Win a Signed Copy of "Inside the Apple"

'Tis the season of gift giving and we thought we'd get things started by giving away an autographed copy of Inside the Apple: A Streetwise History of New York City.

The contest is very simple and involves following us on Twitter. Between November 18 and November 29, all you need to do is the following:

1) Become a follower of Inside the Apple on Twitter (if you aren't one already) at http://www.twitter.com/insidetheapple.

2) Tweet something along the lines of: "I just entered to win a free copy of Inside the Apple by following @insidetheapple. Rules at: http://bit.ly/aRNS41." The exact wording of your tweet doesn't matter but it MUST include our handle (@insidetheapple) and the link to the official rules (http://bit.ly/aRNS41).

The contest will end at 11:59 p.m. on Monday, November 29. We'll announce the winner on our blog and on Twitter on Tuesday, November 30. For more details, read the official rules at http://bit.ly/aRNS41.

Good luck!

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.

Upper West Side Walking Tour this Sunday at 4PM

Just a friendly reminder that this Sunday, May 2, at 4:00 p.m., is our free walking tour of the Upper West Side sponsored by Borders. This will be a great opportunity to explore the neighborhood just north of Columbus Circle, including Lincoln Center and some of the important apartment buildings in the area. The tour will last somewhere between 60 and 90 minutes; we will end back at Borders for a Q&A and book singing.

The tour will meet at the Special Events Area of the Columbus Circle Borders (inside the Time Warner Center on the second floor). In order to make sure that we get started on time, please plan to be at the store by 3:50 p.m.

We look forward to seeing you there!

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Read more about the Upper West Side in

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

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Save The Date: Upper West Side Walking Tour + Book Signing on Sunday, May 2

Save the Date:
Sunday, May 2, 2010, at 4:00 p.m.

FREE EVENT

Following on our successful March walk in lower Central Park, we are returning to Borders, Columbus Circle, to lead a free walking tour of the part of the Upper West Side just outside their front door. We’ll talk about the history of Columbus Circle, walk up Broadway to Lincoln Center, and see some great residential architecture, too.

The tour will last between 60 and 90 minutes and will be followed by a Q&A and book signing back at the store.

Please meet at the Borders in the Time Warner Center, Columbus Circle, over in the special events area. In order to start on time, please plan to be there by 3:50PM at the latest.

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Read more about the Upper West Side 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.

Central Park Walking Tour + "Inside the Apple" Book Talk

On Sunday, March 28, at 4:00PM the Borders bookstore at Columbus Circle is sponsoring a walking tour and book signing with us where we'll be talking about the history, architecture, and art of Central Park. We'll be sharing stories from Inside the Apple, which is celebrating its first year in print this week.


We'll meet inside the store (which is on the second floor of the Time Warner Center) over at the special events section. From the store, we'll walk into the park and spend approximately 90 minutes looking at the history of the park, its development in the mid-19th century, and the role that Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux's original master plan still plays today. The tour will conclude back at Borders for a question and answer session and book signing.


In order to make sure that tour starts on time, please try to be in Borders by 3:50PM. No reservations are necessary.

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The History of Yankee Ticker Tape Parades

photo of the 1996 ticker tape parade for the Yankees by Ruby Washington / New York Times

Anyone who’s read our book or this blog knows we have a thing for ticker tape parades. So, of course we are excited for tomorrow’s parade honoring the New York Yankees 27th world championship. It will be a record-setting ninth parade for the Bronx Bombers. However, while many people associate ticker tape parades with winning sports franchises, honoring the local teams is a relatively modern development; the Yankees didn’t get their first parade until 1961.

The first ticker tape parade was held in 1886 in honor of the opening of the Statue of Liberty, but the parades did not become a regular occurrence until the beginning of the 20th century. The first sports-related parade was August 6, 1924, honoring the U.S. Olympic team (featuring three-time gold medal winner Johnny Weismuller) returning from the Paris games. Two years later, golfer Bobby Jones got a parade (the first of two) as did the first woman (Gertrude Ederle) and the first mother (Amelia Gade Corson) to swim the English Channel.

Baseball did not get its first parade until Connie Mack was honored in 1949 for his remarkable 50-year career as the manager of the Philadelphia A’s.* When the Giants won the National League Pennant in 1954, they were the first local team to be given a parade; but why the Dodgers or Yankees did not get one the next year (or the year after that) when they faced off in the World Series remains a mystery. Indeed, the Yankees were in the World Series every year from 1955 to 1958 with no recognition. In 1960, the Yankees won the pennant -- but lost the series to the Pirates, but at the beginning of the next season they were honored with a parade up Broadway. (Perhaps the only time a team has been thrown a parade for not winning the World Series.) That parade was perhaps as good omen, as the 1961 season featured the Roger Maris-Mickey Mantle home run contest and a victorious trip to the World Series. The team was honored again at the start of the 1962 season for having won the World Series. (There is some question as to whether this was a true parade; the Yankees were certainly honored at City Hall. Did they also ride up Broadway in a motorcade as they'd done the year before? We're still searching....)

