New Yorkers making their way along Centre Street during a huge snowstorm. The building is the Tombs prison. February 1857 Ballou’s Pictorial Magazine 2-21-1857
“Congealed rain, frozen particles, precipitated from the clouds, and preserved by the coldness of the atmosphere in a frozen state until they reach the earth.” Continue reading
You may think that the Daughters of the American Revolution is a moribund organization that no one cares about anymore.
If that is the popular perception, then of course we at Stuff Nobody Cares About would care.
Louisa Capron Thiers as a young woman photo: Daughters of the American Revolution
I had given the Daughters of the American Revolution as much thought as the nocturnal habits of the ocelot. That is until I ran across a 1925 article about Mrs. Louisa Capron Thiers who was celebrating her 111th birthday. Continue reading
Siegel-Cooper Department Store has been gone for over 100 years. But in 1898, Henry Siegel and Frank H. Cooper’s emporium was the Amazon of its day.
In the 1890s Siegel and Cooper successfully operated a department store in Chicago before setting their sights on an expansion in New York.
What Siegel, the driving force of the concern, conceived in New York was not just a department store, it was the “Big Store.” The Siegel-Cooper Department Store was built on Sixth Avenue between 18th and 19th streets. It was a great location, then being New York’s primary shopping district known as the “Ladies Mile.” Within a half mile stretch of Sixth Avenue between 14th and 23rd Streets could be found the giants of retailing including Macy’s; Altman’s; Hugh O’Neill’s; Adam’s Dry Goods;, Ehrich Brothers; and Simpson, Crawford & Simpson.
The Siegel-Cooper Big Store building opened on September 12, 1896 and was an instant smash with the public.
Siegel-Cooper provided the nineteenth century shopper with a incredible array of goods, from abdominal bands to zephyrs and everything in between. Perhaps the most unusual article available for sale was “Baby”, a live, baby female elephant. Baby was sold within two weeks of the store’s opening for $2,000.
Among the store’s innovations was a nursery with trained nurses Continue reading
Though it was only five dollars I somehow avoided buying “Expulsion” at the local thrift store for myself or as a gift. As the cover for Expulsion proclaims the game recreates Jewish Life in Spain from the Golden Age to 1492. It promised to be “an exciting and challenging game to play for the whole family.”
Then comes the big plus which was hard to resist. No previous background necessary to play. So you don’t need to be a Jew, an Islamic extremist, KKK member or Nazi to learn and enjoy Expulsion.
While wondering about the game, I couldn’t help thinking of the Mel Brooks film The History of the World Part 1, where Brooks does an over the top Busby Berkeley style homage to the Spanish Inquisition.
Is the object of Expulsion to get the Jews out of Spain?
According to Gabriella Geselowitz Continue reading
Minnie Minoso and Eddie Robinson examine Ted Williams bat
Eddie Robinson, a big six foot two lefty first baseman who played for seven teams in a 13 year major league career, turns 100 December 15, 2020.
Born in Paris, TX, Eddie Robinson is among the few players still alive who played alongside and saw firsthand many of the great players of the twentieth century.
Robinson was in the big leagues from 1942 – 1957, missing three prime seasons to serve in the military during World War II. His career numbers are 172 home runs, 723 RBI’s and a .268 batting average.
Playing in the World Series could bring a player a financial bonanza, sometimes nearly as much as a regular season salary, When Robinson was traded after the season from the 1948 World Champion Cleveland Indians to the perennially terrible Washington Senators, he was surprisingly relieved and happy. Continue reading
Today we conclude the story of one of New York City’s greatest unsolved missing person cases. At the end of part one of the story, on December 12, 1910, Dorothy Arnold said goodbye to Gladys King, an acquaintance she had bumped into on Fifth Avenue. Gladys was the last person to see Dorothy Arnold alive.
From They Never Came Back by Allen Churchill (Crime Club, 1960) is part two of The Girl Who Never Came Back.
Return now to the Arnold home. Never had the well-brought-up Dorothy skipped a meal without warning the family ahead of time. Now when she failed to return for dinner an increasingly worried group ate without her, then began making discreet phone calls to Dorothy’s close friends asking if the girl had dropped in on them. Told she had not, the Arnolds begged that no mention ever be made of the phone call. Later they asked the same girls not to discuss the case with reporters, and it is indicative of the vast difference between society girls then and now that none of the girls ever did. Continue reading
In the annals of missing person cases few are as baffling as Dorothy Arnold.
Time has erased the Dorothy Arnold case from the public’s memory. But for decades, Dorothy Arnold’s disappearance ranked among the most speculated of mysteries in New York’s history.
Dorothy Arnold disappeared on December 12, 1910 after leaving her house to go for a walk and do some shopping in midtown Manhattan. To make finding her whereabouts more complicated a report that she was missing was not filed with police until weeks after her disappearance. Continue reading
Love those 1920s bathing suits.
Though undated, our photograph is from July 29, 1924, at Steeplechase Park. Miss Coney Island would go on to represent the neighborhood in the Miss America Pageant. This was before each state had just one representative. Continue reading
This view was taken by an official city photographer June 26, 1917 documenting New York’s infrastructure. The Queensboro was the first cantilever bridge over the East River. The photo is unusual because Continue reading
We continue with part two on the advice given out in 1923 by New York City’s Legal Aid Society, Domestic Relations Division to help to save marriages.
1. Be generous according to your means. A woman rightly expects liberal support from her husband. She is duly considerate of sincere effort and tolerant of misfortune, but differentiates sharply between ill fortune and inertia. Continue reading