Tavern on the Green to Get New Management

New York's Department of Parks has announced that next year Dean J. Poll, who currently holds the license to operate the Boathouse in Central Park, will also take over the management of Tavern on the Green.

Among the changes Poll will implement is a thinning of the landscaping at the rear of the building to open up the vistas toward Sheep Meadow. What many people don't realize is that throughout most of the park's life, Sheep Meadow's official name was "the Green." Thus, when the restaurant first opened in 1934, it made sense that it was Tavern on the Green. (Perhaps techinally in should have been Tavern near the Green, since it is cut off from its namesake by the wide swath of the ring road.)

The Green came to be nicknamed Sheep Meadow because from 1864 to 1934 it housed a flock of pedigree Southdown and Dorset sheep. The removal of the sheep in 1934 is a story we tell in Inside the Apple. There are many plausible reasons why the sheep may have left, but certainly the main one is that the Parks Department (in the person of Robert Moses) had its eye on their sheepfold, an elaborate 1870 structure designed by Jacob Wrey Mould. As soon as the sheep were out, their barn was tranformed into Tavern on the Green.

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For Sale: The Narrowest House in New York

The press has been having a field day this week with the news that New York's narrowest house -- No. 75-1/2 Bedford Street -- is on the market for $2.75 million.

This is one of the most popular stops on our tours of Greenwich Village and appears in every guidebook. Unfortunately, most of those guidebooks also perpetuate the stories that Cary Grant and John and/or Lionel Barrymore stayed at the house, despite the fact that there's not a shred of evidence to connect either one to the home.

The entire property in that area was once owned by a coppersmith named Harmon Hendricks. His house, No. 77 Bedford, stands at the corner of Bedford and Commerce; built in 1799 it is the oldest home in the Village. Though No. 75-1/2 is often dated to 1873 (when it appears on tax rolls), it is stylistically older and may have been built as early as the 1850s.

The entire Henricks property was bought by the Cherry Lane Theatre in 1923, who converted a former brewery and factory space at 38 Commerce into the theater and planned to rent the rest of the property for profit. The Cherry Lane was founded by a group of refugees from the Provincetown Playhouse (which has been in the news a lot recently, too) including Edna St. Vincent Millay, who moved into the narrow house at 75-1/2 Bedford in 1924. It was Millay and her husband who remodeled the home, adding a skylight and the Dutch gabling on the front and back.

The other famous tenant to live in the house is anthrpologist Margaret Mead. What most press coverage leaves out is that Mead was living there with her sister and brother-in-law, the cartoonist William Steig (best known today, perhaps, as the creator of Shrek).

The New York Post has a feature on the house, including a photo essay in the post that doesn't necessarily reveal a lot about the interior, but does give a great view of the unique four-in-a-row burner stove. Over at Curbed, you can download the floorplan as you mull over whether or not $2.75 million is a good price for owning a conversation piece.

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We have three different tours that you can take to see the city's narrowest house.

• You can book your own private walking tour with us at http://www.walknyc.com
• You can take a self-guided tour of the neighborhood using our book, Inside the Apple: A Streetwise History of New York City
• Or you can download an audio tour of the area that we created for our partners at CityListen.com.

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And speaking of CityListen -- they are having a great contest right now to give away a free pair of Kuru walking shoes. All the details are at http://blog.citylisten.com/2009/08/favorite-walks-contest/. But hurry -- the deadline for entries is September 6th.

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E. Ridley & Sons and the Murder of Edward Ridley

The Ridley building as it appeared in 1874; it was expanded in 1886, badly damaged in a fire in 1905 after the store had been sold, and truncated in 1931-32.

As guest blogger Bowery Boogie noted on Curbed yesterday, the pink Jodamo building on the Lower East Side at the corner of Orchard and Grand streets is for sale for a cool $25 million.

In the nineteenth century, the building was home to E. Ridley and Sons, one of the biggest department stores on the Lower East Side. Though Broadway in the area we today call SoHo was home to most of the city’s high-end shops, including A.T. Stewart’s “Marble Palace,” the stretch of Grand Street east of Broadway was an important retail district in its own right. Many of the shoppers came from Brooklyn or New Jersey on the Grand Street ferry and were then transported by horse-drawn street car.

