• Skip to secondary menu
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Skip to secondary sidebar

New York Almanack

History, Natural History & the Arts

  • Email
  • Facebook
  • RSS
  • Twitter
  • Adirondacks & NNY
  • Capital-Saratoga
  • Mohawk Valley
  • Hudson Valley & Catskills
  • NYC & Long Island
  • Western NY
  • History
  • Nature & Environment
  • Arts & Culture
  • Outdoor Recreation
  • Food & Farms
  • Subscribe
  • Support
  • Submit
  • About
  • New Books
  • Events
  • Podcasts

Greenwich Village

Ben Brotherson’s Bank Scheme

February 1, 2023 by Dave Waite Leave a Comment

New York Herald, March 24, 1858Around 1800, Philip and Catharine Brotherson arrived in Blue Corners on the western edge of Charlton in Saratoga County. Over the next 40 years, their five children grew to maturity, the last being Benjamin Kissam Brotherson, born in 1819.

At the age of sixteen, Benjamin was hired as a clerk for the dry goods merchant James Winne in Albany, New York. During his time in Albany, he was known as an upstanding young man of good moral character. Three years later, in 1838, he moved to the city of New York and took a job at Union Bank, where he would work for the next twenty years. [Read more…] about Ben Brotherson’s Bank Scheme

Filed Under: Capital-Saratoga, History, New York City Tagged With: Albany, Albany County, Charlton, Crime and Justice, Financial History, Gambling, Greenwich Village, Manhattan, New York City, Saratoga County, Saratoga County History Center, Saratoga County History Roundtable, Vice, Wall Street

The Queen of Greenwich Village: Romany Marie Marchand

January 17, 2023 by Jaap Harskamp 6 Comments

Au bistroThe coffee habit was introduced into Western Europe in the mid-seventeenth century. The emergence of the London coffeehouse transformed various aspects of intellectual and commercial life. Lloyd’s insurance, the postal system and the auction house are some of the institutions that trace their origins back to the coffeehouse.

At a time that journalism was in its infancy, the coffeehouse provided a center of communication and news dissemination. It served as a forum of discussion, often becoming a hotbed of political strife and faction. Coffeehouse culture helped shape the public sphere of the Enlightenment. [Read more…] about The Queen of Greenwich Village: Romany Marie Marchand

Filed Under: Arts, Food, History, New York City Tagged With: Art History, Culinary History, Cultural History, Education, French History, Greenwich Village, Immigration, London, Manhattan, modernism, New York City, womens history

NYC Preservationists, Officials Protest Demolition of Historic Landmarks

December 22, 2022 by Editorial Staff Leave a Comment

press conference at City HallOn Thursday, December 15th, the New York City Historic Districts Council (HDC) and their community partners were joined by elected officials and concerned members of the public for a press conference at City Hall, condemning City agencies for approving a raft of demolitions of landmarked buildings across New York City. [Read more…] about NYC Preservationists, Officials Protest Demolition of Historic Landmarks

Filed Under: History, New York City Tagged With: Advocacy, Bedford Stuyvesant, Greenwich Village, Harlem, Historic Districts Council, Historic Preservation, Landmarks Preservation Commission, Manhattan, New York City

Italian Heroes In New York: What Purpose Did Statues Serve?

December 14, 2022 by Jaap Harskamp 1 Comment

Bust of Italian Patriot Giuseppe MazziniNationalism of the nineteenth century represents very different values to those of our era. With the present rise of frenzied flag-waving and militant xenophobia, it is hard to understand the cult status achieved by foreign revolutionary figures such as Lafayette, who was honored as the “French Hero of the American Revolution.”

In 1878 a bust of Giuseppe Mazzini was unveiled in New York City‘s Central Park. A decade later, on the sixth anniversary of his death, Giuseppe Garibaldi was memorialized with a bronze statue in Washington Square Park. Why were these relatively unknown Italian insurgents given such a prestigious presence in New York? [Read more…] about Italian Heroes In New York: What Purpose Did Statues Serve?

Filed Under: History, New York City Tagged With: Art History, Central Park, French History, Greenwich Village, Immigration, Italian History, Manhattan, Monuments, New York City, Revolutions of 1848, sculpture, Staten Island

Marsha P Johnson State Park Gateway Design Unveiled

December 9, 2022 by Editorial Staff Leave a Comment

gateway to Marsha P. Johnson State ParkThe preliminary design for a new gateway to Marsha P. Johnson State Park in Brooklyn was unveiled this summer. The park honors Marsha P. Johnson, a transgender woman of color who was a pioneer of the LGBTQ+ civil rights movement. [Read more…] about Marsha P Johnson State Park Gateway Design Unveiled

Filed Under: History, New York City, Recreation Tagged With: Black History, Brooklyn, Civil Rights, East River, Greenwich Village, Landscape Architecture, LGBTQ, Manhattan, Marsha P. Johnson State Park, New York City, Political History, Williamsburg

Socialism, Greenwich Village & ‘The Masses’

June 28, 2022 by Jaap Harskamp 2 Comments

Piet Vlag drawing The socio-political and economic turmoil of the early twentieth century transformed American society. Between the conclusion of the Civil War and the end of the First World War, the country went from being a predominantly rural farming society to an urban industrial one. [Read more…] about Socialism, Greenwich Village & ‘The Masses’

Filed Under: Arts, History, New York City Tagged With: Arts and Crafts Movement, Cultural History, Greenwich Village, Journalism, Labor History, Manhattan, New York City, Political History, Publishing, Socialism, World War One, Writing

The Women’s House of Detention: A Queer History of a Forgotten Prison

June 3, 2022 by Editorial Staff 1 Comment

The Women's House of DetentionThe Women’s House of Detention, a landmark that ushered in the modern era of women’s imprisonment, is now largely forgotten. But when it stood in New York City’s Greenwich Village, from 1929 to 1974, it was a nexus for the tens of thousands of women, transgender men, and gender-nonconforming people who inhabited its crowded cells.

