Category Archives: History

Book Review – Of Things That Used To Be, The Bronx In The Early 20th Century

A Step Up From New York’s Tenements

Nathan (Nat) D. Lobell’s Of Things That Used To Be  A Childhood On Fox Street In The Bronx In The Early Twentieth Century is a memoir concentrating on a striving South Bronx neighborhood full of  immigrants, primarily Jewish, Irish and Italian between World War I and the 1920s. Continue reading

New Yorker Cartoons From 1970 That Would Now Be Inappropriate

A Dozen 1970 New Yorker Cartoons That Would Not Get Published Today

In 1970 the Women’s Lib movement was in full swing. But it was still de rigueur for the media to portray women as sexual objects.

The New Yorker magazine has always been a mirror of society in the drawings it decides to publish.

Looking back through its cartoons that ran in 1970, reveals what once was considered funny, would now be considered politically incorrect. They may be funny as well. It depends upon your sense of humor.

Many cartoons we display below, involve sexual harassment. But back then these cartoons were a reflection of many men’s behavior and attitudes towards women.

In it’s 100 years of publishing, is there a New Yorker cartoon that was offensive or in bad taste for the time it originally ran? I have seen thousands of their cartoons and have not found one.

What I find offensive is cartoons that are not funny. How did that get published?

Here are cartoons from The New Yorker magazine in 1970, that would probably never appear in The New Yorker today.

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The Nearly Indestructible Pay Phone

 Even Being Indestructible Did Not Stop The Pay Phone’s Extinction

There are certainly people who have never seen a pay phone before. And people who are familiar with pay phones may have only seen them with push buttons. Rotary dial phones were replaced in the 1970s by push buttons. Whereas pay phones managed to remain ubiquitous until the 1990s.

Pay phones were once everywhere. You could find them in hotels restaurants, gas stations, drug stores, transportation facilities, office and public buildings and on street corners,

The ad above ran in the September 11, 1971 New Yorker magazine.

In 1970 vandals cost American Telephone and Telegraph $12 million Continue reading

Brooklyn Dodgers Begin 1955 With A Long Winning Streak

Dodgers Shortstop Pee Wee Reese Counts Down The Wins To A Perfect Season

Brooklyn, NY – The undefeated Brooklyn Dodgers tonight equaled the Major League record of nine consecutive games won at the start of a season, by defeating Philadelphia 3 to 2. The only remaining member of the 1940 Dodger team which also won its first nine games of the season, captain Pee Wee Reese, prepares to draw a line through number 146 after tonight’s win. Looking on is Walt Alston. The mark was first set by the Giants in 1918 and the St. Louis Browns also won their first nine in 1944. photo: International News Photo – Herb Scharfman 4/20/1955

The Brooklyn Dodgers would go on to set a new record winning their tenth consecutive game the following day, beating Philadelphia 14-4. The Dodgers finally lost a game on April 22 to The New York Giants. Continue reading

Women’s Corsets, Bras, Underwear, Silk Petticoats And Bodices -1919

Undergarments For Women From James McCreery & Co. 1919

The two illustrations seen here are excerpts from a full page ad. This advertisement comes from the April 27, 1919 New York Sun daily newspaper. Shown is an array of intimates of the late teens that a fashionable woman would wear beneath their clothes.

The uptown location of James McCreery & Co. at Fifth Avenue and 34th Street Continue reading

Baseball’s First Electronic Ball – Strike Machine – 1950

Branch Rickey Inspects An Automatic Umpire, Electronic Ball Strike Indicator

Newest Dodger
Vero Beach, FL –  (L-R) Branch Rickey, Dodger President, Dick Shea, electronics engineer from General Electric, umpire Bill Stewart and Fresco Thompson scout for the Dodger system. They are looking over Rickey’s newest pet – a mechanical umpire that calls balls and strikes and gives speed of pitch over the plate.It is worked by means of a magic eye. It won’t replace the human umpire because it can’t operate at night. photo: Gunther-Keystone 3/15/1950

The machine pictured above was called the “cross-eyed electronic umpire.” It was claimed the machine “could call balls and strikes closer than any normally endowed arbiter.”

Always the innovator, Branch Rickey said, “I expect it to be of definite value in determining the abilities of young pitchers since the machine also will establish the velocity of a fast ball as well as to show beyond question whether the ball is in or outside the strike zone.”

But Rickey also emphasized that he machine was “not intended now or ever to replace manual umpiring in actual games.” Continue reading

Can You Spot The Turn-Of-The-Century Champion Coney Island Lifeguard?

Which Of These Lifeguards Is Captain Thomas Riley Who Saved Hundred Of Coney Island Swimmers?

This circa 1900 Detroit Publishing Co. photograph is captioned “Capt. Riley and Life Guards, Coney Island, N.Y.”

But which of them is Captain Riley? Click on the photo to have a much closer look.

The obvious choice would be the man in the cap wearing a dark colored shirt that says “Balmers Life Guard.”

Wearing a lifeguard shirt does not mean you are one or in charge of a group. Continue reading

A New Baseball Introduced At Spring Training 1931

Manager Connie Mack Shows Pitchers The New Baseball To Be Used For The 1931 Season

Connie Shows His Men How The New Ball Works
Fort Myers, Fla: Connie Mack, veteran chief of the Philadelphia Athletics explains the new ball to Walberg, Grove, Rommel and Shores as spring training gets under way here. 3/5/1931 photo International Newsreel

With a new lively baseball introduced after 1920, it was no surprise that balls started to travel further. But as the 1920s progressed and hitters kept hitting more and more home runs, baseball writers, fans and those within the game felt that the hitters had achieved too much of an advantage. So after a decade of increasing run production, the National and American Leagues made the decision to try and curb the scoring by changing to a new baseball.

Big Numbers

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The Problem Of Mass Transit In New York 1903

1903 – Transit Traffic In New York City As Seen By Harry Grant Dart

Satire from artist Harry Grant Dart showing what he captioned “The luxury of travel in New York.” (click illustration to see details).

The cartoon is from the January 22, 1903 Life magazine. The subway was still more than a year away from opening. The situation on the four New York elevated train lines was Continue reading

Crime In New York City 1838 & Today

New York City Crimes Committed And Their Sentences 1838

 Jail Time Then – Leniency Now

How many people long for the good old days when it comes to punishing crime?

Some people may lament the lack of strict law enforcement in New York today. There has always been crime in New York, but how has crime and its consequences changed? Continue reading