Ridley’s was founded in 1849 by Edward Ridley Sr., an immigrant from Nottinghamshire, England, in a small building at 311-1/2 Grand Street. As the shop grew over the next two decades, Ridley began acquiring nearby lots and by 1883, he had built a store that encompassed the entire street-front on Grand from Orchard to Allen. According to some sources, it was the country’s largest retail store. (Today’s building is actually slightly truncated; when Allen Street was widened in 1931-32, a portion of the building was shorn off to accommodate the expanded road.)

For the Jewish immigrants who began to flood in the neighborhood in the 1880s, Ridley’s became a destination for young Jewish women to window shop – and from which to occasionally purchase, a sure sign of upward-mobility. Understanding the need to appeal to the area’s new clientele, Ridley’s began to promote itself more to local residents, including a big push in December equating Hanukkah with the gift-giving of Christmas. The shop was also one of the first to send out a catalogue so that buyers could peruse and purchase their goods from the comfort of home. (In 1964, a request was delivered to 311 Grand Street demanding to know why the Ridley's catalgoue had not been sent out "for some time." The writer clearly didn't know the store had gone out of business--in 1901!)

Edward Ridley died in 1883 and the store was taken over by his sons, Edward A. and Arthur Ridley. They continued in business until 1901, by which time they could no longer attract a enough clientele to fill the store. The building was sold and subdivided and both brothers went into real estate.

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Now, here’s where the story gets weird.

Edward A. Ridley was a bit of an eccentric, to say the least. He operated out of the subbasement of the old department store’s stables, a dungeon-like space 40 feet below street level. (The address is variously reported as 59, 61, and 63 Allen Street.)

As the New York Times wrote in 1931:

Ridley needed to wear rubber overshoes in his dank, cellar office and ultimately took to wearing them at all times. He allowed his beard to grow out, making him look like a wild-eyed Biblical prophet (“Whitmanesque” the Times called it), and he was rarely seen outside the office except going to and from his boarding house in New Jersey, always carrying an umbrella, rain or shine.

Then, in 1931, Ridley showed up for work one day to find his assistant, Herman Moench, dead. Actually, Ridley read his mail for about an hour, then bothered to go to the other side of the 8x15 foot office and found Moench lying next to his desk. At first the police assumed that Moench, who had worked for Ridley for an astonishing 51 years (he’d started at the store when he was 9 years old) had died of natural causes. Only when the body was examined by the coroner were two bullet wounds discovered. No one who worked at the garage that surrounded the office, including its managers, Harry and Lee Weinstein (who leased the space from Ridley) had seen or heard anything and with no leads, the case soon went cold.

Just a little over two years later, tragedy struck again. Ridley had hired Lee Weinstein from the garage to be his new assistant. On May 10, Lee’s brother Harry was unable to reach them in the office by telephone; he asked a garage employee to check on his brother and the man discovered that Lee Weinstein had been shot twice and Ridley beaten to death. The similarity of the two cases led the police to reopen the Herman Moench murder and ballistics tests immediately proved that the same gun had been used to kill both of Ridley’s assistants.

At first, the police assumed Ridley had been killed trying to protect Weinstein. However, when the old man’s will was found, it showed a $200,000 bequest to Weinstein, making the police wonder if Ridley had been the intended target and if Weinstein had been involved in both murders. The next day, the police discovered that Weinstein had been secretly married and living with his wife under an assumed name at a midtown hotel. As the investigation continued, the police found an unused bootlegging room in the Allen Street garage where Ridley kept his office, but decided that illegal alcohol had nothing to do with the murders. More promising was the discovery that Lee Weinstein had purchased a $2,050 car—while only making about $40 a week. It soon became clear that the will was a fake, signed by Ridley unwittingly and “witnessed” by two fellow conspirators—both of them accountants who helped keep Ridley’s books—who had hoped to split the $200,000. Further investigation revealed that Weinstein and his accomplices had already stolen over $200,000 from his employer.

