Posted: Nov 22, 2012 | 12:45 AM
1774: "Committee of Sixty" organized to enforce the revolutionary Continental Congress' ban on British imports, exports, and product consumption.
1880: Lillian Russell, acclaimed early 20th Actress debuts in NYC at Tony Pastor's 14th St Theater.
Lillian Russell.
Does anyone know where I can buy outfits like this for my beloved?
1936: Met's President Fred Wilpon born. He took over in 1980.
1943: Billie Jean King, top ranked US Tennis Star, Humanitarian, and feminist born.
1950: Collision kills 79 and injures hundreds on LIRR (Long Island Railroad) in Richmond Hills, Queens on Thanksgiving Eve. The LIRR is the nation's busiest commuter rail road, and this is its worst accident. In 2012 on the eve of Thanksgiving, the LIRR's switch was out for hours.
L.I.R.R. crash
1963: NYC joins most of the world mourning for JFK with public and private enterprises closing.
1966: NYPD Civilian Review Board created, monitoring complaints against the Police. The purpose was to increase public confidence in the police. Shortly after, only Police will be on the Board, undermining public confidence in it until civilians join it again in 1993.
1977: Baseball Pitcher great Rich "Goose" Gossage signed with Yankees for 6 years at $2.75 million. The subsequent season, he is on the mound as the Yanks win the American League East, the Pennant, and the 1978 World Series.
Goose Gossage
Concorde in flight with straight nose.
1977: The Concorde Supersonic Jet arrives at JFK, 3.5 hours after leaving London. Normal jets take about eight hours. The $800 tickets were 20% higher than typical first class seats
on subsonic jets at 44% the time.
Concorde landing with bent nose, so pilots can see.
As a kid in middle school, the Concord frequently flew over during the play time outside before they let us in. Every day I saw the Concorde was a good day, just as every day I do a tour is a good day. :)
The Concorde was retired around 2000.
There is one you can visit at the Intrepid Sea, Air and Space Museum.
Concorde interior.
The inside looks like the SpacePlane from 2001: A Space Odyssey, which was conceived and developed, coincidentally, in parallel with the Concord through the mid 1960s.
2001's SpacePlane Stewardess
My two dreams from the late 1970s that will never be fulfilled: Flying in the Concord and meeting Andy Warhol.
1995: 6 year old Elisa Izquierdo was killed by her mother to remove evil spirits, prompting NYC to reform its Child Welfare administration.
More about Nov 22nd in History
http://learning.blogs.nytimes.com/on-this-day/november-22/
Even more about Nov 22nd in History
Full Story
Posted: Nov 21, 2012 | 8:40 PM
1964... The Verrazano-Narrows Bridge opens, connecting Staten Island to Brooklyn -- the world's longest span its day.
More on the Verrazano Bridge in this article by Gay Talese, and below.
1834... Hetty Green "the Witch of Wall Street" and the richest woman of her Gilded Age era was born. She made a fortune in investing and she was a legendary miser. She died in 1916.
1904... Jazz' great tenor saxophonist Coleman Hawkins born.
1916... Columbia Football great and Chicago Bears' four-time champion Quarterback, Sid Luckman, born in Brooklyn. He was #3 in the Heisman Trophy Award poll, despite the mediocrity of the rest of his team. Luckman helped innovate the T-formation offense. He played with the Bears for 12 years.
1934... A teenage Ella Fitzgerald wins Amateur Night at the Apollo Theater in Harlem. She didn't even plan to sing, and she bombed at first, but the MC encouraged her, and Ella stunned the raucous crowd. Shortly after she went pro.
Amateur Night started in 1933. We explore the why's of Apollo being the Mecca of Black Performing Arts on Harlem Tours.
1934... Joe Dimaggio signed by the New York Yankees for $25,000.
1934... Cole Porter's "Anything Goes" debuts at Broadway's Alvin Theater starring Ethel Merman.
1944... Earl "the Pearl" Monroe, the great NY Knick, born.
1952... Eamonn Coghlan, the great Miler, born
in Ireland. He was the world record holder for the Mile run, and won the Millrose Games Mile in Madison Square Garden seven times. I have a personal connection reflected below.
1952... Lorna Luft actress on Broadway, television and film born to Judy Garland.
1953... Print media figure Tina Brown celebrates another birthday.
1971... The New York Rangers beat California 12-1 at Madison Square Garden, their largest victory margin. Two of the goals are scored in 8 seconds by Pierre Jarry.
1980... Gene Micheal becomes the NY Yankees' fourth Manager in less than a year-and-a-half. George Steinbrenner was an incorrigible owner then.
1988... Carl Hubbell, the greatest NY Giants southpaw pitcher died.
1991... The U.N. Security Council chose Boutros Boutros-Ghali of Egypt to be secretary-general.
1995... The Dow closed above 5,000 for the first time. In 2012 it is nearly 13,000.
