Postcard Thursday: The Beginning of the Canyon of Heroes

Since tomorrow the U.S. women's soccer team is being feted with a ticker tape parade, we searched our archives high and low for a postcard of a parade up Broadway, but came up short. (An internet search revealed that few, if any, commemorative postcards of parades have been issued.)

Here, instead, is the image of the building that marks the beginning of the so-called "Canyon of Heroes": the Alexander Hamilton United States Custom House on Bowling Green, which sits at the foot of Broadway in the Financial District. Designed by Cass Gilbert and built between 1899 and 1907, the building is a remarkable expression of Beaux-Arts design, and we'll write more about it in a future blog post.

For now, here's our previous write-up of the history of the ticker tape parade:

[In 1886], the official grand opening [of the Statue of Liberty] in the harbor was followed by a parade up Broadway from Battery Park. It was during that parade that some enterprising office worker in one of the brokerage houses on Broadway decided to turn his company’s used ticker tape into confetti. Thus was born the ticker tape parade, an enduring New York tradition.

The parades took a while to catch on. The next one was for Admiral Dewey, hero of the Spanish-American War, following his return from Manila. Then ten years went by before the next parade, for Jack Binns, the radio operator of the RMS Republic. (The Republic had struck the SS Florida in January; because the ship was equipped with wireless radio, Binns was able to send a Mayday signal and the passengers and crew were rescued.) 

In the 1920s ticker tape parades really started to take off. The parades, under the purview of the mayor’s office, were mostly given to arriving dignitaries, sports heroes, or pioneers in flight. The two busiest years were 1951 and 1962, which each had 9 parades. In 1962, honorees were as diverse as John Glenn, the New York Yankees, and Archbishop Makarios of Cyprus.
The Yankees hold the record for most parades at eight. While a handful of individuals have been feted twice (including Glenn), only one person has been honored three times—Admiral Richard E. Byrd, the polar aviator and explorer. 

If you find yourself in Lower Manhattan, take a stroll up Broadway from Battery Park. All the recipients of ticker tape parades are commemorated in plaques in the sidewalk.

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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.

Why Not Use the "L"?

Reginald Marsh, Why Not Use the “L”?, 1930. Egg tempera on canvas, 36 × 48 in. (91.4 x 121.9 cm). Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; purchase  31.293  © 2010 Estate of Reginald Marsh / Art Students League, New York / Artists Rights Society, New York

A few nights ago, we were walking through the Whitney Museum's recently re-installed top floor, "American Legends: From Calder to O'Keeffe," when Reginald Marsh's 1930 painting "Why Not Use the 'L'?" caught our eye. If you've read Inside the Apple, you know that we're fans of Marsh's work in the US Custom House on Bowling Green.

In this work, Marsh captures a slice of the city that's now gone: riders on the elevated train. The train depicted appears to be the Third Avenue "L" (or, sometimes, "El"), but transportation aficionados should chime in if we are wrong about that. As in many of Marsh's paintings, there is a gauzy quality to the canvas, though a few things are in sharp focus. Above the sleeping man's head is a sign that gives the painting its title: "The subway is fast, certainly. But the open-air elevated gets you there quickly, too! And with more comfort. Why not use the 'L'?" Below the man's feet is a newspaper, the headline of which trumpets, "Did Sex Urge Explain Judge Crater's Disappearance?"

Judge Joseph Force Crater disappeared on August 6, 1930. Having had dinner with his mistress and a friend on Forty-fifth Street, he hailed a taxi, never to be seen again. At first, he wasn't even reported missing--the courts were in recess and he had been frequently commuting back and forth to his summer house in Maine. But when he didn't show up for work on August 25, the police were called in; the disappearance went public in early September and consumed the New York headlines for weeks. Had he been murdered? Kidnapped? Run off to a tropical island with a woman? It remains one of the great unsolved cases in New York history and anchors Marsh's painting in a very specific moment in time.

A few years after this canvas was painted, the Treasury Department's Section of Fine Arts hired Marsh to complete sixteen murals in the rotunda of the Custom House. As we write in Inside the Apple:

"[His] murals depict the dominance of American shipping; the eight larger panels show the stages of a steamship's entrance into New York harbor, from its approach to the Narrows to its discharge of passengers and cargo. In one panel, the ship pauses to take on the press so that they can interview an arriving celebrity--Greta Garbo.... Just before work was to begin in September 1937, Marsh received world that Joseph P. Kennedy, U.S. maritime commissioner, objected to the fact two prominent ships in the panorama were foreign vessels--the Queen Mary and the Normandie. Kennedy wrote that Marsh should instead depict 'the new passenger liner that we will probably commence building.'"

Marsh ignored Kennedy. Supposedly the word "Normandie" is smudged on the bow of that vessel, but it is still perfectly legible. The old Custom House is now the Museum of the American Indian and is open to the public free of charge so that you can check out Marsh's work yourself. The Whitney Museum is pay-what-you-wish on Friday nights. There are other Marsh works in the "American Legends" installation, as well as, of course, some of the finest works of American art in any New York collection.

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Find out more about Reginald Marsh in
our book:

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

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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!