Postcard Thursday: In the Papers

These personal ads graced the front page, first column, of The New York Daily Herald on February 1, 1868 -- exactly 150 years ago today -- and give an insight into how New Yorkers who were not personal friends communicated in the age before Snapchat and dating apps. What makes them so tantalizing is that each advertisement had to be pithy and include only as much information as to make it relevant without revealing anyone's true identity. (Much like Twitter would be if Twitter wasn't a morass of political name-calling.)

They are all good (and just a small sampling of the ads that ran that day) but this is a favorite:

"The charming ladies (in carriage) who so kindly noticed tall gentleman, with dark mustache, and who returned salutations and and waving of handkerchiefs when opposite 37 Broad Street, may confer favors by addressing Banker, Herald Office."

This second advertisement, also from Feb 1, 1868, is from the back page of The New York Times. The notice takes up almost an entire column (see it here) and is for a proposed home for soldiers who'd been injured in the Civil War.

As Brian Johnson notes in "The Gettysburg Compiler":

In the aftermath of the Civil War, the number of men who had suffered debilitating wounds was staggering and the need to do something for them was great. Nearly 300,000 Union soldiers had survived gunshot wounds and nearly 30,000 had suffered amputation. Disease, the greatest killer of Civil War soldiers, probably disabled even more than battle wounds.

 A home for wounded and disabled veterans seemed necessary and in the 1860s, as this advertisement attests, fundraising for the project was moving forward quickly. The site, on the very spot where one of the war's most important conflicts took place, seemed fitting. What could go wrong?

The whole thing turned out to be a fraud. The New York backers "authorized an illegal lottery of shoddy diamonds, and appointed themselves...to the board of managers." Then, an "inquiry exposed the Asylum as nothing more than a tax fraud scheme for the benefit of the New York investors. Pennsylvania’s tax laws...could be more easily exploited than in their home state, and the idea of a Gettysburg Asylum for Invalid Soldiers offered the perfect guise."

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Read more about New York City history in our two books:

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

Inside the Apple: A Streetwise History of New York City

Postcard Thursday: Fifty Years Ago Today, Sgt. Pepper Taught the Band to Play.... (more or less)

On June 1, 1967, the Beatles released what is widely considered to be their crowning achievement, "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band." Except, it turns out, June 1 isn't the day it came out.

In the UK, the album had actually dropped on May 26, rushed into stores perhaps because illegal copies were already circulating. Meanwhile, the album didn't officially come out in the United States until June 2 -- though some stores may have put in on their shelves early here, too.

Though Rolling Stone magazine ranks Sgt. Pepper as its #1 album of all-time, it's instructive to remember that it wasn't fully appreciated at the time of its release. The venerable New York Times called it an "album of special effects, dazzling but ultimately fraudulent." If you have a Times subscription, the whole review is worth reading, but other highlights include:

Like an over-attended child, "Sergeant Pepper" [spelled out, of course, this being the Times] is spoiled. It reeks of horns and harps, harmonica quartets, assorted animal noises and a 41-piece orchestra.

"Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds" is an engaging curio, but nothing more. 

In substituting the studio conservatory for an audience, they have ceased being folk artists, and the change is what makes their new album a monologue.

Other contemporary reviews were more positive, but it's also interesting to note that most came out in columns labelled "Teen Scene" or something similar, an indication that no one over the age of 20 really needed to pay attention to popular music. In those columns, while the album is praised, there a sense of resignation that there's nothing with a good beat for dancing.

However, two aspects of the album were seemingly universally praised: the innovation of removing a space between each song so that the whole album played like a suite; and the inclusion of printed lyrics on the album sleeve. Commonplace today, this was a first for pop music.

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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

Postcard Thursday: Times Square, Western Union, and the Time Ball

Tonight, it is estimated that more than 1 billion people around the world will watch the illuminated ball drop in Times Square to ring in the new year. This New Year’s tradition in Times Square dates back to 1907—the dropping ball replaced an earlier fireworks display—but the notion of dropping a ball as a way of keeping time is a much older tradition.

