In 1934, Doctor Helen Hosmer opened a physician’s office on West Street in the Village of Galway, in Saratoga County, NY. Originally from Billerica, Massachusetts, when Hosmer arrived in Galway, she was 50 years old, and though an experienced chemist and scientist, she was just beginning her career as a physician. [Read more…] about Dr Helen Hosmer’s Rural Healthcare in the US & Canada
Great Depression
Play Streets & New York City Recreation History
In summer thoughts turn to fun at the beach, pool and in parks. The vertical files of the New York City Municipal Library include a trove of publications describing City government’s role in providing recreational opportunities between 1919 and 1979.
A good portion of the contents are news clippings that track, decade by decade, City residents’ recreational choices. “Eel Season Ending For City Anglers” the New York Times reported in 1967; “People Pushing Horses Out Of Park” the Daily News decried as the Claremont Riding Academy was poised to close in 1970; and the perennial “New York on Next to Nothing” from the New York Post are just a few of the titles. [Read more…] about Play Streets & New York City Recreation History
Reluctant Warriors of 1936: William Bleakley & Herbert Lehman
On a warm, clear afternoon in June 1926, 600 Westchester County Republican delegates gathered in the art deco casino at Playland Amusement Park on Long Island Sound to endorse their neighbor, state Supreme Court Justice William F. Bleakley (1883–1969), for New York Governor. [Read more…] about Reluctant Warriors of 1936: William Bleakley & Herbert Lehman
William Kennedy’s Albany Trilogy: An Interview with Paul Grondahl
The work of novelist William Kennedy marks the union of encyclopedic knowledge, built over ninety-eight years spent soaking up the city of Albany, and a profound empathy for human experience in all its forms, from the underworld of gangsters, gamblers, and hustlers to the heights of power and politics.
In the recently published Library of America edition of The Albany Trilogy, three of Kennedy’s greatest works set in New York’s capital take readers through vastly different but interrelated lives. [Read more…] about William Kennedy’s Albany Trilogy: An Interview with Paul Grondahl
Before The Motels: Lake George Between the World Wars
Before the the United States entered the the First World War, along with New England and the Adirondack woods, Lake George was a vacation destination for half the population of the eastern seaboard.
In the summer of 1856, for example, Lake George attracted six thousand visitors. By 1881, that number had grown to 20,000. [Read more…] about Before The Motels: Lake George Between the World Wars
Dwight James Baum: The World’s Most Famous Architect from Little Falls
My grandfather Dwight James Baum (DJB) is Little Falls, Herkimer County, NY’s most-famous architect and one of its most-famous sons. While I may be partial to that view, it’s shared by many experts.
In the 2008 reissue of The Work of Dwight James Baum, edited by William Morrison in 1927, Ron McCarty, Curator and Keeper of Ca’ d’Zan (a Mediterranean revival residence on Sarasota Bay in Florida designed by DJB) noted that “in 1923, the Architectural League of New York awarded the Gold Medal to Dwight James Baum. Aged 37 and practicing independently for a mere eight years, Baum was the youngest architect ever to receive the coveted honor. [Read more…] about Dwight James Baum: The World’s Most Famous Architect from Little Falls
How The New Deal Helped Ignite Interest in American Skiing
Following the stock market crash of October 1929, an economic malady gripped the United States and much of the world, lasting several years. Loss of employment created excessive hardships, limiting even basic necessities of life.
The President, Franklin D. Roosevelt, who had previously been the two-term Governor of New York State, developed a composite plan to help citizens cope with the financial disaster and provide jobs, commonly known as “The New Deal.”
The ambitious program was multi-faceted, with one face being the creation of the Civilian Conservation Corps (C.C.C.) established in 1933, where young men were organized into military style labor, housed in barracks at remote locations. [Read more…] about How The New Deal Helped Ignite Interest in American Skiing
The Vanishing Hitchhiker of the Glens Falls-Lake George Road
Over the decades, one of the worldwide urban legends has been that of the vanishing hitchhiker. The stories go somewhat like this. A driver of a vehicle offers a ride to a person hitchhiking. After spending time in the car, the stranger seemingly vanishes without any logical explanation. There are numerous versions of this unbelievable story, too. One of those is the traveler is someone who before disappearing offers the motorist a prophecy.
In 1933, the Glens Falls-Lake George Road (Route 9 in Warren County, NY) had its own variant of the vanishing hitchhiker tale. [Read more…] about The Vanishing Hitchhiker of the Glens Falls-Lake George Road
Labor and Art: Pins, Needles & Depression
Social Realism as a movement in art and fiction emerged between the World Wars in response to the political and socio-economic turmoil of the period. To create in the 1930s, both in Europe and the United States, meant making an ideological choice.
The direction might be reactionary or revolutionary, it could be religious or materialist – the routes had in common a shift away from the experimentation of previous decades towards tradition, from individualism towards shared views. [Read more…] about Labor and Art: Pins, Needles & Depression
Death Avenue, Urban Cowboys & Social Realism
Attached to the bric
k wall of a restaurant/brewery called Death Avenue at 10th Avenue, almost hidden out of sight, a curious little plaque features a period photograph (ca. 1898) of steam locomotive running at street level surrounded by tenements, horses, pedestrians and children.
