Postcard Thursday: Lost Landmarks

The Leonard Jerome mansion.

The New York Merchandise Mart, which replaced the Jerome mansion

Yesterday, Curbed NY ran a story that James wrote about two New York City landmarks that were demolished in the 1960s: the Leonard Jerome mansion on Madison Square and 71 Pearl Street, a commercial building in the Financial District.

While it's not surprising that 71 Pearl was never part of a picture-postcard view (and, in fact, James was able to find only one photo of it, below), it was a little surprising that the Jerome mansion, which later housed the Union and Manhattan clubs, never warranted a postcard image.

The building in the center (slightly obscured by the El tracks) is 71 Pearl Street. Notice the arched windows on the second floor, the basis for its landmark designation.

After searching our own archives and coming up short, we looked through dozens of postcards of Madison Square hoping to find an inadvertent image of the Jerome mansion. Here's the only one we discovered:

Courtesy of the exhibition "Flatiron High and Low." (https://vanalen.org/projects/flatiron-high-and-low/)

If you look just to the right of the tower of Madison Square Garden, you can see the roof of the Jerome house peeking over the treeline.

Read James's entire story about these two demolished landmarks at http://curbed.com/archives/2015/04/29/how-some-of-nycs-first-landmarked-buildings-became-rubble.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.

Keith Moon, The Who, and the Hotel Navarro

Today would have been the sixty-sixth birthday of the Who's drummer, Keith Moon. Moon was born in England -- and died in London when he was just 32 -- but like many rock stars, he spent a good deal of time in New York City, much of it at the Hotel Navarro at 110 Central Park South.

Built in 1928, the Navarro became the go-to stop for rock bands in residence in New York. In the 1970s, it was home base for the Grateful Dead, the Rolling Stones, the Kinks, the Who, and many others.

As Tony Fletcher writes in Moon: The Life and Death of a Rock Legend, at the Navarro "the group had finally found a New York hotel that would not just put them up, but would actually put up with them. The Navarro, on Central Park South, had as its manager a genial Irishman by the name of Mr. Russell who seemed, almost impossibly, quite content to let the Who stay on his premises for as long as they desired."

Rumors later circulated that the Who actually owned a one-third share of the hotel, but this seems unlikely. What's more likely is that it was the sort of thing Moon might have boasted in his drug-fueled mania. According to Fletcher, when the group was staying at the hotel during the abortive attempts to record Lifehouse (the follow-up to Tommy that ultimately gave rise to Who's Next), Moon was frustrated by his inability to get into sound engineer Bob Pridden's room to hear some tapes. Since the rooms were adjoining, Moon simply started carving a hole in the wall with a "hotel paperknife" until he could loosen a brick and eventually -- covered head to toe in dust -- appeared in Pridden's room to retrieve the tape.

Other versions of the story are not so tame; in Rock Scully's Living with the Dead, Moon was on a quest for drugs. Having already done a prodigious amount of cocaine, Moon decided to go to Studio 54. But he'd locked himself out of his room without his drugs. As Scully recalls:

He's a man possessed. He's stripping the plaster off the wall with a buck knife. He's got that mad Jack-Nicholson-with-the-ax look-here's Johnny! He's a miracle of enthusiasm. Now he's got the plaster off and he's down to the lathe and bricks. 

"Won't be a moment," he says and splits. Am I being too optimistic to think he's abandoned the project? Gone to raid Pete Townsend's stash, most probably? But no, it's too good to be true. He goes downstairs to the basement and comes back up with a chisel and a hammer. He's taking the bricks out one by one. 

"I own a third of this hotel, y'know," he says by way of explanation. He's going, "God, I'm gonna get in so much trouble for this!" But he doesn't care, he's pounding away at it! He's determined to get back into his room and get his drugs....Finally the hole is big enough. Moon wriggles through it, gets his stash and crawls back through the hole, once again forgetting to open his door. He's now covered with dust from head to toe, like a ghoul recently exumed from from a graveyard.

The Navarro was later renovated into the Ritz-Carlton and is now an apartment building.

