Charles Atlas: Bodybuilder and Artist's Muse

Today would be bodybuilder Charles Atlas's 121st birthday were he still with us (he died in 1972). Though best known for his Dynamic Tension exercise program that could turn a 97-pound weakling into the hero of the beach, Atlas also earned extra cash by posing as an artist's model. By some counts, over a hundred sculptures and paintings feature Atlas, many of them pieces that New Yorkers pass every day.

Born Angelo Siciliano on October 30, 1892, Atlas moved to Brooklyn in 1905. One day when he was a skinny 15-year-old, he was lounging at Coney Island when a bully came up and kicked sand in his face. Vowing never to be so humiliated again -- and supposedly inspired by a statue of Hercules at the Brooklyn Museum -- Atlas began strength training. By the time he was nineteen, he was employed as a Coney Island strongman; in 1922, he legally changed his name, and in 1929 he launched his mail-order fitness program, known to comic-book readers for generations.

Before Atlas hit it big, he also made money posing as a studio model. No definitive list exists of what pieces were based on Atlas's physique, but the ones below are usually associated with him.

"Washington at War"
Perhaps the most famous statue in the city to feature Atlas is Hermon MacNeil's "Washington at War," which stands on the eastern pier of Stanford White's arch in Washington Square Park. In early architectural drawings, allegorical figures adorned the arch, but when the monument was unveiled in 1895, the pedestals stood empty. It took another twenty years for sculptures to be prepared, with MacNeil's added in 1916. (Its companion, "Washington at Peace" by A. Stirling Calder, debuted a year later.)

photo courtesy of imjustwalkin.com

"Dawn of Glory"
Among Atlas's most dramatic poses is the allegorical "Dawn of Glory" in Highland Park in Brooklyn. This 1924 statue by Pietro Montana was dedicated to the men who died in World War I who hailed from the Highland Park and East New York neighborhoods. As the Highland Park website notes, the "sculpture depicts a male with face turned skyward in the process of disrobing, giving the illusion that the statue is unveiling itself. It is the physical embodiment of the spirit of those who served, and the glory in the hereafter."

"Washington Heights-Inwood War Memorial"
According to a 1942 New Yorker profile of Atlas (paywalled), it was Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney who gave the bodybuilder his start as a model. Whitney was "working on a group for a soldiers' memorial" and in need of a "husky model." The article doesn't say what piece she was working on, but there's a good chance it is the memorial in Mitchel Park in Washington Heights, another local tribute to those who died in the First World War.

"Civic Virtue"
We've written about Frederick MacMonnies's "Civic Virtue" before -- it stood in front of New York's City Hall until Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia had it unceremoniously removed to Queens, where it resided until December 2012. It has now been moved to Green-Wood Cemetery in Brooklyn. The "Rough Guy" (as the figure of Civic Virtue was nicknamed) is modeled on Atlas and has been deteriorating for years. There's no word, yet, on plans to restore the piece.

"Alexander Hamilton"
This last one isn't in New York, but is probably the most famous of all of Atlas's modeling work. Commissioned in 1920, this statue by James Earle Fraser stands in front of the U.S. Treasury Department and shows America's first treasury secretary, Alexander Hamilton, his chest puffed out -- it almost looks like he's ready to strip off his clothes and show off his Dynamic Tension physique. Hamilton certainly looks more robust here than the "little man" that John Adams once described him as being.

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A quick plug for the new book:

Footprints in New York: Tracing the Lives of Four Centuries of New Yorkers

comes out April 15, 2014, but you can already 

pre-order it if you are so inclined at Amazon.com.

In the meantime, if you don't have a copy of 

Inside the Apple: A Streetwise History of New York City

what are you waiting for?

The Armory Show at the New-York Historical Society

The subtitle of the new exhibition at the New-York Historical Society commemorating the centennial of the 1913 Armory show is "Modern Art and Revolution." It's worth walking through the galleries just to see how little of it seems revolutionary any more. In the hundred years since the original International Exhibition of Modern Art (as it was officially called), most of the works that were deemed shocking at the original are now looked on as staid. Marcel Duchamp's Nude Descending a Staircase is so wild that it continues to take people by surprise, but the intimate nature of this New-York Historical Society overview doesn't show it off to its best advantage.

