Tag: Rent

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Moving Day! Mayhem and Madness in Old New York

EPISODE 324 At last! The Bowery Boys: New York City History podcast looks at one of the strangest traditions in this city’s long history — that curious custom known as Moving Day.

Every May 1st, for well over two centuries, from the colonial era to World War II, rental leases would expire simultaneously, and thousands of New Yorkers would pack their possessions into carts or wagons and move to new homes or apartments. 

Of course, for the rest of the world May 1 would mean all different things – a celebration of spring or moment of political protest. And it would mean those things here in New York – but on a backdrop of just unbelievable mayhem in the streets.

There are a few theories about the origin of Moving Day but most of them trace back the Dutch colony of New Netherlands. So why did New Yorkers continue the custom for centuries?

FEATURING Davy Crockett, Lydia Maria Child, The Jeffersons, Mickey Mouse and an amazing New Yorker named Amy Armstrong with a really stubborn husband.

PLUS: Greg reads a poem.

To get this episode, simply stream or download it from your favorite podcast player.

Or listen to it straight from here:
MOVING DAY! MAYHEM AND MADNESS IN OLD NEW YORK

Moving Day (in Little Old New York), 1827, Unknown Painter (Met Museum)
Harry T. Peter’s Collection of Pictorial Newspaper Illustrations, The First of May in New York City – Moving Out. Courtesy New-York Historical Society Library
Newspaper illustration 1869
A circa 1921 Pierce Arrow moving van parked on the street, Byron Company. 1921. Courtesy the Museum of the City of New York
An illustration by Philip Reisman, 1929, courtesy the Museum of the City of New York
Moving Day 1936 in an illustration by painter and cartoonist Don Freeman. Courtesy the Museum of the City of New York

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‘Moon’ Struck


There are very few ‘real’ diners left in Manhattan. My personal favorites still in existance are the Pearl Street Diner in the financial district, the Square Diner in tribeca (order the onion rings, trust me on this), and the far less endangered Empire Diner up in Chelsea

But mention of the words ‘Manhattan’ and ‘diner’ in a sentence always used to conjure up one image to me: the Moondance diner, deep in Soho off 6th Ave, with its beat-up interior and spectacular, spectacular glittery, swivelling moon sign.

However, the sun now sets on the Moondance, at least for the New York eater. The restaurant, a scrappy fixture of the 30s, finally closed up this year and, in an unusual move, will be transported 2,100 miles to La Barge, Wyoming. Yes, that’s right. Placed on a semi tractor-trailer, and driven across country, to the middle of the least populated state in the nation.

Like an abused hand-me-down at a thrift shop, the restaurant was sold for $7,500 to a La Barge couple who plan to reopen to feed the town’s hungry 493 residents, who at the moment have NO restaurant at all in town.

They should be lucky the restaurant was around at all. *Surprise* the restaurant was closed to make way for luxury condos. But the Extell Development corporation, who bought the land, made a cursory gesture to history by donating the restaurant shell and ubiqitous signage to the American Diner Museum, based in Rhode Island.

It was the Diner Museum that found a new home for the Moondance. The Museum also has other classic East Coast diners for sale if you’d care to purchase one for your backyard.

The removal of the Moondance is a blow for theatre fans, as the restaurant once employed the late Jonathan Larsen, creator of ‘Rent’. It was also the location for several films and TV sows, most recently “Sex and the City” and the first ‘Spider-man’. The Moondance also played a jokey 50s diner in an episode of ‘Friends’ where Monica was employed wearing a blonde wig and fake breasts.

We’ll leave it to the sardonic response of Brooks of Sheffield at Lost City to explain how we really feel about this.

So long, little doggie!

UPDATE: Eater reports that the city is inquiring a little further into just how exactly they plan to uproot the building from its foundation and transport it. Why do I get a weird feeling this thing’s going to end up in the middle of the highway somewhere in Ohio?