Posted: Apr 21, 2013 | 12:52 AM
by Jared Goldstein
1884: The birth of Madison Square park; it was built on a Potters Field at Fifth Avenue and 23rd Street. It shortly became the center of town.
Madison Square tour, Flatiron District tours, Christmas tour, Holiday Lights tour, Santa Claus tour, Santa's NYC tour, Santa the NYC Tour, City Lights tour, and Chelsea tours.
1910: Mark Twain died in CT at 74.
We see his apartment house on Greenwich village tours.
1947: Iggy Pop, Rock star, born.
We see his neighborhood on East Village tours, East Village Community Gardens Tour, Community Gardens of the East Village Tour, and Community Gardens tour.
1949: Patti LuPone, actress, singer born.
Broadway tours, Times Square tours, Theater District tours, Theatre District tours.
1951: Tony Danza, Actor "Taxi," and "Who's the Boss?", born in Brooklyn.
1959: Thousands
welcomed Cuba's new Premier Fidel Castro to his
four-day stay.
Castro was surrounded by the largest security detail ever assigned a visitor to the city, since discovery of plans for his assassination. The following year he would have reason to suspect that part of his security detail would be after him, too, as the CIA and organized crime preferred him out of the picture.
1970: Comedian, actor, and Marines veteran Rob Riggle born.
1977: The musical "Annie," based on the "Little Orphan Annie" comic strip, debuted on Broadway. She returned to Broadway in 2013.
She probably will return every ten years or so, as has been happening, as a new crop of girls mature who never saw her before.
Posted: Apr 20, 2013 | 3:02 PM
by Jared Goldstein
This autumn 2013, I will be teaching a Continuing Education course at Bergen Community College to qualify people for being an officially licensed NYC Tour Guide.
Consider signing up!
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Posted: Apr 20, 2013 | 1:27 AM
1777: New York adopts its constitution as an independent state, and it elects George Clinton as its first Governor.
1812: George Clinton --
War hero, New York's Governor 1777-1795 and 1801-1804, third Vice-President of the United States, and Chancellor of Columbia University -- died at 73.
1850: Sculptor of the Lincoln Memorial, Daniel Chester French, born in New Hampshire. He had a residence and
studio in NYC from the 1880s through his death in 1931. He was active in local arts organizations, including serving as a Trustee of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
We touch upon French's work on Downtown tours and Financial District tours when we see his
"The Four Continents" sculptures
in front of the US Customs House. Their symbolisms are ironic on several levels, but their beauty is constant.
We also touch upon Daniel Chester French on Greenwich Village tours and
Columbia University tours where we see his "Alma Mater."
1860: Steam turbine inventor Charles G. Curtis born in Boston. He died in 1953.
1903: The New York Highlanders,
predecessors to the 1913 Yankees, played their first game, losing to Washington 3-1.
1939: New York World's Fair opened
with
Grover Whalen as greeter.
1951: General Douglas MacArthur was honored by 7.5 million with a ticker-tape parade shortly after Truman fired him from leading the Korean War; he was also a World War II Pacific theater hero.
Grover Whalen was his greeter.
1964: Happy Birthday to New York born actor, Crispin Glover.
1977: Woody Allen's "Annie Hall" premiered.
1988: The Yankees scored their 10,000th home run by Claudell Washington. Dave Winfield scored the penultimate run, and Jack Carter's subsequent homer garnered victory 7-6 over the Minnesota Twins in ten innings.
Posted: Apr 18, 2013 | 10:51 PM
by Jared Goldstein
1861: Thousands throng Broadway to cheer New York's soldiers marching to the Civil War.
1945: Rodgers' and Hammerstein's "Carousel" debuted on Broadway.
1965: New York City finally enacted the Landmarks Law, preserving in subsequent decades over two thousand buildings and districts. The preservation movement grew from the rubble of the original magnificent Penn Station demolished in 1963.
