Author: GY

The story of the world’s first Christmas tree with electric lights

Post author By GY
Post date December 2, 2020
4 Comments on The story of the world’s first Christmas tree with electric lights

An electric Christmas lights advertisement from the 1890s. Getty Images

The world’s very first Christmas tree with electric lights was displayed in 1882 at the home of Edward Hibberd Johnson in the Murray Hill neighborhood of New York City.

Not only did it glow with this innovative new form of illumination, this Christmas tree also spun around, revolving like a flashy new car at an automobile expo.

The Christmas tree of Edward Hibberd Johnson

Two years later in 1884 the New York Times looked back fondly upon this greatly advanced version of the Christmas tree:

“The tree was lighted by electricity and children never beheld a brighter tree or one more highly colored than the children of Mr. Johnson when the current was turned and the tree began to revolve.

“It stood about six feet high, in an upper room, and dazzled persons entering the room. There were 120 lights on the tree, with globes of different colors, while the light tinsel work and unusual adornment of Christmas trees appeared to their best advantage in illuminating the tree.

“The set of lights were turned off and on at regular intervals as the tree turned around. The first combination was of pure white light then as the revolving tree tree severed the connection of the current that supplied it and made connection with the second set, red and white lights appeared. Then came yellow and white and other colors.”

The children of Mr. Johnson were witnessing a revolution. Yes an actual revolution – of the tree itself – but the beginning of an entirely new way of celebrating the holiday.

Surrounded by his wealthy investors, Thomas Edison gave the first public demonstraton of the incandescent lightbulb on December 31, 1879.

Now, believe it or not, New Yorkers were already accustomed to electric illumination during the Christmas season. The major Manhattan shopping districts were already exposed to stadium-like arc lighting, a primitive form of electric light that was too harsh and intense for everyday usage.

But Edison’s invention was vastly superior and it wouldn’t just drive away the dark. In its compact size, its durability and eventual convenience, the lightbulb would elaborate on one of candlelight’s most appealing components – mood.

The next year, on December 20, 1880, Edison had additional investors out to Menlo Park, and they were greeted with an extraordinary site.

From the NYT: “The train arrived at Menlo Park at 5:31. Darkness had settled down upon the bleak and uninviting place which Mr. Edison had chosen for his home, but the plank walk from the station to the laboratory was brilliantly lighted by a double row of electric lamps, which cast a soft and mellow light on all sides.

“The incandescent horseshoes gave out a yellow light which shone steadily and without the least painful glare and were beautiful to look upon.”

While this was not intentionally a Christmas lighting display, the arriving investors, in the holiday spirit, remarked upon the appropriate warmth and charm of the lights on the chilly December evening.

The light bulb would change the world but it would also make Edison a lot of money.

Soon Edison began aggressively promoting the various ways that electric lighting could be used to improve life – the more reasons, the more likely other investors would sign on and the more likely cities would hire Edison to install electrical power stations.

That is precisely what happened in New York on Sept 4, 1882, with the first commercial power plant in the world began operation in lower Manhattan on Pearl Street.

For the first time, the homes and offices of lower Manhattan would be able to light their interiors more pleasantly and conveniently than those homes with gaslight.

Whereas as the illuminations from gas would often create a sickly glow, the light from an electric glass bulb would seem romantic and alluring in comparison. Finally the candle had some competition.

Further uptown, at the home of Edison’s friend and the vice president of the Edison Electric Company Edward Hibberd Johnson (pictured above), electricity was taking the place of a rather hazardous form of decoration.

For Johnson’s electric-tree idea took his inspiration from traditional candle-lit trees.

In the early 19th century a Christmas tree was considered a luxury of the urban rich who could afford to have a tree cut down for them and installed in their homes. But by the 1850s people could purchase trees at the market and carry them home to decorate for the season.

The most beautiful trees — the ones that seemed to fully embody the spirit of the season — were decorated with lit candles.

Getting a candle to stick in a tree was not easy. Some held the melted wax to branches, others pierced the candle with needles, tying them to the tree that way.

Happy Christmas (1891) by Danish artist Viggo Johansen

In 1878 an inventor named Frederick Artz devised a spring clip that could hold candles to the branches.

Now a family could attach lit candles to a Christmas tree and know — with just a touch more assurance — that the waxen dagger would not fall into the branches and burn the house down.

Keep in mind that in the 19th century Christmas trees were only installed in homes for only a few days. People did not lavishly decorate a month and a half before like we do today.