The Yankees weren’t honored again until 1977, when they won the first of two back-to-back World Series. Parades were held in 1978, 1996, 1998, 1999, and 2000 to celebrate those victories – and now, of course, we’ll add one more tomorrow.

If you go to the parade, which begins at 11:00 a.m. check out the plaques embedded in the sidewalk. They list everyone who has ever been honored with a parade and stretch from Bowling Green Park to the foot of City Hall Park.

* Correction: An astute reader points out 1949 would have been Mack's 49th anniversary as the A's manager. The official sidewalk plaque states that the parade was to honor Mack's 50th anniversary, but looking back now at the press coverage, that was not the intent at the time. In truth, the parade honored Mack's lifetime contributions to baseball (he'd been a player and manager for 65 years). The next day, August 20, 1949, was "Connie Mack Day" at Yankee Stadium and Mack was honored again at the stadium.

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Read more about ticker tape parades in Inside the Apple: A Streetwise History of New York City.

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Cooper Mania: Free access into the Great Hall at Cooper Union and the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum

Two great architectural spaces in New York are having free events this week and next that will grant you access to some of the city’s great interior spaces. (If you are not already worn out from last weekend’s openhousenewyork events.*)

On Thursday, October 15, the Cooper Union is continuing their year-long celebration of their 150th birthday with “Great Evenings in The Great Hall: Science and Technology,” a multimedia lecture featuring such notables as Adam Gopnik, Nobel Prize winner Harold Varmus, and a slew of writers and actors. The Cooper Union was founded by industrialist and inventor Peter Cooper, to whom we devote a chapter in Inside the Apple. Among Cooper’s many notable accomplishments, he patented edible gelatin (a by-product of his glue factory), thus giving the world Jell-O. When Cooper Union opened, its Great Hall (where the lecture will be held) was the largest auditorium space in the city and in 1860 it was the site of Abraham Lincoln’s famous “Right Makes Might” speech, which was instrumental in garnering him the Republican nomination and the presidency.

Then, starting on Monday, October 19, the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum is opening doors free of charge for a week to celebrate National Design Week.

The Cooper-Hewitt was founded by Amy, Eleanor, and Sarah Hewitt who were daughters of Mayor Abram Hewitt (more on him in a later post) and granddaughters of Peter Cooper. It is housed in the former home steel magnate Andrew Carnegie and the house is the subject of another chapter in Inside the Apple.

So, grab your copy of the book and head out to enjoy these two wonderful spaces!

* Many thanks to those who were able to join us for our exploration
of Gramercy Park with openhousenewyork;
we look forward to doing similar tours in the future.

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Guest blogging at the Lower East Side Tenement Museum

In conjunction with our talk tonight at the Lower East Side Tenement Museum, they have graciously asked us to blog for them today. Those of you familiar with the neighborhood may know tiny Petrosino Square, which has been undergoing renovation and is slated to reopen soon. In our blog entry (HERE), we look at the square's namesake, along with that of its former appellation, Kenmare Square.

Hope to you see you tonight at the museum.

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Presentation at the Lower East Side Tenement Museum

On Monday, October 5, we will be giving a "Tenement Talk" at the Lower East Side Tenement Museum at 6:30 p.m.

The talk, illustrated with archival photos, prints, and paintings, will look at New York during the period between 1863 and the mid-1930s -- the years that the Tenement Museum's property, 97 Orchard Street, was an active apartment building. Instead of focusing on the immigrant history of the Lower East Side, we'll instead take a step back to look at the bigger picture, focusing on stories from Inside the Apple from that same era that show how the city was growing and changing during the Gilded Age, the City Beautiful era, and the Great Depression.

To RSVP for the talk, visit the Tenement Museum's website at http://www.tenement.org/vizcenter_events.php. The talk will take place at the museum's visitors center at 108 Orchard Street, just south of Delancey Street; complete directions are on the museum's site.

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One Broadway

As we have written previously, we will be leading a free tour on Sunday, August 16, of Revolutionary War Lower Manhattan. (See http://www.insidetheapple.net/tours.htm for more details.)

One of the stops on the tour will be One Broadway, where the Washington Building -- later known as International Mercantile Marine -- now stands. But back in the 18th century, the base of Broadway was home to Archibald Kennedy, New York's receiver-general (i.e., the customs collector), and later the Earl of Cassilis.

Kennedy built his mansion ca. 1760; because Broadway was then much closer to the Hudson, Kennedy would have had a fine view out over the harbor and in the summer of 1776, he would have seen the massive British fleet assembling beyond Staten Island. Between June 29 and August 12, nearly 200 ships arrived, the largest naval fleet since antiquity. One observer, a soldier named Daniel McCurtin, wrote in his journal:

"[I] spied as I peeped out the Bay something resembling a wood of pine trees trimmed.... I declare I thought all of London was afloat."

