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Jared the NYC Tour Guide Blog

Posted: Jan 13, 2013 | 2:22 AM
by Jared Goldstein

Jan 14th in NYC History

1895: 5,000 Brooklyn trolley workers strike shutting down 200 miles of tracks and 900 cars. When management attempted to reopen a riot ensued. Labor-friendly police do little to quell the unrest, so the governor called in the state troopers to restore order. The strike lasted two weeks.

1915: Gameshow Producer Mark Goodson (Goodson & Todman Productions) born. His career took off in NYC in radio then television from the late 1940s through the late 1960s when his company moved to California. His innovations include pitting celebrities against each other, buzzers, and returning champions.

Here are some of his biggest hits: Winner Take All, What's My Line? I've got a Secret, To Tell the Truth, The Price is Right, Concentration, Password, Beat the Clock, Family Feud, and Match Game.

It seems that these gameshows were a precursor to so-called Reality TV, which just uses higher production values.

1919: 60 Minutes Television columnist and cranky curmudgeon Andy Rooney would have celebrated his birthday today had he not died at 92.

1952: NBC's "Today" show premiered with Barbara Walters.

We see the studio and sometimes the show itself on tours of Rockefeller Center.

1957: New York native Humphrey Bogart died of cancer at age 57.

1964: Shepard Smith, Broadcast journalist "The Fox Report" born.

1966: Fifth Avenue went one-way southbound while Madison Avenue went one-way northbound.

1968: Queens rapper, clothing designer, and actor L.L. Cool J born.

1970: Composer and Maestro Conductor Leonard Bernstein hosted a meeting at his home, "That Dinner at Lenny's," to raise funds for the legal defense of the Black Panther Party. Tom Wolfe's droll coverage of the event and its media flap popularized the term "radical chic," but not 'limousine liberal.'

1993: Late-night TV talk show host David Letterman announced he was moving from NBC to CBS.

2000: Late Show host David Letterman underwent quintuple-bypass surgery at 52. He recuperated and returned to work 6 weeks later.

2001: The Giants won the NFC Championship against Minnesota 41-0, paving the way to their third Superbowl, which they lost to Baltimore 34-7. On today's glorious date, Giants quarterback Kerry Collins passed for 381 yards and five touchdowns.

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Posted: Jan 13, 2013 | 1:58 AM

January 13th in NYC History

1864: Great American composer Stephen Collins Foster, famous for songs including "Oh! Susanna," "My Old Kentucky Home," and "Camptown Races," died in the charity ward of Bellevue Hospital days after completing another hit, "Beautiful Dreamer."

1910: The first opera broadcast was Enrico Caruso singing Cavalleria Rusticana with the Metropolitan via the De Forest Radio Telephone Company.

1922: Gene Tunney of NY wins the American light heavyweight championship against "Battling Levinsky" (Barney Lebrowitz) after 12 rounds.

1939: The owner of the Yankees (1915-1939, great years) who started the sports' greatest dynasty, Colonel Jacob Ruppert died in NYC age 71.

1942: NYC's quickest knockout: 11 seconds in the first round in Brooklyn with Joe Jakes flooring Al Forman.

1950: Soviets boycott the UN Security Council over admitting Nationalist China (Formosa/Taiwan) over Communist mainland China.

1952: Geoffrey Canada, founder of Harlem Children's Zone - a national model in 20 cities, and writer, born. We see at least one Children's Zone facilities on Harlem walking tours.

1959: The Cold War thaws when Krushchev's deputy visits the United Nations, the Financial District, and Macy's. He declared that Americans want peace.

1961: Actress and C0medienne Julia Louis-Dreyfus of "Seinfeld," "the New Adventures of Old Christine," and "Saturday Night Live" celebrates her birthday.

1976: The Metropolitan Opera's first woman conductor, Sarah Caldwell led Verdi's La Traviata.

1978: The Yankees manager who led them to 7 World Series Champions, four of them in a row, and 8 pennants, Joe McCarthy died in Buffalo at 90.

1987: LT, Lawrence Taylor named NFL MVP, very rare for a defense player.

1989: Subway viglilante shooter Bernhard "Bernie" Goetz sentenced to a year in prison for possessing an unlicensed gun that he used against four youths he said were about to rob him.

He served 8 months. More about Bernie Goetz here.

2002: Off-Broadway musical "The Fantasticks" ended nearly a 42 year run of 17,162 performances. Mostly at the Sullivan Street Playhouse. Some of the children of the stars grew up performing their parents' roles.

