History, Natural History & the Arts
During the Renaissance (roughly 1400–1600) and Baroque (roughly 1600–1750) eras, Spanish barber shops doubled as social hubs. Barbers kept stringed instruments hanging on the wall for waiting customers to play or played them themselves to entertain patrons.
Spain has a rich lineage of stringed instruments that includes the bandurria. [Read more…] about A Tale of Mistaken Identity: Mandolin Mania in Manhattan
Fred Currier of Waterford, NY was a man of many interests. His actual name was Alfred, but he was known as Fred. For 17 years, he was a Waterford Town Constable.
In 1921, Governor Nathan Miller appointed him Division Superintendent of Canals. When that commission was up, he returned to law enforcement as a Deputy Sheriff, later becoming a Day Jailer. [Read more…] about The Black Hand & Shootings of Constable Fred Currier
Although some industrial production of pasta took place prior to the industrial revolution, the introduction of steam-powered machines during the nineteenth century enabled the mass production of pasta and marginalized the artisanal production of the staple in Italy. [Read more…] about A Short History New York Pasta Makers
Yankee Doodle went to town
A-riding on a pony,
Stuck a feather in his cap
And called it macaroni.
Macaroni Craze
During the third quarter of the eighteenth century, Londoners saw the bizarre spectacle of the so-called “macaroni craze.” Young aristocratic men who had returned home from their educational Grand Tour through Continental Europe to Italy, displayed a liking for pasta. [Read more…] about The Dutch & Flemish Roots of Yankee Doodle Dandy
Located on the River Scheldt (Schelde), Hoboken is a southern district of the city of Antwerp in Flanders. The name originates in the medieval Dutch phrase Hooghe Buechen (Hoge Beuken, or tall beech trees). Today there is a geriatric hospital in Hoboken named Hoge Beuken. The first historical records of the place date from the year 1135.
The New Jersey area of Hoboken on the western shore of the Hudson River was inhabited by Lenape indigenous people who called it Hopoghan Hackingh (Land of the Tobacco Pipe) for its green-veined rock from which they carved their pipes. [Read more…] about Hoboken: A Tale of Immigration & Frank Sinatra
Arnold Rothstein was of the most famous of America’s 20th century criminal masterminds, and for more than 20 years, the New York City native spent his summers in Saratoga Springs, gambling on the horses by day – and just plain gambling by night.
He first started coming to Saratoga on a regular basis in 1904, when he was 22 years old, and he largely gave up on Saratoga after 1925 – by then, he was able to make so much money bootlegging liquor that he no longer spent much time gambling at the Saratoga Race Course. [Read more…] about Arnold Rothstein’s Saratoga Club & The 1919 World Series Scandal
Launched in July 1900, the transatlantic liner S.S. Vaderland (Flemish for fatherland) sailed the route between Antwerp and Hoboken on behalf of the Red Star Line. Catering for 340 first-class, 200 second-class, and over 600 third-class (formerly steerage) passengers, the liner was one of “mid tier” elegance rather than opulence and designed to compete with its rivals of the Cunard and White Star lines. She played a key role in the early history of mass emigration from Europe to the United States.
On May 25, 1912, the liner left Antwerp, arriving at Ellis Island for immigrant inspection on June 4th. On board was a talented twenty-year-old Polish woman keen to break free from traditional Jewish domestic constraints and find intellectual and sexual freedom in Manhattan. [Read more…] about Lesbian History: Eve Adams, Monocles, Tearooms & Deportations
The National WW II Museum in New Orleans is home to about 250,000 artifacts, including more than 100,000 photographs ranging from battlefield pictures captured by military and press photographers to individual albums full of wartime snapshots donated by veterans and their families. [Read more…] about Mechanicville’s WWII & Korean War Veterans Photo Collection
Italian Rainbow Cookies
Chocolate covered
Layers of red white and green
With raspberry jam in between
The colors pop
Inside the pastry shop
Inviting you to take them home
Along with the cannoli
Delicious and hard to resist are
Italian Rainbow Cookies
America has been the world’s most diverse nation since its founding 250 years ago. New York has been the nation’s most diverse city. New York has led the way in welcoming immigrants, integrating them into American life and, at the same time, enabling them to retain something of the culture that they brought with them from abroad.
New York City’s America’s Making Exposition just over a century ago undertook to demonstrate the contributions of various national and ethnic groups and to show how they contributed to and enriched American society. [Read more…] about Beyond ‘Americanization’: New York’s 1921 Celebration of Diversity
Despite recent anti-immigrant developments, the ingredients that make up each of America’s flavorful households are waiting to be discovered and devoured.