But this discovery did little to shed the light on the killings and Weinstein's fellow thieves seemed to have nothing to do with the murders (and no connection to Herman Moench). The accountants were indicted for the theft and forgery but despite a $10,000 reward, no useful information came to the police. Ridley had owned many tenements on the Lower East Side and was said to be a miserly landlord, but none of his tenants was ever seriously looked at for the murders. To this day, the case remains one of the great unsolved crimes of the Lower East Side.

The building at 59-63 Allen Street still stands – and is still a parking garage. Does Ridley’s obscure basement office still exist, as well? If you park in the building, check it out and let us know!

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Our book, Inside the Apple: A Streetwise History of New York City, has a great walking tour of this neighborhood. And while it doesn’t stop at Ridley’s, it does take you to a number of famous places on the Lower East Side, ending just a couple of blocks from the Ridley’s intersection.

The book is available from retailers across the country or online.

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The Apollo 11 Ticker Tape Parade

photo from the LIFE magazine archives on Google.com

Earlier this summer, the world celebrated the 40th anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing, which took place on July 20, 1969. Today marks another Apollo anniversary—the massive ticker tape parade for Buzz Aldrin, Neil Armstrong, and Michael Collins. At the time, many claimed it was the largest ticker tape parade New York had ever seen, but as we researching Inside the Apple, we found that claim was made for many parades and it’s almost impossible to verify. (Four million people were said to have attended the Apollo parade—an impressive number, even if it’s not the largest.)

Certainly, it was the longest parade. The city’s traditional parade route runs from Bowling Green Park at the foot of Broadway to City Hall. The Apollo astronauts, however, after receiving the key to the city, continued up Broadway to Herald Square and then on to Times Square. As the New York Times noted, the confetti in Midtown was “made up more of paper towels and pages from telephone directories than tickertape” and that it grew “so dense that the astronauts could hardly see.”

As we write in Inside the Apple:

It was also one of the fastest ticker tape parades. The astronauts started at Bowling Green at 10:17 a.m. (about half an hour ahead of schedule) and arrived on the steps of City Hall just fourteen minutes later! Many people who showed up for the parade were disappointed to discover that the astronauts had already passed them by…. By 1:15 p.m. the astronauts were back at Kennedy airport to go to Chicago. They ended the day with festivities in Los Angeles. Having just been to the moon and back, a quick one-day jaunt across North America must not have seemed like such a big deal.

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For more on the origin of the ticker tape parade and a walking tour of the “Canyon of Heroes,” check out Inside the Apple. Or join us this Sunday for our free tour of that neighborhood, during which we’ll focus on the American Revolution.

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One Broadway

As we have written previously, we will be leading a free tour on Sunday, August 16, of Revolutionary War Lower Manhattan. (See http://www.insidetheapple.net/tours.htm for more details.)

One of the stops on the tour will be One Broadway, where the Washington Building -- later known as International Mercantile Marine -- now stands. But back in the 18th century, the base of Broadway was home to Archibald Kennedy, New York's receiver-general (i.e., the customs collector), and later the Earl of Cassilis.

Kennedy built his mansion ca. 1760; because Broadway was then much closer to the Hudson, Kennedy would have had a fine view out over the harbor and in the summer of 1776, he would have seen the massive British fleet assembling beyond Staten Island. Between June 29 and August 12, nearly 200 ships arrived, the largest naval fleet since antiquity. One observer, a soldier named Daniel McCurtin, wrote in his journal:

"[I] spied as I peeped out the Bay something resembling a wood of pine trees trimmed.... I declare I thought all of London was afloat."

During the war, Kennedy left the city and the house became George Washington's headquarters during the planning of the Battle of Brooklyn, which took place in late August 1776. When the British captured New York, the home -- which escaped the Great Fire of 1776 -- was used by the British army. After the Revolution, the house was rented by Isaac "King" Sears. A prominent member of the Sons of Liberty, Sears was was involved in the Stamp Act Protests in 1765 and the Battle of Golden Hill in 1770, a skirmish just north of Wall Street that some call the first bloodshed of the Revolution. Sears paid £500 a year, probably the highest rent in the city.

The house was later owned by John Watts, a successful merchant and founder of the Leake and Watts Orphan House in Morningside Heights.

