Posted: Mar 21, 2013 | 11:34 PM
1765: After the French and Indian War, Britain enacted the Stamp Act to raise money from the American colonies to pay for their security. The associated abuses led the colonies, in New York City, that year to convene the Stamp Act Congress in what was to become Federal Hall. A precursor to the American Revolution. I speculate that Canada did not have a violent break from Britain partially due to this divergent policy.
We see Federal Hall on Colonial NYC tours, Wall Street tours, Financial District tours, George Washington's New York tours, and my Santa's NYC tour.
1874: The YMHA, Young Men's Hebrew Association formed, founding the prominent 92nd Street Y, whose spiritual leader will marry me and Amanda this summer 2013
1930: Stephen Sondheim, Broadway theater composer and lyricist born.
1948: Andrew Lloyd Webber, Broadway and London theatre composer born.
1948: Wolf Blitzer, CNN's broadcast journalist born.
1952: Sportscaster Bob Costas born.
1962: Barbra Streisand
she debuted on Broadway debut at age 19 in the musical "I Can Get it For You Wholesale" at the Shubert Theater, her supporting role got her a Tony nomination.
1965: Bob Dylan's album "Bringing It All Back Home," was released. It featured his first electric guitar as well as more personal and surrealistic lyrics.
We visit where Bob Dylan lived on Greenwich Village tours.
Regarding Bob and Barbra:
Both made their career beginnings in Greenwich Village where personal honesty,
Dylan's lyrics and raw voice, and
Barbra Streisand not changing her name or nose to something WASPy,
reflect that;
along with the likes of comedians like Lenny Bruce, Dick Gregory, Richard Pryor and Woody Allen baring their souls 'as if a magic lantern threw their nerves in patterns on a screen;'
Beat poets recounting their life experiences;
Jazz musicians, black and white, playing bebop soaring solos for audiences black and white;
Edna St. Vincent Millay, the original Carrie, recounting her dating life in poems about being young and pretty in the city;
Eugene O'Neill changing drama, making it about real life in intimate theaters;
Edward Hopper painting what he saw, not Historical Figures, Myths, Biblical themes or enchanted landscapes, But real life, personal experiences, personal perceptions, personal feelings, personal art.
Gays and Lesbians arriving from Kansas, living lives in rose and rainbows in Oz.
Greenwich Village is about being your true self.
Back to historical reality,
on this day in
1995: Colin Ferguson sentenced to life for killing six on a Long Island Rail Road commuter train in 1993.
Posted: Mar 21, 2013 | 2:55 AM
by Jared Goldstein
Wayne Jebian quoted me waxing rhapsodic about Katz' appeal and how it is a model for Connecticut Jewish-style Deli in CT.com, Connecticut's website for arts, dining, and entertainment.
"Katz's Delicatessen, on Manhattan's East Houston Street, is the most nostalgic of New York's Jewish delis and a destination for food tourists and American Jews searching for their roots. Jared Goldstein of jaredthenyctourguide.com puts Katz's as the centerpiece of his "Jewish Lower East Side" tour, calling it "a regular-guy proto-deco neon light hand-painted signage cafeteria palace of delicious greasy salty pastrami and hot dogs." It is a role model for the New York style delis of Connecticut..."
Posted: Mar 20, 2013 | 11:30 PM
1790: Thomas Jefferson became America's first secretary of state.
His offices were in Fraunces Tavern, which was converted to government use. Also in residence, Hamilton's Department of the Treasury and the Department of War. Department of War - Department of Peace... Hamilton - Jefferson: Everyone could agree on Fraunces Tavern.
As you might have gathered, NYC was America's first capitol.
We see Fraunces Tavern on Wall Street Tours, Financial District Tours, and Colonial NYC Tours. We also see where Fraunces went while his tavern was put to public use - catering for George Washington, until he got fired.
1867: Florenz Ziegfeld, the theater producer and impressario, born. He died in 1932
1908: John D. Rockefeller III born: philanthropist who worked for public causes such as population control, international peace, and improving the non-profit sector. He died in 1978. He was a founder of Lincoln Center.
