Fraunces Tavern Museum Lecture

On Thursday, April 23, at 6:30PM, we will be speaking at Fraunces Tavern in Lower Manhattan. Because that neighborhood is steeped in New York's early history, our talk will focus on the area right about the tavern, starting with the Dutch and looking at the British takeover in 1664, the American Revolution -- in which Fraunces Tavern played a significant role -- and the growing mercantile nature of the neighborhood in the early 19th century.

The lecture costs $6 (or is free if you are a member of the museum). Come early to enjoy the museum's collection.

After the talk, there will be a reception and books will be available for sale and signing.

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The Assassination Attempt on William H. Seward

Yesterday, April 14, marked a solemn date during a year in which we are celebrating Abraham Lincoln's 200th birthday -- the 144th anniversary of his murder.

While Lincoln's death at the hands of John Wilkes Booth will likely always be remembered as one of America's most heinous crimes, it should be recalled that Booth and his conspirators had two other targets that night, as well: Secretary of State William H. Seward and Vice President Andrew Johnson. Even though Lee had already surrendered to Grant, Booth reasoned that if they could kill the President, the Vice President, and the Secretary of State all on one night the Union would be thrown into disarray. And, with no formal right of succession--which wouldn't be codified in the Constitution until after the Kennedy assassination--Booth might have had a point.

William Seward, best known today for his purchase of Alaska from the Russians ("Seward's Folly"), was Governor of New York from 1838-42 and Senator from 1848 until becoming Lincoln's Secretary of State in 1861. (Seward, one of the founding members of the Republican Party, had been many people's first choice to be nominated in 1860 and he received more votes on the first ballot than Lincoln. However, he did not have enough votes to gain the nomination outright and it was his eventual shift of support to Lincoln that guaranteed his rival the top spot on the Republican ticket in 1860.)

The night that Lincoln was murdered, Seward was laid up in bed. He had been in a serious carriage accident just nine days earlier that had left him close to death. One of Booth's co-conspirators, Lewis Powell (aka Lewis Paine), talked his way into the Seward house pretending that he was delivering medicine. Stopped on the stairs by Seward's son, Frederick, Powell panicked, attacking Frederick and dashing into the Secretary of State's bedroom. He stabbed Seward multiple times, injured another of Seward's sons and his bodyguard, and retreated into the night thinking he had mortally wounded the Secretary of State. It was only after Powell was captured the next day that he discovered that Seward was still alive; Seward went on to make a full recovery, continuing to serve as Secretary of State under Andrew Johnson. (Johnson was to have been assassinated that night by George Azerodt, but the would-be killer chickened out.)



Seward died in 1872 and is memorialized in New York City in a famous park on the Lower East Side (about which we'll blog more in the future) as well as in a grand statue in Madison Square Park. This statue will be one of the stops on our tour of the Flatiron District this Sunday, April 19, at 4:00PM. The tour is sponsored by local, independent travel bookstore Idlewild Books. The event costs $25 per person, which include the tour, a signed copy of our new book, Inside the Apple, and a reception afterwards at the bookstore. This is a great opportunity to learn more about Madison Square Park and the Flatiron District -- and a great deal; you are essentially getting a free book for the price of a walking tour. To register for the tour call Idlewild Books at 212-414-8888.

[This post was edited April 14, 2015 for clarity and to add a new photo.]

Taking Questions about Manhattan History at the New York Times

All this week will be answering questions about Manhattan History at the New York Times's City Room blog.

Please visit the blog at http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/04/13/ask-about-the-history-of-manhattan/

We look forward to your questions about the city!

New-York Historical Society Presents "Inside the Apple"

Next Wednesday, April 15, at 6:00PM, we will be giving an illustrated book talk at the New York Historical Society.

Like Inside the Apple, the talk will focus on the history of the city from Henry Hudson's arrival in 1609 to the present. We will pay special attention to some of the important New Yorkers who have shaped the city over the past 200 years and were also integral to the creation and early life of the New York Historical Society. The talk will also feature a brief "virtual tour" of the Upper West Side neighborhood where the society now resides, showing how Central Park West went from farmland to posh address at the end of the 19th century.

Copies of the book will be available for sale and signing afterward. We are also being filmed that evening for C-SPAN 2's "Book TV," so come with good questions for the Q&A!

The event is free and open to the public. The New York Historical Society is located at 170 Central Park West (at the corner of 77th Street).

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Crazy Joe Gallo

Born in Red Hook, Brooklyn

In the year of who knows when.

Opened up his eyes

To the sound of an accordion.

--Bob Dylan and Jacques Levy, Joey

 

Today marks both the birth and the death of one of New York’s most famous gangsters, “Crazy” Joe Gallo.

