The Great September Gale of 1815

NOTE: This is a slight rewrite of an article we wrote last year as we awaited Hurricane Irene. With Hurricane Sandy bearing down on the city, we thought it might be timely to repost.
Stay safe out there!

Prior to Hurricane Sandy, the most famous hurricane to come ashore in the New York region was undoubtedly 1938's "Long Island Express," a Category 3 storm that hit on September 31, 1938, wreaking havoc throughout New York and New England.

However, while that hurricane and its aftermath are well documented, an equally strong storm arrived on September 23, 1815, that is now largely forgotten. Known as the "Great September Gale of 1815" (the word hurricane was not yet in popular use), it very likely also a Category 3 storm. The storm originated, as many Atlantic storms do, in the warm waters of the Caribbean, striking the Bahamas before moving northward.

When the storm hit Long Island, it was probably packing 135-mph winds. Though wave heights aren't known, it seems likely that it matched the effect of the 1938 storm, which had a highest recorded wave height of 50 feet. The storm was so strong that it literally rewrote the landscape: before 1815, the Rockaways and Long Beach were connected as one, long barrier island. It was the Great September Gale that rent them asunder, permanently creating the inlet between them.

The worst of the storm's damage came in New England. An 11-foot storm surge rolled up Narragansett Bay, destroying over 500 homes, dozens of ships, and flooding Providence, Rhode Island.

Perhaps the most important after-effect of the gale was to cause Harvard mathematician John Farrar to realize that these types of gales were "moving vortexes," an essential first step toward the modern definition of a hurricane.

Stay safe everyone!

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Read much more about the history of New York in

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

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Last chance: The Colorama at Transit Museum's Grand Central Annex

photo by Jim Pond / courtesy of George Eastman House

As you go around the city this weekend preparing for the arrival of Hurricane Sandy (or the "Frankenstorm" as the National Weather Service has dubbed it), consider popping into Grand Central to check out the Transit Museum annex's exhibit on Kodak's famous Colorama. The show is only open until November 1, so if you are interested, you'd better act now.

From 1950 to 1990, the east wall of Grand Central Terminal -- above the balcony where the Apple store now sits -- featured a rotating series of Ektachrome transparencies. Before the terminal's landmark restoration, there was no staircase to the east balcony (and, of course, no fancy retail establishments in the main hall), making the Colorama one of the most interesting architectural features of the station.

The prints were huge -- 18 by 60 feet -- and were created using a special process where Kodak stitched together 41 panels of film, each approximately 19 inches wide by 20 feet long. (In later years, as technology improved, Kodak was able to cut the number of panels used in half). Once the panels had been stitched together, reinforced grommets were added at six-inch intervals to allow the transparency to be held taught once it was installed. The Colorama was then shipped from Kodak's headquarters in Rochester to New York City where it was swiftly unrolled and hooked in place.

The photographs changed approximately every three-to-five weeks and often reflected seasonal scenes: a family at the beach in summer, or cross-country skiing at Christmastime. Alas, the prints in the current show are nowhere near as big as the originals, but anyone who commuted through Grand Central in the 1960s (when the bulk of the prints in the show date from) will instantly remember these bucolic scenes, which serve as a great reminder of the aspirational nature of both advertising and photography in the Don Draper era.

For a slide show of Colorama prints, visit the New York Times "Lens" blog at http://lens.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/08/03/kodaks-idealized-colorama-returns/.

For more on the history of the Colorama, Kodak has a feature on their website at http://www.kodak.com/US/en/corp/features/coloramas/colorama.html.

photo by Hank Mayer / courtesy of George Eastman House

The Transit Museum annex is just off the main concourse in Grand Central (in the Shuttle Passage), adjacent to the Station Masters' Office. The show is open though November 1; Monday – Friday: 8 AM to 8 PM, Saturday – Sunday: 10 AM to 6 PM.

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For more on the history and architecture of Grand Central, pick up a copy of
Inside the Apple: A Streetwise History of New York City.

