November 15th in NYC History:
Posted: Nov 15, 2012 | 1:11 AM
1848: The HighBridge Croton Water Aqueduct across the Harlem
River completed, Manhattan Island's oldest existing pedestrian bridge to America.
1867: The Stock Ticker debuted.
1887: Artist Georgia O'Keeffe was born.*
1887: Poet Marianne Moore born**. Surprising fact: She was Jim Thorpe's Professor of English.
Below: Let's see how these contemporaries took on the Brooklyn Bridge.*
1891: Statesman Averell Harriman born.
1905: City Magistrate Baker helps legitimize boxing, since
boxing was illegal in NYS since 1900. The rationale used was that it was
sponsored by a club for its members.
1919: Judge Wopner, of the People's Court, born.
1926: NBC, the National Broadcasting Company, has its radio network debut
with 24 stations, premiering with Will Rogers and the New York Symphony
Orchestra. A few years later, NBC will move to a new headquarters in Radio City, now known as Rockefeller Center.
1931: The Bayonne Bridge to Staten Island opened.
1940: Sam Waterston, the great actor of New York characters, was born.
1954: Actor Lionel Barrymore died.
1959: The Clutter Family murders that inspired Truman Capote's non-fiction novel In Cold Blood occured in Holcomb, Kansas.
1961: The Metropolitan Museum of Art pays what was an outrageous $2.3 million for "Aristotle Contemplating the Bust of Homer." This was the Met's 30th Rembrandt.
At least that is what they thought then. Brilliant Tour Guide Harry Matthews wrote to say: "...you have to be careful about counting the Rembrandts at the Met. Like most of his contemporaries, Rembrandt ran a painting factory, using a large staff to produce portraits on order. (His workshop is now a museum in Amsterdam, if you want to see for yourself.)
Several canvasses once attributed to Rembrandt are now listed as "Associates of Rembrandt." Attributions have been changed more than once or twice. The "Homer" canvass, however, has never been challenged as a work of the master. It is too good.
Incidentally, the Met's Vermeers are all authentic, and the largest collection outside Amsterdam."
I conject that such a painting would fetch over $100 million these days.
Bidding at Parke-Bernet lasted four minutes.
"Aristotle Contemplating the Bust of Homer" was previously owned by Alfred Erickson, co-founder of McCann Erickson.
1993: Robert Wagner Jr., former Mayor Robert Wagner's son, and himself a rising political star, killed by heart attack at age 49. He was the former Deputy Mayor and Board of Education President.
1972: NY Rangers' Left-Wing Steve Vickers becomes first team-member to score consecutive "Hat-Tricks," 3 goals in the game, leading to hats thrown in the air.
The first hat-trick was against the Los Angeles at home on Nov 12, 5-1. The second versus Philadelphia 7-3 at home. Not bad for a rookie!
1978: Barnard and American Museum of Natural History's Anthropologist Margaret Mead died.
1996: Controversial State Department Lawyer Alger Hiss died.
2011: The NYPD raided Occupy Wall Street's 'Liberty Park' (Zuccoti Park) community, evicting hundreds of protesters and demolishing the tent city, including the five thousand book library. In 2012 OWS has morphed in Occupy Sandy, leading rescue, relief and recovery efforts in flood ravaged waterfront communities in Queens and Brooklyn.
"Granite and Steel" by Marianne Moore
Enfranchising cable, silvered by the sea,
of woven wire, grayed by the mist,
and Liberty dominate the Bay-
her feet as one on shattered chains,
once whole links wrought by Tyranny.
Caged Circe of steel and stone,
her parent German ingenuity.
"O catenary curve" from tower to pier,
implacable enemy of the mind's deformity,
of man's uncompunctious greed
his crass love of crass priority
just recently
obstructing acquiescent feet
about to step ashore when darkness fell
without a cause,
as if probity had not joined our cities
in the sea.
"O path amid the stars
crossed by the seagull's wing!"
"O radiance that doth inherit me!"
—affirming inter-acting harmony!
Untried expedient, untried; then tried;
way out; way in; romantic passageway
first seen by the eye of the mind,
then by the eye. O steel! O stone!
Climactic ornament, a double rainbow,
as if inverted by French perspicacity,
John Roebling's monument,
German tenacity's also;
composite span—an actuality.
.