Postcard Thursday: Hudson-Fulton Celebration

Collection of the authors.

On September 25, 1909, New York launched one of the largest and most ambitious festivals in its history, the enormous Hudson-Fulton Celebration, which commemorated 300 years since Henry Hudson had sailed into New York Harbor, and a century (give or take a couple of years) since Robert Fulton's North River Steamboat had been launched.

This rare, embossed postcard emphasizes the improvements in navigation over three centuries.
Collection of the authors.

Among the many events that took place during the celebration (some of which can be seen in the small type at the bottom of the top postcard) was a naval parade that included everything from replicas of Hudson's ship Half Moon and Fulton's sidewheeler steamer to the RMS Lusitania. As a nod to the direction in which transportation was headed, Wilbur Wright took to the air as well, circling the Statue of Liberty on one day, and flying up the Hudson to Grant's Tomb and back to Governor's Island on another. In 1909, it's safe to say most New Yorkers had never seen an airplane flight before.

Of the many parades connected to the festival, the Historical Parade in New York City on September 28 was probably the most important. The entire celebration was an attempt to boost New York (the state, but mostly the city) in the public's mind as key player in American history. As the commission noted in their wrap-up after the festival:

A glance at the book-shelves of any great public library will show how industrious the historians of Massachusetts and Pennsylvania and Virginia have been in recording the annals of which they are justly proud and how comparatively indifferent our own writers have been in this field. And this disparity has resulted in a very general ignorance of the full part played by our Colony and State in our national history.

courtesy of Hudson River Valley Heritage.

The Historical Parade featured floats from every period of New York's history, from the Native American era to 1909, with a special emphasis on the city's Dutch roots and its role in the American Revolution (as shown in the float above). You can see many more postcards of floats from the parade -- along with souvenir programs from 1909 and other ephemera -- at the Hudson River Valley Heritage website dedicated to the celebration.

A century later, in 2009, the city once again celebrated the arrival of Henry Hudson (albeit in a somewhat more subdued fashion). One permanent souvenir from that celebration is the Dutch pavilion in Peter Minuit Plaza in the financial district, which we write about in the first chapter of Footprints in New York.

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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.

Robert Fulton and the Age of Steam

August 17, 1807 -- 203 years ago today -- was a pivotal moment in American history. Today marks the anniversary of the launch of Robert Fulton's North River* Steamboat. The boat left its slip in Lower Manhattan and steamed up the Hudson River, arriving in Albany fifty-two hours later. This maiden voyage proved that steam was an efficient and safe mode of transport and while clipper ships would not instantly disappear, the introduction of steam vessels forever changed maritime transportation.

Fulton started life as a painter, but his penchant for mechanical engineering led him to design the first practical submarine (which he tried, in vain, to sell to Napoleon) and then to turn his attention to steam navigation. In France, Fulton met Robert Livingston, the U.S. Minister and former Chancellor of New York State, who decided to bankroll Fulton in order to secure New York's preeminence as a commercial port. Fulton returned to the U.S., set up shop in Manhattan, and perfected his engine.

As we write in Inside the Apple:

On August 17, 1807, the boat, christened with the rather prosaic name North River Steamboat, left New York harbor en route to Albany. It arrived 52 hours later: 32 hours of that was steaming, and twenty hours was a diversion to Robert Livingston’s Hudson River estate, Clermont (where, presumably, the Chancellor took a long nap). The return trip, the next day, took just 30 hours and within a month twice-weekly service was scheduled between the two cities, averaging 36 hours per trip. (Hudson River sloops, by contrast, averaged a week for the same trip.) 

In her own day, the boat was only called by her own name, North River Steamboat, or simply “The Steamboat” (since she had no competition). It was only after Fulton’s death in 1815 that the name of Livingston’s estate, Clermont, became commonly associated with the vessel.

Chancellor Livingston was more than just Robert Fulton's patron -- he soon became his de facto father-in-law, when Fulton married Livingston's second cousin Harriet (who was the same age of the Chancellor's daughters). When Fulton died in 1815, he was buried in the churchyard of Trinity, Wall Street. However, he is not buried underneath the large marker in the south side of the yard that bears Fulton's portrait. That marker was erected by the Society of Mechanical Engineers in 1901 to stand in a high-traffic part of the graveyard and draw attention to their hero. Fulton is instead buried in the Livingston family's nondescript vault in the north side of the graveyard. If you happen to be downtown today, stop by Trinity and pay your respects to the man who in many ways secured New York's place as the economic capital of America.

* Until the 20th century, the Hudson River was
more commonly known as the North River.

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Read more about Robert Fulton and the age of steam

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

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