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Charles Keck's "Hiawatha" at the House of Morgan

Our blog is probably not the place you normally turn for recommendations on where to buy Halloween paraphernalia, but we urge you to head to Wall Street sometime in the next two weeks to the Halloween pop-up store that has opened at 23 Wall Street.*

Of course, Halloween decor isn't the reason we're sending you..... Twenty-three Wall Street is better known as the "House of Morgan." Sitting at the junction of Broad and Wall streets, it is one of the monuments to American capitalism. Once one of the grandest banks in the Financial District, the interior has been stripped of all its charm -- except in one place, over the doorway. There, Charles Keck's masterful running frieze depicts the story of Hiawatha. It is the only part of this magnificent space that is left, and since the building's interior is normally closed to the public, now is a rare chance to check it out in person.

J. Pierpont Morgan began his career in finance in the 1860s and within a decade had built his first bank at this corner. Morgan's fame and influence skyrocketed in the Gilded Age. In many ways, he was single-handedly responsible for calming the Panic of 1907. As we write in Inside the Apple:

[O]n the news of the Knickerbocker Trust Company’s insolvency after an ill-fated attempt to corner the copper market, Morgan had saved the day. In just 15 minutes, he had extracted promises of $25 million to help prop up the stock market. However, there remained the issue of a number of failing trust companies. So, Morgan gathered New York’s financiers at the library. According to historian Ron Chernow, the commercial bankers were locked in the library, “beneath signs of the zodiac and a tapestry of the seven deadly sins” and the trust company men were put in the study, “beneath the gaze of saints and Madonnas.” Morgan sat in the librarian’s office playing solitaire. At five o’clock in the morning, the incarcerated bankers finally agreed to a $25 million bailout of the weaker trusts and were allowed to go home.

In 1913, the old Morgan bank on Wall Street was torn down so that a new building could be built. As the New York Times reported at the time, observers were surprised to discover that Morgan was not planning a "high office building...with the lower floors reserved for J.P. Morgan and Co.," but instead was contemplating a building "somewhat under ten stories high." The final product was, in fact, only four stories tall, most of the space taken up by the colossal main hall with its skylighted 30-foot ceiling.

The bank was designed by Trowbridge and Livingston (who also built 14 Wall Street, catty-corner from Morgan's bank), and they hired sculptor Charles Keck to provide the interior sculptural detailing. Keck was a New Yorker who had apprenticed with Augustus Saint-Gaudens and was a Fellow of the American Academy in Rome; his best-known work in New York is the Father Duffy statue in Duffy Square in front of the TKTS ticket booth. According to the December 1914 edition of Architecture magazine, Keck created two scenes: on "one side, the industries of the sea, the earth, and the air are depicted through the medium of Greek mythology." On the other side -- and this is what you can easily see just above the main entrance door inside the building -- he "borrowed from the North American Indian mythology the legend of 'Hiawatha' who is supposed to have given the Indians their knowledge of agriculture and the arts."

Like most Americans, Keck's familiarity with the Hiawatha story was likely from Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's Song of Hiawatha, which was published in 1855 and quickly became an extremely popular American verse. Here, a white missionary -- "the Black-Robe chief" -- preaches to the natives:

And the Black-Robe chief made answer, 

Stammered In his speech a little, 

Speaking words yet unfamiliar: 

"Peace be with you, Hiawatha, 

Peace be with you and your people, 

Peace of prayer, and peace of pardon, 

Peace of Christ, and joy of Mary!"

* The Halloween City store is open daily through November 2nd.

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Read more about J.P. Morgan's bank in 

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

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Reminder -- Architectural Walking Tour of SoHo, Chinatown, and Little Italy

**** UPDATE ****
There are just a few spaces left for our tour this Sunday, so if you'd like to join us, please reserve soon!

________________________

October is always a great time to walk around the city, so on Sunday, October 14, at 4:00PM we will be hosting a public walking tour of The Architecture of SoHo, Little Italy, and Chinatown. This walk will focus on the architectural treasures – some well-known, others obscure – that populate the city’s immigrant neighborhoods. We will see work by Stanford White, Richard Morris Hunt, Calvert Vaux (just to name three luminaries) along with civic buildings, churches, tenements, and more.

