Jimi Hendrix and Cafe Wha?

Jimi Hendrix when he was still known as Maurice James.

Had he lived, today would have been rocker Jimi Hendrix's 70th birthday (he died in 1970). Though his recording career was very short -- he released just four albums between 1967 and 1970 -- he had an incredible impact on popular music.

Hendrix arrived in New York in 1966 to try his hand at the Greenwich Village music scene. He had been performing under the name Maurice James, which he soon changed to Jimmy James. After busking on the sidewalks of the Village -- wouldn't that have been a thing to see? -- Hendrix formed the Blue Flame, which served as the house band at Cafe Wha? on Macdougal Street. This was the same cafe where Bob Dylan had first performed when he'd arrived in New York in January 1961.

Chas Chandler, the bassist for the Animals, came to see the Blue Flame perform at Cafe Wha?. Impressed with the guitarist and the song "Hey Joe," Chandler invited Hendrix to come to London. The Blue Flame broke up, the Jimi Hendrix Experience was formed, and Hendrix's meteoric career took off.

So, if you find yourself in the Village today, stop by Cafe Wha? to pay tribute to its place in rock and roll history.

* * * *

Read more about the Greenwich Village music scene in 

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

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1863: The Year of Two Thanksgivings

Even if your knowledge of the history of Thanksgiving is a little shaky, you probably know that it became a national holiday when Abraham Lincoln declared it one in 1863. In the words of the original proclamation, issued in October 1863 and actually written by Secretary of State William Seward, the former senator from and governor of New York:

I do therefore invite my fellow citizens in every part of the United States, and also those who are at sea and those who are sojourning in foreign lands, to set apart and observe the last Thursday of November next, as a day of Thanksgiving and Praise to our beneficent Father who dwelleth in the Heavens. And I recommend to them that while offering up the ascriptions justly due to Him for such singular deliverances and blessings, they do also, with humble penitence for our national perverseness and disobedience, commend to his tender care all those who have become widows, orphans, mourners or sufferers in the lamentable civil strife in which we are unavoidably engaged, and fervently implore the interposition of the Almighty Hand to heal the wounds of the nation and to restore it as soon as may be consistent with the Divine purposes to the full enjoyment of peace, harmony, tranquility and Union.

However, this was actually Lincoln's second Thanksgiving proclamation of the year. On July 16, he had issued the following proclamation (again, likely by Seward):

It has pleased Almighty God to hearken to the supplications and prayers of an afflicted people, and to vouchase to the army and the navy of the United States, on the land and on the sea, so signal and so effective as to furnish reasonable grounds for augmented confidence that the Union of these States will be maintained, their Constitution preserved, and their peace and prosperity permanently preserved; but these victories have been accorded not without sacrifice of life, limb and liberty, incurred by brave, patriotic and loyal citizens. Domestic affliction in every part of the country follows in the train of these fearful bereavements. It is meet and right to recognize and confess the presence of the Almighty Father, and the power of His hand equally in these triumphs and these sorrows.

Now, therefore, be it known that I do set apart Thursday, the sixth day of August next, to be observed as a day for National Thanksgiving, praise and prayer, and I invite the people of the United States to assemble on that occasion in their customary places of worship, and in the form approved by their own conscience, render the homage due to the Divine Majesty for the wonderful things He has done in the Nation's behalf, and invoke the influence of His Holy Spirit, to subdue the anger which has produced, and so long sustained a needless and cruel rebellion; to change the hearts of the insurgents; to guide the counsels of the Government with wisdom adequate to so great a National emergency, and to visit with tender care, and consolation throughout the length and breadth of our land, all those who, through the vicissitudes of marches, voyages, battles and sieges, have been brought to suffer in mind, body or estate, and finally to lead the whole nation through paths of repentance and submission to the Divine will, back to the perfect enjoyment of union and fraternal peace.

(FYI: That second paragraph is one sentence.)

The first Thanksgiving of 1863, August 6, was celebrated with proper solemnity. As the New York Times noted the next day, "The National Thanksgiving was observed throughout the City yesterday by an almost entire abstaining from secular pursuits. The stores throughout were closed, and there appeared to be a very general desire to unite in the purposes of the day -- Thanksgiving and Praise. Very many of the churches were open, where proper observances were had, and each was crowded to overflowing." What they were praising and/or hoping for was continued Union success; with the Union victory at Gettysburg in July, many hoped that tide of the war had finally turned in favor of the North.

Of course, on the minds of New Yorkers would have been the fighting closer to home -- the Civil War draft riots -- which had waged on the streets less than a month earlier. However, it is unclear if the riots played any role in the Thanksgiving commemorations.