And trees were more closely monitored then. Next to the presents underneath the tree was a bucket of water.

By 1908, some insurance companies refused to cover fires started by candle accidents on Christmas trees, claiming they were a clear and knowing risk.

So you can understand why people absolutely lit up at the idea of a Christmas tree with electric lights.

In January 1883, the journal Electrical World called Johnson’s tree on Madison Avenue the handsomest tree in the United States.

Pictures would suggest otherwise, although photographic process of the early 1880s were hardly equipt to capture such a unique and peculiar things – a rotating, brilliantly and colorful lit object of natural art.

But of course it wasn’t art. It was promotion.

With each year, Johnson would continue to let in the press into his home to report his unusual holiday marvel.

In addition he would install similar trees in places where Edison electrical power would soon be made available.

For instance, for Christmas 1883, he put up a much larger display tree at the Foreign Exposition in Boston at Mechanics Hall in Boston’s Back Bay.

From a 1904 history of Edison lighting:

“At the Boston Foreign Fair, about 1,500 Edison lamps were employed and the Christmas tree took several hundred more.

“This tree was deisgned to be operated by an automatic device which would make the light of the lamps appear and disappear in time with whatever music might be played and it was manipulated by means of a keyboard of switches, the operator being concealed at the base of the tree.

“The effect was so pleasing that Christine Nilsson, the Swedish Nightingale, who was in the audience begged to be allowed to manipulate it.”

All these wondrous, grandious displays were all for the general promotion of electrical power and not for the production of Christmas home decorating products themselves.

For at least two decades after Johnson’s extraordinary display, electric Christmas sets for the home were sheer novelty and clearly for the richest participants of the Gilded Age, those who could afford electricians and personal generators.

Consumers wouldn’t get to affordably light their home Christmas trees until the 20th century. Well, affordably can be debated.

In 1903, General Electric would finally make strings or festoons of miniature incadesent lamps – with bulbs of all colors — available for home holiday decorating. 24 bulbs for just $12! In 1903 dollars. That’s about $325 dollars today.

To decorate a tree of any meaningful size would require holiday revelers take a small mortgage out on their house.

But of course, by this time, Christmas in America was already being defined by thresholds of wealth. Christmas meant spending.

So for some, spending a week’s paycheck on Christmas lights might have been worth the heartache.

For some of course, it made more sense to RENT Christmas lights, a popular option in the year 1900.

From a General Electric Ad that year: “Edison Miniature Lamps for Christmas Treets. No Danger, Smoke or Smell. Lamps either rented or sold. Full directions furnished, enabling anyone to readily wire and put up the lamps.”

For more information, check out these Bowery Boys podcasts:

Tags electricity, How New York Saved Christmas, Madison Avenue, Thomas Edison

Music History Podcasts

The Beatles Invade New York! Memories of Beatlemania from the fans who helped create it

Post author By GY
Post date November 26, 2020
4 Comments on The Beatles Invade New York! Memories of Beatlemania from the fans who helped create it

Police enforce the barricades outside New York's Plaza Hotel as fans push forward in hopes of a view of The Beatles after their arrival for an American tour on February 7, 1964. (AP Photo)

PODCAST: EPISODE 346 How Beatlemania both energized and paralyzed New York City in the mid 1960s as told by the women who screamed their hearts out and helped build a phenomenon.

Before BTS, before One Direction, before the Backstreet Boys and NSYNC, before Menudo and the Jackson 5 — you had Paul, John, George and Ringo.

The Beatles were already an international phenomenon by February 9, 1964. when they first arrived at the newly named JFK Airport. During their visits to the city between 1964 and 1966, the Fab Four were seen by thousands of screaming fans and millions of television audiences in some of New York’s greatest landmarks.

And each time they came through here, the city — and America itself — was a little bit different.

In this show, we present a little re-introduction to the Beatles and how New York City became a key component in the Beatlemania phenomenon, a part of their mythology — from the classic concert venues (Shea Stadium, Carnegie Hall) to the luxury hotels (The Plaza, The Warwick).

We’ll also be focusing on the post-Beatles career of John Lennon who truly fell in love with New York City in the 1970s. And we’ll visit that tragic moment in American history which united the world 40 years ago — on December 8, 1980

But we are not telling this story alone. Helping us tell this story are recollections from listeners, the women who were once the young fans of the Beatles here in New York, the women who helped built Beatlemania.

