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New York City

Vulgarity & Vice: Times Square in the 1920s

May 7, 2023 by Jaap Harskamp 3 Comments

The Girl with the Whooping CoughThe 1920s was a decade of change and upheaval. While Europe was recovering from the First World War, the United States saw a period of economic growth and prosperity in which the country’s focus shifted from rural areas to the cities. It was also a time of great creativity in art and entertainment. New York City set the pace. [Read more…] about Vulgarity & Vice: Times Square in the 1920s

Filed Under: Arts, History, New York City Tagged With: Art History, Crime and Justice, Cultural History, French History, Jewish History, Legal History, Manhattan, New York City, Performing Arts, Theatre, Urban History, Vice

A $17.7M Ellis Island Immigration Building Project

May 4, 2023 by Editorial Staff Leave a Comment

Aerial view of Ellis Island (courtesy Library of Congress)Ellis Island became the first federal immigration station in the United States, opening in 1892. Designed in the Beaux-Arts style by the New York architectural firm Boring and Tilton, the Main Immigration Building was completed in 1900, replacing the original wood structure destroyed by fire in 1897. From 1892 to 1954 some 12 million immigrants were processed there. [Read more…] about A $17.7M Ellis Island Immigration Building Project

Filed Under: History, New York City Tagged With: Architecture, Ellis Island, Historic Preservation, Immigration, National Park Service, New York City

Hudson River Steamboats & Gibbons v. Ogden: 200 Years of the Commerce Clause

May 3, 2023 by Editorial Staff 2 Comments

Historical Society of the New York CourtsOne of the world’s first steamboats successfully completed a maiden voyage on the river Clyde in Scotland in 1798. That same year, Chancellor Robert R. Livingston proposed to the New York Legislature that he would develop a new form of public transportation, the steamboat ferry, in return for a monopoly on steam navigation in New York waters. Despite the Legislature’s skepticism that steamboat technology was viable, legislation granting Livingston the monopoly was enacted. [Read more…] about Hudson River Steamboats & Gibbons v. Ogden: 200 Years of the Commerce Clause

Filed Under: Capital-Saratoga, Events, History, Hudson Valley - Catskills, New York City Tagged With: Albany, Albany County, Daniel Webster, Economic History, Historical Society of the New York Courts, Hudson River, Industrial History, Legal History, New York City, New York Historical Society, Robert Fulton, Robert Livingston, Steamboating, Supreme Court, Transportation History

Redeeming Al Smith: New York’s Four-Time Governor

May 1, 2023 by Chris Kretz Leave a Comment

Governor Franklin D Roosevelt (left) and Al Smith (right) in Albany, New YorkAl Smith was many things during his political career: reform champion after the Triangle Shirtwaist fire, four-time governor of New York State, the first Catholic presidential candidate. But he was always a New York City boy at heart. [Read more…] about Redeeming Al Smith: New York’s Four-Time Governor

Filed Under: Capital-Saratoga, History, New York City Tagged With: Al Smith, Albany, Catholicism, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Ku Klux Klan, Long Island, Lower East Side, New York City, Political History, Robert Moses

Major General William Alexander, Lord Stirling: A Short Biography

April 30, 2023 by Peter Hess 2 Comments

Detail of Lord Stirling's last stand around the Old Courtelyou House (now known as the Old Stone House in Park Slope) during the battle of BrooklynWilliam Alexander was born on December 25, 1726 in the city of New York to well-known lawyer James Alexander and his wife Mary. Mary and James had emigrated from Scotland in 1716. When they married, Mary was already a widow with six children and she and James had seven more. William was the second son of Mary and James, but when his older brother died in 1731, William became the male heir to the Alexander clan. [Read more…] about Major General William Alexander, Lord Stirling: A Short Biography

Filed Under: Capital-Saratoga, History, Hudson Valley - Catskills, New York City Tagged With: Albany, Albany Plan of Union, American Revolution, Battle of Brandywine, Battle of Brooklyn, Battle of Germantown, Battle of Saratoga, Battle of White Plains, Brooklyn, Delaware River, George Washington, James Monroe, Lafayette, Livingston Manor, Manhattan, Massachusetts, Military History, New Jersey, New York City, Pennsylvania, Schenectady

The Migration of European Modern Art to New York: Solomon Guggenheim & Karl Nierendorf