Some of these inmates — Angela Davis, Andrea Dworkin, Afeni Shakur — were famous, but the vast majority were incarcerated for the crimes of being poor and improperly feminine. Today, approximately 40 percent of the people in women’s prisons identify as queer; in earlier decades, that percentage was almost certainly higher. [Read more…] about The Women’s House of Detention: A Queer History of a Forgotten Prison

Filed Under: Books, History, New York City Tagged With: Crime and Justice, Cultural History, Gender History, Greenwich Village, LGBTQ, New York City, Social History, womens history

Anna Ben-Yùsuf: The Bravery of a Migrant Mother

February 16, 2022 by Jaap Harskamp 1 Comment

Dorothea Lane, Migrant Mother, 1936From the early times of explorers and settlers to the present day, the United States has been a nation of immigrants. Diversity makes the nation tick.

In the history of migration the (often neglected) participation of women has been crucial. Tales of hardship and bravery are legion. The plight of women who have had to make painful sacrifices has been highlighted by artists and historians, though more easily forgotten by the general public.

Zaida Ben Yùsuf joined the American labor force in the 1890s. She was in the vanguard of women who became professionally involved in the production of periodicals, as magazines reached a mass readership and photographs supplanted illustrations. But it was her migrant mother who had blazed the trail. [Read more…] about Anna Ben-Yùsuf: The Bravery of a Migrant Mother

Filed Under: History, New York City Tagged With: Art History, Fashion History, Greenwich Village, Immigration, Labor History, Manhattan, Muslim-American History, New York City, Photography, Publishing, Theatre, womens history

Tammany’s Last Stand: The McManus Club & The McGovern Campaign

October 28, 2021 by James S. Kaplan 1 Comment

Jimmy McManus in 1972James R. McManus was born in Hell’s Kitchen in 1936 and recently died in 2019. For 54 years (from 1962 to 2016) he was the Democratic Party District Leader from the Hell’s Kitchen area. This was a position that his father Eugene E. McManus had held for 20 years before him.

Previously Eugene McManus’s great grand uncle, Thomas J. McManus, had held the position, since the formation of the McManus Democratic Club in 1892, when he defeated the prior District Leader George Washington Plunkitt, author of Plunkitt of Tammany Hall: A Series of Very Plain Talks on Very Practical Politics (1905). [Read more…] about Tammany’s Last Stand: The McManus Club & The McGovern Campaign

Filed Under: History, New York City Tagged With: Al Smith, FDR, Frances Perkins, Greenwich Village, Jimmy McManus, Labor History, Manhattan, New York City, Political History, Tammany Hall, Urban History, womens history

Huguenots & New Rochelle’s Spirit of Liberty

October 17, 2021 by Jaap Harskamp 1 Comment

Monument in Hudson Park commemorating the Huguenot founders of New RochelleThe city of New Rochelle has a relevant place in the founding history of the United States. It was here that in 1689 a small community of French Protestant refugees would settle.

Known as Huguenots, they exercised considerable influence on America’s course towards self-determination. George Washington descended from a Huguenot refugee on his mother’s side. [Read more…] about Huguenots & New Rochelle’s Spirit of Liberty

Filed Under: History, New York City Tagged With: Art History, French History, Greenwich Village, Huguenots, New Netherland, New Rochelle, New York City, Religious History, Suffrage Movement, Westchester County, womens history

  • Go to page 1
  • Go to page 2
  • Go to page 3
  • Go to Next Page »

Primary Sidebar

Help Support The Almanack

Subscribe to New York Almanack

Subscribe! Follow the New York Almanack each day via E-mail, RSS, Twitter or Facebook updates.

Recent Comments

  • James S. Kaplan on New York State Canals Bicentennial: Some History & Plans For Celebrations
  • M Raff on Deep Time: Lake Ontario’s Lucky Stones & Fossils
  • N. Couture on Iroquois and the Invention of the Empire State
  • Bob on Are Baby Boomers The Worst Generation?
  • Anonymous on Gymnastics History: The Legacy of Friedrich Ludwig Jahn’s Turnerism
  • Editorial Staff on Women at Seneca Knitting Mill in Seneca Falls
  • B cottingham-kleckner on Women at Seneca Knitting Mill in Seneca Falls
  • Landscaping By G. Pellegrino on Work Begins On Bayard Cutting Arboretum Visitors Center
  • Colette on Cornwall-on-Hudson Historian Colette Fulton Being Honored
  • Daniel RAPP on Former NY Central Adirondack Division Rails Being Removed

Recent New York Books

“The Amazing Iroquois” and the Invention of the Empire State
american inheritance
Norman Rockwell's Models
The 1947 Utica Blue Sox Book Cover
vanishing point
From the Battlefield to the Stage
field of corpses
Madison's Militia
in the adirondacks

Secondary Sidebar

Mohawk Valley Trading Company Honey, Honey Comb, Buckwheat Honey, Beeswax Candles, Maple Syrup, Maple Sugar
preservation league