History, Natural History & the Arts
What does a sunken auto in Lake George, New York and New York City’s Apollo Theatre have in common? Well, both were owned by one of the country’s most influential citizens of post-World War One America.
Sydney S. Cohen was the president of the Motion Picture Theatre Owners of America. During an era when there were no televisions in American homes, nearly every town across the country had at least one movie house. [Read more…] about A Sunken Lake George Car and the Apollo Theatre
Recently, Diane O’Connor, the managing director of the Lower Adirondack Regional Center for History in Ticonderoga, presented “Adirondack Jews: Community and Contribution,” at the Historical Society of the Town of Chester and the Town of Chester Library. The program highlighted the contributions of the Marshall family – Louis Marshall and his sons James, George and Bob – to the preservation of the Adirondacks. [Read more…] about The Marshalls: An Indispensable Adirondack Family
The modern era has produced a number of great speeches that have withstood the test of time. Amongst them are Winston Churchill’s “Fight on the Beaches” (June 1940), John F. Kennedy’s “Ich bin ein Berliner”(June 1963) and Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream” (August 1963), but the speech that may have had the biggest impact in the history of political thought was Abe Lincoln’s “Gettysburg Address” (November 1860). [Read more…] about Sigmund Freud, Adirondack High Peaks and American Colitis
What might Lake George have looked like 265 years ago, on the eve of the French attack on Fort William Henry?
That’s the focus of the display in the entryway to the Fort museum and historical attraction. It includes three figures – an American provincial, a British regular and a ranger, all created by the late Jack Binder for the reconstructed fort, which opened to the public in 1955. [Read more…] about Comic Book Artist Jack Binder & Fort William Henry History
New York State’s Forest Preserve lands of the Adirondacks and Catskills are living fossils of the broad 19th-century movement to protect wild forests of the federal public lands in the West as forest reserves and not as national forest sources of fiber, forage, and minerals.
New York State’s Forest Preserve lands therefore are living proof that the wilderness preservation movement is not an upstart 20th-century offshoot of the mainstream American conservation movement. [Read more…] about Ed Zahniser On Wilderness & New York State
Frances Steloff was the daughter of a Russian immigrant and itinerant rabbi who, in an age of rising anti-Semitism, was one of the early Jewish settlers in Saratoga Springs. The large family lived in dire poverty.
After the death of her mother, Frances was “informally” adopted by a wealthy Boston couple. Having run away from her foster parents, she made her way to New York, worked in a Brooklyn department store selling corsets, before establishing a tiny bookshop in Midtown Manhattan. On her death, after eighty-one years in the business, she was revered as one of America’s most influential booksellers and bibliophiles. Founder of the Gotham Book Mart, she turned her establishment into a center for avant-garde literature. [Read more…] about Saratoga’s ‘Fanny the Flower Girl,’ Gotham Book Mart Founder
The history of achieving the 1964 Wilderness Act in the U.S. Congress is commonly seen as an eight-year legislative struggle. The first wilderness bills were introduced in Congress in 1956 — in the House of Representatives by John P. Saylor of Pennsylvania and in the Senate by Hubert H. Humphrey of Minnesota.
The Wilderness Act was signed into law by President Lyndon B. Johnson on September 3rd, 1964. My father, Howard Zahniser, primary author of the Act, had died in May 1964. My mother, Alice, attended the White House signing, and President Johnson gave her a pen he used. Three years later President Johnson sent me a letter telling me I was being drafted for two years of US Army service. [Read more…] about Ed Zahniser On American Wilderness History
The Ticonderoga Historical Society is set to present a free program, “Adirondack Jews – Community and Contribution,” at 7 pm on Thursday, November 29 at the Hancock House, 6 Moses Circle in Ticonderoga.
The Adirondacks are rich with accomplishments and contributions by individuals of Jewish heritage. This program will look at people such as Louis Marshall, an attorney and conservationist and his son Bob Marshall, a founder of the Adirondack 46ers and The Wilderness Society. [Read more…] about Adirondack Jewish History Program Planned
Spending so much time conducting research in old books and newspapers, I’m often left shaking my head when today’s news headlines call to mind a favorite saying: “Those who don’t know history are condemned to repeat it.” We use the concept all the time for personal decisions.
Before making a purchase — car, washing machine, cable package, cell phone — have you ever referred to a magazine like Consumer Reports, read online reviews, or asked a friend how their own choice worked out? If so, you checked with history to avoid making a poor choice. It’s a simple concept: learn a product’s history and you’re not doomed to repeat it. [Read more…] about Immigrants Are Our History: So What Do We Do Now?
Through the efforts of a statewide grassroots committee, public and private colleges and universities throughout upstate New York have been spending this fall commemorating the Empire State’s role in inspiring federal wilderness preservation.
These activities are occurring in celebration of the anniversary of the signing by President Lyndon Johnson of the National Wilderness Preservation System Act of 1964, legislation that created the legal definition of “wilderness” in the United States and now makes provisions for wilderness management on more than 109 million acres of federal land. [Read more…] about Campuses Celebrate NYS Wilderness Act Connection
Governor Al Smith helped block the construction of a highway along the shore of Tongue Mountain, but it was Franklin D. Roosevelt who was instrumental in protecting the east shore of Lake George, documents in the Apperson-Schaefer collection at the Kelly Adirondack Center at Union College in Schenectady suggest.
With funding from the bond acts of 1916 and 1926, much of Tongue Mountain and many of the islands in the Narrows were now protected, permanently, as parts of the Adirondack Forest Preserve.
But by 1926, John Apperson, the General Electric engineer who dedicated much of his life to the protection of Lake George, had become concerned about the future of the east side. [Read more…] about Adirondack Environmental History Going Online
In Louis Marshall and the Rise of Jewish Ethnicity in America: A Biography (Syracuse University Press, 2013) M. M. Silver provides the first scholarly treatment of a the sweeping influence of Louis Marshall’s career through the 1920s. A tireless advocate for and leader of an array of notable American Jewish organizations and institutions, Marshall also spearheaded civil rights campaigns for other ethnic groups, blazing the trail for the NAACP, Native American groups, and environmental protection causes in the early twentieth century. [Read more…] about Louis Marshall: The Rise of Jewish Ethnicity in America
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