Here's Moon drumming with the Who at Madison Square Garden during the multi-night appearance in 1974:

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Inside the Apple: A Streetwise History of New York City

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New York Thrills to the 6-Day Walk

Every four years when the Olympics take center stage, pundits murmur about the more odd-ball sports: rhythmic gymnastics? synchronized swimming? 50-kilometer race walking?

This last event has a long history -- there's been a race walk in the Olympics since 1908 and the sport grew out of the nineteenth-century obsession with long-distance walking, or pedestrianism, which hits its peak in the late 1870s. In 1878 and 1879 a series of six-day foot races known as the Astley Belt Races were held in London and New York; the ones in New York were the most talked about sporting events of their day, drawing thousands of spectators to Madison Square Garden to see a handful men battle it out to see who was the world's greatest pedestrian.

The craze for long-distance walking is usually traced back to Edward Weston, who in 1861 decided to walk from Boston to Washington, DC, for Abraham Lincoln's inauguration. It took Weston ten days and ten hours -- getting him to Washington four hours after Lincoln was sworn in -- but netted him favorable press. In 1867, Weston decided to walk from Portland, Maine, to Chicago, which took him 26 days, but which earned him a $10,000 prize. (In an era of dollar-a-day wages, this was a significant sum and, during its brief heyday, race walking would go on to become the highest paid sport in the country.)

As the appetite for long-distance walking increased, Weston created the six-day race, which could take place on an indoor track. The goal was simply to see who could walk the most miles over the course of six days and six nights. Unlike modern race walking, which has strict rules against running, six-day racers could combine walking, running, and could rest whenever necessary.

In 1878, Sir John Astley decided to sponsor the Astley Belt races in order to capitalize on the sport's growing popularity. The first Astley Belt race took place in London in 1878. Dan O'Leary, the only American in the contest, easily won by covering 520 miles.

The championship then moved to New York to Madison Square Garden (or Gilmore's Garden as it was then known). Over the course of six days, 30,000 spectators turned out to see local favorite John Hughes fall to O'Leary. Immediately, the city was bitten by the race-walking bug; the third Astley Belt race was quickly scheduled for March 1879 with only four competitors. Three were Americans: O'Leary, Charles Harriman, and John Ennis; the fourth was a young Englisman named Charles Rowell, who'd been sent over to try to capture the race-walking title for the U.K. The race was one of the most closely followed of the era. Hourly updates were posted in saloons across the city and tens of thousands of dollars were wagered on the outcome. (Indeed, the athletes themselves could supplement the race's large purse by getting in on some side-bet action.)

O'Leary, the defending champion, looked weak from the start and dropped out after 215 miles. (Rumors swirled that he'd been drugged, but O'Leary denied them.) Madison Square Garden increased the admission price to $1 to take advantage of the throngs of people trying to get inside -- by some reports, over 70,000 witnessed the race. By the fifth day, it was clear that Rowell, the English challenger (pictured above as a British lion in a Thomas Nast cover for Harper's), would win. He stopped after hitting the 500-mile mark. Neither Ennis nor Harriman could match him, and Rowell captured the title and the $20,000 first prize.

A fourth Astley Belt race, back in London, saw Edward Weston, the sport's pioneer, emerge victorious. This set the stage for a fifth, and final, showdown at Madison Square Garden pitting Weston against Rowell and a pack of other racers. The race began just after midnight on September 22, 1879. Rowell, the heavy favorite, pulled ahead early and Weston settled toward the back of the pack. On the fifth day, Rowell seemed on the verge of dropping out -- he took an uncharacteristically lengthy rest and when he emerged from his sleeping tent, he seemed ill. But the Englishman rallied, eventually covering 530 miles.  Weston, meanwhile, had managed just 455 miles.

As quickly as six-day race walking had captured New York's imagination, the sport began to fade. This was, in part, due to the rise of cycling, which became a popular sport at Madison Square Garden. Also, the long-distance walkers set themselves to other, less spectator-friendly pursuits, such as cross-country walks. Daniel O'Leary and Edward Weston each walked across America. Charles Rowell turned his attention to the marathon race, which was also supplanting race walking as a competitive sport.