April 27, 2023 by Jaap Harskamp Leave a Comment

SS Europa prior to her maiden voyage in March 1930Born on April 18, 1889, in Remagen am Rhein into a Catholic family, Karl Nierendorf was educated in Cologne. He worked as a banker before World War I, but his career was disrupted in 1913 by the social upheaval in the Weimar Republic. One of his acquaintances, an art collector, introduced him to the Swiss-born German painter Paul Klee who persuaded him to attempt a career as an art dealer. The two would remain close. When Klee died in June 1940, Nierendorf published Paul Klee Paintings Watercolors 1913 to 1939 (New York: Oxford UP, 1941) as a tribute and an act of friendship. [Read more…] about The Migration of European Modern Art to New York: Solomon Guggenheim & Karl Nierendorf

Filed Under: Arts, History, New York City Tagged With: Architecture, Art History, Film History, Frank Lloyd Wright, French History, German-American History, Guggenheim Museum, Jewish History, Manhattan, modernism, Museums, New York City, painting

The Early NYC Automobile Accident Photos of Eugene De Selignac

April 20, 2023 by Editorial Staff Leave a Comment

Manhattan Bridge Damaged Car 1936Eugene De Selignac (1861–1943) was born in Boston into an eccentric family of exiled French nobility, de Salignac had no formal training in photography. In 1903, at the age of 42, his brother-in-law found him a job as an assistant to the photographer for the Department of Bridges in New York City, Joseph Palmer. After three years of apprenticeship, Palmer suddenly died, and in October 1906, de Salignac assumed his duties. [Read more…] about The Early NYC Automobile Accident Photos of Eugene De Selignac

Filed Under: History, New York City Tagged With: Architecture, Brooklyn, Documentary, Manhattan, New York City, Photography, Roosevelt Island Historical Society, street photography, Transportation History

Chuck Connors & Slum Tourism in Chinatown

April 20, 2023 by Jaap Harskamp 1 Comment

Dating from 1785, Edward Mooney House at 18 Bowery, at the corner of Pell Street in Lower Manhattan’s Chinatown, is one of New York’s oldest surviving brick townhouses. Built shortly after the British evacuated New York and before George Washington became President, its architecture contains elements of both pre-Revolutionary (British) Georgian and the in-coming (American) Federal style. Designated in 1966 as a landmark sample of domestic architecture, Mooney House has three stories, an attic and full basement.

The property itself and the land on which it was built are manifestations of Manhattan’s socio-political emergence. The house harbors a history of various functions that involved a diverse mix of tenants and occupants, reflecting the chaotic rise of the metropolis. [Read more…] about Chuck Connors & Slum Tourism in Chinatown

Filed Under: History, New York City Tagged With: Architecture, Art History, Asian-American, Chinatown, Crime and Justice, Cultural History, Immigration, James De Lancey (Delancey), Jewish History, London, Lower East Side, Manhattan, New York City, poverty, The Bowery, Tourism, Urban History, Vice

Vannie Higgins: ‘Brooklyn’s Last Irish Boss’

April 14, 2023 by Guest Contributor 1 Comment

Brooklyn Rum Runner and Gangster Vannie HigginsVannie Higgins (1897-1932) was a notorious Brooklyn gangster and rum-runner. He was born Charles Van Wyck Higgins in 1897 in Bay Ridge, son of Daniel and Helen (Nellie) Higgins. As a young boy he was involved in street corner brawls, then moved up the ladder to assaults, robbery and grand larceny. Although he had an extensive police record, he was usually able to squeeze out of any jail time. [Read more…] about Vannie Higgins: ‘Brooklyn’s Last Irish Boss’

Filed Under: History, New York City Tagged With: Brooklyn, Crime and Justice, Genealogy, Great Meadow Correctional Facility, Irish Immigrants, Legs Diamond, liquor, Manhattan, New York City, Prohibition

The Seligmans, Philip Payton & Harlem’s Black-Jewish Alliance

April 10, 2023 by James S. Kaplan 2 Comments

Joseph SeligmanAround the time of the Civil War Joseph and Jesse Seligman were the most prominent Jewish businessmen on Wall Street – financiers of the Northern effort in the Civil War and close associates of Abraham Lincoln and Ulysses S. Grant.

Every summer in the 1870s they would bring their families with a retinue of servants to stay at the Grand Union Hotel in Saratoga Springs, NY among the most prominent resorts in the United States. In 1879 however, the new manager of the hotel, Judge Henry Hitlon, announced a new policy — henceforth no Jewish people would be allowed to stay there. [Read more…] about The Seligmans, Philip Payton & Harlem’s Black-Jewish Alliance

Filed Under: History, New York City Tagged With: Black History, Civil Rights, Harlem, Harlem Renaissance, Housing, Jewish History, Legal History, Manhattan, NAACP, New York City, Urban History

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