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Manhattan

Jack Niflot: Olympic Gold Medal Wrestler

May 11, 2022 by John Conway Leave a Comment

Isidor “Jack” NiflotNew York State’s connection to Olympic wrestling goes all the way back to 1904, the very first year freestyle wrestling was included in the summer games, when Isidor “Jack” Niflot, then of New York City, but later a longtime Sullivan County resident, won a gold medal in the bantamweight division. [Read more…] about Jack Niflot: Olympic Gold Medal Wrestler

Filed Under: Adirondacks & NNY, History Tagged With: Manhattan, New York City, Olympic History, Queens, Sports History, Sullivan County

Four Nymphs, a Satyr and Manhattan’s Ladies’ Mile

May 8, 2022 by Jaap Harskamp Leave a Comment

Portrait of John David WolfeUntil the mid-1860s the Fifth Avenue area around Madison Square was Manhattan’s “aristocratic” heart. Its brownstone mansions were occupied by the city’s elite. The gradual incursion of commerce into this residential haven started with high-class hotels.

In 1864 Hoffmann House was one of the first to open its doors. Owned by Cassius H. Read, it was located on the corner of 25th Street & Broadway and contained tree hundred rooms with all the latest conveniences. The establishment proudly advertised its lavish furnishings, carefully chosen artworks, and refined French (Parisian) cuisine. At a time that hotel living was becoming a fashionable alternative to owning a family mansion for wealthy New Yorkers, Hoffmann House was recommended as the most comfortable and homelike residence in the metropolis.

During the 1880s the hotel’s “grand salon” became one of New York’s “secretive” attractions for a very specific reason. [Read more…] about Four Nymphs, a Satyr and Manhattan’s Ladies’ Mile

Filed Under: Arts, History, New York City Tagged With: American Museum of Natural History, Anthony Comstock, Art History, Crime and Justice, Cultural History, French History, Hudson River Railroad, James Fisk, Manhattan, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City, painting, Pop Culture History, Vice

Dutch-American Stories: The “Patron Saint of New York”

May 3, 2022 by Jaap Jacobs Leave a Comment

treaty of friendship and trade between the United States and the Dutch RepublicThe bonds that connect the American and Dutch peoples have been commemorated in various ways and at various levels. Dutch-American Friendship Day is a well-established annual event at the governmental level. In New York City, the historical memory of Petrus Stuyvesant has recently become controversial, but in the twentieth century his image was iconic.

On April 19th, 1782, the Dutch States General decided to recognize John Adams as the envoy of the United States of America. It was the culmination of a contentious political process in which the Dutch Republic’s constituent provinces (Friesland being the first) instructed their delegates to vote in favor of accepting Adams’s nomination. With Adams in place as America’s minister plenipotentiary, the Dutch Republic reciprocated by naming Pieter Johan van Berckel as its first ambassador. [Read more…] about Dutch-American Stories: The “Patron Saint of New York”

Filed Under: History, New York City Tagged With: Dutch History, Dutch-American History Series, Manhattan, New Amsterdam, New Netherland, New York City, Peter Stuyvesant, sculpture

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

George Deem, Bulldozers and Stalinist Suppression

April 11, 2022 by Jaap Harskamp 3 Comments

George DeemManhattan artist George Deem is remembered for referencing the history of painting by re-imagining Old Masters in a contemporary context. He re-configured iconic pictorial images through visual ploys such as repetition and erasure, or through the addition of components of contemporary life and art. [Read more…] about George Deem, Bulldozers and Stalinist Suppression

Filed Under: Arts, History, New York City Tagged With: Art History, Chicago, Cultural History, Literature, Long Island, Manhattan, Metropolitan Museum of Art, modernism, New York City, painting, Russian History, Writing

Saved at the Seawall: Stories from the September 11 Boat-Lift

April 8, 2022 by Guest Contributor Leave a Comment

seawallOn this episode of Empire State Engagements, a conversation with author, historian, and mariner Jessica DuLong about her book Saved at the Seawall: Stories from the September 11 Boatlift (Three Hills/Cornell University Press, 2021). [Read more…] about Saved at the Seawall: Stories from the September 11 Boat-Lift

Filed Under: Books, History, New York City Tagged With: 9-11, East River, Hudson River, Manhattan, Maritime History, New Jersey, New York City, New York Harbor, Podcasts, Search and Rescue, Transportation History

The Violin, George Gemünder & The Sound of New York

March 22, 2022 by Jaap Harskamp 1 Comment

Lion head violin carving by Jacob StainerThomas Jefferson, America’s first Ambassador to France and the nation’s third President, developed a liking for the more genteel aspects of life in Europe. The man who requested that a cellar be constructed at the White House, has been named the first American wine connoisseur. He ordered his supplies directly from the finest French vineyards.

Jefferson also had a passion for music and was a devoted violinist. As part of his early ‘gentlemanly’ education he had been taught to play the instrument. Later in life he compiled a music library at his Monticello estate in Charlottesville that contained works by Vivaldi, Corelli, and Handel, and compositions by contemporaries such as Haydn and others. [Read more…] about The Violin, George Gemünder & The Sound of New York

Filed Under: Arts, History, New York City Tagged With: Cultural History, Manhattan, Music, Musical History, New York City, Queens

The Beauty of Bricks: Amsterdam, Delft & Manhattan

March 16, 2022 by Jaap Harskamp 1 Comment

Nicasius de Sille’s house in New Utrecht with roof tiles imported from the NetherlandsIn his 1653 poem on “The Character of Holland,” a piece of stereotypical English propaganda that was written in an era of fierce Anglo-Dutch economic rivalry, poet and politician Andrew Marvell ridiculed the Low Countries as being composed of “undigested vomit from the sea.”

The satirist did not mention the fact that out of this appalling spew the Dutch created bricks that were used by architects to build their characteristic cities which, in turn, inspired the flourishing genre of the cityscape in seventeenth century painting. Both bricks and building skills were at the time exported to England and across the Atlantic. [Read more…] about The Beauty of Bricks: Amsterdam, Delft & Manhattan

Filed Under: Arts, History, New York City Tagged With: Architecture, Art History, Dutch History, Haverstraw Brick Museum, Historic Preservation, Industrial History, Manhattan, New Amsterdam, New Netherland, New York City, Rockland County

The First Great Reset: Wall St, the Great Depression & the Pecora Commission

March 9, 2022 by James S. Kaplan 4 Comments

Crowd at New York's American Union Bank during a bank run early in the Great Depression (ca 1931)Initially many thought the severe Wall Street crash of October 1929 was a temporary phenomenon and like many subsequent crashes (i.e. 1987, 2008) the stock market would recover in a few months or years.

Unfortunately, this did not prove to be the case. After some upward spurts, stocks on the New York Stock Exchange continued to fall for the next three years and economic conditions throughout the country continued to worsen, so that by 1932 the market closed at 41, a drop of 89% over its 1929 high of 381. Employment in Wall Street firms plummeted, as the once heady activity evaporated and the Great Depression took hold.

The response would require a great reset between Wall Street and working Americans. [Read more…] about The First Great Reset: Wall St, the Great Depression & the Pecora Commission

Filed Under: History, New York City Tagged With: Agricultural History, Al Smith, Disability History, Economic History, FDR, Financial History, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Great Depression, Herbert Hoover, Labor History, Manhattan, New Deal, New York City, NYC, Political History, Wall Street, Wall Street History Series

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