Six-day racing, however, never faded away. Sri Chimony's followers, based in Queens, continue to host six-day events on a regular basis in New York, and there are competitive events around the world. The current world record, held by Yiannis Kouris, is 644 miles.

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Read more about Madison Square Garden and sports in New York in

Inside the Apple.

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Stanford White's Madison Square Garden

On June 16, 1890 -- one hundred and twenty years ago today -- the second, and arguably most famous, of the arenas to bear the name Madison Square Garden opened for business. Designed by famed architect Stanford White, it was New York's biggest entertainment venue and is still considered by many to be one of the greatest buildings of the Gilded Age.

The first venue to be called Madison Square Garden opened on Madison Avenue and 26th Street in 1874. Originally named the "Monster Classical and Geological Hippodrome," it was run by P.T. Barnum in a converted railroad freight building. In 1879, William K. Vanderbilt renamed the building Madison Square Garden, using it as a velodrome as well as a site for boxing matches and other sporting events. However, the building was open air and was torn down in 1888 so that an enclosed arena could go up on the spot.

Stanford White's Garden, which opened two years later, essentially contained four theaters: the main amphitheater, with seating for 8,000 (and plenty of additional standing room), a concert hall, a 1,200-seat theater for plays, and a rooftop garden and cabaret. It was this last theater that became most famous when it was the site of the "crime of the century": White's murder in June 1906 during a performance of Mam'zelle Champagne.

The Garden's 32-story Moorish tower was originally topped with an 18-foot statue of Diana by Augustus Saint-Gaudens. Made of bronze and weighing 1800 pounds, the statue was designed to be weather vane that spun in the wind. White and Saint Gaudens soon had second thoughts about this and the statue was removed to be sent to the 1893 Columbian Exposition in Chicago (where it was eventually destroyed in the fire that engulfed the fair grounds). A lighter, fixed, 12-foot version of Diana was then set atop the Garden, where it stood until the building was demolished in 1925. That Diana now resides at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, though a copy is also at the Metropolitan Museum.

When White's Garden had been built, Madison Square was still in the center of the city's entertainment district, with theaters stretching from 14th Street up Broadway to 38th Street. However, with the creation of a new Broadway theater district centered around Times Square in the early 20th century, Madison Square Garden suddenly began to seem too far downtown and in 1925, the Garden moved to Eighth Avenue and 50th Street. That building was, of course, subsequently replaced by the current Garden that was built after the destruction of Charles McKim's Penn Station in 1964 (the other crime of the century).

Interested in more Stanford White architecture? Grab a copy of Inside the Apple and download our walking tour of White's architecture.

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Read more about Stanford White and Madison Square Garden in

Inside the Apple: A Streetwise History of New York City.

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Walking Tour of Stanford White's New York

So often when we commemorate anniversaries, it is of something tragic or terrible – and this week is no exception. Tomorrow, June 25, marks the 103rd anniversary of the murder of architect Stanford White at the theater at Madison Square Garden. White was killed by his ex-girlfriend’s husband, Pittsburgh millionaire Harry K. Thaw.

(If you read press coverage from 1906, it always refers to Thaw as being from Pittsburgh – as if that explained everything somehow.)

Instead of rehashing the murder itself (which you can read all about in Inside the Apple: A Streetwise History of New York City), we thought this week we’d provide a walking tour of some of White’s significant New York buildings. He was one of the greatest Beaux Arts architects and his firm, McKim, Mead & White, is responsible for much of the Neoclassical look of late 19th- and early 20th-century New York.

The tour can be found at http://www.insidetheapple.net/whitewalkingtour.pdf (note: PDF file!)

You’ll notice that some stops refer to chapter numbers; these are chapters in Inside the Apple where we tell the story of a particular Stanford White building in greater depth.

So print out the tour, grab a copy of Inside the Apple, and go explore the Gilded Age!

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