The tour will last about 90 minutes and cost $15 per person.  To reserve, send

• Your name
• The number in your party
• And a contact phone number (preferably a cell #) to walknyc@gmail.com                                               

Reservations are taken on a first-come, first-served basis, and we may sell out, so act early.

The meeting place will be emailed to you when you reserve.

Hope to see you there!

Michelle and James Nevius 

WWII and New York at the New-York Historical Society

State Historical Society of Missouri Art Collection. Art© T.H. and R.P. Benton Testamentary Trusts/Licensed by VAGA, New York, NY. 

We stopped by the New-York Historical Society on Friday for the opening day of their new exhibit, WWII and New York, which runs through May 27, 2013.

The show begins with a small section examining attitudes in the city -- and America -- in the years before the bombing of Pearl Harbor. We're not sure if this is by happenstance or design, but this is also the hardest part of the show to see. Many of the objects on exhibit are hung in cases so that visitors have to stand right in front of them to get a decent view. (This is fine for the person with their nose pressed to the glass, but not so good for everyone else in the room.) The exhibit opens up in subsequent sections, which cover "The New York Home Front," "Going to War," and "Victory and Loss."

The show is best when displaying the ephemera of the era: Chic Young's It's Our War comic strip demonstrating what children needed to do to defend the country; the Maiden Form company's application for a "Declaration of Necessity" for their bras for factory workers; the miniatures from the National War Poster competition at MoMA.

The exhibit also serves as a sobering reminder of the lives lost during the war. Towards the end of the show, there are profiles of thirteen New Yorkers who served -- from Commander-in-Chief Franklin D. Roosevelt on down -- including the tales of those who died in combat. Also affecting are Thomas Hart Benton's paintings -- in particular "Embarkation—Prelude to Death (Year of Peril)" (above), which shows young American servicemen boarding a ship in New York on their way to Europe. If you have the time, step into the small theater nearby and watch WWII and Me, a film by Francis Lee, a New Yorker from East 10th Street who was a combat cameraman who documented his experiences from basic training to Omaha Beach.

Like many exhibitions (and this isn't a critique of the N-YHS as much as it is a criticism of every museum), there's too much in the show to take in all at once. From the U-Boats patrolling New York Harbor to the WAVES in the Bronx, the exhibit tries to cover every possible base. The upside to this approach is that there's something for everyone here, from children to veterans, and you'll surely discover something about wartime New York that will be new to you. You can also explore the show online at http://wwii.nyhistory.org/.

* * * *

Read more about New York in World War II in

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

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Also, you can now follow us on Twitter.

Sunday, October 14: Architectural Walking Tour of Soho, Little Italy, and Chinatown

October is always a great time to walk around the city, so on Sunday, October 14, at 4:00PM we will be hosting a public walking tour of The Architecture of SoHo, Little Italy, and Chinatown. This walk will focus on the architectural treasures – some well-known, others obscure – that populate the city’s immigrant neighborhoods. We will see work by Stanford White, Richard Morris Hunt, Calvert Vaux (just to name three luminaries) along with civic buildings, churches, tenements, and more.

The tour will last about 90 minutes and cost $15 per person.  To reserve, send

• Your name
• The number in your party
• And a contact phone number (preferably a cell #) to walknyc@gmail.com                                               

Reservations are taken on a first-come, first-served basis, and we may sell out, so act early.

The meeting place will be emailed to you when you reserve.

Hope to see you there!

Michelle and James Nevius

Tatzu Nishi: Discovering Columbus

If you've been by Columbus Circle recently, you've noticed that the monument to Christopher Columbus is shrouded in scaffolding. This has been built for a dual purpose -- beginning in November, it will be used so that conservators can clean and restore the 120-year-old monument. But until then, the area atop the scaffold has been transformed by artist Tatzu Nishi into a living room where you can see the Columbus statue up close and personal.

