Postcard Thursday: Rear Views

James has a story in today's New York Post that examines many of the hidden homes in New York City that were once carriage houses, rear tenements, or -- as is the case in the photo above -- an artist's studio and theater.

"Washington Square, New York" (1910) courtesy of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

The artist was Everett Shinn, a member of the Ashcan School, who lived and painted in New York starting in the late 1890s. Like many Greenwich Village bohemians of the era, Shinn wasn't content to merely paint and founded a small theatrical company to perform plays he'd written. These melodramas had

titles like “Lucy Moore, the Prune Hater’s Daughter.” Though not home to high art — the New York Times called one participant “the worst actor in the New World” — Shinn’s theater is credited with paving the way for the Off-Off-Broadway theaters of today.

You can read the entire story at https://nypost.com/2019/01/09/back-houses-are-nycs-best-kept-secrets/

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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: The Death of George Washington

"First in war, first in peace, and first in the hearts of his countrymen, he was second to none in humble and enduring scenes of private life. Pious, just, humane, temperate, and sincere; uniform, dignified, and commanding; his example was as edifying to all around him.... [V]ice shuddered in his presence and virtue always felt his fostering hand. The purity of his private character gave effulgence to his public virtues. ... Such was the man for whom our nation mourns." -- Henry ("Light Horse Harry") Lee

On December 14, 1799, former president George Washington breathed his last at Mount Vernon. Washington was not the first Founding Father to pass away -- Benjamin Franklin had died nine years earlier -- but he was already widely acknowledged as the "Father" of his country and quickly transformed into a symbol of America. Dozens of cities, towns, parks, lakes, and boulevards are named from him across the country, and he is memorialized with countless statues and other monuments.

One of the most famous of these statues, by French sculptor Jean-Antoine Houdon, was completed during Washington's lifetime. Houdon was hired by the Virginia General Assembly in 1784 and traveled from France to Mount Vernon in the summer of 1785. He stayed at Mount Vernon that fall, measuring Washington limbs and taking a life mask (below) from which he could work once he was back in France. The statue was completed around 1792 and installed in 1796 in the rotunda of the Virginia state capitol.

Starting in the 1850s numerous casts of the Houdon statue were made, including a bronze copy that now stands in the rotunda of New York's City Hall. Prior to that (from 1883 to 1907), the work stood in Riverside Park between 88th and 89th Street near the Soldiers and Sailors monument. According to Peter Salwen's Upper West Side Story, the statue had been unearthed in the arsenal in Central Park by parks commissioner Egbert Viele. According to a contemporary guide to the city, "children of the public schools of the city" raised the funds to have the statue erected in the park, very near Viele's home. By 1907, it had been moved to the Metropolitan Museum of Art. According to a 1908 edition of the New-York Tribune, because the statue was only life size and not "heroic size, as statues have to be to look well out of doors," it was taken to the Met to be put on display. When, precisely, it then migrated to City Hall is unclear, though it seems to be sometime in the 1960s.

Of course, New York has many other Washington monuments, including Henry Kirke Brown's equestrian statue in Union Square, JQA Ward's standing figure on the steps of Federal Hall National Memorial, and the Washington Square Arch, erected to honor the centennial of Washington's inauguration.

 

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: Washington Square and Jane Jacobs

Today's postcard is an aerial view of Washington Square and lower Fifth Avenue. The postcard was sent in August 1928, but the image must be from a few years earlier. Notice that No. 1 Fifth Avenue, erected in 1927 (and pictured below), is missing.

One Fifth Avenue

Also notice that an asphalt road goes through the Washington Arch and continues through to the south side of the square. This was the road the Robert Moses wanted to expand in the 1950s to make the Village more car friendly and to connect uptown traffic to the Lower Manhattan Expressway (LOMEX), which was on the drawing board at the same time.

Robert Moses's plans for a highway through Washington Square

The road through Washington Square was blocked by Shirley Hayes and Jane Jacobs, whose 100th birthday was yesterday. As part of the birthday celebrations, James wrote a history of the rise and fall of LOMEX for Curbed.com.

You can read the piece at: http://www.curbed.com/2016/5/4/11505214/jane-jacobs-robert-moses-lomex

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RESERVATIONS ARE NOW OPEN

for our 3rd Annual Alexander Hamilton Memorial Day Weekend Walk

Read all about it and reserve at

http://blog.insidetheapple.net/2016/05/3rd-annual-alexander-hamilton-memorial.html

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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: West Broadway

The Bradford Plan, courtesy of the Boston Public Library

Today's not-a-postcard (see last week's post) shows New York City as it appeared on the Bradford Map, ca. 1728-30. In those days, the city barely made it north of today's City Hall Park (labelled here"Common").

This image is just one of many accompanying James's article that was published today on the history of West Broadway, the street that runs north from the World Trade Center to Washington Square.

West Broadway is one of those afterthought streets to many New Yorkers: people know it's there, but it usually doesn't make much of an impact. It turns out the street has a colorful history--and maybe has had more names (and attempted name changes) than any Manhattan thoroughfare.

Read all about it in How West Broadway Became One of NYC's Most Important Streets at Curbed.com -- and share with your friends!

(Link: http://ny.curbed.com/archives/2016/01/14/how_west_broadway_became_one_of_nycs_most_important_streets.php.)