Listen today on your favorite podcast player:

A very big THANK YOU to the women who sent in recollections about their love of the Beatles in the 1960s.

Galavanting around Central Park — sans George.

Bob Dylan heading into the Delmonico Hotel to meet the Beatles

The Beatles at Shea Stadium/SUBAFILMS LTD

Image credit: Allan Tannenbaum, Getty Images

Historical clips used in this show:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j3fDYM3GdcA

FURTHER LISTENING
Related to this week’s show

Featuring a ghost story related to the Dakota Apartments:

The Bowery Boys: New York City History podcast is brought to you …. by you!

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Bowery Boys Bookshelf

You Talkin’ To Me? A new book explores the way New Yorkers speak

Post author By GY
Post date November 19, 2020
2 Comments on You Talkin’ To Me? A new book explores the way New Yorkers speak

We echo our ancestors’ history everyday through our accents and spoken language. Accents are a filtered connection to how those before us spoke — well, for many people, that is.

As for me — born in the Ozarks with much of my life in New York City — you’d think I would have pretty bizarre accent. Instead I’ve somehow managed a mostly average, spice-less voice with few registers of the past.

The ‘newscasters’ voice, aka General American English, is perhaps the most frequently heard accent in the country, partly due to the influence of pop culture, partly with standardized American education.

But even devoid of specific New York, New England, or Southern influences, even my voice tells a story. And even my very generic voice, in a roundabout way, was born in New York.

YOU TALKIN’ TO ME?
The Unruly History of New York English
E.J. White
Oxford University Press

In the eye-opening (or is that ear-opening) You Talkin’ to Me, exploring the idiosyncrasies of New York City English, author and language educator E.J. White brings together the accents, vocabulary and place names of the modern city to illustrate the sophisticated ways in which we communicate here.

It might sound unusual to refer to accents as ‘sophisticated’ — we’ve been trained to consider them the opposite — but as White charts throughout her book, our ways of speaking are more expressive and rich when they reveal something about ourselves and our past.

Below: Students in an elocution class

Teaching the sound of English was a priority for New York City schools during the early 20th century when classes became filled with the children of immigrants. These young accented voices, according to some instructors, were un-American.

A 1931 textbook, for example, describes the “characteristic racial errors that students of various ethnicities are apt to make in their speech, using language that suggests that nonstandard speech derives from flaws of ethnic temperament.”

New York accents, borne from multiple ethnic influences, are often derided in culture to this day. “In all his iterations,” writes White, “Batman speaks Standard American English. Well, it’s to be expected; Bruce Wayne attended fancy prep schools and then Ivy League. But in every iteration, the thugs, mooks and henchmen who populate most of the city’s underclass use New York City features in their speech.”

Another interesting chapter explores code switching or the relationship of accents and speech patterns within New York City communities.

Here, too, you can find evidence of city’s immigration history, navigating arenas of status and class, especially in the richness of Puerto Rican English or in the dramatic intricacies of gay men’s speech.

But New York English is a gift that the world enjoys. White entertainingly runs through dozens of phrases that have connections to Old New York. She even reenforces one of my favorite stories ever — that the word hooker comes from the old waterfront neighborhood Corlear’s Hook.

“In 1839, the Hook, as locals often called the neighborhood, held ‘thirty-two houses of assignation and eighty-seven brothels’ — this according to a guidebook published that year, which attests, at the very least, to the reputation the neighborhood had mad for itself.”

How could a neighborhood name — which few really reference today — have such influence upon language? “In short, the parceling of the city into districts, along with the crowding together of social and economic classes, led from the naming of places to the power of places to name.”

And as for the commonplace ‘general American’ accent — the accent you hear on news networks and Friends?

That stems from “newscasters, college graduates and actors in film and television” adhering to a rhotic standard, “a standard that signified Americanness in large part by distinguishing itself form the speech of America’s capital of immigration. American sound the way they do because New Yorkers sounded the way they do.”

Food History Queens History

A Grocery Story: America’s First Supermarket Opens in Queens 1930

Post author By GY
Post date November 17, 2020
3 Comments on A Grocery Story: America’s First Supermarket Opens in Queens 1930

Did you know the modern supermarket was created in New York City? The ways people purchased groceries in the first few decades of the 20th century had evolved very rapidly. And by the 1930s all roads to the grocery store would lead to Queens.