1999... Quentin Quisp died. It is hard to summarize his life: writer of The Naked Civil Servant, conversationalist, actor, writer, gay icon.
Word in the East Village in the 1990s was that you could look him up in the phone book, ask him out for lunch,during lunch he would provide you with interesting conversation while demonstrating impeccable manners and dress. Then you paid for the meal. I regret not taking him up on the 'offer!'
2001... An elderly Connecticut woman died of inhalation anthrax, the last of five people killed in the anthrax attacks, most of whom were in the NYC area, cross-contaminated by attacks on NYC media companies. At least one other Anthrax killer is believed to remain at large.
More about the Verrazano Bridge:
The towers are 700 ft (250m) tall, like skyscrapers. The span over the water is nearly a mile long.
The bridge is so long, it is engineered to compensate for the earth's curvature. It's span is so high to accommodate that other recent New York marvel, the massive shipping container ship.Three died constructing the span.This bridge is only for motor vehicles.
The bridge still doesn't have a pedestrian path. There were two excuses. The first seems most important: It was feared that such a path would add to the $325 million cost, and second it might attract suicides, which didn't
stop a character from "Saturday Night Fever."
Actually, there have been many such attempts, to the point that the bridge has signs to discourage it.
I think that this development cost is a
canard. It turns out that pedestrian paths on bridges are negligible costs. The real 'cost' is tolls. It is hard to collect pedestrian and bike tolls. Robert Moses Bridges are all toll bridges, garnering huge amounts of cash for his quasi-public "authorities," which gained power by having so much cash. The cost for pedestrians was not to the public but to the bridge's Authority.
The bridge also does not have capacity for rail trains. I guess trains don't pay tolls either.
However, the bridge does host the end of the Five Borough Bike Tour. The climb up the span is arduous, and you burn your breaks slowing the downward speeding.
Most dramatically, it is the dramatic opening for the New York Marathon, which my Dad publicized since it became a five borough event.
The 50c toll was supposed to be discontinued once they paid for the bridge construction, but it is now $13. The truck toll is $47 to $70. Therefore trucks in Brooklyn drive across all of Brooklyn and through downtown Manhattan to avoid the toll, contributing to the Lower East Side's stratospheric asthma rate, and legendary crosstown traffic. In addition, the lack of rail freight tracks on the bridge encourages the use of trucking whose tiny diesel particulates are especially lethal, nestling deep inside lungs.
Despite the traffic diversion due to the high tolls 200,000 vehicles use it daily. Ironically, for all the money collected, the bridge is not in great shape.
I think the lack of transit, pedestrians, bikes and freight is because its visionary, Robert Moses, did not like mass transit and the people who used it. It
is said that he never met a highway that he didn't like. Ironically,
Moses couldn't drive. He had an office in his limousine, so he didn't
notice what was out his car's windows. In addition, Federal policy in that era favored highways and automobiles over mass transit.
The first car across the 6,690 foot span was a convertible blue Cadillac whose passengers wore light blue tuxedos. They waited for a week to be first across. They would be joined by
5000 other cars, mostly from Staten Island.
The bridge, the last and greatest designed by octogenarian, O.H. Ammann, who was the engineer of the George Washington Bridge built three decades prior, and many great ones in between.
Asked how he felt after the bridge opened, Ammann replied:
"Oh, as I feel everyday," which was about all he publicly said that day, amidst the political statements and hoopla that Robert Moses orchestrated for hours. About a minute was devoted to the greatest bridge engineer in history.
Ammann also designed the Bayonne Bridge on the other end of Staten Island; the latter was the 'son' or 'daughter' of another bridge he helped design, the Hellgate Bridge, the inspiration for the Sydney Bridge, which is shorter in either length or height. Be careful stating that to Australians.
Ammann designed the Triborough (RFK) Bridge, the Throg's Neck and Bronx-Whitestone Bridges, as well as planning and managing the Lincoln Tunnel construction. He designed over half of NYC's connections to the USA.
I was talking to a cab driver November 21st 2010, and we were reminding each other about Ammann's NYC bridges. We came up with four. That was the nerdiest cab ride for both of us in a while; I'm sure.
He also helped design the Golden Gate Bridge of San Francisco.
When they opened, the GW and the Verrazano Bridges were the longest suspension bridges on planet earth. Verrazano is still the longest in the Western Hemisphere, and top eight world wide. He died about a year after the Verrazano Bridge opened, after 40 years in engineering.
81 years before the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge, the Brooklyn Bridge was the longest single span bridge. The Verrazano's construction marks the end of the great age of NYC's bridge
construction.
The bridge is named for the Italian explorer and map maker Giovanni da Verrazano. For the French he documented what is now called New York Harbor in 1524. He was among the early Europeans to visit The Narrows since the Vikings. The Verrazano part of the name for the bridge was partially a sop to the Italian Americans of the area, some of whom were displaced by the bridge development.
