April 25th in New York City's History
Posted: Apr 25, 2013 | 12:25 AM
by Jared Goldstein
1664: The Duke of York dispatched a fleet to capture New Netherlands from the Dutch. When that worked out for him, he renamed the city after his namesake.
April 25, 1795, the cornerstone of St. Mark’s Church in-the-Bowery was laid over the Dutch Reform Protestant Chapel of the last Nieuw Amsterdam Governor Pieter Stuyvesant.
1901: New York became the first state to require automobile license plates.
1908, Edward R. Murrow, the influential radio and television broadcaster during the industry's formative years, was born. He died 1965.
We walk in his haunts in the media capitol, on midtown tours.
1917: Jazz singing great Ella Fitzgerald born in Virginia. As a teenager she made her career in Harlem.
Here is one of my favorite Apollo Theater stories, paraphrased from her website:
'In 1934, at 17, she competed in Amateur Night. Ella went planning to dance, but she felt her act would not compare. Once on stage, faced with boos and murmurs of "What's she going to do?" from the rowdy crowd, a scared and disheveled Ella made the last minute decision to sing. Ella quickly quieted the audience, and by the song's end they were demanding an encore. A few months later she joined Chick Webb's Orchestra.'
We experience this on Harlem tours.
1930: Paul Mazursky, actor, director, writer, screenwriter, born this day in Brooklyn.
We walk in his footsteps on Greenwich Village tours and Brooklyn tours.
1940: Happy Birthday, actor Al Pacino, born in Manhattan.
We see where Pacino got his start in theater on Broadway tours; We see Serpico's neighborhood on Greenwich Village tours, and where he drove blind in "Scent of a Woman" on DuMBO tours on Brooklyn tours.
1964: Happy Birthday, voice actor famous for "The Simpsons," actor, comedian, and director Hank Azaria born in Queens.
2007: The Dow Jones industrial average topped 13,000 for the first time, ending the day at 13,089.89. A lot of good that did us in early 2009. We explore cycles of boom and bust and financial history on Wall Street tours, Financial District tours, Colonial NYC tours, Dutch New Amsterdam tours, and Downtown tours.