The original armory show, held at the 69th Regiment Armory on Lexington Avenue, showcased over 1,250 works of art by both European and American artists. Today, it would be impossible to bring together all these works in one place, so the New-York Historical Society has wisely chosen to highlight a few key works, focusing not just on the famous European pieces, but also on the American artists who made up a large portion of the show.

This gives visitors the opportunity to spend time with works by Ashcan school painters like Ernest Lawson, Robert Henri, and John Sloan, whose McSorley's Bar is a highlight. Other Americans like George Bellows are well represented, as are lesser-known figures like John Marin, whose Woolworth Building, No. 31 (above) is terrific.

The museum is using timed tickets for entry, but we went on two successive Friday nights (when the museum is pay what you wish) and were handed tickets to walk right in. Maybe it will get busier over the next few months, but for now it seems like the timed tickets weren't necessary.

If you are interested in the moment when "modern" art took New York by storm, this show is well worth checking out. You can read more (much more--it's an extremely comprehensive website) at http://www.nyhistory.org/node/562/online.

* * * *

And read more New York City history in

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

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Reminder -- Sunday's tour "Farmland to Five Points"

Just a reminder that we are hosting a special immigration tour on Sunday, October 13, at 4pm, "From Farmland to Five Points," a look at the multiple, overlapping immigrants who've called the Lower East Side home.

Our new book, Footprints in New York: Tracing the Lives of Four Centuries of New Yorkers (due out in the spring), focuses on this area of the city from multiple different perspectives. On our walk, we'll look at how people as different as Peter Stuyvesant, Alexander Hamilton, Calvert Vaux, Jacob Riis, Lillian Wald, and Martin Scorsese -- all subjects of the new book -- saw the area in their own time periods.

The walk will be about two hours. If you reserve from now until Tuesday, October 8, the cost is just $15 per person. Reservations taken on or after Wednesday, October 9, will be $20 per person.

If you reserve today, October 9, you can still get the special $15 rate -- we won't raise it until tomorrow. So act now!

Come experience this neighborhood through new eyes. Copies of our current book, Inside the Apple, will be available for sale and signing.

To reserve: email info@insidetheapple.net with your:

* Name
* Number in your party
* A cell number where we can contact you in case of emergency.

(Our general rule is to tour rain or shine, but we want to be able to be in touch with in a timely manner in case of inclement weather, so please do include a phone number.)

We will email you the meeting place. Hope to see you this weekend!

Terror of the Soul: Edgar Allan Poe at the Morgan Library

Today marks the 164th anniversary of the mysterious death of Edgar Allan Poe. Born in Boston in 1809, Poe died in Baltimore on October 7, 1849. A former resident of that city, he was only passing through on his way home to New York (he lived in the Bronx near Fordham University) when he was found "rather the worse for wear" and "in great distress." Poe appeared not to have bathed in some time; his hair was dirty; his eyes were "vacant." He was wearing an ill-fitting suit--maybe it wasn't even his own.

What had happened to him?

That's just one question we actually touch on in the Poe chapter of our new book, Footprints in New York: Tracing the Lives of Four Centuries of New Yorkers, which comes out in April. (It's already available on Amazon.com for you early birds.)

But while you wait for the book to come out, you can go up to the Morgan Library & Museum to check out their new Poe exhibition, "Edgar Allan Poe: Terror of the Soul," which opened this past Friday and runs until January 26, 2014.

The exhibit pairs Poe's early manuscripts with first editions, drawings, photographs, and works by some of the many authors that Poe influenced. Like many exhibits at the Morgan, it's a small show, but entertaining for anyone interested in seeing poems and stories in the master's own hand. (Alas, you can't go today to commemorate Poe as the museum is closed on Mondays.)

Also interesting: today's installment of the "Page-turner" at The New Yorker, which investigates whether some stories attributed to Poe's brother, Henry, are actually by Edgar himself.

