Category Archives: New York

The Most Pretentious Home

How To Advertise a House – 1926 Style

This is an ad from a copy of the October 10, 1926 Sunday New York Times. An odd choice of words to sell a home.

Larchmont is a wealthy suburb 25 miles north of New York City.

This ad has me pondering numerous questions:

I wonder if this home sold quickly because the H.M. Williams copywriting team knew the word “pretentious” would appeal to that special, up and coming snob who wanted to live in a pretentious home?

Even in 1926 wasn’t it demeaning if you admitted that you lived in the most pretentious home in Larchmont? Maybe it was bad, only if other people said it about you or your home?

If this house still exists in 2011, do the current owners know how it was once advertised?

Does anyone out there from Larchmont recognize the house and if so can you drop us a line with the street address?

Old New York in Photos #6 – Birdseye View of Fifth Avenue and Central Park 1888

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Early Birdseye View of New York 1888

Looking North up Fifth Avenue from 52nd Street.

Church steeples are among the tallest structures in the photo. The closest steeple belongs to the original St. Thomas Episcopal Church on Fifth Avenue and 53rd Street, which was destroyed by fire in 1905. Continue reading →

Baseball Theme Songs

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When Baseball Teams Had Their Own Unique Songs

When my Dad and I would drive places at night in the 1970’s, my father would put on the Baltimore radio station, WBAL-AM to hear the Orioles games. At night the radio signals were stronger and you could pick up most of the bigger radio station’s broadcasts within a 400 mile range, so he would listen. I vividly remember the upbeat song that used to be played to start the O’s broadcast. I searched the internet and have had no luck finding “Orioles Baseball” which is what I believe the title was. But I have collected a number of baseball theme songs and thought I would share them.

For every baseball fan who can remember…

(click on link to hear the mp3 of the song)

Yankees Theme Song

In the 1970’s when I was listening to the radio, before the start of every ball game, the New York Yankees would have their theme played. The Yankees announcers, Phil Rizutto, Frank Messer and Bill White would eventually talk over the song and it would fade out. At the end of the game they would play the theme again. The Yankees still play a truncated version of the song at the beginning and conclusion of games on the radio, but they rarely play this version with the lyrics.

Mets Theme Song

Musically well constructed and simply the best song ever written for a team with its catchy lyrics. The “Meet The Mets” song still holds up nearly 50 years after the Mets introduction to New York. This version is the original version. (ed note: strangely enough I wrote this article on June 30 and originally scheduled it to be posted on July 5. I moved it up to July 3 after seeing that the writer of the Mets theme song Ruth Roberts passed away Friday, July 1 at age 84.)

Cubs Theme Song

If you grew up in Chicago you may remember “Hey, Hey Holy Mackarel” which was the Chicago Cubs song.

White Sox Theme Song

Now, if you were a Chicago White Sox fan, the song dear to your heart would be “Let’s Go, Go, Go White Sox.”

Tigers Theme Song

In the late 1960’s this is what the Detroit Tigers were playing – “Go Get ‘Um Tigers.” Continue reading →

One of the Strangest Deaths in New York’s History

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Girls Chase A Boy to Give Him Birthday Kisses… and He Dies

Woodlawn Cemetery Is The Final Resting Place of George Spencer Millet Who Had One Of The Strangest Deaths In New York’s History

There is a book called Woodlawn Remembers: Cemetery of American History by Edward F. Bergman (North County Books, 1988.) The book is mostly comprised of beautiful full page color and black & white photographs of monuments, tombstones and mausoleums with one page of text describing each person profiled. The cemetery is located in the northern part of the Bronx. Woodlawn is on my shortlist of recommendations of unusual places to go for New York visitors.

The book is fascinating to be sure. It covers many of the interesting and important historical figures at Woodlawn. But one story not mentioned, is the life and death of George Spencer Millet (misspelled as George Millitt by The New York Times in the story at the end of this article) who is interred at the cemetery.

Millet’s story is briefly recounted in Permanent New Yorkers A Biographical Guide To The Cemeteries of New York by Judi Culbertson and Tom Randall (Chelsea Green 1987.) This book contains photographs too, but has more detailed biographies than Woodlawn Remembers. Permanent New Yorkers also covers the entire New York area, not just focusing on the two most famous New York City cemeteries. Woodlawn and Greenwood. I highly recommend both of these out-of-print books.