Seeman Brothers Grocery Store 1905 / Museum of the City of New York

During the 19th century grocers provided shoppers with a limited number of items which the clerk procured for the customer from behind a counter. Items like meat and bread were often bought separately — at butchers and bakers.

There were of course outdoor markets, where customers would have greater flexibility in selecting their own produce. But markets with a truly fine and diverse selection were rarely available to most Americans outside of big cities.

Overall grocery shopping was a less dynamic affair than it is today with fewer options and an almost blatant disregard to convenience.

A&P Grocery Store 1936, photo by Berenice Abbott, courtesy Museum of the City of New York

Advent of the Grocery Chain

Successful merchants would branch out into several grocery stores in one city, using a trusted brand name as a lure to customers who looked for conformity and assurances in freshness and quality.

Those grocers could share resources among its many stores and even get into the manufacturing business themselves, creating branded products.

The beloved A&P supermarket, which sadly closed just a few years ago, traces back to a small 1859 New York store The Great Atlantic & Pacific Tea Company.

Many other famous grocery names familiar to New Yorkers got their start well over 100 years ago — including Charles and Diedrich Gristede (in 1891) and John and Walter Wegman (1916).

A Tennessee Piggly Wiggly, 1939, courtesy NARA’s Southeast Region (Atlanta)

Choose Your Own Food

Perhaps the most important grocery innovation in American history took place in 1916 at a Memphis, Tennessee grocery store called Piggly Wiggly.

To cut cost, the store got rid of the clerks and allowed customers to pluck items from the shelves themselves.

From Smithsonian Magazine: “Just like today, a shopper picked up a basket (though Piggly Wiggly’s were made of wood, not plastic) and went through the store to purchase everything. By the end of that first year there were nine Piggly Wiggly locations around Memphis.”

This seemingly simple idea of self-service shopping was too cost effective to ignore and soon other grocery chains across the country picked up on this novel concept.

Going Big

Experiments like the 1915 Astor Market on New York’s Upper West Side were a bit ahead of its time. The market allowed multiple independent sellers to work under one roof, a massive army of food options creating a ‘super’ market experience (if not quite yet a supermarket).

Unfortunately a grocery store of great size was not yet a desirable experience for shoppers who preferred shopping in their own neighborhoods, and the experiment closed in 1917.

In the 1930s, New York would pull outdoor markets and most pushcarts vendors off the street and place them in dedicated markets such as Essex Street Market. (Listen to our podcast on La Guardia’s War on Pushcarts and the Creation of Essex St. Market for more information.)

But perhaps the most important innovation put a truly royal stamp on the grocery store experience.

Everything In One Place

You also may be familiar with the name Kroger, still a thriving grocery store business in the United States today. That chain traces back to a small grocery story opened in 1883 by Cincinnati merchant Bernard Kroger.

In 1929 a Kroger employee named Michael J. Cullen proposed to his boss an eye-opening expansion to the grocery store business. “Before you throw this letter in the wastebasket, read it again and then wire me, so I can tell you more about my plan and what it will do for you and your company.”

‘King’ Michael J Cullen, inventor of the supermarket

Cullen’s plan involved, according to Supermarket News, “stores that would be 80% self-service, located outside a city’s main business center” and involve a unique pricing scheme — “where 300 items would be sold at cost, 200 others at 5% above cost, 300 more at 15% above cost and another 300 at 20% above cost.” [source]

The idea was to immerse a customer with bargain selections so that it would be nearly impossible for somebody to run in to pick up one or two necessary items without picking up a half-dozen unnecessary ones.

As he wrote, “When I come out with a two-page ad and advertise 300 items at cost and 200 items at practically cost, the public would break my front doors down to get in.”

His boss wasn’t interested in this grocery revolution, so in 1930 Cullen instead moved to Long Island and partnered with a Brooklyn grocery executive Harry Socoloff to build his dream store.

The destination? The borough of Queens.

A Queens Shopping Experience

Queens was an ideal place to try out something new in 1930.

The borough was experiencing a huge population boom and new, inventive housing developments were turning former farmland into sprawling new neighborhoods. In effect, eastern Queens was developing as a ‘suburb’ to the more developed regions of the borough, as well as the denser populations of Manhattan and Brooklyn.

Cullen and Socoloff leased a garage at 171-06 Jamaica Avenue in the neighborhood of Jamaica Estates and opened his ‘super’ experiment on August 4, 1930 — King Kullen.