In Colorful Palate: A Flavorful Journey Through a Mixed American Experience (Fordham University Press, 2026), author Raj Tawney shares his coming-of-age memoir as a young man born into an Indian, Puerto Rican, and Italian-American family, his struggles with understanding his own identity, and the mouthwatering flavors of the melting pot from within his own childhood kitchen. [Read more…] about Colorful Palate: A Flavorful Journey Through a Mixed American Experience
The rampant industrialism of the Gilded Age and early Progressive Era eventually took root in Little Falls, NY. The city and the surrounding Mohawk Valley had served as a hub for immigrant and migrant labor for a significant time. The construction of the Little Falls Canal and the Erie Canal during the 18th and 19th centuries attracted a multitude of predominantly Irish laborers.
In the latter half of the 19th century, as industrialism took hold, the mass construction of railroads attracted even greater numbers of immigrant workers to Little Falls in search of jobs within the burgeoning factory apparatus. [Read more…] about Immigration and Labor in Little Falls, New York
J.N. Cheney, an independent historian focusing on the labor movement, radical politics, and community action where he lives in the Mohawk Valley has published Women, Immigrants, and the Working-Class Battle in Little Falls, New York: The Textile Strike of 1912-1913 (Algora Publishing, 2025).
This is the first non-fiction book to provide a comprehensive recounting and analysis of the largely forgotten Little Falls Textile Strike, one of the most important events in New York State’s labor history and one with national significance. [Read more…] about The Little Falls Textile Strike: New Scholarship Brings A New Book
Today the state of Minnesota is engaged in the first General Strike in nearly 80 years. There have been thousands of strikes in American history, but only about a dozen General Strikes. One of the first strikes took place in the city of New York in 1677. Afterward a dozen cart-men (one-horse cart operators) were criminally prosecuted “for not obeying the Command and Doing their Dutyes as becomes them in their Places” and fined.
About 80 strikes in the U.S. have involved over 100,000 workers. Here are 13 strikes every New Yorker should know about: [Read more…] about Strike! 13 Strikes Every New Yorker Should Know About
Spread over an archipelago of islands nestled amongst the marshes of the northern Adriatic coast, Venice was founded in the fifth century AD by refugees who fled the “barbarian” onslaught after the collapse of the Western Roman Empire.
In 811 its seat of government transferred from the island of Malamocco (one of the earliest settlements) to an area corresponding to present St Mark’s Square which was less vulnerable to attacks from sea. [Read more…] about Venice Design & Manhattan’s Skyline
William Sharp was born Leon Schleifer in 1900 at Lemberg in the Austro-Hungarian Empire (Lviv, now part of Ukraine), where he attended the Academy for Arts and Industry and continued his studies in Kraków, Poland, before finishing his education at the University in Berlin in 1918.
After serving briefly in the German army, he stayed on in Berlin and worked as a book illustrator, etcher and painter. He focused on courtroom sketches for the liberal Berliner Tageblatt and the social democratic weekly Volk und Zeit.
As Adolf Hitler’s National Socialist Party grew in the late 1920s, Schleifer adopted various pseudonyms whilst contributing political cartoons for the anti-Nazi press. Threatened with imprisonment in 1934, Schleifer and his wife Ruth fled to the United States. [Read more…] about William Sharp: An Artist in Troubled Times
Water has always played a vital role in the history of Putnam County, NY. Now, Brewster High School senior and Eagle Scout candidate Connor O’Reilly has led a service project commemorating the construction of the East Branch Reservoir in the Town of Southeast, completed more than a century ago. [Read more…] about Putnam County’s East Branch Reservoir History Collection Debuts
The year was 1901 when the steel barque Moshulu sailed into New York Harbor carrying many Sicilian immigrants for inspection at Ellis Island.
This is the gripping fictional opening scene of The Godfather II, although considerable artistic license was taken by its producer and director Francis Ford Coppola. [Read more…] about Vito Corleone, Alonzo Blauvelt & Smallpox in Italian Harlem
It seems to have been forgotten, or ignored, but the vast majority of Americans have an immigrant family history story – often of struggle and sacrifice. New York Almanack wants to publish them.
In 300 words or less, tell us the story of your immigrant ancestor(s) and their earliest experiences in New York and we’ll share them with our readers.
Here’s how: [Read more…] about Send Us Your Immigrant Family History Story
People arriving in New York City for the first time have had reactions ranging from fascination to astonishment to horror. Here are six of their perspectives ranging from 1915 to 1967, from a journalist, a poet/artist, a Socialist, a suffragist, a travel writer, and a songstress. [Read more…] about New York City Newcomers: Six Perspectives, 1915-1967
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