It would be the Dutch who would settle the area 100 years later. The estuary was first neglected by the Europeans, since it offered no short-cut to China, which worked out fine for the diverse Native Americans populating the region and enjoying its bounty.
Staten Island is New York City's fastest growing borough. It combines the brassy brashness of Brooklyn with exurban patriotism of the heartland to define a new confident assertive attitude that is unique.
Eamonn Coghlan
How do I know he's a great guy? My parents publicized the
Millrose Games, which he was the perennial highlight, and we had dinner with Eamonn and New York Knick and Olympic Basketball great, Ray Lumpp at the Lumpps' home.
You might have noticed the Mobil brand in picture. Mobil used to sponsor American Track and Field. They were my father's top client. I quip that I went to college on the Mobil scholarship.
Joe Dimaggio
Joe Dimaggio and my Dad share a picture at the legendary Carnegie Deli. My Dad hosted a lot of press luncheons there. I'll try to get a picture of that picture.
More about this day in history:
http://learning.blogs.nytimes.com/on-this-day/november-21/
Posted: Nov 19, 2012 | 10:44 PM
1775... The Continental Congress orders the militia to disarm Queens County British loyalists who refused to support the Revolution.
1804... John Pintard, City Inspector and founder of America's first Life Insurance company, along with Mayor DeWitt Clinton and others, founded the New-York Historical Society at Old City Hall (where Federal Hall is now, 26 Wall Street at Broad St).
Now located on Central Park West, it's still the city's oldest museum. The New-York Historical Society's purpose is to "collect and preserve whatever may relate to the natural, civic, or ecclesiastical History of the United States in general and of this State in particular."
My nick-name for the museum: 'The American Historical Society of New York.' It is a much more accurate title. It goes well with its neighbor, the American Museum of Natural History, and it distinguishes itself from its upstart rival, the Museum of the City of New York.
Six years later at old New York City Hall (Federal Hall), the NY Historical Society will christen "Sancte Claus" who we now call Santa Claus, on St Nicholas Day, December 6, 1810. The subject of my special holiday tour! Santa Claus' NYC History Tour.
** ** **
The New York Historical Society founded in 39 Broadway the old Presidential Mansion on Bowling; New York City's first museum and among America's first cultural institutions.
Led by John Pintard, the founders include a Mayor, Judge, Merchant, and a Scientist. Pintard himself founded the first life insurance and savings bank institutions. Pintard also advocated for free public education.
The New York Historical Society could have picked a better name, 'The American Historical Society of New York,' but I wasn't and ain't in charge. The NY Historical Society's mission: "to provide for the
permanent preservation and cataloging of the nation's significant
historic documents. The collection, now at 77th St and Central
Park West (across from the American Museum of Natural History),
includes George Washington's Inaugural Carriage, Gouverneur Morris'
wooden leg, important American documents and books, and the largest
collections of Audubon's Birds paintings and Tiffany Lamps.
Just over six years later, Pintard will convene a meeting declaring Sancte Claus the patron saint of old Nieuw Amsterdam. The beginning of my Santa Claus Birthday tour. The Museum of the City of New York, about New York City, will be a tense spin-off decades later.
1878... Kind of a break in the case of the kidnapped remains of A.T. Stewart, the sea-merchant, first department store founder, and founder of the first railroad commuter suburb, the model Garden City.
Stewart's remains were grave-robbed two weeks prior from St. Mark's In-the-Bouwerie Church on 10th St and 2nd Ave.
A Resurrectionist was arrested.
The case progressed much faster a few months later when the grave robbers sent a ransom note to a lawyer, sending some of the casket as proof, while demanding a quarter of a million dollars.
The remains were finally returned over a year later, in 1880, netting the disguised ghoulish bandits $20,000. They evaded prosecution.
A.T. Stewart is finally put to rest in a secret spot in the dome of the cathedral in Garden City, NY, which he funded, in the suburban town he founded, where Stewart Ave still runs through it.
Garden City was a pioneering suburban town developed within walking distance around a commuter rail-road with shopping and grassy areas.
A.T. Stewart was also a retailing pioneer, creating palaces of shopping that the new middle class adored, making him the richest man in the world. Stewart had a keen sense for creating markets for middle class desires, and his impact is still felt.
More recently, at least in NYC, young adults are turning away from the suburbs for life in the city, which still has local businesses. Mid-level department stores are hurting due to the Internet. The strongest department stores are the spare big box discount stores like Walmart, a far cry from a palace of shopping.
AT Stewart's became the NY Daily Sun where "Yes, Virginia. There is a Santa Claus was written.
1897... C.F. Bates' horses run away with the National Horse Show at Madison Square Garden, garnering 20 ribbons, including 12 first places, and prizes worth $2645.
1925... New York Senator Robert Kennedy born.
1936... Author Don DeLillo celebrates his birthday.
1955... Bo Diddley debuts on the Ed Sullivan Show, influencing rock music.
