Postcard Thursday: Elizabeth Ann Seton

Though you can't see it on this classic linen postcard view of St. Patrick's Cathedral, the church features magnificent front doors:

... and one of the figures on those doors is Saint Elizabeth Ann Seton, whose was born on August 28, 1774, which makes her America's first-born saint (not the first American to be sainted).

As we write in Inside the Apple:

Born Elizabeth Ann Bayley, Seton was the daughter of Columbia College’s renowned professor of anatomy, Richard Bayley, and a member of the de rigeur Episcopal parish, Trinity. In 1794, the Episcopal Bishop of New York officiated at her marriage to merchant William Seton and in 1801, the Setons moved into a waterfront house on State Street near the Battery. However, William Seton’s health was failing and just two years later the family moved out, embarking on what they hoped would be a restorative trip to Italy. 

Sadly, William died in Pisa shortly after their arrival. Rather than turn right around (for what was an exceptionally long sea voyage), Elizabeth stayed in Italy for a few months grieving—and discovering the Catholic Church. After returning to New York the next year, she began seriously considering conversion and in 1805 she was received into the Catholic faith—much to the chagrin and embarrassment of her friends and relatives.

Had Elizabeth contented herself to be privately Catholic, it perhaps wouldn’t have mattered so much, but soon her sister-in-law came to her with an interest in conversion. When that happened, Elizabeth’s family began threatening to have powerful allies in the state legislature kick her out of New York for proselytizing. (Or so the story goes—they never followed through.) Elizabeth didn’t give them the satisfaction; instead, she moved to Baltimore in 1808 to open a school and then founded America’s first convent, the Sisters of Charity, the next year. She died at the convent in Emmitsburg, Maryland, in 1821. In 1963, she was beatified by Pope John XXIII, and in 1975, she was elevated to sainthood for her posthumous miracles, making her the first American-born saint.

Though there is a shrine to Saint Elizabeth Ann Seton on the site of her State Street home, her house is no longer standing. The house next door (which is part of the shrine) dates from 1790s and is one of the oldest left in Manhattan.

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Explore more NYC history in

Footprints in New York: Tracing the Lives of Four Centuries of New Yorkers

If you haven't had a chance to pick up a copy of Footprints yet,
you can order it from your favorite online retailers (Amazon, Barnes and Noble, etc.) or
from independent bookstores across the country.

And, of course, Inside the Apple is available at fine bookstores everywhere.

Postcard Thursday: The Third Avenue El

James is finishing up a piece right now on the history of St. Mark's Place in the East Village (we'll let you know when it's published), and as part of that research he's been reading about how the Second Avenue and Third Avenue Elevated trains were an integral part of the neighborhood for years.

This postcard, showing the Third Avenue El running along the Bowery, is ubiquitous in postcard shops (often the sort of card that can be picked up for under a dollar), which means they must have printed thousands of them at the turn of the twentieth century as a typical New York City view.

The Third Avenue El first opened in 1878, running from South Ferry to Grand Central. Two years later, a Second Avenue El began operating from a split at Chatham Square. The Third Avenue line eventually ran all the way into the Bronx (parts of its infrastructure are still used today by the 2 and the 5 trains), and was the last of the lines to come down in Manhattan, ceasing operation in 1955.

Do you have recollections of riding the Third Avenue El? If so, please let us know in the comments.

A crowd on St. Mark's Place watches the demolition of the Third Avenue El.
Photo by Calvin S. Hathaway, Dec. 16, 1955 (courtesy of the Museum of the City of New York)

Updated Blog Layout

You may have noticed that we changed the layout of the blog a few weeks ago.... and today we've changed it again. Most people who reach the blog do so through a Google search for a specific person or event, and we want to make the site as useful to them as possible.

(If you've read Footprints in New York, you may remember that "Anne Hutchinson" was the search term that brought more people to our blog than anything else. That's no longer true. Recently, she's been edged out by "Robert Fulton," but we'll see how long he hangs onto the top spot.)

Let us know if you have any feedback about how you think the Inside the Apple blog could be more useful to you.

Thanks,
James & Michelle Nevius

PS: James now has a separate website and blog of his own. Visit him at www.jamesnevius.com for more info.

Postcard Thursday: Thomas Edison's Phonograph

Postcard of Thomas Edison with an early phonograph, ca. 1888.

Where would we be without Thomas Edison? As James noted over on his personal blog the other day (which you can read at http://jamesnevius.blogspot.com), Edison is responsible for so many inventions that define modern life: the light bulb, movie projector, and phonograph among them.

Today marks the anniversary of Edison's introduction of the wax cylinder phonograph in London in 1888. At a press conference there, Edison played a recording of Sir Arthur Sullivan's "The Lost Chord," presumably on a machine very much like the one Edison is seen with in the postcard above (if not, in fact, that very machine).

A few months later, Sullivan -- infatuated with the possibilities of the new device -- made an "audio postcard" to send back to Edison in the United States. Luckily, both the original recording of Sullivan's piece (perhaps the oldest extant musical audio recording) and his message to Edison survive:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lv7i-gkSWn0]

And if you want to hear a version of "The Lost Chord" in higher fidelity, here it is:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DRx8-rgQyRs]

Lastly, notice that in the postcard version of Edison and the phonograph, the background has disappeared. This is the original image:

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Explore more NYC history in

Footprints in New York: Tracing the Lives of Four Centuries of New Yorkers

If you haven't had a chance to pick up a copy of Footprints yet,
you can order it from your favorite online retailers (Amazon, Barnes and Noble, etc.) or
from independent bookstores across the country.

And, of course, Inside the Apple is available at fine bookstores everywhere.

Postcard Thursday: Calvert Vaux

Bike path on Ocean Parkway courtesy of the Museum of the CIty of New York

Today's postcard, dated 7/19/1908, shows the "cycle path" on Ocean Parkway -- the very first bike path in New York City.

This illustration is just one of many in James's article published earlier today on Curbed about the architecture of Calvert Vaux, one of the unsung heroes of mid-19th century New York City design. People who know his name associate it with his parks, including Central Park and Prospect Park, but he built a number of fantastic Victorian Gothic edifices all around the city.

Read the full article at:
http://ny.curbed.com/archives/2014/08/07/mapping_central_park_architect_calvert_vauxs_other_nyc_work.php

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Explore more NYC history in

Footprints in New York: Tracing the Lives of Four Centuries of New Yorkers

If you haven't had a chance to pick up a copy of Footprints yet,
you can order it from your favorite online retailers (Amazon, Barnes and Noble, etc.) or
from independent bookstores across the country.

And, of course, Inside the Apple is available at fine bookstores everywhere.