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Read more about NYC history in

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

Available from your favorite online retailers (Amazon, Barnes and Noble, etc.) or from independent bookstores across the country. 

Walking tour of Greenwich Village on Sunday, June 27

On Sunday, June 27, at 4:00 p.m., we will join with Shakespeare & Co. Booksellers in Greenwich Village to offer a free, one-hour walking tour of the heart of this historic neighborhood. We’ll meet at Shakespeare & Company’s store at 716 Broadway and walk west toward Washington Square, highlighting some of the stories featured Inside the Apple. Sunday the 27th is also Pride Day and while we won’t get as far west as Sheridan Square and the Stonewall Inn, we will talk a little bit about the Village’s crucial role in the gay rights movement.

The tour will last about an hour and end back at Shakespeare & Co. for a Q&A. Books will, of course, be available for sale and signing.

Please meet at the Shakespeare & Co. store at 716 Broadway (at Washington Place). In order to start on time, please plan to be there by 3:50PM at the latest.

The Washington Square Arch Turns 115 Today

Today marks the 115th anniversary of the unveiling of the marble memorial arch in Washington Square. Designed by famed architect Stanford White, the arch was built between 1890-1892, making it the first significant edifice in the city's Beaux Arts period.

White actually built the arch twice. The first one was made of wood, plaster, and papier-mâché and erected on Fifth Avenue just north of Washington Square in 1889 as a part of the festivities in honor of the centennial of George Washington's inaugural. (The Washington centennial was one of the largest parties New York had ever thrown. Its massive parade not only featured President Benjamin Harrison but also former presidents Cleveland and Arthur and every governor of the 22 states then in the Union.) As soon as the centennial festivities were over, a fundraising committee was established to create a permanent, marble replacement.

Though construction of the arch proceeded quickly -- it was certainly complete by the Christopher Columbus quadricentennial in October 1892 -- the official unveiling did not take place until May 4, 1895. A huge crowd gathered to watch the military and New York's governor (former Vice President Levi P. Morton) parade down Fifth Avenue to the arch; the New York Times exclaimed that "a more orderly, courteous, and intelligent gathering of people has never been seen in New-York City than that which occupied the sidewalks of Fifth Avenue yesterday."

In fact, the arch wasn't fully complete when it was unveiled: the two statue bases on the Fifth Avenue side of the arch were conspicuously empty and would remain that way until 1915-17 when the two statues of Washington were finally erected. (Notice that the statues are missing in the early photo, above.)

The arch was the first major structure to embody the principles of the growing City Beautiful movement. That movement is often associated with the 1893 Columbian Exposition in Chicago, but White's arch came first. An article in the Times in 1894 about the brand-new Municipal Arts Society, sums up the goals of the City Beautiful thinkers:

"The adornment of courtrooms and public buildings  with paintings and statuary keeps before the poorest and most indifferent citizens several things which cannot be too frequently presented to their eyes. One is that New-York is a great city with an illustrious past, a city to be loved, taken pride in, and guarded from despoilers from within and without. Another is that New-York contains many thousands of people who are not blind to the higher needs of the mass of citizens less energetic or less fortunate than themselves. The bitterness of poverty and disappointment is sweetened a little by signs of interest in, signs of respect for, the great mass of toilers."

So, head on down to Washington Square today to look at White's magnificent monument -- and show respect for the great mass of toilers -- and celebrate the beginning of Beaux Arts New York.

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Not only is the Washington Arch a stop on the Greenwich Village tour in our book, Inside the Apple: A Streetwise History of New York City, it is also featured in the special tour we put together of Stanford White's New York, which you can download here. (To do the Stanford White tour, you will need a copy of Inside the Apple, available online or at fine bookstores everywhere.)

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Washington Square Tombstone Unearthed -- Part 2

photo courtesy of the New York City Parks Department.

Following up on our post yesterday, the Parks Department has revealed the tombstone that was recently uncovered in Washington Square Park. It reads:

"Here lies the body of James Jackson, who departed this life the 22nd day of September 1799 aged 28 years native of the county of Kildare Ireland."

You can read more about the discovery in Gothamist and the New York Times.

(And, of course, you can read more about Washington Square Park its role as a city cemetery in Inside the Apple.)

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Washington Square Tombstone Unearthed

image courtesy of the LIFE Magazine archive on Google.

As has been reported in Gothamist, Curbed, and elsewhere, the WSP blog broke the news yesterday that a tombstone has been unearthed during the ongoing renovations of Washington Square Park.

It is well-known that the park was once a potter's field and by some estimates up to 20,000 people were buried there. (We write about the park's early history in depth in Inside the Apple.) However, what has people scratching their heads is the fact that you don't normally find a tombstone in a potter's field.

The tombstone isn't so mysterious, however. Only a portion of today's park was the potter's field. As Luther Harris writes in his wonderful book, Around Washington Square:

The land area [of the original square]...was about 6-1/4 acres, a respectable public space, but not a grand one. Much narrower than today's square, the potter's field was limited on the east by a strip of church cemeteries, and on the west by Minetta Creek, which ran southwest from the foot of Fifth Avenue to the corner of MacDougal and West Fourth Street. (italics added)

Thus, it seems likely considering where the current excavations are happening that what's been unearthed is a tombstone from one of these church graveyards. The Scotch Presbyterian Church owned the largest cemetery and vehemently opposed the park's usurpation of their land. Perhaps this is one of their brethren? We await a full report.

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