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Posted: Jan 12, 2013 | 12:33 AM
by Jared Goldstein

January 12th in New York City History
Jets Win Superbowl - Guaranteed!
College Football Bans Murder and Maim,
Legalizes Forward Pass.
Happy Birthday Howard Stern and All in the Family.

1906: Inter-collegiate Athletic Association (now NCAA) announced new rules addressing the weekly death toll in college football, and legalizing the forward pass.

The previous season claimed 18 lives and caused 149 serious injuries. University presidents and President Roosevelt called to suppress "savagery and foul play."

1928: Pianist Vladimir Horowitz makes his American debut at Carnegie Hall.

1954: Howard Stern, Radio talk show host, TV judge on "America's Got Talent" celebrates his birthday again.

1969: The New York Jets led by Quarterback Joe Namath upset the Baltimore Colts 16-7 in Super Bowl III at the Orange Bowl in Miami. Namath brashly guaranteed that the 18 point underdog would win. He did his part connecting 17 out of 28 passes for 206 yards (over two lengths of field). This earned him game MVP.

The NY Mets will later upset the Baltimore Orioles to win the World Series autumn 1969.

1971: The ground-breaking sitcom "All in the Family," starring the Emmy-winning Carroll O'Connor as Archie Bunker, premiered on CBS. Rob Reiner was a supporting actor, along with Ruth Stapleton.

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Posted: Jan 11, 2013 | 6:37 AM
by Jared Goldstein

January 11th in NYC History -
Happy Birthday, Hamilton;
William James and Mary J Blige;
First US Capitol of twice.

1757: Alexander Hamilton born in the West Indies.

As a Patriot, he founded the US Coast Guard, Customs Service, and the Treasury Department.

As a New-Yorker he established America's first bank, the Bank of New York and The New York Post.

We explore a great deal of Hamilton's colonial and early American history on walking tours of the Financial District.

1785: New York City becomes the new nation's capital even before the present Constitution.

Congress, under the Articles of Confederation, met at Federal Hall. NYC remained the capitol through the first years of the Constitution in 1789-90.

We explore NYC's early American history on Downtown Tours.

1842: William James, philospher and psychologist, born in NYC.

1925: Brooklyn conductor Aaron Copeland's career takes off from the Aoelian Hall with his modern and acclaimed First Symphony. Copeland will be known as the dean of American composers.

1971: Happy Birthday, Mary J. Blige.

1978: Toni Morrison's book, Song of Solomon won the National Book Critics Circle Award, the first time for a black, and the first in fifty years for a woman.

1995: The NHL and its players' association finally agree, ending a 105 day lockout, leaving only 48 games in the schedule.

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Posted: Jan 10, 2013 | 4:26 AM
by Jared Goldstein

Jan 10th in NYC History -

Beginnings: greatest Secretary of State, public television network, the Subway bids, The Sopranos, and a media behemoth too big to succeed.
Endings: Dashiell Hammett and, kind of, Congressman Powell.

1861: William Seward, a great New York politician, becomes Lincoln's Secretary of State, likely the best one in history.

1900: Bids are released for the Subway's construction running from City Hall to the Bronx. The first subway opened in 1904.

Coincidentally (?), on this date in 1863 London's Metropolitan (subway), opened.

1961: Dashiell Hammett, author of hard-boiled detective novels turned into popular films, died in NYC. He was born in 1894.

1967: National Education Television (NET) becomes the first noncommercial educational television network, connecting 70 affiliates. It's first broadcast is President Johnson's State of the Union address. NET will later morph in PBS, the Public Broadcasting Service, which would soon make a big impact on television, such as with Sesame Street and Masterpiece Theater.

1967: Harlem Congressman Adam Clayton Powell, "Mr. Civil Rights," who represented Harlem for 26 years was banned from the House of Representatives pending an investigation into corruption. Powell was re-elected two years later after the the Supreme Court re-instated him.

In the early 1970s he lost the election to Charlie Rangel, who himself was censured for tax evasion three decades later. Rangel, also decades later, will defeat Powell's nephew to retain his seat. Rangel is still serving Harlem in Congress.

We explore the glories of Adam Clayton Powell and the ignominy of Charlie Rangel on Harlem tours.

1999: HBO premiered The Sopranos.

Many tours of Midtown, including my 42nd Street tour, show HBO headquarters.

2000: America Online agreed to buy Time-Warner for $162 billion. The new corporation was valued at $350 billion.

Time-Warner decided to spun off AOL in 2009.

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Posted: Jan 8, 2013 | 11:01 PM

January 9th in NYC History - 12 facts:

1808: NYC's first public works project: filling in Collect Pond with landfill from a flattened Broadway, drained by a canal where Canal Street is. Unemployed and hungry laborers threatened riot unless they got work.

