strung over the top so that there will be plenty of light for the industrious who wish to study.”
The rooftop library, 1910. Courtesy New York Public Library
Adults were even allowed onto the roof late into the evening, including “mothers who wish to do their sewing out of doors.”
Although this grand structure was placed here in 1909, it was certainly not the neighborhood’s first library. Once the domain of the private sector, libraries were provided by philanthropic organizations such as the Aguilar Free Library Society, which began offering a reading room for New Yorkers at this very address starting in 1891.
Below: Inside the Aguilar Free Library in 1895.
De Leeuw & Oppenheimer, – Souvenir book of the fair in aid of the Educational Alliance and Hebrew Technical Institute. New York : De Leeuw & Oppenheimer, 1895
Aguilar’s East Broadway library, “where the readers are nearly all Hebrew,” featured over 140,000 thousands books, the most popular being ‘Uncle Tom’s Cabin’ and ‘Around The World In 80 Days”. This library was sold in 1902 and remade as the building which stands there today.
The Seward Park Library has gone through two major renovations, the most recent in 2004, bringing back most of the building’s original lustre. As evidenced by this photo, little around it remains from its original condition.
Here are a couple more interesting views of the neighborhoods, featuring meany streets and structures that are no longer with us today:
Looking north, 1928. The library is mid-frame, far right. The main thoroughfare seen here is Essex Street. The Williamsburg Bridge can be seen faintly in the distance.
Kalart Co/Museum of the City of New York
Looking east along Canal Street to Strauss Square, Seward Park and the library. The Forward Building is the tall structure to the right.
EPISODE 307 The Holland Tunnel, connecting Manhattan with Jersey City beneath the Hudson River, is more important to daily life in New York City than people may at first think.
Before the creation of the Holland Tunnel, commuters and travelers had painfully few options if they wanted to get to and from Manhattan. And for the city’s many waterfront industries, there was mostly only one option — barges and ferries which carried cargo across the crowded Hudson River, maneuvering through an overcrowded port system which profited from the grotesque congestion.
And then along came the automobile, rapidly transforming the American way of life. How could an average motorist — or a regular cargo truck — get back and forth to New York City in its current chaotic state?
NJ.com
The new tunnel envisioned by chief engineer Clifford Milburn Holland would create a new pathway for motor vehicles, the first for such conveyances under the Hudson River.
Yet one pressing problem stood in the way of its completion. Railways and mass transit could travel through long, underground tunnels because their tracks were electrified. But automobiles produced poisonous exhaust — carbon monoxide — making a contained tunnel almost 100 feet underwater a deadly proposition.
The ingenious solution would ensure not only the success of the New York/New Jersey tunnel, but would change the fate of automobile transportation in the United States and around the world.
PLUS: The tragic story behind the naming of the Holland Tunnel
LISTEN NOW — THE HOLLAND TUNNEL
THE TAKEOUT — A bonus after-show podcast for those who support us on Patreon. We share a few interesting details that didn’t make it on the show — including the Holland Tunnel police force and their odd tunnel ‘cop car’ and the story of the first bridge over the Hudson River (in the year 1804!) PLUS — Why is the Holland Tunnel so underappreciated in comparison to the region’s great bridges? Subscribe at the Five Points level and above to receive this bonus show.
A full sized section of the Hudson River vehicular tunnel (aka the Holland Tunnel) 29′ 6 inches diameter, taken 1923, courtesy New York Public Library
Also taken 1923, courtesy New York Public Library
Miners in the tunneling shield, shoveling out the south tunnel, 4/5/23. NYPL
Canal Street shaft and air locks, South tunnel, 4/24/23, NYPL
Holing through North Tunnel between New York and New Jersey. November 1924. NYPL
The famously large New York river shaft caisson, leaving St. George, Staten Island. January 1923.
The governors, officially meeting halfway!
NYPL
Photo from 1935, courtesy Museum of the City of New York.
A Holland Tunnel catwalk car, used by Port Authority during the 1950s. Courtesy Hoboken Historical Museum
Madness! A 1954 postcard showing the maelstrom of traffic at the tunnel entrance in Manhattan. Courtesy Museum of the City of New York
The New York Land Ventilation Tower, photo courtesy Library of Congress
Ventilation towers on either side of the Hudson River. The tunnel runs under the Hudson between these towers. Photo courtesy Library of Congress
FURTHER LISTENING
After listening to our show on the Holland Tunnel, check out these episodes with similar themes:
The George Washington Bridge would open just a few years after the Holland Tunnel. It too faced some interesting engineering hurtles…..
The Tribeca neighborhood would be greatly affected by the tunnel’s construction — in grand ways (clearing away those congested ports) and bad (the true end of the old St. John’s Park neighborhood).