Having celebrated Thanksgiving in August, why did Lincoln then proclaim another one in November? The declaration for this second Thanksgiving seems little different from the first; there had been no major Union victories in the meantime for which the nation could express thanks; and Lincoln's proclamation doesn't make any ties to harvest festivals, the Pilgrims, or any of the things we now firmly associate with the holiday. Had Lincoln not issued a second Thanksgiving proclamation in 1863, do you think we'd be celebrating the national holiday in August? Any thoughts are welcome in the comments.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Michelle & James Nevius

www.insidetheapple.net

The Perfect NYC Gift

As Thanksgiving approaches, that means that Black Friday, Small Business Saturday, and Cyber Monday can't be far behind. If you are shopping for a fan of New York City this holiday season, we'd just like to remind you that Inside the Apple: A Streetwise History of New York City makes a great present. In 182 short chapters, we cover everything from pre-contact Manhattan to the rebuilding of the World Trade Center, with special attention to places that you can visit and explore on your own.

Or, as the New York Times put it, the book is "a smart and entertaining window on the city of past."

You have an array of buying options: Amazon.com currently has one of the best online prices. At Barnes & Noble's website, you can either order online or find out if your local store has the book in stock.

And if you do want to support and independent, local bookstore this weekend for Small Business Saturday (and who doesn't want to buy local?), you can use this handy website to find an independent book shop near you that stocks Inside the Apple. In New York City, we know that our friends at Shakespeare & Company always have it in stock.

Have a wonderful holiday -- and don't forget that Sunday is Evacuation Day.

Michelle & James Nevius
www.insidetheapple.net

Happy Birthday, James Renwick

One of New York's most influential architects was James Renwick, and yesterday may or may not have been his 194th birthday -- sources variously list the date of his birth as November 1, November 3, and November 11.

We do know that Renwick was born in the Bloomingdale section of Manhattan (now the Upper West Side) in 1818. He was the son of Columbia College professor James Renwick, Sr., and Margaret Brevoort, the sister of Henry Brevoort, one of the city's most prominent landowners.

Renwick studied engineering at Columbia (graduating at age 18, which was not that unusual in that era), and became a supervising engineer on the new Croton aqueduct system that was bringing water from Westchester county to New York. In 1843, Grace Episcopal Church purchased land from Renwick's uncle Henry to build a new parish in Greenwich Village. Likely through Brevoort's influence, Renwick -- who'd never built a building in his life -- was given the job. The church was immediately the toast of the town. As we write in Inside the Apple:

Former mayor Philip Hone, now living on nearby Great Jones Street, soon tweaked the new parish’s congregants in his diary: "This is to be a fashionable church and already its aisles are filled…with gay parties of ladies in feathers and 'mousseline-delaine dresses' and dandies with moustaches and high heeled boots; the lofty arches resound with astute criticisms upon 'Gothic Architecture' from fair ladies who have had the advantage of foreign travel, and scientific remarks upon 'acoustics' from elderly millionaires who do not hear quite as well as formerly." 

The other great New York diarist of the time, George Templeton Strong, took issue with the city’s sudden love of all things Gothic and levied his criticism squarely at Renwick:  "If the infatuated monkey showed the slightest trace or germ of feeling for his art, one could pardon and pass over blunders and atrocities…. [Renwick is] caught up in the prevailing romantic preoccupation with keeps and dungeons illuminated by flashes of lightning and ringing with the clash of sword on shield."

Hot on the heels of the success of Grace Church, Renwick won the competition to design the new Smithsonian Institution in Washington, DC. Built between 1847-1855, the original building -- today known as "The Castle" -- was a major influence on the widespread use of Gothic Revival architecture in America.

Besides the Castle, Renwick's most famous work is probably St. Patrick's Cathedral, completed in 1879; however, New York is filled with other Renwick buildings, from the old Hotel St. Denis (across the street from Grace Church, now offices), to the row of apartments on West 10th Street known as "Renwick Terrace," to the Packer Collegiate building in Brooklyn Heights that was once the Church of St. Ann. It is nearly impossible to study 19th-century architecture in the city without experiencing and enjoying Renwick's influence.

So, no matter what day you were born -- Happy Birthday, James Renwick!

* * * *

Read more about James Renwick in 

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

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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!

* * *

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.

* * * *

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.

* * * *

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

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

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Also, you can now follow us on Twitter.

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.

To get RSS feeds from this blog, point your reader to this link.

Or, to subscribe via email, follow this link.

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