Postcard Thursday: New York Skyline, ca. 1900

Courtesy of the Library of Congress

(To see a larger view of this entire postcard, CLICK HERE.)

Today's postcard comes from the vast trove of images at the Library of Congress. Published ca. 1900, the fold-out card shows the downtown skyline. The view, looking at the west side of Lower Manhattan from the Hudson River, shows just how much has changed in the past 116 years.

The tallest building in the postcard (toward the right of this close-up) was also the tallest in the world: The Park Row building, Completed in 1899 by R.H. Robertson, the building's twin cupolas hosted the city's first paid observation deck, a feature that would become a hallmark of every future building to hold the record. The Park Row tower still stands (until recently its ground floor housed J+R Music World), but many others in that part of town are now gone, including another tallest building in the world, the headquarters of the New York World, Joseph Pulitzer's newspaper. Capped by a large dome (at the left of the above close-up), Pulitzer's skyscraper was the first building ever to boast about its height, though it was -- paradoxically -- also designed to appear short and stocky to passersby. Like much of Newspaper Row, the skyscraper was demolished to make way for the widened approach ramps to the Brooklyn Bridge.

Another familiar landmark on the skyline is the spire of Trinity Church, which was also once the tallest structure in town. (It is the dark spire, above.) Just north of that you can see the American Surety Building at 100 Broadway, Bruce Price's 1896 skyscraper that still stands opposite Trinity's graveyard, though this and any other extant buildings in Lower Manhattan are impossible to see from the river today.

Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons

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JULY 29 at 6:30PM || ALEXANDER HAMILTON'S NEW YORK

We will be speaking at the New-York Historical Society on Friday, July 29, at 6:30pm. The illustrated talk, which takes you through the New York City Alexander Hamilton would have known, is free with museum admission (which is pay-what-you-wish on Friday nights) but the museum would like you to make a reservation. Click this link for all the details: http://www.nyhistory.org/programs/exploring-hamilton%E2%80%99s-new-york

* * * * 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

Greetings from Coney Island

This recent addition to the Inside the Apple archives is a wonderful look at Coney Island during its heyday. This postcard dates to 1906, the peak of the amusement park era. Just a decade earlier, most of the area was given over to restaurants, bath houses on the beach, and a few dance halls. There were a few rides--and the famous elephant, which burned down in 1896--but entertainment would not take over as Coney Island's main draw until the turn of the century.

By the time this postcard was issued, most of Coney Island was given over to amusement parks, including the famous Steeplechase Park, Dreamland, and Luna Park (which is pictured inside the "N" of "Island" in the image above).

More intriguing are the women who grace the letters of "Greetings." Who are they? Bathing beauties? Actually, they look more like chorus girls or Gibson Girls, the most famous of whom, Evelyn Nesbit, was in the headlines at the time because her husband, Harry Thaw, murdered Stanford White on June 25, 1906. We have a tendency to think of amusement parks today as being the domain of families and children, but in 1906, Coney Island was definitely an adult's paradise, as this postcard attests. (Even carousels, like the one today in Central Park, were geared to adult riders.)

What's most fascinating to us, however, are the three figures inside the "G" of "Greetings": Theodore Roosevelt, George Washington, and Abraham Lincoln. Was this to show that a trip to Coney Island--with its daring rides and scantily clad women--was still a morally upstanding place? Remember, T.R. was the sitting president at the time. It would be like going to Vegas today and having Barack Obama's face in the corner of your postcard of the Strip.

You can see a great map of Coney Island in 1906 at http://www.westland.net/coneyisland/mapsdocs/coneymap06.htm. Click on any red dot on the map and it will bring up a vintage postcard or other image from the era.

You can also read our earlier history of the postcard, and see a guidebook to saving money at Coney Island from the Brooklyn Historical Society here.

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182 more stories about New York can be found in

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

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