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Jewish History

1899 And The Making Of New York City

April 26, 2022 by Jaap Harskamp 5 Comments

original St James Hotel on Broadway & 26th StreetOn August 31st, 1901, Polish-American anarchist Leon Czolgosz booked a room in Nowak’s Hotel at 1078 Broadway.

Six days later he made a trip to Buffalo, site of the Pan-American Exposition where President William McKinley was due to speak. He shot him from close range. [Read more…] about 1899 And The Making Of New York City

Filed Under: History, New York City Tagged With: Architecture, Auburn Prison, Crime and Justice, Fires, Irish Immigrants, Jewish History, Manhattan, New York City, Oscar Hammerstein, Performing Arts, Sing Sing Prison, Theatre, Theodore Roosevelt, Transportation History

Florenz Ziegfeld: The Incarnation of Broadway

April 20, 2022 by Jaap Harskamp Leave a Comment

The Follies in 1907Impresario Florenz (Flo) Ziegfeld Jr. was an American icon who developed the modern Broadway revue and established its global leadership in entertainment. He invented show business.

Florenz hit his stride with the Follies of 1907. A combination of European refinement, the signing of high quality performers (chorus girls), choreographers and lyricists, a relatively short show of forty minutes presented with lightning speed and precision, created an unprecedented sense of theatrical excitement. [Read more…] about Florenz Ziegfeld: The Incarnation of Broadway

Filed Under: Arts, History, New York City Tagged With: Chicago, Cultural History, Dance, German-American History, Immigration, Jewish History, Manhattan, Musical History, New York City, Performing Arts, Theatre, womens history

The Corset Maker: The Story Of A Courageous Jewish Teen

March 25, 2022 by Bob Cudmore Leave a Comment

The Historians LogoThis week on The Historians Podcast Annette Libeskind Berkovits discusses her historical novel The Corset Maker which tells the story of a courageous Orthodox Jewish teen, Rifka, who was living in Warsaw, Poland, in the late 1920s and early 1930s. [Read more…] about The Corset Maker: The Story Of A Courageous Jewish Teen

Filed Under: History Tagged With: Jewish History, Literature, Podcasts

The Jews of Long Island (A New Book)

March 9, 2022 by Editorial Staff 1 Comment

long island history project logoBrad Kolodny returns to The Long Island History Project podcast to update us on what he’s been doing during the intervening thirty episodes since he last appeared. Turns out he’s got a new book and a new historical society.

The Jews of Long Island (SUNY Press, 2020) is out now and in it Kolodny documents the personal and communal stories of Jews on Long Island from the l8th through the early 20th centuries, uncovering a cast of thousands from itinerant peddlers to early baseball players to vacationing vaudevillians. [Read more…] about The Jews of Long Island (A New Book)

Filed Under: Books, History, New York City Tagged With: Cultural History, Immigration, Jewish History, Long Island, Podcasts, Religious History, Social History

Wall St History: 19th Century Growth of Investment Banking

January 24, 2022 by James S. Kaplan 3 Comments

Wall Street in 1846 (NYPL)With the demise of the Philadelphia based Bank of the United States, the financial center of the country shifted to the privately owned state chartered financial firms on Wall Street.

As the nation recovered from the severe depression in the Panic of 1837, President James K. Polk’s policy of Manifest Destiny took root and significant westward settlement of Indigenous land expanded in the 1840s. Fortified by the Erie Canal and its Canal Fund, Wall Street financial institutions became strongly influenced by four factors: the invention of the telegraph; the development of railroads; the discovery of gold and other precious minerals in the West (particularly the California Gold Rush of 1849); and the arrival of significant numbers of Jewish and Irish immigrants in the city of New York. [Read more…] about Wall St History: 19th Century Growth of Investment Banking

Filed Under: History, New York City Tagged With: August Belmont, Civil War, Economic History, Financial History, Immigration, Jewish History, Manhattan, New York City, New York Stock Exchange, Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Wall Street, Wall Street History Series

Catskills Klan: The KKK in Sullivan County, New York

January 23, 2022 by John Conway 1 Comment

KKK cross burning LOCMany people – even those with more than a passing interest in Sullivan County history – are surprised to learn that the Ku Klux Klan was once fairly active in parts of the county. And yet, throughout the 1920s and early 1930s, there were several chapters in the Catskills, most set up by recruiters from the Binghamton area.