1956... Mark Gastineu, the NY Jets Defensive End and greatest sacker, is born.
Gastineau had 107 sacks
His exuberant 'sack dances' in the 1980s riled the sacked teams, so the
league limited such displays.
(Nowadays 2011, Giants' Wide Receiver Victor Cruz salsa dances after his touchdowns. Salsa dancing has not been banned by the NFL.)
1966... Marty Begovich, St. Johns University Basketball great, dies. From 1928-31, as Center, he helped win 88:96 games. The team was so good that they played professional clubs, which led to their team being kicked out of the college leagues, so they went pro!
1966... Bert Convy, after his success in Fiddler on the Roof, starred as Cliff in the debut of Cabaret on Broadway, getting great reviews.
1982... Columbia's Baker Field, the nation's last remaining major all wooden stadium, has its 323rd and final game after Brown's Bruins beat the Columbia Lions Football team 35-21.
Harvard has the oldest football stadium in the U.S. Columbia wanted to build an older one, but found it impossible.
Lawrence Wien, who is related to the Malkins who own the Empire State Building, pays for a new stadium named for him.
./' "'Oh, who owns New York? Oh, who owns New York,' the people say? ./' We own New York! We own New York! C-O-L-U-M-B-I-A!" ./'
(In 1985-1986, I was in the CU Marching Band. My instrument: the Pasta. I shook pasta boxes. This was not too far out for them during that era. Musical excellence was substituted with creativity as "The World's Cleverest Band.)
Wien's new stadium comes with secret strings attached, though. None of those darned rock music concerts.
In 1985, after Columbia's successful anti-Apartheid protests, lauded
by Nelson Mandela, Bono of U-2 offers to play a free concert at Columbia in support of the student's pioneering activism. Wien Stadium at Baker Field was ruled out by the CU administration. The official reason: the grass is too delicate for a concert. [(This was the same excuse Mayor Bloomberg used to prohibit an anti-Bush protest during the Republican Convention in NYC in 2004.)
The other perennial excuse to prohibit fun: insurance liability costs.]
The free U-2 concert for Columbia still hasn't happened.
However, U-2 did play a free concert on the streets of NYC on a rolling flatbed truck a few years ago.
In 1968, the Grateful Dead played at Columbia for free, and without
authorization, in front of the Student Center during the widespread
campus protests against military research contracts and taking over
public park land for a new gym. Below is a picture of students sitting
on Furnald Lawn attending a 'Dead concert. It seems that the lawn fared better than CU President Kirk's brandy, cigars, and file cabinets which were being rifled through that moment when his office was occupied.
Part of the issue was that Harlem residents were to have their own gym
in in 20% of the space (or so) through a separate entrance on the
bottom, while Columbia would have most of the space with its gym on the top. The plans were cancelled. Columbia didn't own New York that time, but it is the #3 landlord, behind the Catholic Church and first-place NYU.
Princeton's Jadwin Arena is Columbia's never-built gym transplanted to Princeton's NJ campus. Princeton got the architectural plans for a bargain basement price. If you see a game at Princeton, you
notice that it has a strange bi-level interior design, which would be
very appropriate for steep Morningside Park between Columbia and Harlem.
1982... Drew Barrymore hosted Saturday Night Live when she was seven.
(If you can find video of this, please send me the link.)
More about November 20th in History:
http://learning.blogs.nytimes.com/on-this-day/november-20/
Posted: Nov 18, 2012 | 11:22 PM
by Jared Goldstein
1887... Emma Lazarus, gifted poetess of the famous Statue of Liberty poem, "the New Colossus," dies a year after the Statue is finally erected in NY Harbor. She was 38.
Her poem inspired millions of immigrants to donate an average 5c each to pay for the base of the statue's $200,000 cost.
A base designed by America's leading architect, William Morris Hunt, trained in Paris, paying homage to modern French style.
It is a wonderful poem describing the noblest sentiments represented by an inspirational allegory embodied in a Statue.
..'Give us your tired, your poor, your huddle masses yearning to breath free...Send these, the homeless..to me...I lift my lamp besides the golden door.' (the real version is linked above)
Before this poem, she was already notable.
Lazarus was from an established respected Jewish family, the kind that formed settlement houses to quickly settle the unwashed masses into American society, while encouraging public service.
We see her home
on Greenwich Village Tours.
We see Settlement Houses on Lower East Side Tours, and Ellis Island on Ellis Island Tours!
1905... Tommy Dorsey celebrated his birthdays on this date until 1956. The big band leader propelled Frank Sinatra to stardom. Sinatra's first solo shows sold out the Paramount for weeks in the late 1930s.
1902... The Williamsburg Bridge opened.
The Jewish Lower East Side was the densest populated place in the world, known as "The Ghetto." The opening of the Willyburg opened up opportunities for the emerging modest Jewish middle class to growing with a tree in Brooklyn and streets to play games on. Williamsburg was humorously called the "Jewish Riviera."
