Blizzard of 1888

We hope that everyone is enjoying their blizzard safely and warmly! Twenty inches of snow were reported in Central Park--which is half of what came down in the famous blizzard of 1888.

Here's our recap of that famous 19th-century blizzard:

http://blog.insidetheapple.net/2009/03/blizzard-of-1888.html.

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

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World Trade Center Tops Out (and messes with everyone's TV)

Forty years ago today, at 11:30 a.m. on December 23, 1970, the north tower of the original World Trade Center "topped out" when its highest piece of structural steel was hauled into place. At 1,370 feet, this made the World Trade Center the world's tallest building -- a title it would hold until the Sears Tower (now Willis Tower) in Chicago topped out until May 1973.

map courtesy of New York magazine.

As the Twin Towers reached their final height, people in the Bronx and Westchester began to notice a problem: their television signals were becoming blurred or full of static. Late in the design phase of the World Trade Center, engineers had realized that VHF television signals beamed from the top of the Empire State Building would hit the Twin Towers and bounce back 35 millionths of second later; this may not seem like much, but it was enough of a delay that people in the path of the second signal -- see map, left -- ended up with interference. The problem was going to last until new television antennas could be affixed to the top of the World Trade Center; in the meantime, broadcasters came up with a stop-gap measure of broadcasting on a separate UHF frequency. The only problem? Many televisions in 1970 didn't have UHF built in, and a converter cost $25.

In September 1970, New York magazine ran a long story entitled "Is the World Trade Center Worth All the Problems It's Causing New York," detailing the television broadcasting woes, along with other complaints that were commonly leveled against the complex: it's too big; the Port Authority is wasting money on real estate; there will be too many people flooding into Lower Manhattan for the the subways to handle. Other interesting information from the piece (which you can read here):

• There was talk of extending the soon-to-be-built Second Avenue subway south of 34th Street to accommodate the added Wall Street traffic.
• Another subway proposal: build "people movers" from the WTC to the Lexington Avenue and Second Avenue lines.
• It was estimated that only 2,000 people out of 150,000 a day were going to use the Hudson Tubes (aka the PATH train) to commute to the World Trade Center.
• The Port Authority was asking WTC tenants to stagger their work schedules so as to ease the burden on the subways.

A portable Sony color TV in 1970 runs you $309.95

The money quote comes from then-Congressman Ed Koch: "Public funds ought to be used for better purposes, such as mass transit. This is antiseptic.... [David] Rockefeller is leveling everything and putting up clean towers that match the Chase Manhattan Bank. I place the blame for this on him."

Were you around in 1970 when the television signals went haywire? If so, let us know in the comments.

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Read more about the rise and fall of the World Trade Center in

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The Birth of the Crossword (or "Word Cross")

Today marks the anniversary of the first modern crossword puzzle, published in the New York World on Sunday, December 21, 1913.


By 1913, the World was one of the most famous newspapers in, well, the world. Joseph Pulitzer had purchased the paper in 1883 and raised its circulation through sensational news coverage (so-called "Yellow Journalism"), stunt reporting, like that of Nellie Bly, and a focus on distractions and pastimes. The World was beloved for its comic strips and Sunday Fun section.

The crossword (then called a "word cross") was added to the Sunday Fun section by Arthur Wynne, an English emigrant who worked for the World and had been asked to create a new puzzle for the paper. Remembering a game called magic square that he'd learned as a child, Wynne created a simple, diamond-shaped grid and wrote short clues. The puzzles became an overnight sensation, copied by newspapers throughout the city, and--eventually--the world. (Notably, the New York Times was slow to join the party. A Times editorial called crosswords "a primitive form of mental exercise" in 1924, and the paper did not publish the first of its famous puzzles until 1942.)

We've included Wynne's first crossword at left; if you can't read the clues, a clearer version is here. Notice that the clues are written to let you know which space the word starts and ends on; e.g., "1-32 To govern" is the 4-letter word that stretches from cell #1 to cell #32. Have fun!

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Read more about Joseph Pulitzer and the New York World in

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George B. Post (1837-1913)

Today marks the 173rd birthday of George B. Post, one of New York's most influential Beaux-Arts architects.