These Klan chapters, whether in Livingston Manor, Jeffersonville, Liberty, Woodbourne or some other hamlet, often started out as social organizations, and it was not unusual to see newspaper articles and even advertisements about their charitable activities or their clambakes, sometimes in conjunction with the Kamelias, the organization’s women’s auxiliary. [Read more…] about Catskills Klan: The KKK in Sullivan County, New York

Filed Under: History, Hudson Valley - Catskills Tagged With: Binghamton, Black History, Catholicism, Catskills, Crime and Justice, Jewish History, Ku Klux Klan, Livingston Manor, Sullivan County

A History of Wall Street: Tontine Coffee House & The Buttonwood Agreement

January 3, 2022 by James S. Kaplan 2 Comments

The Castello Plan from 1660, showing the wall at rightMany New Yorkers, and many Americans generally, consider Wall Street – to be the world’s most famous and important street. Many tourists are surprised to find that Wall Street, once described as “a short street with the river at one end and a Church at the other,” is only seven blocks long.

Originally named for a palisade wall built by the Dutch in the 1640s (and torn down by the English in 1699), the street was an important east-west thoroughfare until the American Revolution. At that time the entire city of New York, home to about 15,000 people, was south of City Hall Park.

One of the current ironies is that Wall Street today has returned to its residential roots. The financial institutions which became famous there now are located in midtown Manhattan or elsewhere. [Read more…] about A History of Wall Street: Tontine Coffee House & The Buttonwood Agreement

Filed Under: History, New York City Tagged With: American Revolution, Economic History, Financial History, Jewish History, Manhattan, New York Stock Exchange, NYC, Wall Street, Wall Street History Series

Gymnastics History: The Legacy of Friedrich Ludwig Jahn’s Turnerism

December 27, 2021 by Jaap Harskamp 4 Comments

3,000 Turners performed at the Federal Gymnastics Festival in Milwaukee, 1893By the mid-nineteenth century European gymnastics was an established system that had evolved through a century of innovation and adaptation. Originating in the Enlightenment with the
experiments of educational reformers intent on reviving a Greek ideal which the Roman poet Juvenal had summarized as mens sana in corpore sano (a healthy mind in a healthy body), gymnastics achieved widespread recognition after Friedrich Ludwig Jahn initiated the Turnverein (gymnastics club) movement.

The inventor of apparatus such as the balance beam, parallel bars, and vaulting horse, he used the discipline of organized exercise to inspire young gymnasts with a sense of national (Prussian) duty and solidarity. Jahn turned gymnastics into an agency of German patriotism.

The ambiguity of his message: enjoyment of competition and companionship versus militant nationalism, brought about Jahn’s contrasting legacies in Europe and the United States. [Read more…] about Gymnastics History: The Legacy of Friedrich Ludwig Jahn’s Turnerism

Filed Under: History, New York City, Recreation Tagged With: Civil War, Education, German-American History, Immigration, Jewish History, Manhattan, New York City, Political History, Revolutions of 1848, Socialism, Sports History

Jews in Early America

December 15, 2021 by Liz Covart 2 Comments

ben_franklins_worldThe first Jewish colonists in North America are believed to have arrived in 1654. Jews worked to build and contribute to early American society and the birth of the United States.

In this episode of the Ben Franklin’s World podcast, Gemma Birnbaum and Melanie Meyers, the Executive Director and Director of Collections and Engagement at the American Jewish Historical Society, join us to explore the history and experiences of Jews in early America and their contributions to the American Revolution and the founding of the United States. [Read more…] about Jews in Early America

Filed Under: History Tagged With: American Jewish Historical Society, Cultural History, Immigration, Jewish History, Podcasts, Social History

Saratoga’s ‘Fanny the Flower Girl,’ Gotham Book Mart Founder

December 14, 2021 by Jaap Harskamp 1 Comment

Congress Spring, Saratoga, 1849Frances 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

Filed Under: Arts, Capital-Saratoga, History, New York City Tagged With: Immigration, Jewish History, Literature, Manhattan, Medical History, New York City, Publishing, Saratoga, Saratoga Springs

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