As we write in Inside the Apple:

In the years leading up to [the Columbus quadricentennial in] 1892, Carlo Barsotti, the publisher of the Italian-language paper Il Progresso Italo Americano diligently promoted the idea that Columbus be honored in New York, which was fast becoming one of the largest centers of Italians in the world. Through public subscription, Il Progresso raised the money for a statue to be erected...and hired Sicilian artist Gaetano Russo to create a monument to be ready for October 12, 1892. It was unveiled in the newly named Columbus Circle as part of the celebrations for Columbus Day.

Nishi's installation takes Columbus out of the public sphere and reexamines Russo's artwork not only as part of a domestic scene -- there are couches, newspapers, and CNN running on a big-screen TV -- but also as a stereotypical American cultural reference. The wallpaper Nishi has designed for the installation features other American icons, such as the Empire State Building, Elvis Presley, Michael Jackson, baseball, and the old west.

The installation runs through November 18. Admission is free, but timed tickets are required and can be requested at http://www.publicartfund.org/view/exhibitions/5495_discovering_columbus. We're told that it is particularly compelling at night, though we've only seen it from the exterior after sunset.

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Read more about Christopher Columbus in New York City in

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

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The Great Fire of 1776

Today marks the anniversary of the beginning of the end of American control of Manhattan during the Revolutionary War – the Great Fire of 1776, which decimated Lower Manhattan on the night of September 21.

As we write in Inside the Apple:

The fire started on the evening of September 21, 1776—perhaps in the Fighting Cocks Tavern on the wharf, though that has never been substantiated—and quickly engulfed the city west of Broadway. The churchyard surrounding Trinity Church kept the fire from heading south, but neither Trinity was spared, nor anything between it and St. Paul’s Chapel. St. Paul’s, itself only ten years old, had a bucket brigade manning its roof and was saved. In all, over 400 buildings were gone—nearly twenty-five percent of the city’s structures.

The British immediately blamed the Americans. (One American blamed by the British was Nathan Hale, who was arrested for spying that same day. Hale, however, had nothing to do with the fire.) General Howe called it a “horrid attempt” by a “number of wretches to burn the town….” As most of the damage happened on “Holy Ground” and other Trinity Church property, some saw it as an explicit attack on the Church of England’s power and influence. In truth, the Americans had contemplated the idea of torching the city if it fell into British hands. One of Washington’s generals, Nathaniel Greene (the “Fighting Quaker”), had pressed Washington in that direction. However, when Washington floated the idea by John Hancock, the Continental Congress immediately nixed it and it is unlikely that either Washington or Greene disobeyed Congress.

By the time the fire was extinguished, New York was firmly in British hands and it would remain the British center of authority until November 25, 1783 -- Evacuation Day.

One thing that ticked off the Americans left behind in the British-occupied city was the fact that none of the fire damage was repaired. Throughout the war the area west of Broadway was left to smolder in ruins. Much of the rebuilding -- including re-erecting the city's main church, Trinity, Wall Street -- would not happen until the 1790s.

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Read more about the Great Fire of 1776 and the American Revolution in

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

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1901: Teddy Roosevelt Becomes the First New Yorker to be President

On September 14, 1901, William McKinley succumbed to the gunshot wound he'd suffered eight days earlier at the Pan American Exposition in Buffalo, New York, thus elevating Theodore Roosevelt to the presidency.

Not only was Roosevelt America's youngest president (at age 42), he was the only one to be born and raised in New York City. As we write in Inside the Apple:

[Roosevelt] was born on October 27, 1858, in the family’s brownstone townhouse at 28 East 20th Street. Often in poor health as a child, much of Teddy’s later bully and bravado was the result of the exercise he undertook in and around Gramercy Park, Madison Square, and Union Square—where his grandfather lived—to boost his physique. The Roosevelt family moved out of the 20th Street house in 1872, and in 1916, the building was demolished to make way for a restaurant and retail shops.