In 1882, Kennedy's house (by then a boardinghouse) was demolished to make way for the Washington Building, which still occupies the site. When the Washington Building was erected, it had more office space than any building in New York.

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We will be talking more about One Broadway, George Washington, "King" Sears, John Watts, the Stamp Acts protests and more on our FREE walking tour on August 16.

Or you can pick up a copy of our book, Inside the Apple: A Streetwise History of New York City.

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RIP Tony Rosenthal

EV Grieve just alerted us to the fact that sculptor Tony Rosenthal passed away last week at the age of 94.

Rosenthal is best known as the artist behind the rotating Astor Place Cube (officially, The Alamo -- so called because his wife thought it was a good name for an impenatrable object).

There are many other places in the city to view Rosenthal's public art, including:

• 5 in 1, a tribute to the five boroughs of New York City, in One Police Plaza behind the Municipal Building;
• Rondo at the New York Public Library's branch at 127 East 58th Street;
• Hammarskjold at FIT (27th Street and Seventh Avenue);
• SteelPark at 401 East 80th Street.

Also, according to the artist's website, a temporary exhibition is currently on view in the Ralph Lauren flagship store at 72nd Street and Madison.

Another interesting note: the Astor Place Alamo -- which was originally installed temporarily as part of a citywide "Sculpture in Environment" show -- is not one of a kind. Examples of Rosenthal's cube sculptures can be found in private and public collections, including Pyramid Hill Sculpture Park in Hamilton, Ohio, and at his alma mater, the University of Michigan, at Ann Arbor (where the piece is called Endover).

You can also read Tony Rosenthal's obituary in the New York Times.

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B-25 Bomber Crashes into the Empire State Building

photo from the LIFE magazine archives on Google.com

When they thought the top of the Empire State Building would good be for landing airships, this wasn't what they had in mind:

photo by Ernest Sisto/New York Times

At 9:40 a.m. on Saturday, July 28, 1945, a B-25 bomber en route to Newark airport flew through a dense fog and into the 79th floor of the Empire State Building, tearing a hole in the 78th and 79th floors and killing ten people in the building. (All three men on the plane also died, one of whom was simply hitching a ride home to visit his family in Brooklyn.)

According the New York Times the next day, workers at the Empire State Building "alarmed by the roar of the engines, ran to the windows just in time to see the plane loom out of the gray mists that swathed the upper floors of the world's tallest office building."

The crash not only damaged the Empire State Building (estimates at the time ran from $500,000 to $1 million in damages): one of the plane's engines actually shot through the building, tore a hole in the south side, and plummeted down onto the penthouse of 10 West 33rd Street, the studio of sculptor Henry Hering. The subsequent fire destroyed the studio. The other engine went into the elevator shaft, snapping the cable and driving the car -- with two women in it -- down to the basement; both women survived, one with severe burns.

The plane was captained by decorated pilot Col. William F. Smith, Jr. Just a few minutes earlier, Smith had radioed La Guardia airport; what happened next is unclear. According to some published reports, air traffic control told Smith to land in Queens; but there is also evidence that Smith was cleared to land in Newark as long as he could maintain three miles visibility.

It is certain that Smith's visibility quickly worsened. With the fog growing thicker, Smith decided to fly lower to check his visibility; when he emerged from the clouds he found himself in Midtown Manhattan and somehow managed to fly about ten blocks, dodging skyscrapers, before ultimately hitting the Empire State.

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More about the Empire State Building -- and the aircraft originally designed to land on its towering spire -- can be found in Inside the Apple: A Streetwise History of New York City.

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Walking Tour of Revolutionary War Lower Manhattan

On Sunday, August 16, at 5:00 p.m., we are returning to Lower Manhattan for another free walking tour of downtown sites.

The tour will focus on famous sites in the Financial District connected to the Revolution and the early Federal period, including Fraunces Tavern--George Washington's last headquarters--and Federal Hall. But we'll also talk about some lesser-known places, such as the sites of the second presidential mansion and the 1765 Stamp Acts protests when New York's governor was burned in effigy.