We explore landmarking on these NYC tours: Wall Street tours, Colonial NYC tours, SoHo tours, Brooklyn Heights tours, Harlem tours, Greenwich Village tours, and Grand Central tours. If you see a brown sign, look around.
1989..."The Central Park Jogger" was brutally raped and beaten to near death. Five teenagers were convicted in the media and the courts. Pretty much everyone thought they did it. Turns out not.
2001: Mel Brooks' musical "The Producers" debuted on Broadway onto six years, 2502 performances, and 12 Tony awards.
Posted: Apr 17, 2013 | 10:56 PM
by Jared Goldstein
1831: Happy Birthday, New York University NYU.
We explore NYU's backyards on East Village tours and Greenwich Village tours.
1881: Max Weber, Jewish-American modern artist, born in Russia. He died in 1961.
1923: The first baseball game was played at Yankee Stadium during which New York beat the Boston Red Sox 4-1 in the Bronx thanks to Babe Ruth's three-run homer.
We visit the Bronx on Bronx tours.
1933: Former Mayor Beau James Jimmy Walker married his mistress from his days in office Betty Compton.
1963: Happy Birthday to comedian Conan O'Brien.
We see where Conan O'Brien worked on Rockefeller Center tours.
1963: Happy Birthday to Eric McCormack, actor famous for "Will and Grace."
We see where Grace had her studio on SoHo tours, and on some Santa Claus tours aka Santa Claus' NYC tour, aka Santa Claus the NYC Tour.
1976: "A Chorus Line" won the Best Musical Tony award.
1979: So-called Reality TV's Kourtney Kardashian's birthday.
We see the sisters' favorite neighborhood on SoHo tours.
1999: Wayne "the Great" Gretzky,
the National Hockey League's record scorer,
played his last professional game at Madison Square Garden.
2011: Standard & Poor's lowered its long-term outlook for the U.S. government's fiscal health from "stable" to "negative."
We see the Financial District on Wall Street tours, Financial District tours, Downtown tours, and we see financial businesses on Midtown tours, Times Square tours, and Theater District tours.
Posted: Apr 16, 2013 | 11:52 PM
by Jared Goldstein
1524: Italian Giovanni Da Verrazano, exploring for France, became the first European to sail into New York harbor and was the first European to set foot on Manahatta, aka Manhattan. He was looking for a shortcut to the Pacific, and he thought that the Muheekantuk (aka Hudson aka North River) looked promising, which inspired the Dutch to explore here decades later.
Verazzano returned to North America two more times. The second to settle permanently. He was eaten by Caribbeans. He introduced Italian food to the Americas as well.
The great bridge separating the Atlantic from New York Harbor bears his name.
We experience the Verazzano Bridge on Staten Island Ferry tours, New York Harbor tours, and Statue of Liberty tours.
1837: J.P. Morgan, financier, banker, philanthropist, and U.S. Steel founder, as well as orchestrating the formation of General Electric, born in CT. He died in 1913.
We visit JP Morgan's headquarters on Wall Street tours, and Downtown tours, and the Indomitable Spirit Tour.
1872: Bloomingdale's Department store began as a small dry-goods store on Third Avenue near 56th Street owned by the Bloomingdale brothers, Lyman and Joseph.
We see Bloomingdales on Upper East Side tours.
1929: Babe Ruth married his second wife at 5:45 in the morning. Seize the day!
We see The Ansonia, where Babe Ruth lived and where Saul Bellow's novella Seize the Day took place, on Upper West Side tours.
1951: New York Yankees' Hall of Famer Mickey Mantle debuts, scoring a run and an RBI in a 5-0 victory over Boston.
1964: The New York Mets debuted in their new home, Shea Stadium, losing 4-3 to the Pittsburgh Pirates. They were lovable losers then, but they would become the Amazin' Mets in five years. The Mets played their first two years at the Polo Grounds.
We see CitiField, where the Mets now play, on Queens tours. We see where the Polo Grounds were on Washington Heights tours and Upper Manhattan tours.