Though Bob Dylan claimed he’d been born “in the year of who knows when,” Gallo was actually born April 7, 1929, in Red Hook. His life of crime began when he and his brothers became enforcers for the Profaci family in the 1950s. After successfully carrying out the murder of Albert Anastasia at the Park Sheraton Hotel, Crazy Joe asked Joseph Profaci for a bigger cut of the action. When Profaci refused, a turf war broke out between the Gallo brothers and the Profacis—a bloody fight that continued well into the 1960s even after Gallo was sent to prison for ten years for extortion and Joseph Profaci died of cancer, handing the reins of the family to Joseph Colombo.

Crazy Joe was released from prison in 1971 into a whirl of publicity. Jimmy Breslin’s book The Gang That Couldn’t Shoot Straight—a humorous take on the Gallo/Profaci war—had been released in 1969 and filmed in 1971. In the film, Jerry Orbach—later of Law and Order fame—played “Kid Sally,” the character based on Gallo. Crazy Joe wasn’t thrilled with the performance, so invited Orbach and his wife over to dinner to set them straight. They were amazed at his knowledge of art and literature—as Marta Curro Orbach later said, “When he asked me whether I preferred Camus or Sartre, I almost fell into a plate of spaghetti.” The Orbachs quickly became some of Gallo’s closest friends, introducing him, in turn, to their friends in the world of theater and publishing.

However, the friendship was not to last. On April 7, 1972, Gallo celebrated his birthday with the Orbachs and other friends at the Copacabana. After the party broke up, Gallo, his wife, and his body guard, Pete “the Greek” Diapoulas decided to head to Little Italy for a quick bite at Umberto’s Clam House. Uncharacteristically seated with his back to the door, Gallo didn’t notice a gunman enter the restaurant until it was too late. He leapt up and ran toward the hail of bullets—probably to draw fire away from his wife—and staggered out on to Mulberry Street, where he died.

While Umberto’s still exists in Little Italy, it is no longer in its original location. The spot where Gallo was killed, at the corner of Hester and Mulberry, is now Da Gennaro. Umberto’s moved to Broome Street a few years after the murder.

Gallo’s life is not only recounted in The Gang That Couldn’t Shoot Straight and Bob Dylan’s Joey (from the album Desire), it was also made into a film called Crazy Joe in 1974 starring Everybody Loves Raymond’s Peter Boyle.

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More about Little Italy -- including a walking tour of famous and not-so-famous sites -- can be found in our book Inside the Apple, which is now available. For more information about the book and our upcoming talks and walking tours in New York, visit http://www.insidetheapple.net.

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Peter Greenberg's Worldwide Radio

Just a brief update to let you know that we will be appearing on Peter Greenberg's travel radio show this weekend.

Greenberg -- who is the Today Show travel editor as well as the author of numerous books including Don’t Go There! The Travel Detective’s Essential Guide to the Must-Miss Places of the World and Tough Times, Great Travels -- hosts a weekly radio program that is syndicated to over 150 stations nationwide.

We will be appearing on the show the morning of Saturday, April 4 (though some stations don't broadcast the show until Sunday, April 5).

To find a station near you, visit http://www.petergreenberg.com/peter-greenberg-worldwide-radio-station-finder and enter your zip code.

Alternately, you can stream the show live between 10:00AM and 1:00PM Eastern Standard Time at News Radio 1440 , or you download a podcast from iTunes to listen to at your leisure.

If you are not familiar with the show, Peter flies to a different city each week to report on that week's travel news, take calls and emails from listeners, and profile authors and other travel experts. Our show will be broadcast from Lucerne, Switzerland. (Though, alas, we will not be in Switzerland!)

Hope you enjoy it.

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PS: Save the date for three April events (which we'll detail in future posts):

Wednesday, April 15:

An illustrated lecture and book signing at the New York Historical Society 

Sunday, April 16:

A walking tour of the Flatiron District and book signing in conjunction with Idlewild Books
(this was postponed from March)

Thursday, April 23:

An illustrated lecture and book signing at the Fraunces Tavern Museum

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Henry Hudson?

On Sunday, the New York Times published an article about the events in Amsterdam and New York surrounding the 400th anniversary of Henry Hudson's voyage of discovery.

The article is accompanied by a drawing of Henry Hudson that was captioned, "An illustration thought to be that of English explorer Henry Hudson."

However, as Thomas Janvier noted in Henry Hudson: A Brief Statement of His Aims and Achievements:

“No portrait of Hudson is known to be in existence. What has passed with the uncritical for his portrait — a dapper-looking man wearing a ruffed collar — frequently has been, and continues to be, reproduced. Who that man was is unknown. That he was not Hudson is certain.”

 

Which begs the question: Who is that man in the ruffed collar?