* * * *

And read more New York City history in

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

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A Man's World at the Metropolitan Playhouse

As many of you know, we're big fans of the work they do at the Metropolitan Playhouse in the East Village (and not just because they sometimes ask us to come speak to the audience after the plays).

The Metropolitan showcases forgotten gems of the American stage, many of which are linked to New York history. Running now through October 13, A Man's World by Rachel Crothers is just such a play and well worth checking out. The acting is stupendous, the sets are wonderful, the direction is spot on -- but what's really fascinating is how Crothers evokes the joys and perils of bohemian life in Greenwich Village at the turn of the twentieth century. Written and set in 1909, the play throws together a group of stock bohemians in a boarding house (probably one very similar to the so-called "House of Genius" on Washington Square where Willia Cather, John Dos Passos, and Stephen Crane all lived.)

Residents in the house include a couple of painters, a playwright, a composer who makes money give "$5 violin lessons for $1.50," an opera singer, and Frankie Ware, a female novelist who's struggling to raise her foster son while fending off critics who think that such strong prose must be written by a man. Her relationship with another boarder, newspaper publisher Malcolm Gaskell, is also the subject of much gossip. The conflicts between modern liberal attitudes and old-fashioned social mores is gripping, and--since the play was written amidst the world it critiques--a real eye-opener as to the sentiments of the time.

You can read more and buy tickets at http://metropolitanplayhouse.org/amansworld.

* * * *

And read more New York City history in

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

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W.H. Auden in New York

This weekend marks the fortieth anniversary of the passing of poet W.H. Auden, who died September 29, 1973. Born in Britain in 1907, Auden moved to New York in 1939, ultimately becoming an American citizen. He lived a number of places around the city between 1939 and 1953 before settling in a tenement at 77 St. Mark's Place, where he would live until a year before his death.

Auden's first home in New York was the Hotel George Washington at Lexington Avenue and 23rd Street. He lived there for two months before moving to the Upper East Side and when he left, he gave them a lengthy poem, which includes the lines:

It stands on the Isle of Manhattan
Not far from the Lexington line,
And although it's demode to fatten,
There's a ballroom where parties may dine....

[T]he sheets are not covered with toffee,

And I think he may safely assume

That he won't find a fish in his coffee

Or a very large snake in his room.

Auden moved to 237 East 81st Street, a nondescript tenement apartment; he had come to America with his friend Christopher Isherwood who joined him on East 81st Street, but Isherwood evidently thought the place haunted. In general, Isherwood was overwhelmed by New York City, and by the end of 1939, he'd decamped to California, never to return.

Auden, meanwhile, relocated to Brooklyn Heights, where he lived at 1 Montague Terrace 1939-40; a plaque on the side of the building at that address trades off the Auden connection, but the apartment complex that stands there now is not the building where Auden lived.

Leaving Montague Terrace, Auden moved into the famed "February House" at 7 Middagh Street, which he shared with an eclectic group of artists: Carson McCullers, Jane and Paul Bowles, Benjamin Britten, and Gypsy Rose Lee.

Over the next decade, Auden moved around a great deal; he taught at the University of Michigan and Swarthmore College. He was drafted but turned down for service in World War II. Eventually, he ended up at 77 St. Mark's Place (which, many years earlier, had housed the Russian newspaper Novy Mir, which counted among its staff writers exiled Russian revolutionary Leon Trotsky).

Auden purchased a summer house in Austria, but spent his winters in New York, drinking at the Holiday Cocktail Lounge ("You could never say when he was drunk, because he was drinking all the time") and writing poetry. Hannah Arendt later wrote that Auden's "slum apartment was so cold that the toilet no longer functioned and he had to use the toilet in the liquor store at the corner."

Auden was a parishioner at St. Mark's-in-the-Bowery nearby on Tenth Street, but he's not buried in their magnificent churchyard. He died in Vienna and is buried in Austria near his summer home.

* * * *

And read more New York City history in

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

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Columbus Day Tour | Sunday, October 13, at 4:00pm

To celebrate Columbus Day, you're invited to a special immigration tour on Sunday, October 13, at 4pm, "From Farmland to Five Points," a look at the multiple, overlapping immigrants who've called the Lower East Side home.