Posted: Apr 15, 2013 | 9:23 PM
1674: Great Street, longer known by the Native-American as Weekagwesgek hunting trail, leading north from the bottom tip of Manhattan, was renamed Broadway.
1947: Bernard M. Baruch New York based financier, presidential confidant, and economic policymaker coined the term "cold war" when he addressed the South Carolina statehouse, "We are today in the midst of a cold war." This super-power standoff lasted, for the most part, through 1989.
1948: Mayor O'Dwyer doubled the subway fare, a nickel since 1904, to a dime.
1962: Walter Cronkite became the anchorman of "The CBS Evening News" for the next 19 years.
1962: Bob Dylan debuted "Blowin' in the Wind" at Gerde's Folk City in Greenwich Village on 11 West 4th Street.
We see several Bob Dylan sights and sites on Greenwich Village tours and my
Bob Dylan the NYC Tour aka Bob Dylan tour.
1947: Harlem's Kareem Abdul-Jabbar born as Lew Alcindor. He scored over 38,000 points in the NBA, the record. In high school he had a 97-2 record.
We see Harlem on Harlem tours. We see "The Rucker" the famous basketball court where seven hundred fellow college hoop stars were developed on my NYC Basketball Tour. We see the Renaissance Ballroom, home of the Harlem Rens that Jabbar profiled in a documentary on my Harlem tours.
1954: Actress Ellen Barkin born in the Bronx, also raised in Queens.
1965: Actor Jon Cryer ("Two and a Half Men") born.
1966: The original Metropolitan Opera house
bows out from it's home on Broadway and 39th Street, soon moving to Lincoln Center. The Met was founded by New York's new gilded age wealth who felt snubbed by the Academy of Music, but
the house was plagued with problems from the start.
Posted: Apr 14, 2013 | 11:59 PM
1880: Max Wertheimer, a founder of Gestalt psychology and New School professor, born in Prague.
We see the New School on Greenwich Village tours.
1889: "The most dangerous black in America," A. Philip Randolph born, union and civil rights leader born. He died 1979.
We visit his home Harlem on Harlem tours.
1889: Artist Thomas Hart Benton born. His career was in New York City. He died in 1975.
Washington Square Park
1912: The New York bound Titanic sank in the North Atlantic, just a few hours after hitting an iceberg. Nearly 1,500 people died, including industrialist Benjamin Guggenheim and Macy's owner Isidor Straus.
We see the pier where the Titanic was supposed to arrive on Chelsea tours and on High-Line tours. We see the lighthouse that was supposed to greet the ship on South Street Seaport tours, or Seaport tours.
1947: Jackie Robinson debuted in his first official baseball game for the Brooklyn Dodgers, becoming baseball's first black major league player.
We see the Dodgers' old office on Brooklyn Heights tours.
1992: Leona Helmsley, "The Queen of Mean," started serving her four-year sentence for tax evasion. Apparently, taxes aren't 'just for little people.' On the other hand, she would be released the following year.
Posted: Apr 14, 2013 | 1:18 AM
1866: Anne Sullivan, famous for teaching Helen Keller, born in Massachusetts. She lived her later years in Forest Hills, Queens.
1912: The Titanic sank, traumatizing the many New Yorkers with family aboard, transfixing a nation about the limits of progress and modernity.
1936: Happy Birthday to Frank Serpico, the NYPD officer who bravely took a stand to NYC of police corruption.
1966: Three Nation of Islam members convicted for murdering Malcolm X in Washington Heights Harlem the previous year were sentenced to life in prison. All three were to be paroled by 1993. A fourth man is at large, according to historian Manning Marable.
Thomas Hagen, assassin 1965
Thomas Hagen 2008
We learn about the life and lives of Malcolm X on Harlem tours and Washington Heights tours.
Posted: Apr 13, 2013 | 1:29 PM
by Jared Goldstein
I was discussing New York City's geographic, historic, and economic relationships with its suburbs. When I pointed out Westchester, my guest remarked that it is next to Canada. This brings to mind:
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