 

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Much more about Henry Hudson and his famous voyage can be found in Inside the Apple, now available online or at bookstore near you!

 

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Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire

Today, March 25, marks the 98th anniversary of the tragic fire at the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory that claimed the lives of 148 young women and ushered in an era of renewed efforts to unionize New York's garment industry and protect the lives of its workers.

As we write in Inside the Apple:

On the day of the fire, a Saturday, only about half of the factory’s 500 employees had come to work. Just as the afternoon shift was ending, a fire broke out on the eighth floor. Typical of garment centers of the day, the factory floor was a virtual tinderbox, with clothes, scraps of cloth, and unswept trimmings everywhere. When the fire started, the majority of the workers on the eighth and tenth floors were able to escape, but those on the ninth floor had been locked in. This was done, some speculated, to cut down on unauthorized breaks, though it is also likely that it kept union organizers off the factory floor. Soon the elevators stopped working, which meant that the only remaining exit was the fire escape. Tragically, the fire escape had been poorly installed and maintained, and when too many young women began to climb down, it collapsed beneath their weight, sending them plunging to their death. The rest of the women on the ninth floor were then faced with jumping out of windows or waiting to burn to death. Many chose the former, raining down on the assembled crowd from above. The fire department did arrive, but as their ladders reached no higher than the sixth floor, it did little to save the women. In the end, 148 women died, most of them at the scene. Almost entirely immigrants from Little Italy and the Lower East Side, some were only thirteen years old.

Though the fire forced the Triangle's owners to abandon the factory, the building still stands at the corner of Washington Place and Greene Street. Then known as the Asch Building, it was renovated and reopened the next year. However, a New York Times article from 1913 noted that the building's tenants hadn't learned many lessons from the fire -- "they were, in fact, heaping its floors with scraps of clothing and flimsy material... and permitting smokers to stand near these heaps--(revealing) once more the singular carelessness of humanity."

The building was purchased by NYU in 1929 and renamed the Brown Building; today, it houses university classrooms.

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Much more about the Triangle fire and other Greenwich Village people, events, and landmarks can be found in Inside the Apple: A Streetwise History of New York City, which is now officially out! You can buy it from online retailers, check out whether it is carried in-store at your local Barnes & Noble or Borders, or look for it at your neighborhood independent retailer.

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Flatiron District Walking Tour and Book Signing

As part of the celebration of the release of Inside the Apple: A Streetwise History of New York City*, please join us on Sunday, March 29, 2009, at 4:00PM, for a Walking Tour of the Flatiron District followed by a book signing at Idlewild Books.

The cost of the event is $25 per person, and this includes the tour, a copy of Inside the Apple, and a reception following the event.

We will examine the history and mythology of such well-known landmarks as the Flatiron Building and the Empire State Building. Was the Flatiron New York's first skyscraper? Did they really try to moor dirigibles to the Empire State Building? We will also look at lesser known figures, like politico Roscoe Conkling and General William Jenkins Worth, sharing stories unknown to many native New Yorkers.

We will end the tour at Idlewild Books, an independent travel bookstore on West 19th Street for a signing and reception.

Advance reservations and payment are required.

To reserve, please visit Idlewild Books in person at 12 West 19th Street (near Fifth Avenue), call 212-414-8888, or email events@idlewildbooks.com.

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* The book has also received a couple of early reviews—a great write-up in last Sunday’s New York Post, which calls the book a “tour de force”—and praise from Publishers Weekly.

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West Side Story

Opening on Broadway tonight is the eagerly anticipated revival of the Leonard Bernstein/Stephen Sondheim/Jerome Robbins musical West Side Story. (For a good analysis from one of the preview performances, check out Rob Snyder’s commentary over at the blog Greater New York.)

A couple of interesting facts about the musical:

•   When Leonard Bernstein and Jerome Robbins first began discussing an adaption of Romeo and Juliet in the early 1950s, their first thought was to examine the tensions between Catholics and Jews on the Lower East Side. Early drafts were titled East Side Story and the action took place around Easter and Passover.
  
  
•  When the decision was made to concentrate instead on conflicts between the Puerto Rican immigrants who were coming to New York in great numbers, the action shifted to the west side neighborhood of San Juan Hill and West Side Story was born. Most of San Juan Hill was leveled to create the Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, but prior to demolition some shots were taken for the opening of the 1961 film version of the musical.
  
  
• West Side Story was being written at the same time as Candide and Bernstein ended up swapping tunes between the two. According to sondheimguide.com, the melodies for “One Hand, One Heart” and “Gee, Officer Krupke,” were both lifted from Candide while a duet originally planned for Tony and Maria ended up in Candide as “Oh, Happy We.”

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