Postcard Thursday: Civil War New York

Happy Thanksgiving!

In case you missed it, James had a piece on Curbed NY a couple of days ago commemorating the 150th anniversary of the Confederate plot to burn New York during the Civil War. The article looks at a dozen or so sites that were important during the war and are still standing.

You can read the article here:
http://ny.curbed.com/archives/2014/11/25/mapping_13_surviving_civil_war_sites_across_new_york_city.php.

And don't forget that reservations are open for our December 7 walking tour:
http://blog.insidetheapple.net/2014/11/postcard-thursday-pearl-harbor-day-tour.html.

Hope you are having a great holiday weekend!

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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: Pearl Harbor Day Tour of Midtown

This perfectly innocuous linen card shows Grand Central Terminal and the elevated bridge that takes car traffic around the station. Thousands of these cards were produced and you can often find them lining the dollar bin at postcard stores.

The reverse, however, is more interesting and ties directly to our next public walking tour, which will be held Sunday, December 7, at 10:00 a.m.

The card reads:

Hello there! Stopped here for a few days. Just couldn't pass it up. It's still New York & it'll never change even with war conditions. Jack

The postmark at the top ("Buy Defense Savings Bonds and Stamps") reveals that the postcard was mailed August 30, 1942, nine months after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor had brought the United States into World War II.  Jack was probably well aware when he was sending this postcard was that just two months earlier, Nazi saboteurs had landed on Long Island with express orders from Hitler to bomb important civilian targets around the United States and that Grand Central was likely high on the list.

Join us on December 7 as we walk through midtown talking about the city's role not just in World War II, but also World War I, the Cold War, and more. The walk costs $15 per person (if you don't want a signed copy of Footprints in New York) or $25 per person if you'd like a book.

This is a great opportunity to pick up a signed copy of the book as a holiday gift!

RSVP REQUIREDTo sign up for the walk please email the following to footprintsinnewyork@gmail.com

1. Name
2. Number in your party
3. Cell number in case we need to reach you on the day of the tour
4. How many people are tour only ($15 each) or tour + a copy of our new book Footprints in New York ($25 each)

​MEETING PLACE WILL BE EMAILED TO YOU WHEN YOU RESERVE

The History of Bedford Avenue, Brooklyn

For those of you who don't follow us on Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram, you may not have seen that James had an article published last week on Curbed about the history of Brooklyn's Bedford Avenue. At nearly eleven miles, Bedford vies for the title of Brooklyn's longest street, so this piece concentrates on the area in Williamsburg, today one of the trendiest thoroughfares in the borough.

You can read the entire story, "Tracing Three Centuries of Williamsburg's Bedford Avenue" at http://ny.curbed.com/archives/2014/11/06/tracing_three_centuries_of_williamsburgs_bedford_avenue.php

Despite the fact that the photo caption says "Brooklyn Bridge," this is the Williamsburg Bridge.

A number of illustrations that James had collected for the story couldn't fit in the final published piece, including this great shot from the Library of Congress of Jewish residents of the Lower East Side and/or Williamsburg praying on the Williamsburg Bridge (above) and a photo of the "Pride of the Nation" (below), the famous carriage that was housed on Bedford Avenue.

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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: Van Cortlandt House

This undated postcard from the early twentieth century (ca. 1915, if we had to guess) shows the Van Cortlandt House in the Bronx, one of the stops we make in the chapter of Footprints in New York that details the history the Delancey family.

As we write in the book:

Considering how easy the house is to reach—it sits less than a ten-minute walk from the northern terminus of the IRT No. 1 train, the city’s oldest subway line—it’s surprisingly empty. In fact, when I visit, the only other person there is a Dutch woman, who is very concerned with carefully examining every souvenir in the tiny gift shop. It is a recurring theme that the city’s more off-the-beaten-path historic sites are either empty or, if they do have visitors, they are schoolchildren or foreigners. Where are the American tourists? Safely ensconced on Manhattan, I presume. 

Soon, I discover that the Dutch woman and I won’t have the place to ourselves. A costumed interpreter—I’ll call his garb late-Colonial/early- Revolution—is leading a group of two-dozen fourth graders down the house’s main staircase. 

“Everybody likes to play!” he admonishes to no one in particular. “There’s a time for play. But there’s a time to be serious!” I will hear this advice reverberate through the house a few more times during my visit, though I will never see him or the children again.

As the children’s footfalls fade, I am left staring into the house’s formal parlor at a portrait of Frederick’s son Augustus van Cortlandt. In the years leading up to the American Revolution, Augustus—a Patriot—was New York City Clerk; in 1775, he spirited the city’s records out of Lower Manhattan to this farm, hiding them from the British in his father’s burial chamber on nearby Vault Hill. 

Tremendous care has gone into furnishing this home, from the seventeenth-century Dutch room on the second floor to the “best” bed- chamber used by George Washington on his visits to the house. That room features a beautiful mahogany dressing table and an English chest of drawers from 1725, both of which descend from family members. They've draped a blue coat and a tri-cornered hat on one chair, as if General Washington has just stepped out for a moment.

If you haven't had a chance to visit the Van Cortlandt House, it's a worthwhile excursion. The resources page of our website has information about visiting the house and other spots mentioned in Footprints.

* * * *

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.