This area is becoming a park. It was a parking lot for the courts (next to Civil and Family Courts, across from The Tombs, Criminal Court). Cars occassionally fell into the pond's sinkholes. It is nice that we are working with nature rather than against it, and it against us.

1854: The Astor Library opened at Lafayette Place, where the Public Theater is now.

It had more books than the Library of Congress.

This semi-public library was a forerunner of the NY Public Library. Washington Irving was the president and chief librarian.

1875: Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney, Sculptress, Patron of the arts, and founder of the Whitney Museum of American Art, born. She died in 1942. We explore some of her heritage sites on our Greenwich Village tours.

1903: The roots of the Yankees planted by the New York Businessmen who bought Baltimore's American League franchise for $18,000, moved them to upper Manhattan, renamed them the Highlanders, and then the NY Yankees in 1913.

1928: Popular author Judith Krantz born in New York City.

1941: Joan Baez, singer and activist born in Staten Island.

1942: Joe Louis defended his championship , knocking out Buddy Baer at 2:56 into the first round. Louis donated his $47,000 prize to the Navy Relief Fund, poignant since the attack on the Pearl Harbor naval base was a month earlier.

1946: Harlem Renaissance writer Countee Cullen died at 42.

1950: Rock singer David Johansen, from the New York Dolls and Buster Poindexter, born.

1954: Neil Smith, the Ranger's GM and President of their 1994 Stanley Cup Championship team, born in Toronto.

2006: "The Phantom of the Opera" became the longest-running show in Broadway history, surpassing "Cats," which ran for 7,485 performances.

2006: Howard Stern goes to satellite radio. In 2005, he signed a $500 million exclusive broadcast deal with Sirius Satellite Radio's subscription-based radio service .

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Posted: Jan 8, 2013 | 3:32 PM
by Jared Goldstein

Jan 8th in NYC History

1790: GW delivers first state of the union address
http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/president-george-washington-delivers-first-state-of-the-union

1904 Peter Arno, a pioneering cartoonist for the New Yorker magazine, is born.

1933Charles Osgood, Broadcast journalist, turns 80

1941 William Randolph Hearst halts ads for Citizen Kane
http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/william-randolph-hearst-stops-citizen-kane-ads

1965...The world's largest sapphire – the Star of India
– comes home to New York in the coat pocket of an assistant district
attorney. The stone had been stolen, along with several others, from the
Museum of Natural History three months earlier. They are recovered from
a locker in a Miami bus depot with the help of one of the thieves.

1971Jason Giambi, Baseball player, turns 42

Ragtime wins the National Book Critics Circle Award, 1976

?1982AT&T settled the Justice Department's antitrust lawsuit against it by agreeing to divest itself of the 22 Bell System companies.?

1987The Dow Jones industrial average closed above 2,000 for the first time, ending the day at 2,002.25.

1988: Defying bans on destroying SRO's and demolishing buildings without permits or safety, Developer Harry Macklowe had four buildings, including two SROs demolished overnight. Macklowe perfunctorialy pad the $2 million fine and constructed the luxurious 43-story Hotel Macklowe there.

1998Ramzi Yousef, the mastermind of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, was sentenced in New York to life in prison.

2007A Moroccan man convicted of aiding three of the four pilots who committed the 9/11 attacks was sentenced by a German court to the maximum 15 years in prison.

?
80John Carroll 1/8/1735 - 12/3/1815
First Roman Catholic bishop in the United States58

Nicholas Biddle 1/8/1786 - 2/27/1844
American financier

72Frank Nelson Doubleday 1/8/1862 - 1/30/1934
American publisher

80Jose Ferrer 1/8/1912 - 1/26/1992
American actor and director
?

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Posted: Jan 7, 2013 | 12:37 AM
by Jared Goldstein

January 7th in New York City History

NYC proposed as independent and neutral city-state for Civil War,
and many big birthdays, big events and firsts.

1789: The first US Presidential election elected George Washington. As it was during the Confederation from 1784-1788, NYC was the capitol of the former British colonies along the east coast.

1861: As Civil War loomed, Mayor Fernando Wood proposed that New York become a "free city" so as not to lose trade with seceding Southern states. More specifically, Wood proposed that New York City secede from the Union and become a city-state to preserve its profitable trade with the South.
The City Council rejected the suggestion by a wide margin.

1873: Adolph Zukor, who built Paramount, born.

1891: Harlem Renaissance figure, writer, and researcher Zora Neale Hurston born.

1912: Cartoonist Charles Addams born. He died in 1988.

1927: Transatlantic telephone service begins connecting New York and London.