The tour will begin and end at Borders at 100 Broadway; after the tour we'll have a Q&A. And, of course, copies of Inside the Apple will be available for sale and signing.

No RSVP is necessary but please arrive a few minutes early so that we can start promptly at 5:00 p.m.

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The Civil War Draft Riots -- Day 4

Thursday, July 16, 1863, marked the final day of the New York City draft riots. (You can follow these links to read about Day 1, Day 2, and Day 3.)

As the day began, many New Yorkers were surprised to hear the news from Mayor George Opdyke that not only had the draft been suspended but that the city council had voted the day before to authorize a fund to pay for a substitute for any New Yorker who was drafted and chose not to serve. The city had appropriated $2.5 million dollars for the cause--money it did not have and which surely would have bankrupted the city if spent. Opdyke promised that the riots were coming to an end and ordered people to go back to work and for the street car lines to resume running.

But to add to the confusion, that same day the papers also published a proclamation from Governor Horatio Seymour--actually issued on Tuesday, two days earlier--letting them know there was riot going on. (In case, somehow, no one had noticed.)

A third letter also appeared in the press: an appeal from Catholic Archbishop Hughes to his flock urging them to come to his home on Friday to hear him in person.

What only a few people knew was that the military had begun to arrive from Gettysburg. The Seventy-Fourth Regiment arrived soon after midnight on Wednesday and by the end of Thursday, the Seventh ("Silk Stocking") Regiment, the Sixty-Fith Regiment and others had been stationed at points around the city.

The arrival of more troops did not instantly quell the riots: there was a bloody clash between about twenty-five soldiers and a crowd that chased them into a foundry on First Avenue. But by the end of the day--as a rainstorm tore through the city, naturally discouraging the mob--it seemed as if the riots were on the verge of burning themselves out.

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The next day, Friday, over 5,000 people gathered to hear Archbishop Hughes's address, but as J.T. Headley noted in Great Riots of New York, 1712-1873:

They were on the whole a peaceable-looking crowd, and it was evidently composed chiefly, if not wholly, of those who had taken no part in the riot. None of the bloody heads and gashed faces, of which there were so many at that moment in the city, appeared. The address was well enough, but it came too late to be of any service. It might have saved many lives and much destruction, had it been delivered two days before, but now it was like the bombardment of a fortress after it had surrendered--a mere waste of ammunition. The fight was over, and to use his own not very refined illustration, he "spak' too late."

There were no further outbreaks of violence that day and none the next day, Saturday, despite the news from Washington that the draft would be enforced and would recommence as soon as the city was ready.

As we write in Inside the Apple: A Streetwise History of New York City:

No one is certain how many people died in the clash. At the time it was estimated to be 1,000 but the official death toll afterward was reduced to just 100 people. The true figure may never be known, but surely rests somewhere in between, making the Draft Riots the single worst civil disturbance in American history.

Democrats, led by rising Tammany Hall powerbroker William “Boss” Tweed, reached a compromise which allowed the draft to continue. Tweed would appoint a commission on behalf of the city to hear claims by those who felt they could neither serve nor pay the $300 and the city would decide to hire substitutes on a case-by-case basis. In the end, through a combination of city money, medical infirmity, and people simply not reporting for duty, only one person from Five Points served in the war because of the draft.

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Read more about New York in the Civil War in Inside the Apple: A Streetwise History of New York City.

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The Civil War Draft Riots -- Day 3

This is the third installment in our day-by-day remembrance of the Civil War Draft Riots, which gripped New York City from July 13-16, 1863. You can read about Day 1 here, and Day 2 here.

Wednesday, July 15--the third day of rioting--proved to be the pivotal day in the confrontation. Had the rioters made more headway on Wednesday, the city could have fallen into utter anarchy and chaos. Instead, it was anarchy and chaos that worked in the favor of the beleaguered police officers and soldiers protecting the city. Each day the nameless "mob" spread out around Manhattan to destroy property and kill and injure black New Yorkers, but because the rioters had no real leaders and no thought-out plan, most mob actions were short lived. Like so many explosions, they burned bright, caused a lot of damage, and soon fizzled out.