Wow it’s been a busy time on the podcast this year. Twenty-seven new episodes of the Bowery Boys: New York City History podcasts in 2019 — along with seven episodes of the Bowery Boys Movie Club, four of The Takeout and other bonus audio for those who support us on Patreon. That’s a lot of talking!
For 2020, we’re thrilled to announce MORE live shows than we’ve ever done before and new episodes visiting landmarks and neighborhoods that we’ve never visited on the show.
What follows is a list of our ten most popular shows in 2019. Did your favorite Bowery Boys episode make the list? We’ve embedded a player for each episode so you can listen to them all
In this special episode, the Bowery Boys podcast focuses on the delicious treats that add to the New York experience. These aren’t just the famous foods that have been made in New York, but the unique desserts that make the city what it is today.
The origins of some of these treats go way, way back — the Dutch New Amsterdam. Others have become staples of the New York diet thanks to immigrant groups who first developed and perfected them in neighborhoods like the Lower East Side.
So while this show may seem like a trifle, the underlying story celebrates the contributions of local communities in creating timeless food classics, served in historic bake shops, candy stores and cafes.
Cheesecake and cannoli are two of our five historic treats. What are the other three? Tune in and find out! (And definitely save some room after dinner for dessert.)
LISTEN NOW — JUST DESSERTS
THE TAKEOUT — A bonus after-show podcast for those who support us on Patreon. Greg dives into further tales of sweet history. Near the Brooklyn Bridge sits a remnant of an old Revolutionary War sugar house with a disturbing history (and possibly ghosts). The Gilded Age shopping district of Ladies Mile was also the home of a short lived chocolate factory. And the tragic story behind the Tootsie Roll.
PLUS: More on the history of soft drinks. Who was Doctor Pepper?
FURTHER LISTENING: Check out our other food history episodes!
Inside the wonderful world of Junior’s in BrooklynA view inside Caputo’s Bake Shop in Carroll Gardens, BrooklynA no-fuss egg cream can still be had at Gem Spa, which has been serving them for generations.Sweets to your heart’s delight at Veniero’s, celebrating 125 years.Ferrara’s in Little Italy is always hopping with hungry patrons….…as is Caffe Palermo’s around the corner, aka the Cannoli King!Sheet music celebrating the World War I ‘doughnut girl’A 1922 Salvation Army ‘doughnut race’. Harris & Ewing, photographer, Library of CongressThe Donut Casino, delivering thousands of free doughnuts to World’s Fair goers.A well-dressed employee working a doughnut machine at a shop in Times Square. 1945, Bob Leavitt, Look Magazine. Courtesy Museum of the City of New YorkNancy Templeton, the 1952 National Doughnut Queen flanked by her runners-up. orld Telegram & Sun photo by Fred Palumbo, Library of CongressA New York City candy store, advertising egg creams, 1935. Arnold Eagle, photographer. Courtesy Museum of the City of New York.A photo taken by Stanley Kubrick in 1947 of a child admiring pastries. Courtesy Museum of the City of New York
Is Bloomberg really running? If so, this would make David Dinkins the only previous living mayor of New York City never to have run for the highest office in the land.
And it begs the question — is it even possible for the leader of the biggest city in America to step up to the role of Commander In Chief?
Precedent tells us no. Not one New York City mayor in history who ever actively tried or hinted at being interested in the job ever got it. Indeed it’s difficult — especially in recent years — to even identify any genuine enthusiasm for such presidential runs.
The Road to the Presidency
This is rather unusual as the mayor of New York City has certain responsibilities akin to running an actual country. Our city has a diverse population the size of Austria with immense financial and cultural power. One might expect the job to be a natural stepping stone to the White House.
Mayors of American cities and towns have become president in the past although that biographical detail is usually not a defining aspect of that candidate’s résumé. For instance, Calvin Coolidge tenure as mayor of Northhampton, Massachusetts, was but one of several offices the lawyer achieved on his way to the presidency.
Grover Cleveland was also a mayor (of Buffalo), but it’s his experience as Governor of New York which recommended him for the Office of the President.
Mayor Philip Hone, in a painting by John Wesley Jarvis, never ran for President but ‘the party mayor’ was close friends with several of them.
Indeed the real road to power is through the office of New York state governor. Four former governors have become president (Cleveland, as well as Martin Van Buren, Theodore and Franklin Delano Roosevelt), four more were vice president (George Clinton, Daniel Tompkins, Levi P. Morton and Nelson Rockefeller) and two have even become chief justice of the Supreme Court (John Jay and Charles Evans Hughes).
Even those governors who failed to become president did so in a dramatic and historic fashion, such as former governors Al Smith, Samuel Tilden and Thomas Dewey (of the particularly famous photo below).
New York governors often have very interesting failed presidential runs!