It was February 15, 1909 and Millet was a good-looking boy. Because when the girls he worked with at The Metropolitan Life Insurance Company found out that it was his 15th birthday, they all insisted on giving him a kiss. Continue reading →

Under First Avenue

Old New York in Photos #5 – 42nd Street c. 1909

42nd Street Looking West From Park Avenue c. 1909

Trolleys, horse drawn wagons and no cars, dominate this view of 42nd street. The building on the right is Grand Central Terminal before being completely renovated by the architectural firm of Warren & Wetmore. The tall building on the right past the trolley is the Hotel Manhattan (demolished c. 1962 and replaced by Sperry Hutchinson Building in 1964). In the far background in the center is The New York Times Tower Building which was opened in 1906. Continue reading →

The Original Yankee Stadium – Photographs and Memories

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A Reflection on The Late, Great Yankee Stadium With Vintage Photographs

I visited the new Yankee Stadium once in 2009 when it first opened. The feeling was a bit surreal. It was like being in Yankee Stadium, but it wasn’t. The main difference for me was the surrounding neighborhood and looking out past the right-center field bleachers and not seeing the apartment buildings and the Bronx County Court House.

The new Yankee Stadium is a glorified mall.

The old Yankee Stadium that existed from 1923 – 1973 was where the storied history of the Yankees took place. Even after the renovation of Yankee Stadium from 1974-1975 which included taking out the old wooden seats and the removal of the beams that could block your view from many of those seats, the stadium still retained some of the old charm, even though it lost a bit of its character. From 1976 -2008 the Yankees played in the same spot where Lou Gehrig, Babe Ruth, Mickey Mantle, Red Ruffing, Hank Bauer, Whitey Ford Joe DiMaggio and Bill Dickey saw action.

The Yankees of the last 35 years; Thurman Munson, Bobby Murcer, Ron Guidry, Mel Stottlemyre, Paul O’Neill, Don Mattingly and Derek Jeter could look around and seep in the history of this altered palace of baseball, even if there were heavy cosmetic changes to the outside and inside of the stadium itself.

There was no more “Death Valley” Continue reading →

Question: Why Do Some Garbagemen (Sorry, Sanitation Workers) Block New York City Streets and Not Give A Damn about Public Safety?

City Bus Must Pass Into Oncoming Traffic

Answer: There is No Good Reason

Some of New York’s Strongest, as the sanitation department has dubbed their workers, leave me scratching my head sometimes.

That is why I am going to call out this group of “New York’s Laziest” as there is a subset of sanitation workers who demonstrate their slothful ways with a complete disregard for traffic laws and public safety on a daily basis. I’m not talking about just backing up traffic on narrow streets by not fully pulling over and instead parking their trucks diagonally when they load garbage. I’m talking about something that is egregious.

Now when you can do something the easy way or the hard way, almost always you should choose the easy way, right?

Wrong.

On a busy crosstown block in Manhattan where there is two-way traffic; a school crossing zone; ( the school is one block away!) a major bus route and lots of vehicles trying to navigate the streets in rush hour, these workers have consistently demonstrated their disdain Continue reading →

Old New York in Photos #4 – Park Avenue

Park Avenue – 1935

For a brief period there was a park in the middle of Park Avenue. This is not it. When road lanes were widened in the 1920’s the pedestrian plaza with benches were removed and replaced with a park like median which is surrounded by fencing and has no public access.

Looking north from around 38th street, Grand Central Terminal is in the middle of this photograph and behind it is the New York Central Building (currently called the Helmsley Building.) Continue reading →

The First Baseball Strike – May 18, 1912

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An Unlikely Catalyst Causes a Baseball Strike – Other Players Rally Around the Unpopular Ty Cobb

On Wednesday May 15, 1912 The Detroit Tigers were playing the New York Yankees at Hilltop Park in upper Manhattan when one of the most infamous incidents in baseball history occurred.

Ty Cobb, the star outfielder for the Tigers was incited by a fan to go into the stands and pummel him.

The fan, Claude Lucker (alternately spelled by contemporary papers as Lueker or Leuker) worked as a page in the office of Tammany boss “Big Tom” Foley. From the onset of the game Lucker was being particularly obnoxious according to all accounts. Cobb and Lucker exchanged nasty barbs and Cobb warned Lucker to stop calling him names or he would come into the stands to take care of him personally. By the fourth inning Cobb had had enough and he jumped into the left field stands and started administering a beating and no one seemed to interfere.

Sticks and stones were probably not as harmful to Cobb as the names which could hurt him – especially when the racist outfielder was called a “half-nigger” by Lucker, which was what apparently drove him over the edge.

It should be noted that Lucker had a machine press accident when he was younger and was missing one hand and had Continue reading →

Stuff Nobody Cares About

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