In 1877, a ball was added to the top of the Western Union Building on Lower Broadway. (We couldn't find a postcard of this building in our collection; the above stereo slide from the Library of Congress will have to do.) Each day at noon, a telegraph signal from Western Union’s main office in Washington, DC, would trip a switch in New York and the ball would descend from the flagpole. Visible throughout the Financial District—and, more importantly, from all the ships in the harbor—it allowed people to reset their watches and ship chronometers. For the first time, New York ran on a standard time.

As the New York Times noted in 1877, this idea of a ball dropping to keep the time wasn’t new. For many years prior to the Civil War, the New York custom house had signaled the time with a ball drop, and in the 1870s it was common to find time balls in major European ports. However, when it began operation in April 1877, the Western Union ball was the only one in a North American port and quickly became a fixture of the Manhattan skyline.

Telegraph wires run on Broadway outside the Western Union Building. After the Blizzard of 1888, these would all be buried underground.

Western Union, afraid that the time ball wasn’t always going to work, set up a system whereby a red flag would be flown from 12:01 to 12:10 p.m. on days that the ball refused to drop. Further, information would be sent to the press each day informing them whether the ball actually dropped at noon or had fallen at the wrong time!

When the Times ushered in New Year's from their brand-new skyscraper in Times Square in 1904, they did so with fireworks shot from the building's rooftop. However, the police soon began to fear that fireworks might be a hazard in the rapidly developing neighborhood.

Instead, in 1907, the Times adopted the time ball as their symbol for ushering in the new year and placed a giant ball atop their skyscraper. That original Times Square ball, made of iron and wood and lit by 25 incandescent lights, weighed 700 pounds. We've been dropping a ball from the top of that building ever since. The current time ball, lit by energy-efficient LED diodes, now stays atop the old Times Building year round so that everyone who visits New York can see the actual ball that drops on New Year’s Eve.

Happy New Year everyone!

Michelle & James

[This article was adopted from an earlier post from 2009.]

A History of Complaining about Valentine's Day

Happy Valentine's Day!

Every year, when February 14 rolls around, there's a rush to buy candy, flowers, and jewelry to commemorate the feast day of the various Saint Valentines (at least three early Christian martyrs bear that name). And every year, people complain about it. But perhaps you'll be happy to know that the tradition of kvetching about the holiday is a time-honored one.

As early as February 14, 1853, the New York Times was sighing about how the once pastoral and courtly traditions of Valentine's day had "vanished before the advancing tide of so-called civilization." In a lengthy piece commemorating the holiday, the Times editorialized that "Saint Valentine has emigrated from the fresh, fair country, and abides in dull, fevered cities." (Presumably New York in 1853 was just such a "dull, fevered" city.)

The Times went on to criticize the "namby pamby" verses of modern valentines -- and their expense. "Thousands of dollars are annually expended in the United States on their purchase.... Every store at all connected with the stationary [sic] business has been blazing for the last week with pictures of hideous men and women...each with some lines of doggrel [sic] written underneath them." (Did the Times not have copy editors in 1853?)

At the American Valentine Company's offices on Nassau Street, the Times's author is shown elaborate valentines in boxes "possessing so many secret folds and unexpected disclosures of Cupids and verses and wreaths of impossible flowers" that it would take "a half hour to open and an hour to shut." Though some valentines cost as little as six cents, others--in ornate boxes--were priced as high as $130. In 1853, when an average laborer made just a dollar a day, this was an incredible sum.

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Read more about New York in 1853 in

Inside the Apple

and don't forget our next book

Footprints in New York comes out April 15, 2014, but you can pre-order today.

Around the World in 16-1/2 Minutes

Ninety-nine years ago today, the New York Times decided to find out how long it would take a commercial telegram to circle the globe. The record had been set in 1903, when President Roosevelt celebrated the completion of the Commercial Pacific Cable by sending the first round-the-world message in just 9 minutes. However, that message had been given priority status and the Times wanted to see how long a regular message would take -- and what route it would follow.

