May 14th in NYC History
Posted: May 14, 2013 | 1:17 AM
by Jared Goldstein
1959: President Eisenhower broke ground on the West Side, in the San Juan Hill ghetto, for a new performing arts complex that will be Lincoln Center. Leonard Bernstein in attendance will later use the condemned neighborhood as the backdrop for his West Side Story.
[ Eisenhower breaking ground ] [West Side Story]
We experience Lincoln Center on Upper West Side tours.
1967: Yankee Mickey Mantle hit his 500th home run. This one was against the Baltimore Orioles.
1995: Drunken NYC harassed hotel guests, trashed hotel rooms at the D.C. Hyatt Regency Hotel, pulled false fire alarms, and one slid naked down the bannister of a hotel escalator, which cost him his job. They were representing the NYPD in Washington D.C. to honor police officers killed in the line of duty. It was good to be in the NYPD during Giuliani time.
1998: Singer Frank Sinatra died at 82.
1998: "Seinfeld" the sitcom aired its final episode.
2011: Dominique Strauss-Kahn, International Monetary Fund (IMF) chief and a comer for president of France, was charged for sexually assaulting a Manhattan hotel maid. He went to house arrest at a $9000 a day hotel. On my SoHo tours, there was a huge media and curiosity-seeker presence for weeks. Strauss resigned from the IMF; the charges against him were dropped.)