Our new book, Footprints in New York: Tracing the Lives of Four Centuries of New Yorkers (due out in the spring), focuses on this area of the city from multiple different perspectives. On our walk, we'll look at how people as different as Peter Stuyvesant, Alexander Hamilton, Calvert Vaux, Jacob Riis, Lillian Wald, and Martin Scorsese -- all subjects of the new book -- saw the area in their own time periods.

The walk will be about two hours. If you reserve from now until Tuesday, October 8, the cost is just $15 per person. Reservations taken on or after Wednesday, October 9, will be $20 per person.

Come experience this neighborhood through new eyes. Copies of our current book, Inside the Apple, will be available for sale and signing.

To reserve: email info@insidetheapple.net with your:

* Name
* Number in your party
* A cell number where we can contact you in case of emergency.

(Our general rule is to tour rain or shine, but we want to be able to be in touch with in a timely manner in case of inclement weather, so please do include a phone number.)

PLEASE NOTE THAT OUR PREVIOUS PUBLIC TOUR sold out pretty far in advance, so if you want to join us, don't forget to sign up while there is still space!

The Monument on Greenwich Village's Monument Lane

The Death of General Wolfe by Benjamin West.

On September 13, 1759, Major-General James Wolfe died during the Siege of Quebec in the French and Indian War (aka the Seven Years War). Wolfe's heroic victory won the war for Britain, allowing it to seize most of Atlantic Canada, and made Wolfe both a martyr to the cause and an instant celebrity.

The most famous commemoration of Wolfe's death on the Plains of Abraham is Benjamin West's painting (above), now in the National Gallery of Canada. But New York had its own memorial to General Wolfe, an obelisk that was erected in Greenwich Village at the end of what came to be known as "Obelisk Lane" or "Monument Lane."

The General Wolfe monument at Stowe.

Very little is known about the memorial. Some think that it was based on a similar obelisk erected in Stowe in Buckinghamshire, England, by Lord Temple, which still stands today. But this is just speculation. Indeed, if it weren't for a few old memoirs and a couple of maps, we wouldn't know that the monument existed at all.

Montressor Map, ca. 1765-1766.

The obelisk was likely erected soon after Wolfe's death, probably in 1762 by Robert Monckton. Monckton was Wolfe's second in command at Quebec and in 1762 he became royal governor of the Province of New York. He lived in Greenwich Village, in a house owned by Admiral Peter Warren, which stood only a few minutes walk from the monument.

The obelisk appears on the Montressor map of 1765-66, where a "Road to the Obelisk" leads to a spot just east of Oliver De Lancey's farm marked "Obelisk Erected to the Memory of General Wolf [sic] and Others."

The Ratzer Plan, ca. 1766-77

The Ratzer Plan of the city -- issued in 1766 or 1777 -- shows a similar road, calling it "The Monument Lane." If you are familiar with this part of Greenwich VIllage, that lane is now Greenwich Avenue, which runs northwest from Sixth Avenue just south of Christopher Streets. However, many other small streets in the Village were once considered part of the lane. As the American Scenic and Historic Preservation Society wrote in their annual report of 1914:

Monument Lane began at the present Fourth Avenue and Astor Place and ran westward along the present Astor Place; thence to Washington Square North about 100 feet west of Fifth Avenue, where it crossed a brook called at various times Minetta Brook, Bestevaer's Kill, etc.; thence to the present Sixth Avenue and Greenwich Lane; thence along the present Greenwich Lane to Eighth Avenue between Thirteenth and Fourteenth Streets, where it intersected the now obsolete Southampton Road; thence northward about 150 or 200 feet farther, where it terminated at the Monument.

Tracing those roads today, it seems likely that the road probably incorporated what today is Washington Mews and MacDougal Alley, just north of Washington Square, roads that have long been thought to be Native American trails. Indeed, it would not be at all surprising to discover that all of Monument Lane existed long before Europeans settled the area that would come to be known as Greenwich Village.