1946: The United Nations temporarily headquartered at Hunter College's Bronx campus, now Lehman College.
1949: Eddie Money, rock musician, born in Brooklyn.
He started off, like much of his family, as a police officer; his name was Edward Mahoney then, and then he left the force for music.
1962: Broadway and film actor Matthew Broderick celebrates his birthday.
Nowadays, women under the age of 35 know his wife better, Sarah Jessica Parker of Sex and the City Fame, but those over 35 remember his Ferris Bueller's Day Off and War Games. Broderick is still big on Broadway.
We walk their neighborhood on Greenwich Village tours. On Community Gardens tours we see the bench they donated to the Suffolk Community Garden.
1962: Television personality, actress, comedienne, activist, and philanthropist Rosie O'Donnell born in Long Island.
Posted: Mar 20, 2013 | 6:52 PM
by Jared Goldstein
1691: Mayoral politics in the post New Amsterdam era gets bloody. The aptly named Henry Sloughter wins. The loser, Jacob Leisler was hanged for treason. Leisler is later cleared.
1922: Happy Birthday to funnyman Carl Reiner. He will be a 2000 Year Old Man in 1,909 years
1931: Happy Birthday to Broadway star and "Barney Miller" Hal Linden.
1950: William Hurt, the award-winning Julliard-trained actor, born.
Hurt's Julliard classmate was Christopher Reeves. We see Julliard on Upper West Side tours.
1957: Director, Brooklyn native and NYU Tisch grad Spike Lee born.
In the early 1990s I was on a line just ahead of him to see Malcolm X documentaries, and I broke the New York Code: "SPIKE LEEEE!! I looooove your movies!" He was annoyed and buried himself in the NY Post Sports section. A couple of years later his Malcolm X film debuted.
1988: M. Butterfly opened on Broadway, garnering the Tony Award, playing 777 times.
Full Story
Posted: Mar 19, 2013 | 1:48 AM
1831: NYC's first reported bank robbery: $250,000 stolen from a Wall Street bank.
Now the banks do the robbing!
Learn about historic and contemporary finance on Wall Street tours and Financial District
1947: Actress Glenn Close ("Damages," "Fatal Attraction") born.
We see her apartment building on Upper West Side tours and we see her character's apartment building was in the movie Fatal Attraction on High Line tours and Meat Packing District tours.
1952: Harvey Weinstein, film producer and media executive, born in Flushing, Queens.
I'd be up for developing a Flushing Queens tour. It is a very historic, lovely, and vibrant community that is really a significant old town.
1962: Bob Dylan's eponymous debut album was released by Columbia Records.
We see where the cover for "The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan" was taken, as well as where Bob Dylan played his first paid and unpaid gigs on Greenwich Village tours.
1984: John J. O'Connor succeeds the late Terrence Cardinal Cooke as NYC's eighth Catholic Archbishop.
Full Story
Posted: Mar 19, 2013 | 1:42 AM
by Jared Goldstein
1766: Britain repealed the Stamp Act.
The Stamp Act Congress happened at Federal Hall in 1765. We visit Federal Hall on Financial District tours and Colonial NYC tours.
1950: CCNY beats Bradley University to win the NIT Championship at Madison Square Garden. A week later CCNY downs Bradley again to capture the NCAA title, becoming the first and only college to win both titles in the same year. But the team's feat is later tarnished by a point-shaving scandal.
Full Story
Posted: Mar 17, 2013 | 12:43 AM
1762: The first St. Patrick's Day Parade is held in Manhattan. Being Irish in New York City was controversial for nearly 200 years!
1871: The National Baseball League is formed at a meeting of baseball officials held at a cafe on Broadway. Teams included the New York Mutuals and the Brooklyn Eckfords.
1905: Franklin D. Roosevelt married his distant cousin, Eleanor Roosevelt, in New York City. His fifth cousin, President Theodore Roosevelt, gave his niece away.