During the war, Kennedy left the city and the house became George Washington's headquarters during the planning of the Battle of Brooklyn, which took place in late August 1776. When the British captured New York, the home -- which escaped the Great Fire of 1776 -- was used by the British army. After the Revolution, the house was rented by Isaac "King" Sears. A prominent member of the Sons of Liberty, Sears was was involved in the Stamp Act Protests in 1765 and the Battle of Golden Hill in 1770, a skirmish just north of Wall Street that some call the first bloodshed of the Revolution. Sears paid £500 a year, probably the highest rent in the city.

The house was later owned by John Watts, a successful merchant and founder of the Leake and Watts Orphan House in Morningside Heights.

In 1882, Kennedy's house (by then a boardinghouse) was demolished to make way for the Washington Building, which still occupies the site. When the Washington Building was erected, it had more office space than any building in New York.

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We will be talking more about One Broadway, George Washington, "King" Sears, John Watts, the Stamp Acts protests and more on our FREE walking tour on August 16.

Or you can pick up a copy of our book, Inside the Apple: A Streetwise History of New York City.

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Walking Tour of Revolutionary War Lower Manhattan

On Sunday, August 16, at 5:00 p.m., we are returning to Lower Manhattan for another free walking tour of downtown sites.

The tour will focus on famous sites in the Financial District connected to the Revolution and the early Federal period, including Fraunces Tavern--George Washington's last headquarters--and Federal Hall. But we'll also talk about some lesser-known places, such as the sites of the second presidential mansion and the 1765 Stamp Acts protests when New York's governor was burned in effigy.

The tour will begin and end at Borders at 100 Broadway; after the tour we'll have a Q&A. And, of course, copies of Inside the Apple will be available for sale and signing.

No RSVP is necessary but please arrive a few minutes early so that we can start promptly at 5:00 p.m.

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FREE walking tour of Financial District Architecture

UPDATE: Our next free tour of the Financial District will be on Sunday, August 16, at 5:00 p.m. Follow this link for more information.

Sunday, June 21, 2009

at 5:00PM

A Walking Tour of Financial District architecture

Sponsored by Borders at 100 Broadway.

FREE

Join us for a free walking tour of the architecture of the Financial District. Focusing on such well-known buildings as Trinity Church and the New York Stock Exchange as well as often-overlooked gems like the Trinity Building and the old U.S. Custom House on Wall Street, the tour will cover 400 years of New York's history in just a few significant blocks.

The tour will begin and end at the Borders at 100 Broadway, which is housed in the old American Surety Building, one of the most significant early skyscrapers on Lower Broadway. Following the one-hour tour, the authors will answers questions and sign copies of Inside the Apple.

No RSVP is necessary, but please arrive at Borders a few minutes early as we plan to start promptly at 5:00PM.

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New-York Historical Society Presents "Inside the Apple"

Next Wednesday, April 15, at 6:00PM, we will be giving an illustrated book talk at the New York Historical Society.

Like Inside the Apple, the talk will focus on the history of the city from Henry Hudson's arrival in 1609 to the present. We will pay special attention to some of the important New Yorkers who have shaped the city over the past 200 years and were also integral to the creation and early life of the New York Historical Society. The talk will also feature a brief "virtual tour" of the Upper West Side neighborhood where the society now resides, showing how Central Park West went from farmland to posh address at the end of the 19th century.

Copies of the book will be available for sale and signing afterward. We are also being filmed that evening for C-SPAN 2's "Book TV," so come with good questions for the Q&A!

The event is free and open to the public. The New York Historical Society is located at 170 Central Park West (at the corner of 77th Street).

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Free Admission to the Andrew Carnegie Mansion

In celebration of National Design week, the Cooper-Hewitt National Design museum is free from October 19 to 25.

The museum is housed in the former mansion of steel magnate and philanthropist Andrew Carnegie. Built by Cook, Babb & Willard from 1899 to 1901, the home featured 64 rooms including vast public rooms, a conservatory, one of the first passenger elevators in a private home, and a very early version of central air conditioning.

Today, it is one of only two full-block mansions on Fifth Avenue left from the Gilded Age (the other is the former home of Carnegie's crony Henry Clay Frick). It is well worth a visit both for its architecture and to see the collections of its current tenant, the Cooper-Hewitt, which is the Smithsonian's National Design Museum.

Much more about Carnegie and his mansion can be found in Inside the Apple.

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Also in the news: a nice story in the October 20 issue of the New York Observer about the house on West 11th Street that was blown up by the Weather Underground, who have been in the news so much lately vis a vis Bill Ayers and Barack Obama.

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