New York City

New Book On The Hill: A Tipi In A NYC Shantytown

January 23, 2022 by Editorial Staff Leave a Comment

The book The Hill (Autonomedia, 2021) by Gabriele Schafer traces the steps of how a shantytown went from the anonymity of waist-high huts hidden in the weeds, to a tour-bus, school-group and celebrity stop; from addicts and recluses just getting by, to a drug supermarket; from a close-knit encampment, to a crime scene that entangles everyone from drug dealers, to users, to cops, to Schafer and Nick Fracaro… when one day tragedy strikes.

In the middle of the night on Thanksgiving 1990, the same weekend that the film Dances with Wolves opened, life partners Schafer and Fracaro erected a 25-foot-tall replica of a Lakota tipi in New York City’s then longest-existing shantytown, known as “The Hill,” located at the foot of the Manhattan Bridge at Canal and Chrystie Streets. [Read more…] about New Book On The Hill: A Tipi In A NYC Shantytown

Louis “Satchmo” Armstrong (Virtual Program)

January 20, 2022 by Editorial Staff Leave a Comment

Louis Armstrong (1901-1971) was one of the most famous and influential musicians of all time, changing the course of music with his innovations as a trumpeter and vocalist. Emblematic of the Jazz Age and the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s.

Armstrong’s unique sound was wildly popular and widely sought-after. The entertainer toured all over the world throughout the course of his illustrious career, but his, home for the last 28 years of his life was in Corona, Queens.

Oyster Slurpers: A Tale of Two Rivers

January 19, 2022 by Jaap Harskamp 1 Comment

For thousands of years the Thames provided London’s inhabitants with a plentiful supply and variety of fish. Until the 1820s locally caught fish was the city’s staple diet. Subsequent pollution of the river drove many professional fishermen and their families into financial ruin because of the collapse of fish populations.

Up until the twentieth century New York Harbor oysters reigned as the quintessential New York food long before pizza, pretzels, bagels, or hot dogs took their place. The metropolis once was a Big Oyster. There too, reckless management of the marine environment led to the obliteration of a huge natural resource. [Read more…] about Oyster Slurpers: A Tale of Two Rivers

Sol Bloom: A Leader In American WWII Foreign Policy (Virtual Program)

January 19, 2022 by Editorial Staff Leave a Comment

Sol Bloom (March 9, 1870 – March 7, 1949) was a song-writer and Congressman from New York who began his career as a sheet music publisher in Chicago. He served fourteen terms in the House of Representatives from the West Side of Manhattan, from 1923 until his death in 1949.

Bloom was the chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee from 1939 to 1947 and again in 1949, an important period in the history of American foreign policy. [Read more…] about Sol Bloom: A Leader In American WWII Foreign Policy (Virtual Program)

Wall Street History: The Bank War & The Shift of Financial Power to New York

January 19, 2022 by James S. Kaplan 2 Comments

At the time construction of the Erie Canal was begun in 1817, Philadelphia (the second largest city in the United States) was the nation’s financial center. Although there were successful banks in New York, Philadelphia, one of America’s leading seaports, had been the capital during the American Revolution and of the nation (1790 to 1800), and so was considered the financial center of the country.

This is not to say there was not some rivalry between financial institutions located on Wall Street in New York and Chestnut Street in Philadelphia, but the latter was the site of the first bank established in the nation in 1781, the Bank of North America, and more importantly became the site of the First Bank of the United States, which Treasury Secretary Alexander Hamilton had promoted. [Read more…] about Wall Street History: The Bank War & The Shift of Financial Power to New York

Fulton’s Steamboat, The Black Ball Line & The Erie Canal

January 17, 2022 by James S. Kaplan 3 Comments

For thousands of years prior to the early 1800s maritime transportation was dependent on sailing ships. In the first few decades of the 19th century however, entrepreneurs in New York helped revolutionize the industry so that one hundred years later sailing ships were an anachronism that hardly existed, except for show.

In the latter part of the 1700s the development of the Boulton & Watt steam engine in England made it theoretically possible to power a boat. Before 1800 a number of inventors, including New Yorkers such as Nicholas Roosevelt, John Fitch, Robert R. Livingston, John Stevens III and others, experimented with boats that used such steam engines. Before Robert Fulton made his first run in the North River steamboat (later renamed Clermont) in 1807 more than a dozen steamboats had been constructed in the United States with varying degrees of success. There were difficulties in making such craft commercially viable. [Read more…] about Fulton’s Steamboat, The Black Ball Line & The Erie Canal

Long Island Coast Guard Men of Color 1942 – 1944 (Virtual Program)

January 17, 2022 by Editorial Staff Leave a Comment

During the Second World War crew of color who lived and worked at East Quogue’s Tiana Lookout Barracks Station on Long Island. Tiana Station was built in 1871 at a position “two miles southwest of Shinnecock light.”

In 1912 the station was rebuilt to replace decayed and antiquated buildings. The station was rendered inactive on June 9, 1937 and reactivated for service during the Second World War and was manned by an African-American crew and commanded by an African-American Chief Petty Officer, CBM Cecil R. Foster. [Read more…] about Long Island Coast Guard Men of Color 1942 – 1944 (Virtual Program)

Woodhull Dam Fish Passage Construction Underway

January 15, 2022 by Editorial Staff Leave a Comment

DEC, Suffolk County, town of Southampton, and Peconic Estuary Partnership (PEP) announced the start of construction on a nearly $1 million fish passage through Woodhull Dam on the Little River in Riverhead.

The fish passage is essential to restoring critical spawning and maturation habitat for river herring and American eel and will help produce sustainable populations of fish species that are valuable resources for a healthy and productive marine ecosystem. [Read more…] about Woodhull Dam Fish Passage Construction Underway

The Spirit of the Times: A 19th Century Chronicle of American Sports

January 14, 2022 by Bill Orzell Leave a Comment

In the early 1800s it was unusual for Americans to be interested in sporting matters on their own shores. News from Europe was the only sporting news of merit, and publishing an American sporting journal was considered a risky use of capital.

The first attempt along these lines may have been in 1829 Baltimore, where John S. Skinner published a monthly magazine which focused on race horse pedigrees called The American Turf Register and Sporting Magazine. Another early attempt was published in New York by the recognized writer and horseman Cadwallader R. Colden, whose organ was called The New-York Sporting Magazine and Annals of the American and English Turf, first published in 1833.

Among the most notable of the sporting press arrived in 1831, when William T. Porter and James Haw published the first issue of The Spirit of the Times, focusing on horse literature and sporting subjects. They had chosen the name for their broadsheet from a quotation in Shakespeare’s King John, “The spirit of the times shall teach me speed.” [Read more…] about The Spirit of the Times: A 19th Century Chronicle of American Sports

Remembering New York City’s Evacuation Day

January 14, 2022 by Bob Cudmore Leave a Comment

This week on The Historians Podcast, attorney and historian Jim Kaplan discusses the significance of Evacuation Day and how the day has been commemorated through the years. A print version of this story previously appeared in New York Almanack.

Evacuation Day was November 25th, 1783, the day British troops left New York City after the American Revolution. [Read more…] about Remembering New York City’s Evacuation Day