1946: Jann Wenner, born in NYC, Magazine publisher (Rolling Stone based in NYC), turns 67.

1955: Singer Marian Anderson debuted with the Metropolitan Opera in New York, becoming the first black person to perform as a member in its 71 year history.

She sang contralto in the role of the dramatic sorceress Ulrica in Verdi's Masked Ball, which earned her many curtain calls, including from two black porters who bought tickets to see her as audience members.

1957: Talk show host Katie Couric turns 56 years old today.

1970: Lou Rawls sings the ABCs song on the first season of Sesame Street.

1976: Former Yank 2nd baseman Alfonso Soriano born.

1991: The US Supreme Court refused to consider a challenge to the NFL's free agency system. To see how it turned out for the players and owners, see January 6th 1993.

1992: Met's pitcher

Tom Seaver elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame with the highest margin, 98.8%. It would have been higher, but for a protest vote against the banning of Pete Rose.

1996: The Blizzard of '96 closed schools and most businesses. 20.2 inches of snow blew in over about a day and a half. At that point, it was the city's 3rd largest snowfall, coming in behind the blizzards of 1947 and 1888.

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Posted: Jan 6, 2013 | 12:34 AM
by Jared Goldstein

January 6th in NYC History:

Teddy and Dizz Died;
E.L.Doctorow and the Telegraph Born;
the importance of Morristown, NJ;
Elvis waist up;
Wires submerged;
Free-Agents Capped.

1777: After recent victories, Washington sets up camp 33 miles east of New York City, in Morristown, N.J. This helped inspire 17,000 New Yorkers to join the militia.

1838: Samuel Morse publicly demonstrated the telegraph, in Morristown, N.J. He died famous and wealthy in New York City April 2, 1872, at 80. On my Greenwich Village Tour, we see NYU where he was a Professor of Painting and Sculpture.

1890: NYC completed the massive project to move most communications lines underground. This was two years after the Blizzard of 1888 caused havoc when the rainforest of telegraph and telephone wires were grounded.

This didn't work out after 2012's Super Storm Sandy Surge. As of this date, there are still businesses Downtown without Verizon phone service. 122 years of uptime isn't bad, though.

1919: NYC's Teddy Roosevelt,, the 26th president of the United States, died in Oyster Bay, N.Y., at age 60.

1933: E.L. Doctorow, New York writer, born.

1947: Courts uphold NYC's ability to require rent control.

1957: Elvis Presley performs his last time on The Ed Sullivan Show. The uproar over his previous performances result in filming him only from the waist up. We see the Ed Sullivan Theater on my John Lennon's NYC Tour.

1993: Jazz trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie died after 75.

1993: The NF L granted players free agency, and owners a salary cap.

1996: Blizzard of 1996 begins, among many others on the East Coast, there are deaths in Harlem beneath a collapsed church roof.

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Posted: Jan 5, 2013 | 1:47 AM
by Jared Goldstein

Jan 5 in NYC History

Robinson retires;
Sugar Hill crosses over into the charts;
Birthdays;
Birth of scheduled shipping revolutionizes trade.

1818: The sailing ship James Monroe sets off from New York for Liverpool at exactly 10 a.m., marking the beginning of international shipping run on a set schedule – a revolutionary idea in its day.

This is just part of the South Street Seaport's rich and innovative heritage that I touch on in my Seaport Tours, which is the official tour of both the South Street Seaport Museum and the South Street Seaport Mall.

1877: Clergyman Henry Sloane Coffin born. He died in 1954.

1925: Lou Carnesecca, champion basketball coach for St. John's University (1989 NIT and 1985 NCAA Final Four), and the New York Nets' 1972 ABA Finals, born in NYC.

1931: Alvin Ailey Jr., choreographer and dancer; founded Ailey American Dance Theater, born. He died in 1989.

1942: Charlie Rose, Broadcast journalist, turns 71.

1946: Diane Keaton, Actress, turns 67.

1953: George Tenet, Former CIA director, turns 60.

1957: Jackie Robinson, who integrated the Major
Leagues in 1947, announced his retirement from baseball weeks after the Dodgers trade him to the cross-town rival Giants for $35,000 and a pitcher.

1970: Soap opera "All My Children" premiered on ABC-TV.

1973: Bruce Springsteen's debut album, "Greetings From Asbury Park, N.J.," released.

1980: The Sugarhill Gang's "Rapper's Delight" becomes hip-hop's first Top 40 hit. We see the Sugar Hill projects during my Harlem tours.

1993: Reggie "Mr. October" Jackson becomes a Baseball Hall of Famer.

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