1912: Civil Rights leader and organizer Bayard Rustin born elsewhere. He died in NYC in 1987. He organized the famous and influential 1963 March on Washington DC for Johs and Freedom with A. Philip Randolph. His being Gay, formerly in the Communist Party, and his later advocacy for Blacks to get into politics over Black Power nationalism made him not achieve requisite public fame.
Randolph left, Rustin right.
Rustin on the left.
1944: John Sebastian, Rock musician from the Lovin' Spoonful, born in Greenwich Village.
1993: Actress Helen Hayes , "The First Lady of Theater," died at 92.
2008: David Paterson, a Harlem political scion and former Lieutenant Governor, took the oath of office in Albany, the New York State Capitol, to become the first African-American – and first legally-blind – governor of New York State. He replaced Governor Elliott Spitzer who was forced to resign.
2011: The U.N. Security Council authorized military action to protect civilians and impose a no-fly zone over Libya.
Full Story
Posted: Mar 16, 2013 | 12:16 AM
1648: Nieuw Amsterdam Governor/Mayor/CEO/Director-General Peter Stuyvesant issued the colony's first tavern license.
I assume that this must have been a tax because taverns had existed in the colony for decades, many taverns.
We explore tavern life in my Dutch NYC tours, my Nieuw Amsterdam tour, my New Amsterdam tour, and my Colonial New York City Tour.
1967: Actress Lauren Graham born in Honolulu.
I went to college with her at Columbia and we worked in the student co-op; she's a sweet and sunny person. Smarter and more sensible than the character she played in Gilmore Girls. I saw her in NYC a few years ago at Old Town Bar, so I'm assuming she's still a New Yorker.
1969: Actor and comedian Judah Friedlander of "30 Rock" born.
1985: Terry Anderson, chief Middle East correspondent for The Associated Press, was abducted in Beirut. Kidnappings like this caused and were caused by the Iranian Arms for Hostages Scandal that metastasized into the Iran-Contra Scandals.
1999: Irrational Exuberance? The Dow Jones Industrial Average peeked over the 10,000 mark for the first time. Two years later it would be down. By 2003, way down.
Posted: Mar 15, 2013 | 9:34 AM
by Jared Goldstein
1933: Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg born in Brooklyn, raised in Flatbush.
1935: Actor Judd Hirsch born.
1955: Twisted Sister's Rocker, Dee Snyder born in Astoria, Queens. He grew up in Long Island.
1956: "My Fair Lady," Lerner and Loewe's hit musical, opened on Broadway.
1962: R&B singer Terence Trent D'Arby born in NYC.
1972: "The Godfather," Francis Ford Coppola's epic gangster film based on Mario Puzo's novel and starring Marlon Brando and Al Pacino, premiered in New York.
Full Story
Posted: Mar 13, 2013 | 8:45 PM
by Jared Goldstein
1886: 400 passengers from the sinking ship "Oregon" were rescued by the schooner "Phantom" in New York Harbor.
1888: The Great Blizzard finally ends. New Yorkers dig from snowdrifts twenty feet high.
1893: The luxurious Waldorf Hotel opens on 33rd Street and Fifth Avenue at a cost of $3 million.
36 years later it will be demolished for the Empire State Building development, and it will relocate to Park Avenue at 49th Street where it will combine with its former rival the Astoria.
1903: Abstract Expressionist artist Adolph Gottlieb born, and later raised, in NYC where he built his influential career as part of "The New York School."
1923: Photographer of real life and the margins Diane Arbus born in NYC. She died 1971 in Greenwich Village.
Diane Arbus' neighborhood, Greenwich Village, is a wonderful place to experience on Greenwich Village tours.
1948: Actor and Comedian Billy Crystal born in Manhattan, to be raised in the Bronx, then Long Beach, LI.
We see this spot, in Katz' Deli, on Lower East Tours.
2013: For the first time since the 1950s, New York City announced more people moved in than moved out. The population grew by over 160,000 to nearly 8.3 million.
Families were growing, too, instead of moving to the suburbs.
Most of the growth happened in Brooklyn along the L train line, but the Bronx saw rapid growth as well.