Then you have Theodore Roosevelt who was the New York City police commissioner and eventual New York governor who became the Vice President and then the President of the United States — all in the span of less than seven years.
Courtesy US Navy
But Mayor of New York City? No.
New York City Mayors and the White House
The list of what-ifs and also-rans is long indeed:
Michael Bloomberg — The mayor from 2002-2013 has flirted many times with a presidential run but has never made the leap — until now. Since his first flirtation with a presidential bid, the political world has shifted greatly. The three-term Republican mayor changed his party affiliation to Democrat last year although he seems forever poised to run as a fiscally-minded centrist.
Rudy Giuliani — The mayor from 1994-2001 did run for President in 2008 but stumbled almost immediately after a major Florida miscalculation and never recovered, withdrawing on January 30, 2008.
John Lindsay didn’t fare much better than Rudy in his quest for the 1972 Democratic nomination. Starting out of the gate strong, like Rudy he stalled in Florida and eventually dropped out. Given the catastrophic changes to the city in the 1960s ad 70s, it’s not surprising that having ‘mayor of New York City’ on their political resume proved a stumbling block.
Robert F. Wagner (1954 to 1965) never ran for president but was short-listed to be Adlai Stevenson‘s vice president in 1956. Wagner was eventually beaten in balloting by Al Gore Sr. and John F Kennedy Jr. But, in the end, they were ALL beat for the spot by the clearly more popular, always reliableEstes Kefauver.
Below: Robert Wagner meets Fidel Castro during his visit to New York in 1959.
Courtesy La Guardia and Wagner Archives
New York City mayors before World War One were generally considered second tier, even props for political machines. Only a few were politically influential and that was often because of prior connections. You can read all our coverage of past New York City mayors here.
William Jay Gaynor (mayor 1910-1913) was widely considered a potential presidential hopeful, even with an assassin’s bullet lodged in his neck. Had he actually lived through his term as mayor, who knows?
George Brinton McClellan Jr (mayor 1904-1909) was never a presidential candidate but his father and Civil War icon George B. McClellan Sr most certainly was. The Union Army general ran in 1864 against Lincoln during his second term, promising to end the war in the South.
A Oakley Hall (mayor 1869 from 1872) (pictured at left) was as closely tied to the Boss Tweed Ring as a politico could be, but even he harbored presidential hopes. Considering he had to temporarily resign from mayor due to the Tweed scandal, I can’t imagine how much luck he would have had.
DeWitt Clinton (mayor for ten non-consecutive annual terms starting in 1803 ending 1815) collected political positions like postage stamps, but the one he could never lick was the presidency, defeated by incumbent James Madison in 1812. By June, Madison had declared war on England and later fled the White House when the Brits torched it.
How a Mayor gets to the White House
The closest a mayor ever got to a top federal job wasEdward Livingston, who became Secretary of State to Andrew Jackson. Which is interesting, as Livingston was literally ran out of Manhattan after his stint as mayor several years previous due to debts and scandals.
For the most part, most politicians who become the mayor of New York City rarely achieve higher elected office. John T. Hoffman is the last individual to be both New York City mayor and then a higher elected position (New York governor in 1869)
John T. Hoffman, a Boss Tweed favorite
This story has been revised from an article which ran on June 25, 2008. Because there’s always a chance, fellow mayors!
A toast to the great 20th-century architect Eero Saarinen! The Modernist icon was born on this date in 1910 in Finland. He immigrated to the United States with his parents when he was thirteen years old. His father Eliel Saarinen was himself a brilliant architect; his son would learn from the best.
Eero Saarinen was a versatile furniture designer and prolific architect, perhaps best known in the states as designer of the St. Louis Gateway Arch, an ambitious and even surreal monument that has come to define the city of St. Louis — and the American Midwest in general. When the Arch opened in 1965, it automatically entered the pantheon of great works of American art.
Saarinen was known as an architectural chameleon of sorts, shifting styles to fit the project. Although he died relatively young, at age 51 of a brain tumor, he gave New York City three very memorable, completely different buildings.
Sadly he did not live to see any of them completed (nor the Gateway Arch for that matter). Work was completed by his firm Eero Saarinen and Associates.
Carlo Fumarola/Flickr
Vivian Beaumont Theater (150 West 65th Street, at Lincoln Center)
Completed four years after Saarinen’s death, the Vivian Beaumont was designed as part of the Lincoln Center complex, thus its concrete and glass containment works in sync with the other buildings in the plaza.
Friendly but formal, this massive theater remains as the only Broadway house outside the traditional Broadway district and has a notable thrust stage that gives performances a virtual in-the-round feel. Last year, New York Magazine ranked the Vivian Beaumont as the second best Broadway theater in New York (after the Richard Rodgers Theatre).