At 7:00 p.m. on August 20, 1911, the Times telegraph operator on the seventeenth floor of the newspaper's offices in Times Square sent a telegram that stated simply: "This message sent around the world." Sixteen-and-a-half minutes later, the same telegraph operator received his message back. In the intervening minutes the telegram had traveled from New York westward, stopping in:

• San Francisco
• Honolulu
• Midway Island
• Manila
• Hong Kong
• Saigon
• Singapore
• Madras
• Bombay
• Aden
• Suez
• Port Said
• Alexandria
• Malta
• Gibraltar
• Lisbon
• The Azores
• and then back to Times Square.

The Times was particularly struck by the portion of the route sent by the Indian Government telegraph from Madras to Bombay. "This line," they wrote, "traverses the domains of the Nizam of Hyderabad, the most powerful Prince in India, from the Coromandel to the Malabar coast, crossing the Indian peninsula and passing through great forests inhabited by man-eating tigers, panthers, boa constrictors, and pythons, and singing its way past the lonely residence of the American missionary, whose only gleam of civilization is the buzzing on the telegraph wires near his bungalow."

Today, the building where the Times dispatched their record-setting message is called One Times Square and is best known for its news zipper and the dropping ball on New Year's Eve. The Times moved out in 1913 and eventually sold the building in 1961.

* * *

Read more about One Times Square and the history of the area
in Inside the Apple: A Streetwise History of New York City.

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Why Does a Ball Drop in Times Square on New Year's Eve?

Greetings faithful blog readers!

We hope that where ever you are you are ramping up to celebrate (or if you are in Asia, have already celebrated) a wonderful end to 2009 and start to 2010.

One of the most frequently asked questions we get when we are leading tours in Midtown is: "Why does a ball drop in Times Square on New Year's Eve?" So, in honor of that imminent event, we thought we'd re-run last year's New Year's Eve blog post (below, brought slightly up to date), which answers the question.

Enjoy your holiday, stay safe, and we'll blog again in 2010!

Michelle & James Nevius

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Tonight, an estimated billion people around the world will watch the illuminated ball drop in Times Square to ring in the new year. This New Year’s tradition dates back 102 years—the dropping ball replaced an earlier fireworks display—but the notion of dropping a ball as a way of keeping time is an older tradition.

In 1877, a ball was added to the top of the Western Union Building on Lower Broadway. Each day at noon, a telegraph signal from Western Union’s main office in Washington, DC, would trip a switch in New York and the ball would descend from the flagpole. Visible throughout the Financial District—and, more importantly, from all the ships in the harbor—it allowed people to reset their watches and ship chronometers. For the first time, New York ran on a standard time.

As the New York Times noted in 1877, this idea of a ball dropping to keep the time wasn’t new. For many years prior to the Civil War, the New York custom house had signaled the time with a ball drop and in the 1870s it was common to find time balls in major European ports. However, when it began operation in April 1877, the Western Union ball was the only one in a North American port and quickly became a fixture of the Manhattan skyline.

(Western Union, afraid that it wasn’t always going to work, set up a system whereby a red flag would be flown from 12:01 to 12:10 p.m. on days that the ball refused to drop. Further, information would be sent to the press each day informing them whether the ball actually dropped at noon or had fallen at the wrong time!)

In 1907, the New York Times—then owners of the skyscraper from which the ball drops on New Year’s Eve—adopted the time ball as their symbol for ushering in the new year. That original Times Square ball, made of iron and wood and lit by 25 incandescent lights, weighed 700 pounds!

In 1911, the original Western Union Building was demolished by the company’s new owners, AT&T, so they could erect a larger structure. (That impressive marble building, known as 195 Broadway, still stands.) Plans called for a new time ball, but by the time the new AT&T headquarters was finished, the ball had been replaced by a giant, gilded statue by Evelyn Beatrice Longman called The Genius of Electricity. (The statue remained on the building until 1980, when it was removed, restored, and installed in lobby of the AT&T headquarters in Midtown. It now resides in Dallas, Texas.)

For the past year, the Times Square ball has not only been lit by energy-efficient LED diodes, for the first time it stayed atop the old Times Building year round so that everyone who visited New York in 2009 could see the actual ball that drops on New Year’s Eve. Presumably it will stay atop its pole again in 2010.

