Postcard Thursday: Gilded Age Walking Tour -- Oct 7 at 11:00am

NEW YORK IN THE GILDED AGE WALKING TOUR   Sunday, October 7, at 11:00 a.m. Come Explore Beaux-Arts Grandeur   Authors James and Michelle Nevius have been exploring New York and writing about the city for many years. This week, James had a story in The New York Post about the rivalry between Chicago and New York brought about by the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition, also known as the "White City" World's Fair. This Columbus Day weekend, celebrate the 125th anniversary of the fair and the architectural movement it helped create, by joining James and Michelle for a guided walk in Midtown Manhattan of some of the iconic landmarks from this Beaux-Arts boom. New York between 1893 and 1913 remade itself as the "Paris of America" and the true world city. From the Broadway theaters that moved to Times Square at the turn of the 20th century to giant public spaces like Grand Central Terminal and the New York Public Library, this tour will feature some of the best Gilded-Age architecture in the city. $15 per person for blog readers. Please register ASAP as space is limited.

REGISTER NOW Your name The number in your party A cell phone in case we need to reach you the day of the tour MEETING PLACE WILL BE SENT WITHIN 24 HOUR OF RECEIVING YOUR RESERVATION (use the button below or email walknyc@gmail.com) SIGN UP NOW STAY INFORMED F O L L O W on F A C E B O O K F O L L O W on T W I T T E R F O L L O W on I N S T A G R A M

Times Square at the turn of the 20th Century

Walking tour of Gilded Age Lower Manhattan -- Sunday, April 22, at 10:00AM

On Sunday, April 22, 2012, at 10:00AM, we will be offering our next public walking tour:

Exploring the Gilded Age in Lower Manhattan

Reservations taken 4/15 or earlier: $10 per person
Reservations taken 4/16 or later: $15 per person
RESERVATIONS TAKEN ON A FIRST-COME, FIRST-SERVED BASIS
events@insidetheapple.net

Join James Nevius, co-author of Inside the Apple: A Streetwise History of New York City, on Sunday, April 22, to explore Beaux Arts architecture in Lower Manhattan. This is the era of JP Morgan, and we’ll see a number of sites associated with him, including the House of Morgan and International Mercantile Marine (IMM) ticket office. IMM owned, among other ships, White Star’s Titanic; since the centennial of that boat’s sinking is just one week earlier, we’ll also talk about the golden age of New York as a port for both goods (as evidenced in Cass Gilbert’s triumphant US Custom House) and people. The tour will last between 1.5 and 2 hours.

Copies of Inside the Apple will be available for purchase at the tour.

To reserve, send an email to events@insidetheapple.net with

·         Your name

·         The number in your party

·         A contact cell phone number

·         A good email address where we can send you information about where the tour will start.

PLEASE NOTE that if you reserve no later than Sunday, April 15, the cost is just $10 per person. All reservations received starting Monday, April 16, will be $15 per person.

This tour will have only a limited number of spaces, so please reserve early to avoid disappointment.

Payment will be taken at the start of the tour by cash only. Directions to the tour’s starting point will be sent out after your reservation is confirmed. 

Hope to see you there! 

The Bombing of Wall Street

Today marks another tragic anniversary in New York City: on September 16, 1920, a bomb exploded on Wall Street, killing 30 people and injuring over 200 more. It was the deadliest terrorist attack on American soil before the Oklahoma City bombing and still one of the greatest unsolved crimes of the 20th century.

As we write in Inside the Apple:

At 12:01 pm on Thursday, September 16, 1920, the church bells of Trinity Church, Wall Street, finished pealing and were suddenly replaced with another noise—the horrible sound of 500 pounds of lead sash weights exploding from a horse-drawn wagon on Wall Street....

As the smoke cleared and people began to pick themselves up from the street (including Joseph P. Kennedy, JFK’s father who was then a stockbroker), they were faced with a scene of carnage and devastation. Approximately 100 pounds of dynamite had expelled the sash weights into the air, shattering windows and tearing through nearby pedestrians. The most gruesome sight was the north wall of Morgan’s Bank. Amid the gouges in the marble from the shrapnel there was also a woman’s head—severed from its body but still wearing a proper hat.

The attack took place soon after the arrest of Sacco and Vanzetti and strong evidence pointed to anarchists. While books and articles have been written over the years laying out a case that anarchist Mario Buda was the bomber, he was never charged at the time and the case against him is mostly circumstantial.

Today, if you go down to the corner of Wall Street and Broad Street, you can see the old Morgan Bank building on the southeast corner (now part of "Downtown by Starck," a luxury residential building). Walk along the Wall Street side of the bank and you’ll soon come to a heavily pock-marked section of wall. These are still the original shrapnel marks from the 1920 bombing, preserved as a memorial to those who died.

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You can read much more about the 1920 bombing, J.P. Morgan, and New York in the 1920s in Inside the Apple: A Streetwise History of New York City. It’s available online and at all major bookstores.

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The Panic of 1907

There was an excellent article in the New York Times about the closed-door meeting in Washington where Treasuty Secretary Henry Paulson dictated the terms of the government's $250 billion investment in 9 large U.S. banks. Seems that Paulson got them all in the room and told them they weren't leaving until they'd signed the one-page agreement he had drafted.

This brought to mind a famous story about the Panic of 1907--at the time one of the most severe economic panics the nation had ever seen. At that time it wasn't the government that Wall Street turned to for a bailout, it was J. Pierpont Morgan, whose famous "House of Morgan" stood opposite the New York Stock Exchange. (The building, still there, is now part of a condo development.)

When the Knickerbocker Trust Company failed in October 1907, Morgan was able to prop up the floundering stock exchange by getting banks to promise $25 million dollars to infuse the market with liquidity. However, a number of other small banks and trusts were on the verge of collapse and Morgan knew there'd be more market uncertainty without a stronger course of action. On the night of November 2, 1907, he invited the leaders of the city's big banks to his new library. Once there, Morgan locked them inside and wouldn't let them go until 5:00 a.m. the next morning having secured an additional $25 million in investment capital to bolster the failing trust companies.

Morgan, who died six years later, was one of America's largest collectors of rare books and fine art. The library--the original section of which was designed by noted Beaux-Arts architect Charles Follen McKim--is now the Morgan Library & Museum, one of New York's finest small museums.

More information about Morgan, his library, and the Panic of 1907 can be found in Inside the Apple. Pre-order you copy today!

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