The Bowery Boys: New York City History
The Metropolitan Opera’s soprano sensation Geraldine Ferrar, photo taken April 1913. I guess fur was never out of season a century ago! “When You Done Your Christmas Furs — It will be an added pleasure to know they came from Gimbels — the house with the time-honored experience in Furs — for surely it requires… Read More
“Photograph shows a boy and a girl dancing while an Edison Home Phonograph plays in a house in Broad Channel, Queens, New York City.” — taken between 1910-1915 Here’s something many people thought they’d never see again in New York City — the opening of a new record store. Rough Trade, known for their famous… Read More
These unbearably cute orphans seen above were lined up to go to the National Horse Show at Madison Square Garden which began on November 15, 1913. These are of course the days of the Garden down at the northeast corner of Madison Square, the glorious McKim, Mead and White structure topped with a glittering statue… Read More
Hopefully this young lady acquired this turkey by legitimate means. In this week’s podcast, I feign shock at the wild party held at the old home of famed actress Charlotte Melmoth, a former school for etiquette-turned-booze hall. To quote historian Henry Reed Stiles directly: “After [Charlotte’s] disease, the house was converted into a tavern, which… Read More
The Tree-Mark Shoe Store at 6-8 Delancey Street. You may know this building today as the Bowery Ballroom, a music venue since 1997. (Wurts Brothers, date unknown, both courtesy NYPL) The interior of the shoe store, 1930 (Pic courtesy MCNY) This building has had a rocky history, according to historian Matthew Postal. Using remnants of an old theater… Read More
No amount of studying will prepare you for some of these odd questions. (A girl at Seward Library, photographed by Lewis Hine.)Trivia quizzes are very popular today in bars and pubs throughout the city, but in the past, they’ve had more elitist purposes. In November 1914, a group of possibly insecure ex-New Yorkers in Chicago… Read More
Photo above courtesy Drew Dies/Flickr He has a cool set of pictures from that day here. Today is the tenth-year anniversary of the Northeast Blackout of 2003 which shut down power for most of New York City (and much of the Northeast) for almost 24 hours, with some areas experiencing outages well into the second day. I… Read More
The studio of William Merritt Chase in the Tenth Street Studio Building at 51 West 10th Street. Another appears below. [Smithsonian] Take a look at these extraordinary photographs of artist studios in New York City from the late 19th century to the early 20th century, the interiors of apartment buildings and houses rendered into a… Read More
Lewis Wickes’ photograph of a few children enjoying a bit of ice cream on a hot day, 1910. (NYPL) 1. America’s first ice cream shop was located on Dock Street** (roughly today’s Pearl Street) in 1774. The British confectioner Philip Lenzi advertised ice cream of “any sort”, along with a host of treats, including sugar… Read More
I’m grateful to see horses getting a little love in the waning years of regular horse-drawn vehicles in New York. But never realized they had their own drive-thru horse wash! This 1912 horse recuperation station was made possible by William J. Gane, the proprietor of a few Herald Square moving picture houses and a ‘pioneer… Read More
I present this little news item from the June 6, 1913 New York Tribune in its entirety: 1) The idea of bombs exploding all over the city is shocking to us today. But in fact the threat of makeshift bombs were sometimes employed in extortion plots such as those by the Black Hand. Most of these… Read More
A barber shop at the Hotel de Gink on the Bowery, circa 1910-15 [LOC] The fight for worker’s rights swept through a variety of occupations over a century ago as New York City laborers rebelled against unfair corporate practices and unsafe working conditions. Garment workers marched the avenues in protest following the tragic Triangle Factory… Read More
May 1st used to be the day that yearly apartment leases ended, resulting in a fury of chaotic furniture relocation known as Moving Day. The April 25, 1897 New York Tribune insert below gently lampoons the event. This was really the worst traffic day in New York each year, as thousands of people shuffled around… Read More
The U.S. Sub Treasury Building — today’s Federal Hall — as it appeared in a colorized postcard in the 1900s (courtesy NYPL)“Hey! Getcha buffalo nickels here. Only 15 cents!” On March 1, 1913, the usual bustle of Wall Street was enlivened with the voices of young men — mostly messenger boys, bank runners and peddlers,… Read More
A study in madness: a view inside one room of the 1913 Armory Show This Sunday marks the 100th anniversary of the opening of the 1913 International Exhibition of Modern Art — aka, the Armory Show of 1913 — which stunned New Yorkers and revolutionized the direction of American art in the 20th century. So… Read More