It commemorates hundreds of people who had lost their lives to the train. One of the victims was Seth Low Hascamp, a young boy (most likely) born into a family of German immigrants.* His death would help transform the area and its safety, a changeover that was recorded by a local Union Square artist. [Read more…] about Death Avenue, Urban Cowboys & Social Realism
‘New Deal For Artists’ Opening Adirondack History Museum Film Series
With the failure of President Herbert Hoover’s policies and the ensuing Great Depression, Americans were desperate for help. Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s pragmatic New Deal programs aimed to help Americans back to their feet by providing them with jobs. Several innovative public arts program were designed to provide economic relief and jobs for all kinds of artists from sculptures to painters and performers. [Read more…] about ‘New Deal For Artists’ Opening Adirondack History Museum Film Series
FDR and Wall Street: Words with Actual Action
The American government has always been corrupt, yet the levels of corruption have varied from time to time. There has always been an element of dark money and insider trading going on, though what is happening now in the 21st century is beyond anything that ever came before.
Everyone in power, or running to get some, seems to be cashing in. That one billion dollars has already been spent by corporate interests in order to influence where hundreds of billions of taxpayer’s money will be spent after this election speaks to this fact. [Read more…] about FDR and Wall Street: Words with Actual Action
Waiters, Restaurers, Automats & Depression Cocktails
An automaton is a machine designed to operate on its own by responding to predetermined instructions. By the mid-eighteenth century, a number of talented craftsmen operated in Paris from
where they exported clockwork automata and mechanical singing birds around Europe and beyond.
The undisputed master in this domain was Jacques de Vaucanson. In 1735, he constructed a life-sized flautist that produced twelve melodies. His masterpiece was unveiled in May 1764 when he presented a “Canard Digérateur” (Digesting Duck) to the public. [Read more…] about Waiters, Restaurers, Automats & Depression Cocktails
FDR, The New Deal, And A Mass Lynching in Georgia
During the Great Depression of the 1930s, President Franklin D. Roosevelt developed New Deal programs to hire unemployed men to work on public works projects. In the South, New Deal jobs typically provided higher wages than those in the private sector and under those programs black men were paid the same wage as white men. [Read more…] about FDR, The New Deal, And A Mass Lynching in Georgia
State Parks Offers Digital Timeline Exploring Great Depression, Civilian Conservation Corps
New York State Office of Parks, Recreation and Historic Preservation (State Parks) has released the third installment of the interactive, online timeline “Blazing a Trail: A History of New York State Parks and Historic Sites” in celebration of New York State Parks’ Centennial. This project employs photographs, illustrations, paintings, documents, archival footage, maps and narrative to tell the story of the development of the New York State Parks system. The newest installment, “Depression and A New Deal,” is available here, along with previously released eras. [Read more…] about State Parks Offers Digital Timeline Exploring Great Depression, Civilian Conservation Corps
Relief & Reform From The Settlement Movement to The New Deal
In December 1884, Canon Samuel Barnett and his wife Henrietta along with friends from Oxford University established Toynbee Hall in Commercial Street, Whitechapel. Named after their friend, fellow reformer and Oxford historian Arnold Toynbee who had recently passed away, the founders’ vision was to create a center for social research where privileged students would live and work. Their expectation was that “settling in” amongst East London’s poor would improve mutual understanding and ease class tensions. [Read more…] about Relief & Reform From The Settlement Movement to The New Deal
FDR, Boy Scouts, Civilian Conservation Corps and the Adirondacks
The New Deal was the largest expansion of federal power since the Civil War and many of its programs had their origins in Albany, in the policies of Governors Franklin D. Roosevelt and Al Smith and their influential aide, Frances Perkins. [Read more…] about FDR, Boy Scouts, Civilian Conservation Corps and the Adirondacks
When Hitchhiking Was Considered Wholesome
Since the 1970s, hitchhiking has been considered increasingly reckless by large proportions of the American public. But, as historian Linda Mahood writes in a recent article for the Journal of Social History focusing on the Canadian experience, attitudes were different in the first half of the twentieth century.
In the 1930s, hitchhiking was viewed as an opportunity for generosity on the part of the driver and a way to practice good manners on the part of the rider. [Read more…] about When Hitchhiking Was Considered Wholesome
Scrabble: Born of the Great Depression
Be it on an individual or organizational or global level, life is punctuated by times of crisis. A state of uncertainty confuses “normal” forms of reasoning and acting. Although predominantly associated with negative affect, crises serve as a catalyst for creative exploits.
Out of the Great Depression in the United States emerged two of the world’s classic family board games. Elizabeth J. (Lizzie) Magie first received a patent in 1904 for her Landlord’s Game which was designed to highlight the evils of capitalism and illustrate the ideas of Henry George, the author of Progress and Poverty (1879). [Read more…] about Scrabble: Born of the Great Depression
Craft Becomes Art: 1930s Upstate NY Highway Shops Created the U.S. Craft Movement
At the very worst economic time ever experienced, in 1929 an upstate New York petroleum merchant initiates a shop making and selling discretionary products for a consumer market characterized by 25 percent unemployment.
A few years later, and 15 miles down the same highway from the first, the same optimist opens a second shop. Improbably, the business idea achieves traction. [Read more…] about Craft Becomes Art: 1930s Upstate NY Highway Shops Created the U.S. Craft Movement