1933... Larry King born in Brooklyn, nee' Lawrence Zeiger, the son of Jewish immigrants who operated a bar and grill. King has reigned at CNN with his show, Larry King Live. King is reportedly worth $144 million. He is very friendly to his guests., nee' Lawrence Zeiger, the son of Jewish immigrants who operated a bar and grill. King reigned at CNN with his show, Larry King Live. King is reportedly worth $144 million. He was known as being very friendly to his guests.
As the subway and real estate was developed, the Bronx served a similar role for Jews.
1942...the Bronx' Calvin Klein born.
1936... Happy Birthday to Dick Cavett. Is he the smartest talk show host?
1957... Leonard Bernstein nominated as the New York Philharmonic Orchestra's Musical Director, the first American-born conductor to serve in this role.
Tangent: Bernstein's Dakota apartment would sell for $15.5 million around fifty years later. It resold a few years after that for I don't know what. Contact a real estate broker, nosy.
Personal note: Nearly ten years after Bernstein took over the Philharmonic, which had recently moved to Lincoln Center, a pregnant (with me) Helene Goldstein did something heroic. She caught a cab in the rain.
As she opened the door Leonard Bernstein bounded to the cab and charmingly asked: "Won't you let the Maestro have your cab?"
My mother replied, "No."
It was one of her droll stories.
This was in strict adherence of the New York Code: Treat celebrities like you don't care about their celebrity.
In retrospect, she should have applied the Cab Corollary to the New York Code by answering his question with this question: "Where are you going? Sharing the cab would have ensured a better story, and perhaps gotten my parents an invitation to attend a radical chic party with the Black Panthers, or at least schnoogled some Philharmonic tickets. I have true stories about such things happening in New York City.
1961... Happy Birthday to actress Meg Ryan.
We see where this happened on my Lower East Side Walking Tour. And where this happened on my Central Park Tours
when we have lunch or row boats at the Boathouse.
Onto another track:
1965... Bret Hanover "the Big Bum" wins the Harness Racing Pacing Triple Crown at Roosevelt Raceway's Messenger Stakes in Westbury, garnering $152,000.
On a personal note: My father publicized the event, and the crowd was probably around 40,000.
Before going into business with my mother in 1969 in NYC, my father was Executive VP of Publicity at Roosevelt Raceway. When Bret Hanover won, half of me was an egg-in-waiting and my other haploid probably didn't even happen until May or June of 1966.
I was born at NYU Hospital in Manhattan, and a month later grew up for 8 years in Westbury, home of Roosevelt Raceway, which is why my family moved there, 35 miles 50k east of Manhattan.
I wanted to live in Manhattan since coming with my parents to their office in Rockefeller Center above Radio City Music Hall (which nearly got destroyed by real estate developers in NYC's dark days). My parents were frustrated Manhattanites, but they endured the suburbs because NYC in the 1970s and 1980s was hairy! My mother said that they moved to the suburbs "to breed."
They told me tales of Manhattan glory and instilled in me that the highest state of human existence is living on Manhattan Island. For many years I thought that every other city was a failed version of Midtown Manhattan.
They moved back to Manhattan as soon as they could, and I moved here as soon as I could, my freshman year at Columbia College, somewhere between Broadway and Amsterdam Avenue, but that's another story.
1972... Original NY Giants Stadium construction begins in NJ Meadowlands.
On a personal note, my father publicized the opening of the NJ Meadowlands, the Giants home, in 1976, which I remember. The developers correctly feared that New Yorkers would think anything off Manhattan Island would be too far, especially in another state.
The distance is less than seven miles, as the crow flies. So, my father had trained pigeons fly from the Empire State Building to the Meadowlands as a publicity stunt. The flight took a few minutes. The point being that it is not such a big deal to see the NY Giants just across the Hudson.
Unbeknown to the public, one pigeon didn't make it to NJ.
One wag reported it, though. The chattering class speculated that the pigeon might have been completely lost... or died.
Urban Legend had it that mob-connected union boss Jimmy Hoffa was entombed 13 feet (4 meters) below the western end zone of the original Giants Stadium.
This lost bird was not exactly good publicity.
But I will reveal the truth, which has only recently come out. Not about Hoffa. The bird flew back to his NYC coop, which isn't great publicity either, but the new NY Giants Stadium is doing fine in NJ with or without this bird.
This old pigeon's bird butt, or cloaca, is facing the Meadowlands. It is a cousin of the one that did not fly there, but that it is another story. The link only partially explains it.
Speaking of cloacas, Thomas Jefferson called New York City "the cloaca of the universe," or 'the universe's sewer.'
1975... One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest premiered in New York City. It won five Oscars, including Best Picture, Best Actor (Jack Nicholson's first after four nominations), Best Actress (Louise Fletcher, who played Nurse Ratched), Best Director, and Best adapted Screenplay. "Mmm! Juicyfruit."