Post was born in New York City on December 15, 1837, and graduated from the University of the City of New York--today called NYU--in 1858 with a degree in Civil Engineering. Post immediately apprenticed to Richard Morris Hunt, who had recently returned from Paris with a degree from L'ecole des Beaux Arts. Post worked with Hunt at his Tenth Street Studio in Greenwich Village for a few years; however, as soon as the Civil War broke out, Post volunteered and became a captain of New York's 22nd Regiment. The company saw action not only at the front, but also during the quelling of the New York City Draft Riot in 1863.

In the post-war era, Post went on to rival his former teacher in terms of influence. Alas, many of his great New York buildings are now gone, including  the Produce Exchange, the Cotton Exchange, and Joseph Pulitzer's World building, the first skyscraper to call itself the tallest building in the world. But what remains of Post's work is spectacular, including the New York Stock Exchange (1903), the Harlem campus of City College (1907), the Brooklyn Historical Society (1881), and the original Williamsburg Savings Bank (1875) at 175 Broadway in Williamsburg. Post was President of the Architectural League, the American Institute of Architects, the Fine Arts Federation of New York, and the National Arts Club on Gramercy Park, where he oversaw the construction of the studio building for artists who were club members.

(Post also worked in other cities, most notably at the 1893 Chicago World's Fair, where he built the Manufacturers and Arts Building, and as the architect of Wisconsin's Capitol in 1906.)

If you work or live near one of Post's buildings, take a moment today to stop and admire his handiwork. Happy Birthday, George!

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Read more about the New York Stock Exchange,
City College, and other Post buildings in

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

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30 Years Ago Today: John Lennon's Murder

"Everywhere’s somewhere, and everywhere’s the same, really, and wherever you are is where it’s at. But it’s more so in New York." -- John Lennon

Unless you are in a media blackout, you've probably already heard that today marks the thirtieth anniversary of the murder of John Lennon. Lennon and his wife, Yoko Ono, moved to New York City in August 1971, first living on Bank Street in Greenwich Village before settling at the venerable Dakota on Central Park West. Lennon was returning from the recording studio on the night of December 8, 1980, when he was shot by Mark David Chapman, a fan who had earlier that day waited outside the Dakota for Lennon's autograph.

Media outlets around the world have been flooded with Lennon articles in the past few days; here's a sampling of some of the more interesting explorations into Lennon in New York City.

• Rolling Stone has extensive anniversary coverage, including the entire interview they conducted with Lennon just three days before his murder.
  
• The BBC reports on events in Liverpool, Lennon's hometown, including a gathering of 50 musicians for a commemorative photo.
  
• At the Washington Post, a roundup of some of the Lennon coverage on the web, including a nice acoustic version of "Watching the Wheels."
  
• At the Huffington Post, Keith Elliot Greenberg--author of December 8, 1980: The Day John Lennon Died--shares photos from Lennon's final days.
  
• CBS follows up on Mark David Chapman, Lennon's murderer.
  
• The New York Times has many articles, including: a slideshow of the aftermath of Lennon's death; a flashback to how many people found out about the shooting--during Howard Cosell's coverage of "Monday Night Football"; and a look back at Lennon's first American album, the politically charged Sometime in New York City.
  
• Curbed looks at how Lennon and Yoko Ono acquired their multiple apartments in the Dakota....
  
• ...while the New York Times's interview with residents of the Dakota reveals that the Lennons almost moved to the suburbs.
  
• New York Magazine tells the story of the iconic photo (above) of Lennon in his "New York City" t-shirt.
  
• And The Daily News interviews the doctor at Roosevelt Hospital who tried in vain to resuscitate Lennon on the night of his murder.

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Read more about John Lennon in New York in

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

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"Inside the Apple" Contest ends at Midnight

Happy Cyber Monday!

Today is your last chance to enter our contest to win a free, autographed copy of Inside the Apple: A Streetwise History of New York City (and to let your friends know how they can enter). Just read our blog entry at http://blog.insidetheapple.net/2010/11/win-signed-copy-of-inside-apple.html for all the details and then tweet to win.

Good luck!

Enrico Caruso and the Monkey House Incident

Enrico Caruso made his operatic debut in New York on November 23, 1903, to great acclaim; exactly three years later, he was back in the news for a more infamous reason--on November 23, 1906, he was convicted of inappropriately touching a young woman named Hannah Graham in the monkey house at the Central Park Zoo.