* * *

Read more about the history of Times Square in
Inside the Apple: A Streetwise History of New York City.

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Or, to subscribe via email, follow this link.
Also, you can now follow us on Twitter.

The Downfall of William "Boss" Tweed

Today marks the anniversary of the beginning of the end of the notorious Tweed Ring and its leader, Tammany Hall boss William M. Tweed.

On July 8, 1871, the New York Times led with a story headlined "MORE RING VILLIANY." While this wasn't the first time the paper had railed against Tweed and Tammany politics, it was the first time they were able to back up their allegations with proof.

Tweed is still one of the best-known names from 19th-century New York; but as we note in Inside the Apple: A Streetwise History of New York City, his actual period in power was relatively brief. Though he served as an alderman and member of the U.S. congress in the 1850s, Tweed's stranglehold on New York politics really began in the aftermath of the Civil War Draft Riots of 1863 (a topic we'll tackle in another post). Over the next decade, Tweed turned New York into his own personal cash register, skimming money from building projects and, as the Times article points out, collecting exorbitant rents for National Guard armories--some of which didn't even exist.

The article's subhead laid out the basic details: "Exorbitant prices given for regimental headquarters--stable lofts at a premium--thousands of dollars paid for bare walls and unoccupied rooms. Over eighty percent of the money stolen."

Over the course of the next two pages, the article spells out precisely how Tweed and his cronies were bilking the city. The Sixth Regiment, for example, rented an almost unusably small drill hall on the second floor of Tammany Hall's headquarters. While the Times notes that such a space might fetch $3,000 on the open market, the treasurer of Tammany Hall instead was paid by the city $86,000 a year--the assumption being that the money then wended its way into the pockets of Tammany Hall's leader, Tweed.

Another armory, at 53 Chrystie Street, was being rented for the more reasonable sum of $5,000 a year. The only problem--there was no armory at 53 Chrystie Street, just the rear entrance to a store owned by Tweed's business partner James H. Ingersoll. Indeed, a thorough examination of the books showed that most of the rents paid out by the city somehow ended up in Ingersoll's account.

For the next three months, the Times -- and Harper's Weekly cartoonist Thomas Nast -- pursued Tweed relentlessly. He was arrested in October 1871 and put on trial in 1873. He was convicted, sent to prison, released, re-imprisoned, escaped.... well, it's a long story. We'll blog more about it future posts and you can, of course, read all about it in Inside the Apple.

* * *

Though there is still a Tammany Hall headquarters building on Union Square, it isn't the one where Boss Tweed presided (or that rented out space to the Sixth Regiment), pictured above.

The best place to go and see Tweed's legacy is the Tweed Courthouse on Chambers Street between Centre Street and Broadway. Today the headquarters of the Board of Education, the Tweed Courthouse was one of the most expensive buildings constructed in 19th-century New York.

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What's in a Name?: Lincoln Square

Glenn Collins at The New York Times posted an interesting blog entry today about the mystery surrounding the naming of Lincoln Center. The center, which is celebrating its 50th anniversary, is named for nearby Lincoln Square. But there seems to be no evidence to explain why this small triangle of land where Broadway and Columbus cross each other at 65th Street* was named in 1906 after President Lincoln. If, indeed, it was named after the Great Emancipator at all.

But we have a theory as to why there's a Lincoln Square. In March 1891, the next triangle of land north--where Amsterdam and Broadway cross at 70th Street--had been named for recently deceased Civil War general William Tecumseh Sherman (who'd lived in a townhouse nearby). Soon the Sherman Square Hotel opened and, just a few blocks south, the Tecumseh apartments; Sherman Square quickly became a real draw and the center of the neighborhood.

As the new IRT subway began to bring residents to the Upper West Side in 1904, real estate development reached a fever pitch. It seems plausible that it was developers who pushed the city to rename the area around 65th Street Lincoln Square in an attempt to raise property values. They may have reasoned that if a Sherman Square was good, wouldn't a Lincoln Square be even better?

As Collins points out in his article, details are hard to track down. But we wouldn't be suprised if the answer turns out to be this real-estate one-upmanship.