2009... Jared Goldstein delivers custom John Lennon's NYC Tour for the first time for a family staying at the Trump International Hotel while riding in a limousine. It was a birthday present for the kid, a big John Lennon fan. This tour had special meaning since Lennon's last performance was on Thanksgiving 35 years before (See November 28th). John Lennon's New York City tour is still available through me, Jared the NYC Tour Guide.
Posted: Nov 17, 2012 | 9:58 PM
1776... A dark day in the American Revolution: Fort Washington becomes Fort Knyphausen. (See November 16th for background.)
1865... Young Samuel Clemens' / Mark Twain's story,
"The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County,"
is published in the New York Saturday Press,
leapfrogging the writer's career.
It is based on an American past-time, competitive frog jumping.
Here is the entire story/essay.
1886... Chester Arthur, the 21st president of the United States, died in New York at age 56.
1928... Walt Disney's "Steamboat Willie" starring Mickey Mouse, premiered in New York. It was the first major animated cartoon, I love the rhythm of cartoons from that era, the way they bounce up and down and boogie. I call them Art Deco Cartoons.
1931... The Whitney Museum of American Art, founded by
Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney, opens
on West 8th Street in Greenwich Village, its original location.
Since the mid-1960s it has been on Madison Ave around 74th St., (near where I saw Gossip Girl being filmed).
The Whitney is preparing to return Downtown to the old Meatpacking District by the beginning of the High Line.
It is expanding to around 400,000 square feet, or four Walmarts, or 40,000 square meters.
The Whitney is the first 20th Century American Art Museum.
Here's an interesting fact: NYC's great art museums of the 1930s had a gentleman's agreement about what each should and should not collect. The Met: only international classical art, the Museum of Modern Art: European modern art; and the Whitney Museum of American Art.
Well, we can see how that agreement went, like the contemporary Kellogg-Briand Pact ended war by making war illegal.
1946... Dapper Mayor Jimmy Walker, "Beau James," dies.
As Mayor from 1926-1932, he embodied the Jazz Age 1920s,
tolerated speakeasies, previously was an entertainer, and enjoyed his gambling palace in Central Park during his Mayoralty.
Tammany corruption caught up with him. Police in cahoots with false witnesses were wrongfully arresting people, mostly Harlem women, for no reason except to extort bribes to keep them from jail.
Walker fled to Europe with his showgirl paramour who he later married. Walker returned to NYC when things
cooled off a bit for him.
1949... Jackie Robinson, Brooklyn Dodgers Second Baseman, chosen National League Most Valuable Player after leading the league in batting (.342), stealing 37 bases, and 121 Runs Batted In (RBI), winning the Dodgers the Pennant.
1953... Happy Birthday to actor and comedian Kevin Nealon from "Saturday Night Live."
1959...Ben Hur has its world premiere at Loew's State Theater in Manhattan. It won a record eleven Academy Awards, including Best Picture.
1961... Columbia Football ties for Ivy League Championship with Harvard. This rare exception belies yesterday's Columbia entry.
1968... Happy Birthday to retired Yankee and Met Gary Sheffield.
1972... NY Knicks have the best comeback in NBA history, scoring the last 19 points versus the Milwaukee Bucks 87-86 at Madison Square Garden.
1974... Happy Birthday Chloe Sevigny, HBO star and SoHo boutique owner.
1978... Billy Joel's "52nd Street" tops the Billboard pop chart, his first #1 album. It will win the Grammy for Album of the Year.
1980... Conn Smythe, builder of great hockey teams, dies. His management built the NY Rangers Hockey Team, leading to two Stanley Cups (1928 and 1933). Then he went to Toronto to create the competitive Maple Leafs, and built their arena. [Tangentially: NYC lost Urban Preservation Pioneer Jane Jacobs to Toronto, too. She was more of a ballet fan, though.]
1992... Spike Lee's Malcolm X premiers.
A couple of years before that I was on line at the Public Theater to watch rare documentaries about Malcolm, and the great director was right behind me. Imagine me, in the voice sounding like what was to be Sponge Bob, exclaiming: "Spike LEE! I just LOOOOVE your movies!" He buried his head in the New York Post's sportspages. I learned to cool it around famous people. It is the New York Code of Conduct.
2011... The Bronx' Regis Philbin retires after 28 years hosting Live! with Regis & Kathie/Kelly.
Posted: Nov 16, 2012 | 11:34 PM
Freedom of the Press!
1734... Peter Zenger arrested for publishing scathing opinion pieces about the new colonial Governor of New York, William Cosby leading to a case establishing freedom of the press in the American Colonies.
Zenger was imprisoned in New York City Hall, also the capitol of the colony.
[ Tangentially, this is the building that was to become the first capitol of the United States in 1789 after a make over, Federal Hall, the first Federal Style Building. In 1810, this building would house the New York Historical Society, which brought Santa Claus to the world.