No one is entirely sure when the monument to General Wolfe was taken down and by whom, but by the time the next map of Manhattan was drawn, ca. 1773, the monument is gone and references to Monument Lane disappear soon thereafter. Some speculate that Oliver De Lancey, a loyalist, destroyed the monument when his lands were confiscated by the Americans after the war, but it seems more likely that the obelisk was already long gone by that time.

If you want to drink a toast to the general and his monument, you do have the opportunity. On Greenwich Avenue is the restaurant Monument Lane which serves a drink called the General James Wolfe. If you're in the neighborhood, stop by and raise a glass to Britain's fallen hero.

* * * *
SAVE THE DATE!
There will be much more about Oliver De Lancey and his family in our next book,
Footprints in New York: Tracing the Lives of Four Centuries of New Yorkers,
coming out April 15, 2014 from Lyons Press.

* * * *

And read more New York City history in

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

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New York's First Murder

Yesterday marked a somber date in New York City history -- the 404th anniversary of the city's first murder.

It happened on September 6, 1609, just days after Henry Hudson and the crew of the ship Half Moon had arrived in the area of what would become New York City.

Hudson had anchored the ship somewhere near Sandy Hook (where they later ran aground). He sent a shallop to explore, and his crew ran into a band of Native Americans.

We know of the incident from the journal of Robert Juet, Hudson's first mate. He wrote:

"The sixth, in the morning, was faire weather, and our master sent John Colman, with foure other men in our boate, over to the north-side to sound the other river, being foure leagues from us. They found by the way shoald water, two fathoms; but at the north of the river eighteen, and twentie fathoms, and very good riding for ships; and a narrow river to the westward, betweene two ilands. The lands, they told us, were as pleasant with grasse and flowers and goodly trees as ever they had seene, and very sweet smells came from them. So they went in two leagues and saw an open sea, and returned; and as they came backe, they were set upon by two canoes, the one having twelve, the other fourteene men. The night came on, and it began to rayne, so that their match went out; and they had one man slaine in the fight, which was an Englishman, named John Colman, with an arrow shot into his throat, and two more hurt. It grew so darke that they could not find the ship that night, but labored to and fro on their oars. They had so great a streame, that their grapnell would not hold them."

The next day Hudson and his crew buried Colman, at the spot they named Colman's Point that is now lost to us.

Juet relates:

"The seventh, was faire, and by ten of the clocke they returned aboord the ship, and brought our dead man with them, whom we carried on land and buryed, and named the point after his name, Colmans Point. Then we hoysed in our boate, and raised her side with waste boords for defence of our men. So we rode still all night, having good regard to our watch."

A few days later, on September 11, 1609, Hudson and his crew would sail up the river -- now the Hudson -- on their way past Manhattan for the first time.

* * * *

Read more New York City history in

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

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Historic Richmond Town's Kruser-Finley House Gutted by Fire

This summer, we snapped the above photo during a visit to Historic Richmond Town, Staten Island's remarkable collection of colonial and early American architecture. That's the Kruser-Finley house, which was built around 1790 and is one of only four houses in Richmond Town built in the eighteenth century. The house, originally located in nearby Egbertville, was built as one room. Two additions were made in the nineteenth century, and it probably served as a house/shop/workshop for various craftspeople, including a cooper (barrel-maker).

Alas, on Wednesday around 4:30pm, the house caught fire. Though the blaze was extinguished in an hour, most the house was lost: the interior was gutted and roof is now completely gone. Though the investigation is still on-going, it has been deemed "suspicious."

courtesy of MARC A. HERMANN/FOR NEW YORK DAILY NEWS

If you've never had the chance to visit, Historic Richmond Town is well worth the trip. Located in the middle of Staten Island, it was the county seat of Richmond County before Staten Island was annexed into New York City. More than 25 significant historic buildings -- some relocated to the site, others original to the town -- are scattered around the property. Though you can walk the streets on your own, the only way to really see the buildings up close is on a tour, which will generally take you inside three or four historic houses.

* * * *

Read more New York City history in

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

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