Wednesday dawned hot. Many New Yorkers, fearing the city was about to fall to the rioters, spent the day trying to get out of town, clogging the Hudson and East River piers and flooding north out of the city toward the Bronx and Westchester County.

The police, many of whom had barely slept in 48 hours, tried to keep pace with the rioters. The police headquarters on Mulberry Street was connected via telegraph to the precincts for instant communication. Throughout the riots, police repair crews were constantly working on the telegraph lines in a vain attempt to keep information flowing in and out of the central command post, which was run by Police Commissioner Thomas Acton.

In The Volcano Under the City, an anonymously written 1886 book that purports to be the first "true" account of the draft riots, the author writes:

In many respects, Wednesday was, to the Metropolitan Police, the most trying day of the riot. All of them were weary, and many of them were more or less injured. Some had succumbed to their exertions under intense heat, and others required all their pluck and sense of duty to keep their wearied bodies up to their work. They had been on duty night and day, with rapid marches and with much hand-to-hand fighting against strong and desperate men. Well might President [aka Commissioner] Acton shout, as he did, with mingled humor and enthusiasm, from the front of the Central Office, to column after column of the men he was so proud of, as he hurried them off to their arduous and perilous errands:

"Go on, boys! Go on! Give it to them, now! Quail on toast for every man of you, as soon as the mob is put down. Quail on toast, boys!"

What kept Wednesday from being the worst day of the riot--and kept the riots from escalating--was the city's ability to protect its munitions. J.T. Headley, the other Nineteenth-century source for information about the riots, notes:

At about two o'clock in the afternoon word was received that a large number of muskets were secreted in a store on Broadway, near Thirty-third Street; and Colonel Meyer was ordered to proceed thither, with thirty-three soldiers belonging to Hawkins' Zouaves, and take possession of them. Reaching the place, he found a large mob gathered, which was momentarily increasing. He, however, succeeded in entering the building, and brought out the arms. An Irishman happening to pass by in his cart, the colonel seized it, and pitching in the guns, closed around it, and moved off.

The worst confrontation of the day took place on Wednesday evening. A regiment of soldiers under the command of Colonel Cleveland Winslow was sent to disperse the rioters who'd gathered at First Avenue between 18th and 19th streets. The Volcano Under the City describes the scene:

No sooner did the detachment make its appearance and undertake its appointed task than it was assailed by a dense mob in front, and by showers of missiles from the houses, including a brisk discharge of pistols and musketry. The fire from the mob in front instantly betrayed something like organization, for it was by volleys, given at the word of command. Here, at least, the rioters went into action under competent leadership, such as might have secured successes for them at many other points. Colonel Winslow and his men stood their ground courageously….Ten rapid rounds of grape and canister tore through the masses of the mob and hurtled along the wide avenue. The slaughter was horrible, and the ground was momentarily cleared; but not so were the buildings on either side. The actual number of killed and wounded cannot be estimated with any accuracy, but there were rows of bodies on the pavement for about two "blocks." The fire from the houses grew hotter, and Colonel Winslow saw that he must retire…. Every tenth man of the entire command was down, and others were falling fast, not to mention those who were disabled more or less by minor hurts. It was literally "decimated," and more than that, before it could escape. The military made good the retreat, and the mob was left in triumphant possession of the battle-ground.

Then, at 11:00 p.m., a second wave of soldiers descended on First Avenue under the command of Captain Putnam. Headley writes:

Putnam immediately charged on the crowd in the street, scattering them like a whirlwind. He then turned his guns on the buildings, and opened such a deadly fire on them that they were soon cleared. Having restored order, he halted his command, and remained on the ground till half-past twelve.

What most of those fighting did not know was that reinforcements were on the way. Late on Tuesday, Mayor Opdyke had telegraphed Secretary of War Edwin Stanton in Washington requesting that New York's militia companies--fresh from winning the Battle of Gettysburg--be sent to the city to quell the riots. As the violence calmed for the night on Wednesday, those militia companies were fast approaching the city. By daybreak, they would be on Manhattan and the riots would soon be over.

Tomorrow: our final installment about the draft riot's final hours.

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Read more about New York in the Civil War in Inside the Apple: A Streetwise History of New York City.

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