There’s are also two other theaters in the building — the Mitzi E. Newhouse Theater (for off-Broadway productions) and the Claire Tow Theater for off-off productions.
We talked about Saarinen’s involvement with this project in our podcast on Lincoln Center:
CBS Building (51 West 52nd Street)
Saarinen’s critics accused him lacking a defining aesthetic, something you might believe comparing the Lincoln Center playhouse to this lurching, severe structure on Sixth Avenue, affectionately nicknamed Black Rock.
Both the Vivian Beaumont and the CBS Building opened the same year, 1965. The CBS Building employs a moat of public space, and the building springs out of the crevice like an ominous plant.
On an avenue of steel, the rather scary CBS Building was the first to use reinforced concrete, although it’s draped in black granite.
It remains the headquarters of the CBS Corporation to this day. Black Rock was designated a New York City landmark in 1997.
From its landmark designation report: “When seen directly, the tower’s bays appear open, with relatively narrow granite piers alternating with relatively narrow window bays of single sheets of plate glass, but when viewed from afar and necessarily at an angle, the V-shape of the piers effectively eclipses the view of the glass, creating the effect of a gray granite slab.”
The TWA Terminal in 1962, photographed by the Wurts Brothers. Museum of the City of New York
TWA Flight Center (JFK Airport, Queens)
If you’re gonna write home about a Saarinen building in New York, make it the kooky, sometimes foolish, always imaginative terminal he designed for TWA that was completed in 1962.
It’s a tragedy that he never saw any of his New York buildings — not to mention the Arch itself — in final form. The terminal is so exotic and loopy that it energized arriving passengers.
It has the unity of some organic space being, retro-futuristic down to its benches. Or as Saarinen describes: “All the curves, all the spaces and elements right down to the shape of the signs, display boards, railings and check-in desks were to be of a matching nature.”
It outlived TWA, which was bought out in 1991. Thankfully landmarked in 1994 — saving it from any potential urges to demolish its now-dated, spacy halls — it has recently reopened as the swanky retro TWA Hotel at JFK.
To hear more about the details of the TWA Flight Center — and Idlewild/JFK in general — listen to our show on the history of the airport.
Herman Melville, one of America’s greatest writers of the 19th century, was born 200 years ago today. Here are five New York-centric facts about Melville that you may not have known:
1) Melville was born at 11:30 pm on August 1, 1819, at 6 Pearl Street. Today, across the street from that approximate location of the address sits a Starbucks, the coffee franchise named after a character in Melville’s Moby Dick.
2) His grandfather Peter Gansevoort, a colonel in the Continental Army, had a fort named after him on the west side of Manhattan, in the area of today’s Meatpacking District. Gansevoort Street is a lasting tribute to both the colonel and his fort.
Melville worked on whalers and merchant ships as a young man, acquiring the rich experiences he would immortalize in his writing. For a time, he also worked in a customs office at West Streetand Gansevoort Street, almost exactly where the old fort once stood. Today a fortress to art stands in its place — the Whitney Museum of American Art.
3) His family’s wealth wildly fluctuated, and Herman’s father was at one point thrown in debtor’s prison. But at the height of the Melville’s prosperity, they managed to live in a luxurious townhouse at675 Broadway, between Bond and Great Jones Street. (Click the address to see what’s there today.) In the 1820s, that would have put them in the lap of wealthy New York
A painting of Coenties Slip circa mid 19th century, artist unknown. Courtesy Museum of the City of New York
4) Melville was very familiar with all of downtown New York’s seaport culture but made special note to mention those places along the East River — Whitehall, Corlear’s Hook and Coenties Slip — in his book Moby Dick. These locations along the east side would have been his landscape as a youth, the places where his mind began crafting tales of adventure. From Moby Dick:
“Circumambulate the city of a dreamy Sabbath afternoon. Go from Corlears Hook to Coenties Slip, and from thence, by Whitehall, northward. What do you see?- Posted like silent sentinels all around the town, stand thousands upon thousands of mortal men fixed in ocean reveries. Some leaning against the spiles; some seated upon the pier-heads; some looking over the bulwarks of ships from China; some high aloft in the rigging, as if striving to get a still better seaward peep.”
5) For much of his later career, Melville lived at 104 East 26th Street. Most of his greatest works had already been written, but it was from this house that he started a novella called Billy Budd. Uncompleted at the time of his death in 1891, it was later published and is today considered one of his greatest works. There’s a plaque nearby where this building once stood, making note of this important literary spot.
6) Melville died on September 28, 1891 and was buried at Woodlawn Cemetery. He had fallen into some obscurity at the end of his life; his initial obituary in the New York Times is a single paragraph. Somebody on staff, a lover of literature I would imagine, corrected this oversight a few days later with a longer tribute:
