New York Almanack

History, Natural History & the Arts

Brooklyn College Aquires Boxing History Collection

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The New York Times is reporting that the Brooklyn College Library has acquired an outstanding collection of boxing history materials from boxing historian Hank Kaplan. According to his obituary (he died at 88 in 2007), Kaplan served was “founder and editor of Boxing Digest magazine, editor of Boxing World and served as consultant to such media outlets as Sports Illustrated, London Times, Der Stern and HBO.” According to the Times:

As yet unavailable to researchers, the collection — so far publicly confined to a small exhibition area in the library — consumes a 10-foot-high chamber in the Archives and Special Collections Division. [Read more…] about Brooklyn College Aquires Boxing History Collection

Historian: America’s First Railroad Tunnel Located

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Incredible news from the Schenectady Gazette this morning. Schenectady City Historian Don Rittner has apparently found the first railroad tunnel ever constructed, buried in the historic Schenectady Stockade District. The find includes a section of the original tracks:

“The 15-foot-deep tunnel snakes its way across what are now a dozen or more private backyards. But in 1832, that land was a major thoroughfare — the foundation of the city’s prosperity and growth for the next century.

“Hundreds of business owners and daring families rode through the tunnel on trains so experimental that they were considered too dangerous to be allowed on city streets. They could travel so fast and their engines could produce so many wild sparks that city leaders feared pedestrians would be run over and buildings burned down.

“So horses dragged the trains from the Erie Canal to the Scotia bridge along a safe, deep tunnel. It was an experiment that lasted just six years, but in that time it was guaranteed a place in the history books. Not only was the tunnel the first ever constructed for a locomotive, but the entrance was the first junction of two railroad companies, according to Rittner.”

Technically, the first railroad in the United States is believed to have been a gravity railroad in Lewiston, New York in 1764. The Mohawk & Hudson Railroad, of which the tunnel would have been a part, was the first modern-style railroad built in the State of New York; it was incorporated in 1826 by the Mohawk and Hudson Company and opened August 9, 1831.

On April 19, 1847, the name was changed to the Albany and Schenectady Railroad. The railroad was consolidated into the New York Central Railroad on May 17, 1853. In 1867, the first elevated railroad was built in New York.

American Presidents Blog: The Roosevelts

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One of the blogs I follow here at New York History is Michael Lorenzen’s American Presidents blog. he recently took a trip to New York and posted a three-part blog on the Roosevelt sites:

Part One – covered Sagamore Hill, the Long Island estate of Theodore and Edith Roosevelt.

Part Two – looked at Eleanor Roosevelt’s home Val-Kill.

Part Three – was a visit to the FDR Presidential Library and Museum in Hyde Park.

Interesting reads, from an interesting blog.

A New Book: Thomas Nast vs Boss Tweed

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Morgan James Publishing has announced a new book on the Tammany Hall / Thomas Nast conflict titled Doomed by Cartoon: How Cartoonist Thomas Nast and the New York Times Brought Down Boss Tweed and His Ring of Thieves (by John Adler and Draper Hill). According to a recent press release:

In many respects, a nineteenth century story of David and Goliath. The legendary politician, Boss Tweed, effectively controlled New York City from after the Civil War until his downfall in November 1871. A huge man of almost 300 pounds, he and his Ring of Thieves appeared to be invincible as they stole an estimated $30 to $200 million—up to $2 billion in today’s dollars.

In addition to the city, county and state government, many judges and the police, the Tweed Ring effectively controlled the press except for Harper’s Weekly, American’s leading illustrated newspaper, and (after August 1870) The New-York Times.

Thomas Nast was the most dominant American political cartoonist of all time. Physically, he was a head shorter than Tweed and about half his weight. Using his pen as his sling, he attacked Tweed almost single-handedly before the Times joined the battle in September 1870. After the Ring was beaten, Nast caricatured what happened to Tweed and his cohorts as justice pursued each of them.

Where Doomed by Cartoon differs from previous books about Boss Tweed is its focus on look¬ing at circumstances and events as Thomas Nast visualized them in his 160-plus cartoons, almost like a serialized but intermittent comic book covering 1866 through 1878. It has been organized to tell the Nast vs. Tweed story so that ordinary readers with an interest in politics, history and/or cartoons—or just in a uniquely caricatured political adventure story—will enjoy it.

For those who don’t recall, Tweed was arrested in 1872 and convicted the following year. He was sentenced to 12 years prison sentence, but that was reduced on appeal and he ended-up serving only one year. After his re-arrest on civil charges he was held in debtors prison. On January 3, 1875 Tweed escaped, fled to Cuba, but was arrested there by Cuban authorities. He then bribed his way onto a ship bound for Spain but was again arrested as he entered the Spain and returned to New York where he was re-imprisoned. Tweed died in the Ludlow Street Jail on April 12, 1878 and was buried in Brooklyn.

Carl Akeley’s Taxidermy History in New York State

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Here is a recent news item regarding the re-installation of what is believed to be “probably the world’s largest mounted fish, maybe the largest piece of taxidermy in the world” – a 73-year-old, 32-foot, mounted whale shark caught off Fire Island in 1935 and believed to have weighed about 8 tons (16,000 pounds).

It has been freshly restored was unveiled at the Suffolk County Vanderbilt Museum in Centerport, where it was damaged by water leakage that closed part of the museum in 1996. [Read more…] about Carl Akeley’s Taxidermy History in New York State

Executed Today Blog: New York’s Electric Chair

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One of the blogs I follow here at New York History is Executed Today, which gives a glimpse of those unfortunates who have found themselves at the wrong end of capital punishment. Unlike the American-only Execution Database of the Death Penalty Information Center, Executed Today travels the world far and wide and includes notable lynchings and other extra-legal violent deaths.

Wednesday’s post “1890: William Kemmler, only in America,” traces the emergence of the electric chair in New York by following the careers of those that have made state death their business. Men like Buffalo dentist (hence the chair and not the gurney) Dr. Alfred Southwick, who watched a drunk guy die after falling into an electrical generator and then worked diligently with New York Governor David B. Hill to make execution by electricity legal. The first execution, despite the War of Currents, was William Kemmler on August 6, 1890. He had been convicted of the hatchet murder of his common-law wife Tillie Ziegler. That’s a sketch of his death at left-above.

Some other recent fascinating posts at Executed Today have included:

1916: Sir Roger Casement
Executed by the British Government for his part in the Easter Rising.

1917: Frank Little of the IWW lynched
Wobbly labor organizer abducted from his hotel and hanged from a railroad trestle in Butte, Montana.

1963: 21 Iraqi Communists
Iraq’s new Ba’ath government executed 21 Shi’a soldiers for participating in a coup attempt.

Oneida Nation Will Remember Battle of Oriskany

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The Oneida Indian Nationhas announced that they will participate in an memorial ceremony to remember the 1777 Battle of Oriskany this evening:

231 years ago, the Oneida Indian Nation became the first ally of the American colonists in their fight for freedom, at the Battle of Oriskany. On Wednesday, August 6, at 7 pm, a solemn remembrance ceremony will be held at the battlefield to remember those who fought and those who died at what history has called the ”bloodiest battle of the American Revolution.” The Oneidas will be represented at this community-wide event by Brian Patterson, Bear Clan Representative for the Nation’s Council, and members of the Nation’s reenactment group, First Allies.

The Battle took place in what is now Oneida County on the south side of the Mohawk River. According to the great wiki:

During his march down the Mohawk Valley from Oswego to Albany, Lieutenant Colonel Barry St. Leger besieged Fort Stanwix, then under the command of Colonel Peter Gansevoort. St. Leger’s force of British regulars of the Royal Artillery, 8th and 34th Regiments, loyalist King’s Royal Yorkers and natives of the Six Nations and Seven Nations of Canada laid siege to the fort.

Upon hearing reports of St. Leger’s advance, Brigadier General Nicholas Herkimer assembled the Tryon County militia at Fort Dayton to proceed to Gansevoort’s aid. On August 4, 1777, Herkimer, with 800 militiamen—mostly poorly trained German-American farmers—and 40 Oneida Indians, began the forty-mile (65 km) trek west from Fort Dayton to Fort Stanwix.

When St. Leger learned through Molly Brant that Herkimer and his relief expedition were on their way, he sent Joseph Brant, a Mohawk chief, with more than 400 natives, and Sir John Johnson, with the light infantry company of his King’s Royal Yorkers to intercept them. Their clash at Oriskany Creek was one of the key episodes of the Campaign of 1777.

On August 6, 1777, [the] American relief force from the Mohawk Valley under General Nicholas Herkimer, numbering around 800 men of the Tryon County militia, was approaching to raise the siege. British commander Barry St. Leger authorized an intercept force consisting of a Hanau Jager detachment, Sir John Johnson’s King’s Royal Regiment of New York, Native allies from the Six Nations, and Indian Department Rangers totaling at least 450 men.

The Loyalist and Native force ambushed Herkimer’s force in a small valley about six miles east of Fort Stanwix. During the battle, Herkimer was mortally wounded. The battle cost the Patriots approximately 450 casualties, while the Loyalists and Natives lost approximately 150 dead and wounded. It was a clear victory for the loyalists over the rebels.

But the Loyalist victory was tarnished when a sortie from Fort Stanwix sacked the Crown camp, spoiling morale among the Native Americans.

The Oriskany Battlefield is located on Route 69, two miles west of the Village of Oriskany.

State Library Thief Expected to Plead Guilty

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Capital News 9 is reporting that former state employee Daniel Lorello is expected to plead guilty today in Albany County Court. He was arrested for stealing hundreds of documents from the New York State Library and selling them on eBay.

Lorello was an archivist in the Education Department’s Office of Cultural Education. He was arrested in January after an investigation led by Attorney General Andrew Cuomo found about 200 state documents [sic: actually it was a lot more than that, read on] had been stolen for profit.

Among the items Lorello is accused of stealing is a letter written in 1823 by Vice President John Calhoun.

Officials said history buff Joseph Romito, a lawyer from Virginia, alerted state authorities after seeing some of the historic documents being sold on eBay.

A piece from earlier this year in the Albany Times Union fills-in more of the picture:

Lorello admitted selling “Davy Crockett’s Almanack” from 1835 for around $3,200 and an 1837 almanac of the frontier hero for $2,000, both to a Colorado collector late last year. Around the same time he sold a copy of “Poor Richard’s Almanac” for $1,001, authorities said.

He was thwarted after he tried to sell an 1823 letter from Vice President John C. Calhoun to a New York general on eBay, posting it as a historical document, authorities said.

Lorello, an expert on Civil War history, coordinated a three-year plan to renovate the storage of state historical records on the 11th floor of the State Library. His duties also included acquiring new artifacts and working with researchers, said State Education spokesman Alan Ray. Ray noted that Lorello is accused of stealing items from the State Library — not the State Archives, where he was employed. The State Archives and Library, along with the State Museum, are part of New York’s Office of Cultural Education. The library alone contains more than 20 million items.

Staffers have so far recovered 263 items, Ray said.

In his statement, Lorello estimated stealing 300 to 400 items in 2007 alone. He told the attorney general’s office he delivered the artifacts by way of FedEx, United Parcel Service and other shippers. Lorello accepted money orders and bank checks for the items, according to the court papers.

“I particularly liked items associated with the Revolutionary War, Civil War, Mexican War, Black Americana, WWI, anything related to the Roosevelts, Jewish items,” he told investigators.

UPDATE: From the Schenectady Gazette this afternoon:

In Albany County Court, 54-year-old Daniel Lorello of Rensselaer admitted stealing artifacts since 1997. He faces two to six years in prison at sentencing Oct. 1. He must also pay $73,000 in restitution to buyers who later returned stolen property and forfeit seized items and his private book collection.

A Week of New York Disasters

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This past week marks the anniversaries of quite a series of transportation disasters in New York History. Three of them have reached the media: the 1893 sinking of the Rachel in Lake George; the 1945 crash of a B-25 Mitchell bomber into the Empire State Building; and the crash of American Airlines Flight 1 into New York City’s Jamaica Bay in 1962.

The Schenectady Gazette has the story of the Rachel, which sank on Lake George killing ten (coincidently, the week also marks the anniversary of another Lake George sinking, that of the John Jay on July 30, 1856). On the night of August 3, 1893 the steamer Rachel was chartered by twenty nine guests of the Fourteen Mile Island Hotel to take them to a dance at the Hundred Island House.

The usual captain fell ill and went home early leaving the boat in the hands of a less experienced pilot. Under little or no moon light as the pilot steered unknowingly out of the channel and struck an old dock south of the hotel tearing a large hole in the side of the boat below the water line. Some of the passengers were caught on the shade deck and died quickly as the boat listed and almost immediately sank in 18 feet of water. “The shrieking, struggling passengers battled for life in the darkness,” one newspaper reported. With only her smokestack left above water, a number of men from shore had rowed boats from the two nearby hotels to the scene to rescue the survivors. A young man named Benedict, an excellent swimmer, dove for his sister Bertha but couldn’t find her. Nineteen-year-old Frank C. Mitchell, of Burlington, drowned while trying to save his mother who also drowned. Eight other women also drowned.

The 1962 American Airlines Flight 1 into Jamaica Bay was featured on last night episode of “Mad Men.” The series follows the lives of early 1960s Madison Avenue ad executives. If you haven’t seen it, you should, it’s an interesting portrayal of 1950s / 1960s consumerism – a time when people still smoked on TV. The storyline involves the ad guys dropping the small New York based regional airline Mohawk Airlines in an attempt to lure American Airlines in the aftermath of the crash. Mohawk had it’s own aviation disaster in 1969 when its Flight 411, a twin prop-jet commuter plane (a Fairchild-Hiller 227, a.k.a. Fokker F-27) flying from La Guardia Airport to Glens Falls in Warren County crashes at Lake George killing all 14 onboard.

The New York Times “City Room” has blogged the Flight 1 story extensively:

The real-life crash, which took place only five years after Pan Am became the first carrier to fly the 707, claimed the largest number of lives of any commercial aviation accident in the United States at that time [95]. (In the worst-ever plane crash on American soil, an American Airlines DC-10 crashed shortly after takeoff at O’Hare International Airport in Chicago on May 25, 1979, killing 273.)

The third New York disaster in the media this week comes from National Public Radio (NPR) which reported last week on the crash of a B-25 Mitchell bomber into the 79th floor of the Empire State Building (it swerved to just miss the Chrysler Building). The plane had been trying to make LaGuardia Airport in a very heavy fog. According to the blog History’s Mysteries:

Upon impact, the plane’s jet fuel exploded, filling the interior of the building with flames all the way down to the 75th floor and sending flames out of the hole the plane had ripped open in the building’s side. One engine from the plane went straight through the building and landed in a penthouse apartment across the street. Other plane parts ended up embedded in and on top of nearby buildings. The other engine snapped an elevator cable while at least one woman was riding in the elevator car. The emergency auto brake saved the woman from crashing to the bottom, but the engine fell down the shaft and landed on top of it. Quick-thinking rescuers pulled the woman from the elevator, saving her life.

NPR’s report (they also featured the Empire State building in their “Present at The Creation” series) includes audio of the actual crash and interviews with some of the survivors.

What a week – I’ve blogged before about disasters in the Adirondacks here.

New Book On The Woolworth Building

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The New York Times is reporting on a new book by Gail Fenske, a professor of architecture at Roger Williams University: The Skyscraper and the City: The Woolworth Building and the Making of Modern New York.

On the evening of April 24, 1913, President Woodrow Wilson pressed a tiny button inside the White House, lighting up the Woolworth Building in Manhattan. It was “the tallest structure in the world, with the one exception of the Eiffel Tower in Paris,” The New York Times reported, and it was a marvel of architecture and engineering.

Of course, the Woolworth Building has been surpassed in height — by the Chrysler Building in 1930 and by the Empire State Building in 1931 — and it has at times seemed to recede into the fabric of Lower Manhattan. The building’s owners at one point considered converting the building into luxury apartments, but now the structure is being refurbished as top-end offices.

The book places the Woolworth Building in the context of its time and place: the booming commercial culture of early 20th century New York; the often unsettling experience of modernization; advances in technology and communications; and a new phenomenon of “urban spectatorship” that made skyscrapers sources of public wonder and admiration.

Many innovations set the Woolworth Building apart. It contained a shopping arcade, health club, barber shop, restaurant, social club and even an observatory. Its use of technology — including an innovative water supply system, a electrical generating plan, high-speed electric elevators providing both local and express service and what Professor Fenske calls “the first prominent use of architectural floodlighting in the world” — also set it apart. So did the construction process, run by the builder Louis Horowitz of the Thompson-Starrett Company, who managed to avoid labor conflict, rationalize the building process and set a record for speed — paving the way for the famously rapid completion of the Empire State Building nearly 20 years later.

The building has survived the Woolworth Corporation itself. The company announced in 1997 that it would close its remaining discount stores. The company was renamed the Venator Group, began focusing on athletic wear, and since 2001 has done business under the Foot Locker name. Although there are no longer Woolworth’s stores in the United States, the Woolworths Group, a former subsidiary of the American company, continues to operate hundreds of retail stores in Britain.