The construction of the Theodore Roosevelt Birthplace is a good example of how a person’s stock can rise after death—especially a former president. In 1916, when the original home was torn down, T.R. was still a polarizing figure in American politics. Having run unsuccessfully as the third-party candidate for president in 1912—which split the vote and ensured the election of Democrat Woodrow Wilson—Roosevelt chose in 1916 to throw his support behind Republican Charles Evans Hughes in an effort to thwart Wilson’s reelection. But he did so only after the Republican Party made it clear that Roosevelt would not be given the nomination himself. Three years later, he was dead and within weeks he was being lionized. The New York State legislature chartered the Woman’s Roosevelt Memorial Association a mere 23 days after Roosevelt’s death. By mid March, the organization had purchased the building that had gone up in place of T.R.’s boyhood home as well as the property next door, which had been owned by Roosevelt’s uncle, Robert. Their plan was to “restore” the houses as they would have looked in 1865, based on the “description written by Colonel Roosevelt in his autobiography.” What this meant, in practice, was tearing the buildings down and starting from scratch. In 1923, the newly built home was opened to the public and was praised as a “shrine to American patriotism.”

When President McKinley was shot on September 6, Roosevelt rushed to Buffalo, but the president's condition soon improved and it was thought that sending Roosevelt to join his family on vacation would send a hopeful signal to the American people. Roosevelt and his family vacationed in the Adirondacks and on September 13, the Vice President summitted Mount Marcy. Camping at Lake Tear of the Clouds nearby, Roosevelt's party was interrupted by a trail guide who had come with a telegram from Secretary of War Elihu Root: "The president appears to be dying and members of the cabinet in Buffalo think you should lose no time in coming."

Roosevelt quickly descended twelve miles to the Tahawas Club, a hunting resort, and then left via stagecoach (in the dark and the fog) to North Creek, the closest train station. By the time Roosevelt had reached North Creek, McKinley had died, and Roosevelt was sworn in in Buffalo later that day.

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Read more about Theodore Roosevelt and the Theodore Roosevelt Birthplace in Manhattan in

Inside the Apple: A Streetwise History of New York City

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Buddy Holly's 76th Birthday

September 7, 2012, would have been the seventy-sixth birthday of rock and roll icon Buddy Holly. Alas, Holly died February 3, 1959, in a tragic plane crash in Clear Lake, Iowa.

On the 50th anniversary of Holly's death, we ran a popular story about his time in New York City, which we are reposting below.

Happy Birthday, Buddy!

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I can’t remember if I cried

When I read about his widowed bride

But something touched me deep inside

The day the music died.

—Don McLean, American Pie

Today, February 3, 2009, marks the 50th anniversary of the “day the music died”—the plane crash in Clear Lake, Iowa, that claimed the lives of Ritchie Valens, the Big Bopper, and rock and roll pioneer Buddy Holly.

Originally from Lubbock, Texas, Holly was one of the earliest stars to take what was then still being called “race music” and cross over to white audiences. His early hits with the Crickets—including That’ll Be The Day, Peggy Sue, Oh Boy!, and Not Fade Away—had a profound influence on later acts (including the Beatles and Bob Dylan, who were huge fans) and are still some of the greatest rock songs ever written.

Before his untimely death at age 22, Holly had split with the Crickets and moved to New York City to be closer to the New York music scene. He and his new bride, Maria Elena, moved into the Brevoort apartments at 11 Fifth Avenue. What was then a brand-new apartment building had recently replaced the famous Brevoort Hotel, which had at one time been among the city’s finest hostelries. (Among other famous events, the Brevoort Hotel was the place where Charles Lindbergh received the $25,000 Orteig Prize for his solo flight across the Atlantic; Orteig was the hotel’s owner.)

From print and online sources, it seems unclear if Buddy Holly lived in Apartment 4H or Apartment 3B (though 4H seems to get the nod from more definitive sources). Whichever apartment it was, he set up a home tape recorder and in December 1958 made his final recordings, among them Crying, Waiting, Hoping and Peggy Sue Got Married. Posthumously released with overdubs and studio trickery, the original tapes have circulated for decades among collectors. They were recently included on the definitive Holly rarities set, Down the Line.

When Holly moved in to the Brevoort in 1958, he paid $1,000 a month rent for a corner unit with a wraparound terrace. A two-bedroom apartment in the building (which has been a co-op since 1981) now goes for about $1.495 million.

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Read more about Greenwich Village in 

Inside the Apple: A Streetwise History of New York City

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