Postcard Thursday: Mary Todd Lincoln

Two hundred years ago, on December 13, 1818, Mary Ann Todd was born in Lexington, Kentucky. She met Abraham Lincoln after she'd moved to Springfield, Illinois; they married in 1842.

We devote a chapter to the Lincolns in Footprints in New York, as New York and Brooklyn were important to both the president and the First Lady.

As we note:

During Lincoln’s first term, he was usually stuck in Washington, DC, but Mary Todd Lincoln came to New York frequently. Mrs. Lincoln’s first trip after her husband’s inauguration was in May 1861, just one month after the attack on Fort Sumter, and seems typical of her city sojourns. Mrs. Lincoln checked into the posh, new Metropolitan Hotel at Broadway and Prince Street, in the heart of the shopping quarter. This section of Broadway south of Bleecker Street had almost everything an out-of-towner could hope for: hotels, theaters, shops, restaurants. It was the Times Square of its day, and like its modern counter- point, there were probably visitors who checked into the Metropolitan Hotel and never left the environs of Broadway and Prince Street. 

Mrs. Lincoln arrived on a Saturday; the next day, she attended services at the Plymouth Church. On Monday, she shopped at A. T. Stewart’s marble palace; on Tuesday, Lord & Taylor’s was on the agenda, as well as a trip to Laura Keene’s theater, which stood on Broadway near Bleecker, just a five-minute walk from the hotel. On Wednesday, Mrs. Lincoln made what was probably her most lasting purchase: new White House china from E. V. Haughwout’s emporium at Broadway and Broome.

The next day, Mrs. Lincoln toured the Brooklyn Navy Yard; the following morning, Mrs. Lincoln inspected the “Park Barracks”—perhaps those in City Hall Park outside the Astor Hotel. Amazingly, the barracks were just about the only sign that America was at war. 

Mrs. Lincoln would return to New York many times, ostensibly as shopping excursions, but also, certainly, to get away from the mounting war pressures in Washington. In the summer of 1863, Mrs. Lincoln spent four days in New York, seeing friends, and being entertained on the French frigate Guerriere. It had been less than a month since the draft riots, but Haughwout’s and Stewart’s were open for business, and the theaters on Broadway were full. It was almost as if nothing had happened.

Not only did Mary Lincoln survive the assassination of her husband, she lost two of her four sons in childhood and a third, Thomas ("Tad"), six years after Abraham Lincoln's murder. Only her eldest son, Robert, survived her--he would go on to serve as Secretary of War under presidents Garfield and Arthur.

Mrs. Lincoln died in 1882 at her sister's home in Springfield, Illinois.

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Happy Holidays! If you are looking for a great gifts this holiday season, Inside the Apple and Footprints in New York look great on anyone's shelves!

 

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

Inside the Apple: A Streetwise History of New York City

Postcard Thursday: The Crystal Palace

On July 14, 1853, the "Exhibition of the Industry of All Nations" -- better known today as the Crystal Palace Exhibition -- opened in Midtown Manhattan in the small square that would one day become Bryant Park.

Spurred on by London's similar exhibition that showcased the industrial might of the British Empire, the American version of the fair supposedly focused on "all nations" In fact, it was a way for America to show off its growing prominence to the world.

Probably the most famous exhibitor was Elisha Graves Otis, who demonstrated one of the 19th century's most important inventions: the elevator safety brake.

As we write in Inside the Apple:

The idea of the elevator was not new; since antiquity, hoists and pulleys had moved cargo. But ropes frayed and pulleys malfunctioned, which meant that there had never been a viable passenger elevator. Without elevators, commercial buildings were limited to six or seven stories, and rents diminished the farther one had to climb from the street. Otis’s invention was a mechanism to automatically stop an elevator in the event of a fall. And to show the world how much he trusted it, he used himself as the test subject.

One block north of the Crystal Palace grounds stood the Latting Observatory, with a steam-powered elevator which could take visitors up two levels. They would then, however, have to climb stairs to the top of the observatory as no one trusted an elevator to take them higher. For his demonstration Otis got inside the elevator cab, which was suspended from the top of the observatory, and called down to his assistant who—with a dramatic flourish—severed the elevator cable. The cab lurched, dropped an inch, and then shook to a halt, held in place by Otis’ new brake.

The story has, over the past 160 years, developed the mystique of legend. In Gotham, Mike Wallace and Edwin Burroughs write that when Otis's platform "reached the highest level, an assistant presented the inventor with a dagger on a velvet cushion" that he used to cut the rope. In the new book Cities are Good For You, Leo Hollis tells a version where Otis is hoisted aloft with "several barrels and heavy boxes, until [he is]... 30 feet above the heads of the throng. After a dramatic pause an assistance cut the hoists with an axe and the crowds gasped as they anticipated seeing the engineer crash to the floor."

Whether it was a dagger or an axe, it was dramatic, and hundreds of people left the observatory that day having witnessed the future. In 1857, Otis installed his patented safety break in the Haughwout china store on Broadway, and it quickly became a tourist attraction. (The store would also become famous in 1861, when Mary Todd Lincoln came to buy a new set of White House china. That's a story we cover in Footprints in New York.)

After the exhibition had closed, the Crystal Palace -- built of cast-iron, and thus thought to be fireproof -- dramatically burned to the ground on October 5, 1858.

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JULY 29 at 6:30PM || ALEXANDER HAMILTON'S NEW YORK

We will be speaking at the New-York Historical Society on Friday, July 29, at 6:30pm. The illustrated talk, which takes you through the New York City Alexander Hamilton would have known, is free with museum admission (which is pay-what-you-wish on Friday nights) but the museum would like you to make a reservation. Click this link for all the details: http://www.nyhistory.org/programs/exploring-hamilton%E2%80%99s-new-york

* * * * Read more about NYC history in   Footprints in New York: Tracing the Lives of Four Centuries of New Yorkers Inside the Apple: A Streetwise History of New York City