Caruso had been arrested a week earlier after being watched for three-quarters of an hour by police officer James J. Cain. As Cain later testified at the trial, he allegedly observed Caruso going up to a number of women in the monkey house; sometimes he stood close behind them so that his legs touched theirs; sometimes he touched women by reaching his hands out through slits cut in his coat's pockets. However, for reasons unknown, Cain did nothing to intervene until Caruso harassed Mrs. Graham. The singer was arrested and quickly brought to trial.

Other than Cain's testimony, the prosecution had very little to go on. They were unable to produce Mrs. Graham and a quick search of her address in the Bronx revealed no Hannah Graham in residence. Cain's excuses for not arresting Caruso sooner seemed flimsy and some observers wrote off the trial as yet another attempt to harass the Italian population. (When Italian New Yorkers flocked to the courthouse to support Caruso, the prosecution argued that their very presence is what had deterred Mrs. Graham from appearing in court.)

In the end, however, the judge sided with the prosecution and fined Caruso ten dollars--the maximum fine for disorderly conduct. Though Caruso vowed to appeal, he eventually let the matter drop, perhaps fearing that any additional publicity would not work in his favor. Five days after the verdict, he appeared on stage at the Metropolitan Opera to a chorus of cheers; he may have lost at trial, but he had surely won in the court of public opinion.

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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!

A Literal Crash on Wall Street: November 12, 1929

Everyone knows about the Wall Street crash of October 1929 that triggered the Great Depression. But there was another, much more literal crash a couple of weeks later. Eighty-one years ago today, one of the great skyscrapers races of all time was coming to a close: The Bank of the Manhattan Company at 40 Wall Street was topping out and thus becoming the tallest building in the world. But an hour before the ceremonies, Wall Street was a scene of chaos.

As The New York Times reported, crowds were gathering around noon for the ceremonies to mark the completion of the world's tallest structure when "a half-ton block of limestone fell from the thirty-fifth floor of the new seventy-story building of the Bank of the Manhattan Company, crashed through the roof of the eighth-story setback down to the fifth floor and scattered debris over the street below."

Luckily, only three people were mildly injured in the accident. A woman in a parked car was cut when a piece of debris shattered the car's window; a steamfitter was struck by a piece of scaffolding in the shoulder; and a young office clerk crossing Wall Street had his leg cut by a shard of granite. As one police officer noted at the scene, "it was miraculous that no others were injured."

One the dust had settled and the injured persons treated at the scene or sent to the hospital, the work of topping out the building commenced. About an hour later the highest piece of structural steel was put atop 40 Wall Street--and, as the papers duly noted the next, it had become the world's tallest building.

Just four days later, the truth would be revealed: the Chrysler Building on 42nd Street had already surpassed 40 Wall Street's height. (You can read our more detailed entry about the skyscraper race from last year for further details.)

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Read more about the race between the Chrysler Building and 40 Wall Street in

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November 4, 1825: "The Wedding of the Waters"

On this day in 1825, New York's governor, DeWitt Clinton, stood on the deck of a packet boat anchored off Sandy Hook and poured a barrel of water from Lake Erie into the Atlantic Ocean. This "wedding of the waters," as it came to be known, was the symbolic completion of the Erie Canal, the most important waterway of its day and the engineering project that once and for all sealed New York's fate as the most important commercial city in America.


We devote many chapters in Inside the Apple to DeWitt Clinton--perhaps the greatest unsung hero of 19th-century New York City--and we won't recap it all here. But it is worth remembering how central the Erie Canal was to New York's consolidation of economic power. Prior to the canal's opening, it was cheaper to bring goods from Liverpool to New York than to haul them overland from Illinois. Once the canal was finished, not only did New York have access to plentiful raw materials from the Midwest, finished products could now also speed to the heartland, opening up new markets for the city's burgeoning manufacturing base.


The canal opened on October 26, 1825, and a cannon was fired in Buffalo to mark the moment. A series of cannons along the canal and the Hudson River had been set up for the occasion and as each gunner heard the shot, he fired his own; in 90 minutes the news passed, cannon to cannon, along the waterway to New York City. Ten days later, the first boat arrived in New York and Governor Clinton poured the water from Lake Erie into the Atlantic. Over the next century, New York's port would expand exponentially, quickly becoming the busiest in America. By the time of the Civil War, New York's control over shipping was so complete that nearly all the cotton being shipped from the south to Europe was being sent out of New York harbor rather than directly from southern ports.

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Read more about DeWitt Clinton and the Erie Canal in

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

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