It was New York City Hall before and after its capitol era (until it was demolished around 1812 for around $400 worth of scrap). ]
Back to Zenger. He was imprisoned for a long time. Inside Federal Hall there is a model of the building, and I can point out his window. There is also a replica of his printing press.
In 1735, Governor Cosby selected the judges, but not the jury. He also disbarred all the local lawyers. Benjamin Franklin sent a brilliant lawyer from Philadelphia to successfully defend Zenger.
The jury ruled not on Zenger's guilt, but on the law, which was unprecedented, and found Zenger innocent because the published criticisms were based on facts, so they were not libelous. This re-affirmed the relative freedom of the press that existed since the Dutch days of old Nieuw Amsterdam, later enshrined in that same building in 1789 in the Bill of Rights.
I love Federal Hall. There it is behind Zenger's papers getting burned.
Here's the trial depicted on the inside:
And another:
1877... Columbia's Football Captain, after losing to Princeton states: "If you must lose, it's a pleasure to lose to gentlemen and I am well satisfied. But in the future, we'll field a better side and the outcome will not always be as it was today." This has been a Columbia sentiment for much of the Lion's history.
1901... Lee Strasberg, the director and pioneer of "method acting", was born.
1904... Isamu Noguchi, the great sculptor born. He worked in Queens' Long Island City and in Greenwich Village on MacDougal Alley.
1942... Martin Scorsese born in Queens. Beloved New York Film Director of Gangs of New York and The Age of Innocence and NYU Film School Grad still going strong.
1944... Mets Baseball great Tom Seaver born in Fresno, CA. Nicknamed "The Franchise," Seaver was the 1967 National League Rookie of the Year. He won the Cy Young Award in 1969 (World Series winning year), 1973 (Pennant winning year), and 1975.
Also 1944... Danny DeVito, actor, director, producer born in NJ.
Also 1944... Lorne Michaels, creator and producer of "Saturday Night Live" among other things, including 30 Rock, born in Israel, raised in Canada.
1961... Governor Nelson Rockefeller announces divorcing his wife, Mary, dooming his Presidential ambitions. He died in the saddle with his Secretary while he was married to his next wife.
1968... NBC cuts coverage of the Jets-Raiders game with just over a minute left in the game with the score 32-29. They cut to the regularly scheduled show for children "Heidi." It turns out that the fans missed a lot. The Raiders scored twice, changing the score 43-32. Fans were upset, and television sports changed.
1985... The Jets Football Team beats Tampa Bay 62-28, the Jets' record for points scored.
1998... Esther Rolle, Broadway and TV actress "Good Times" died. She did not like JJ Walker exclaiming "Dyn-o-mite!" every episode, since she felt the show should be tackling tough issues, not clowning around.
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Posted: Nov 16, 2012 | 2:10 PM
by Jared Goldstein
About this year's Rockefeller Christmas Tree:
This Norway Spruce is from Flanders, NJ, in Morris County, donated by Joseph Balku, a Hungarian immigrant since 1956.
When he moved in in 1973 the tree was 40 feet tall. It is now twice as high.
Each year the Rock Center horticulturalist seeks the tree, sometimes by helicopter.
In mid October the tree was spotted by the Rockefeller Center tree scouting team after they got lost on their way back to New York City.
It survived the recent super storm Sandy. The tree was already secured by 2.5 miles of rope and cord.
Two other trees were down. Balku lost power in the storm for more than a week, but his home survived with no damage.
Balku said: "The tree will act as a symbol to all of us that New Jersey and everyone affected by the recent terrible weather will recover."
The tree is 80 feet tall and 50 feet wide, making it more massive than the average Rock Center tree. It weighs 10 tons.
Balku donated it. Besides the prestige, some trees pose a danger to homes, and removal is very expensive.
The tree-cutting is orchestrated. A team of about half-dozen workers attached the tree to a crane, and held it from all angles with rope, as another cut through it with a chainsaw, which took about five minutes.
Once cut through, the tree was suspended in midair, hanging from the crane.
Then, it was slowly turned to its side, swinging over the garage and nearby trees, and gently placed onto a 115-foot-long flatbed truck, where it was tied up and readied for delivery to Rockefeller Center.
There it will be decorated with over 30,000 lights on five miles of wire, and topped with a 91/2-foot-wide Swarovski crystal star adorned with 25,000 crystals.
The 80th annual lighting ceremony will take place at 7 p.m. Nov. 28 at 30 Rockefeller Center. The tree will remain lit until Jan. 7.
Afterwards the tree is usually recycled as mulch to protect trees in NYC parks, and as wood for Habitat for Humanity's home building programs for the needy.
