Category Archives: New York

The Birth Of The Movie Palace, Roxy, and The Best Deal Ever For A Screenwriter

The Strand Theatre Opens, April 11 1914

When the Strand Theatre opened on April 11, 1914 in New York at 47th Street and Broadway, it marked the beginning of a new era in the exhibition of motion pictures; the age of the movie palace.

The Strand seated an astounding 3,500 people and was the largest and most ornate theatre ever built exclusively to show movies. The Strand covered 20 city lots and had a frontage of over 155 feet on Broadway and over 277 feet on 47th Street.

Innovations in design Continue reading →

Old New York In Photos #17 – Where Was The Easter Parade Held In The 19th Century

The Easter Parade, circa 1900

This view looking north on Fifth Avenue taken at the turn-of-the-century shows New York City holding its famous Easter Parade. The parade, known for its display of beautiful bonnets and fancy hats, has been occurring since the 1870’s in New York. You can see how packed the streets near St. Patrick’s Cathedral.

Anyone could walk Fifth Avenue on Easter, but it was generally the well to do who participated in the exhibition. Fifth Avenue being home to some of the most expensive homes made this a natural gathering spot for the wealthy. But is that where the tradition began?

One of the first places crowds gathered to display their Easter finery in New York City was not Fifth Avenue, but Central Park. Continue reading →

Old New York In Photos #16 – Sixth Avenue Jewelers 1937

Gold & Silver – Highest Prices Paid – 1937

The year is 1937 and we are looking north on the west side of Sixth Avenue. The Sixth Avenue Elevated in the background will soon be torn down. Sitting out in front of Roxy Jewelers is a man trying to drum up business to “sell your diamonds, pawn tickets, gold, silver, jewelry & antiques for the highest prices paid.” The Great Depression saw many people selling off whatever valuables they had to pay the rent or just have enough to eat. Continue reading →

A Photographic Trip To Green-Wood Cemetery Part 3

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Monuments And Odds & Ends

The focus for the final installment on Green-Wood Cemetery are monuments and some interesting things that I took note of.

Dogs

Dogs are not permitted to be buried in human cemeteries. Somehow though fourteen years after inventor Elias Howe’s death, a dog “Fannie,” was buried at the family plot in 1881. That is the exception.

For many people, their dogs were like members of the family. Continue reading →

A Photographic Trip To Green-Wood Cemetery Part 2

A Photographic Trip To Green-Wood Cemetery Part 1

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A Different Way To Spend The Day In New York, Brooklyn’s Green-Wood Cemetery

When I’m asked by people visiting New York what are some of the things they should do while they are here, my answer usually results in incredulous looks. “Go see Woodlawn Cemetery in the Bronx or Green-Wood Cemetery in Brooklyn.”

Most people will never visit a cemetery unless their relatives are located there. Even then, most people dread going to a cemetery. This is a mistake from a cultural standpoint. Cemeteries, especially historic ones like Green-Wood, possess landscape and architectural treasures that you cannot see in any museum. They also contain a history told in granite, marble, bronze, slate and limestone through an array of monuments, mausoleums, crypts, sarcophagi and tombstones of the permanent residents of Brooklyn. As Green-Wood describes itself on its web site:

Green-Wood is 478 spectacular acres of hills, valleys, glacial ponds and paths, throughout which exists one of the largest outdoor collections of 19th- and 20th-century statuary and mausoleums. Four seasons of beauty from century-and-a-half-old trees offer a peaceful oasis to visitors, as well as its 560,000 permanent residents.

The rural cemetery movement began in 1831 with the opening of Mount Auburn Cemetery in Massachusetts, Continue reading →

Death By Root Beer

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A Soda Tax Would Not Have Prevented Henry Koerner’s Death

New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg doesn’t like soda and would like to tax people to discourage them from drinking it. But it wasn’t obesity or the root beer itself that caused Henry Koerner’s demise, it was a bizarre accident.

In the August 20, 1892 New York Times, a brief story appears about Henry Koerner, who worked for Lighte Brothers (a mineral water manufacturer) at 509 East 17th Street and how he was killed when the root beer he was loading on to a wagon exploded.

When Koerner slipped on a fruit peeling on the sidewalk, the ten pound pressurized tank of root beer he was carrying dropped on the stone pavement and exploded like a charge of dynamite. The tank shattered in all directions with one piece going right through Koerner’s head, killing him instantly. The explosion was so powerful, the top of the tank went 150 feet into the air and fell to the ground with a deafening crash. The poor man left behind a wife and three children.

I’m sure there was little if any compensation for his loss of life, as accidents like this were dismissed as being part of the hazards of working. Below is the original newspaper story.

Old New York In Photos #15 – Fifth Ave. & 42nd St. 1928

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42nd Street and Fifth Avenue, 1928

A street level photograph looking east on 42nd Street towards 5th Avenue on a chilly day in 1928. On the left side of the photograph and just to the right of the twin street lamp globes is one of the early traffic towers which would control vehicular traffic flow with colored signals. Continue reading →

Old New York in Postcards #4 – Early Bronx School Buildings

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Public Schools In The Bronx In The Early 20th Century

Most of these postcards are from between 1905 -1925. Some public schools were quaint schoolhouses as the Bronx was rural in most areas.

Click on any image to enlarge

PS 7 in Kingsbridge or referred to here as Kings Bridge.

PS 44 Prospect Avenue and East 176th Street Continue reading →

Life In 1909 – Random News And Advertising

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What Was Happening On January 21, 1909

I picked a random day 103 years ago to see what was in the news. I read the entire New York Times newspaper for Thursday, January 21, 1909 to come up with the some interesting stories and unusual items. The paper was only 18 pages! The major differences compared to current newspapers: few photographs accompany any story and articles of different types are interspersed on the same page, so the news is not sectioned by category. I have put the article summary in blue and my comments are in black italics.

Crowds flocked to the Auto Show at Madison Square Garden. Lots of famous people showed up including Colonel John Jacob Astor and Mr. & Mrs. George J. Gould. There was a selection in gasoline powered and electric cars on display.

Not many people realize that in the early days of automobile manufacturing gasoline and electric cars were battling for market share. Steam cars were also an option, but were left unmentioned in the article. Before 1909 over 600 companies in the United States had at one time started manufacturing automobiles and half of them had already run out of business. An estimated 200,000 automobiles were in use in the United States according to the Association of Licensed Automobile Manufacturers. What would our current energy situation be like today had the electric car won the battle for vehicular supremacy over the gasoline powered engine?

An advertisement for Renault showed they led all automobile companies in US imports with 214 in 1907 and 244 in 1908.

The runner-up for sales in each year (by half as much) were in order: Mercedes, Fiat and Panhard?!

The Conference Committee of the Independent Telephone Officers to meet the following week on plans to build a long distance telephone line from Boston to Omaha. The cost: $5,000,000 immediate expenditure and $30,000,000 over the next four years! Continue reading →

Stuff Nobody Cares About

A not so random collection of observations about things you should care about