* Lincoln Square the northern of the two triangles at this intersection; Dante Square is the name of the southern one.

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Much more about the Upper West Side and the city's propensity for renaming things can be found in our book, Inside the Apple.

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Taking Questions about Manhattan History at the New York Times

All this week will be answering questions about Manhattan History at the New York Times's City Room blog.

Please visit the blog at http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/04/13/ask-about-the-history-of-manhattan/

We look forward to your questions about the city!

Leon Panetta and New York City Secession

Sam Robert's blog and podcast at The New York Times has a fascinating story this week about Barack Obama's pick to head the CIA, Leon E. Panetta. Turns out that when Panetta worked for Mayor John Lindsay, he wrote a fascinating memorandum to the mayor (you can read it here in PDF), about the advantages of New York seceding and becoming at 51st State. It's well worth a read.

(By the by: that's not Panetta or Mayor Lindsay in the drawing above: it's Mayor Fernando Wood, the fist NYC executive to seriously consider secession. We'll blog more about Wood and his Tammany Hall connections in a future post.)

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More about Fernando Wood can be found, as always, in Inside the Apple.

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Times Square Ball Drop

Tomorrow night, an estimated billion people around the world will watch the illuminated ball drop in Times Square to ring in the new year. This New Year’s tradition dates back 101 years—the dropping ball replaced an earlier fireworks display—but the notion of dropping a ball as a way of keeping time is an older tradition.

In 1877, a ball was added to the top of the Western Union Building on Lower Broadway. Each day at noon, a telegraph signal from Western Union’s main office in Washington, DC, would trip a switch in New York and the ball would descend from the flagpole. Visible throughout the Financial District—and, more importantly, from all the ships in the harbor—it allowed people to reset their watches and ship chronometers. For the first time, New York ran on a standard time.

As the New York Times noted in 1877, this idea of a ball dropping to keep the time wasn’t new. For many years prior to the Civil War, the New York custom house had signaled the time with a ball drop and in the 1870s it was common to find time balls in major European ports. However, when it began operation in April 1877, the Western Union ball was the only one in a North American port and quickly became a fixture of the Manhattan skyline.

(Western Union, afraid that it wasn’t always going to work, set up a system whereby a red flag would be flown from 12:01 to 12:10 p.m. on days that the ball refused to drop. Further, information would be sent to the press each day informing them whether the ball actually dropped at noon or had fallen at the wrong time!)

In 1907, the New York Times—then owners of the skyscraper from which the ball drops on New Year’s Eve—adopted the time ball as their symbol for ushering in the new year. That original Times Square ball, made of iron and wood and lit by 25 incandescent lights, weighed 700 pounds!

In 1911, the original Western Union Building was demolished by the company’s new owners, 

AT&T, so they could erect a larger structure. (That impressive marble building, known as 195 Broadway, still stands.) Plans called for a new time ball, but by the time the new AT&T headquarters was finished, the ball had been replaced by a giant, gilded statue by Evelyn Beatrice Longman called The Genius of Elecricity. (The statue remained on the building until 1980, when it was removed, restored, and installed in lobby of the AT&T headquarters in Midtown. It now resides in Basking Ridge, NJ.)

This year, not only is the Times Square ball lit by energy-efficient LED diodes,  for the first time the city plans to keep the ball atop the old Times Tower year round so that everyone who visits New York can see the actual ball that drops on New Year’s Eve.

* * *

More information about the Times Square ball drop—along with the history of the square, the Broadway theater district, and the Times Tower—can be found in Inside the Apple, which is available for pre-order today.

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The New York Times Great Children's Read

On Sunday, October 5, the New York Times is once again hosting its "Great Children's Read" on the campus of Columbia University.

This all-day event features celebrities (well, mostly demi-celebrities) reading from a slew of great children's books set in New York City. A full schedule is available on their site, but one highlight will be the well-eyebrowed George Whipple reading oneof James's all time-favorite kids books: The House on East 88th Street.

Also appearing will be They Might Be Giants, whose most recent children's album is Here Come the 123s.

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