This information is largely based on local coverage:
http://www.dailyrecord.com/article/20121113/NJNEWS/311130033/Flanders-tree-heads-to-Rockefeller-Center
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Posted: Nov 15, 2012 | 11:41 PM
1776... George Washington narrowly escapes Fort Washington (around today's 183rd St). Tories and Hessian mercenaries took the fort and 3000 Continental troops as prisoners. These Patriot prisoners will suffer or die horribly for the next six years in British brig ships. Their remains appeared on Brooklyn's shores for decades.
It is partly for this reason that New York City sacrificed the most for the Revolution.
These remains were entombed in Trinity Churchyard. They were moved there to prevent Pine Street to cut through their property.
This date was Washington's worst military setback.
Six years later Washington returned to liberate New York City, supervising the British Evacuation, and the effective end of the War.
New York City loves George Washington, and we have two dozen places and things named for him, including the massive George Washington Bridge.
Washington was the first documented to use the phrase "typical New Yorker," describing a man who talked fast.
I am not sure what else Washington thought of New York City, but on several other important, more pleasant occasions, he left as quickly as he could.
1801... Alexander Hamilton debuts what is now NYC's, and America's, oldest continuing newspaper, The New York Evening Post, now The New York Post, presenting the Federalist point of view.
The New York Post reputedly has NYC's best sports section.
1873... The "Father of the Blues," W. C. Handy was born. This is his obituary from 1958. He died in Harlem, and his last public appearance was at the Waldorf=Astoria.
1889... The first Battle of the Bronx: Fordham football defeats NYU, which sold out Yankee Stadium or the Polo Grounds through the 1920s and 1930s.
1926... The NY Rangers' first hockey game, defeating Montreal 1-0 in front of 13,000 at Madison Square Garden.
1959... Rodgers and Hammerstein's "The Sound of Music," starring Mary Martin, debuts on Broadway at the Lunt-Fontanne Theater.
1962... Wilt Chamberlain takes the Garden's pro-scoring record with 73 points, helping the Warriors defeat the Knicks 127-111. Earlier that year, he scored 100 points against the Knicks in Hershey, PA, the record for points scoring. That game was not taped because of a rule prohibiting away games from being televised if they were on the radio! Four years earlier, the Big Dipper played for the Harlem Globetrotters instead of another amateur college year, due to need for pay, and triple teaming against him.
Big Wilt will eventually buy Small's Paradise renaming it Big Wilt's Small's Paradise in Harlem, where the Harlem Globetrotters were never based.
1977... Happy Birthday to actress and Columbia College alum Maggie Gyllenhaal.
1982... The NFL ends a two-month football strike, leaving only nine regular season games, and expanding the playoffs.
1982... Happy Birthday to the Knicks' power forward Amar'e Stoudemire.
2010... Congressman Charlie Rangel convicted on 11 of 13 charges related to financial misconduct, prompting censure for the longtime Harlem Representative.
We see the building where Rangel's four subsidized luxury rent controlled apartments are
before getting a soul food lunch at Mannah's on Harlem Tours.
In 2003, I got a preview of his character, while I was working on a community technology program his liaison showed up to take the credit among the constituents. When the ranking member of the Ways and Means Committee was needed to back the funding for the program, his liaison testily refused because it would take a good deal of effort.
Momentum was building for the Iraq War and Rangel was focused on that.
This particular Al Gore sponsored Technical Opportunity Program that I worked on cost half a cruise missile. It continues to directly benefit tens of thousands of people.
(By the way, Gore never claimed to have built the Internet, but he helped make it much better.)
The entire Technical Opportunities Program (TOP) had projects in 50 states, costing a total of 24 cruise missiles in 2003. The program cost $233 million, and helped diverse populations pioneer uses of the Internet for seniors, rural towns, industry, and farmers to share water, for a few examples.
Once in 2004 an $8 billion delivery of cash, weighing dozens of tons, shipped on pallets filling two Hercules Transport Planes to Iraq was lost. This is 32 times the cost of TOP.
In 2011, $6.6 billion was accounted for but billions more was wasted on fraud. The entire Iraq war is estimated to cost $1 trillion, or a million million dollars.
We didn't find Iraqi weapons of mass destruction, but we did kick that Saddam statue's ass!!
Even years later, after I became a tour guide, since I was laid off that worthy program due to lack of funding, a good portion of passengers on my WTC tours believed that Iraq was behind the 9/11/01 Attacks. Many had relatives serving. From their body language, I gathered that they would commit violence against me over the controversy and then get me fired (that would be a second time for this war!).
This taught me a valuable lesson: keep politics out of tours. People didn't pay for it. Half of them don't want dots connected. I love being a tourguide, and don't quite know what I'd do without it.
In 2010, I was not surprised about Rangel's indictments of his character, considering his approach to politics. He continues to be re-elected.
This is in the tradition of Harlem's loyalty to Rangel's predecessor to that Congressional seat, Adam Clayton Powell, Jr., the preacher and civil rights leader.
We see this sculpture, where ACPjr staged a successful store sit-in in the 1930s, and his and his father's church on my Harlem Tours.