The Bowery Boys: New York City History
A rather startling title card from ‘Birth of a Nation’ [courtesy the Liberty Lamp]The question posed in the headline is a fascinating urban legend I’ve been obsessed with proving (or disproving) for about a year. It pops up occasionally during discussions about New York film history. And I think I’ve come up with an answer.… Read More
In honor of the grand re-opening of the Museum of the Moving Image this Saturday, we’re going all New York film and media here on the blog, posting some new stuff and re-printing some older ones pertinent to the city’s filmmaking history. Above, you can watch ‘Father Gets In The Game’, a cheeky short from… Read More
Federal Hall, home to the first House of Representatives 1789 [NYPL] This week the United States got a new Speaker of the House of Representatives, John Boehner, and its first female ex-Speaker, Nancy Pelosi. This changing of the guard got me to wondering how many politicians representing New York had ever held this powerful job.… Read More
Daredevils trespassing the ice between New York and Brooklyn in 1871. I spent much of New York’s Christmas blizzard nightmare in various airports throughout the country, unable to get back to La Guardia Airport, where it appears I would have just been stranded anyway. With all the transportation fiascoes, the unplowed streets and the mounting… Read More
Here’s the whole menu of our 2010 podcasts. As always, you can download them all for free from iTunes and or your favorite podcast aggregator. The original blog page for each is listed below, along with a link to download directly from our satellite site. See you in 2011! TRINITY CHURCHBlog page / Trinity Church:… Read More
Once upon a time, in December 1900, there was a toy store on 67 Cortlandt Street with very, very sad display windows. The store’s owner, Robert Ingersoll, was best known for his ‘dollar watches’ and, on the success of those, had branched out to include other items for sale, including a great variety of toys… Read More
Ballerinas in their first flight of The Nutcracker: the Ballet Russe at the 51st Street Theater, 1940 (Picture courtesy the New York Times) Few ballet productions of the last century had more influence on American culture than George Balanchine’s 1954 edition of Tchaikovsky’s The Nutcracker, as performed by the New York City Ballet. Although not… Read More
The misty Madison Square Garden greets a stranger to the park: America’s first community Christmas tree. (Courtesy LOC)HOW NEW YORK SAVED CHRISTMAS Throughout the week I’ll spotlight a few more events in New York history that actually helped establish the standard Christmas traditions many Americans celebrate today. Not just New York-centric events like the Rockefeller… Read More
The canyon, as seen from the Empire State Building. (Photography by the Wurts Brothers, courtesy NYPL) PODCAST: Times Square is the centerpiece of New York for most visitors and a place that sharply divides city residents. Nothing about it sits still. Even its oldest buildings are severely transformed and slathered with electronic imagery. In 1900,… Read More
(Postcard picture courtesy the marvelous Vintage Chromes blog)Sixty-five years after the birth of Times Square, it was apparent that things were taking a rather bizarre left turn. The old Times Building, a building so critical to the neighborhood that its address was now One Times Square, had been stripped of its architectural finery and encased… Read More
The Hotel Astor in its opening year, 1904. The Astor was a Waldorf; the Knickerbocker was an Astor. Makes sense? (Photo courtesy NYPL) Longacre Square didn’t become Times Square without the Astor family making a lot of money. Much of the area had been farmland that had been purchased by John Jacob Astor in the… Read More
From atop the Times Tower, in 1904, another world lights up below. The year that turned a ragged, uptown intersection into the place known as Times Square also brought an important work of advertising to the area, for a product that has been all but forgotten. Oscar J. Gude was already a master of outdoor… Read More
In 1904, the first year that Longacre Square tried on its new name Times Square, it was still populated with horse-related services like carriage shops and stables. But it seems the horse-less carriages were represented too. In the photograph above, the white building with the triangular roof, once a stable, was now home to the… Read More
A Broadway saloon in 1859 during a ‘Sunday sacred concert’, as in, not very sacred at all. The Santa Claus probably looked like this on a good night. [Courtesy NYPL] I’m doing some research on a couple upcoming entries for the How New York Saved Christmas feature which I started last year and came across… Read More
New York’s original St. Patrick’s Cathedral located in Little Italy — or NoLIta, if you must– just got a serious upgrade yesterday, when the Pope deemed the old, revered Catholic church an officially sanctioned basilica. A Catholic basilica is a church with ‘certain privileges’, an elite designation where various religious rituals can take place. This… Read More