The name of the store came from a drawing made by his young son. “It was a picture of a globe, and on top of it was a man seated — Bobby’s idea of a man seated on top of the world. And across the bottom he had printed the title, ‘King Kullen.’” Cullen said. “Actually, it was because Bobby thought ‘Cullen’ was spelled with a K. But the title struck Mike at once.”

The Smithsonian declares King Kullen to be”the first to fulfill all five criteria that define the modern supermarket: separate departments; self-service; discount pricing; chain marketing; and volume dealing.”

According to the book Savoring Gotham, “The store stocked thousands of food products — about ten times more than other grocery stores — at prices that undercut those at local markets. There was also free curbside parking drawing in customers with cars, who tended to stock up rather than just buying a few items for immediate use.”

The automobile would be key. Customers could now buy more on one trip than they could at grocers near their homes and the spacious parking encouraged a leisurely adventure down the aisles.

More Stores

King Kullen’s early promotional opportunities included a foray into radio; in 1931 music lovers could turn into Woodside radio station WWRL to listen to the King Kullen Krooners. (Has there ever been a more unfortunate alliteration?)

But it was King Kullen’s reputation as “the World’s Greatest Price Wrecker” that soon assured several locations of the grocery store throughout Queens, Brooklyn and into Long Island.

King Kullen was so popular that it almost immediately spawned imitators — sometimes with similar names! In 1932 Cullen took an Astoria competitor to court, a store with a very similar name of King Tuller which advertised itself as “America’s Greatest Price Wrecker.”

Below: A flashy newspaper ad for King Kullen, celebrating its appeal to housewives:

The following year, Cullen purchased a preexisting grocery store in Woodhaven, Queens, very much modeled after King Kullen. The store, Trump Market, was owned by Fred Trump. In keeping with Cullen’s slogan, Trump declared “Serve Yourself and Save!”

Trump sold to Cullen after only six month in business. The store became a King Kullen, and Trump used the money to launch his career in real estate.

(In another odd connection to King Kullen, the Trumps lived on Wareham Place, exactly one mile north of the original location of Cullen’s first supermarket on Jamaica Avenue.)

By 1936 there were 17 King Kullen supermarkets, each one larger than the last. (Sadly that was also the year Michael J. Cullen died at age 52 after an appendix operation.)

Below: A 1933 ad in the New York Daily News

Despite lofty ambitions to expand, Cullen’s death effectively sealed the grocery chain’s lofty fate to expand, but to this day King Kullen remains a very recognizable regional brand name.

There are currently 29 locations in New York State, along with several locations of its health-food offshoot Wild By Nature.

Today there are tens of thousands of grocery stores and supermarkets across the country, most of which likely dwarf the size of Cullen’s grand experiment. But there’s only King.

IMAGE AT TOP: A traditional grocery store set-up 1920, from Illinois. Image courtesy Shorpy/Chasz

Bowery Boys Movie Club Film History

‘When Harry Met Sally’ and the return of postcard New York (Bowery Boys Movie Club)

Post author By GY
Post date November 2, 2020

The new episode of the Bowery Boys Movie Club explores the film When Harry Met Sally and the rich historical context of late 80s New York City. An exclusive podcast for those who support us on Patreon.

I’LL HAVE WHAT SHE’S HAVING. When Harry Met Sally, directed by Rob Reiner and written by Nora Ephron, is more than just a simple romantic comedy about opposites Harry (Billy Crystal) and Sally (Meg Ryan in a breakthrough performance).

The film reinvents New York City for the screen. Its postcard-perfect scenes of autumn leaves in Central Parkand breathtaking walks through the Upper West Side would have been unheard of at the movies ten years before. When Harry Met Sally helped redefine the metropolis after almost two decades of dark, gritty depictions on screen.

Listen in as Greg and Tom recap the story and explore some of the historical context for the film. Featuring a glorious lineup of locations including the Central Park boathouse,the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Puck Building.

How do I listen the Bowery Boys Movie Club? Once you’re signed in on Patreon, you’ll see a private RSS link that can be put directly into your favorite podcast player. Even easier, it can also be played directly from the Patreon app if you’re signed in.

Your support on Patreon assists us in producing our podcast and website and it helps as we endeavor to share our love of New York City history with the world.

Should you watch the movie before you listen to this episode? This podcast can be enjoyed both by those who have seen the film and those who’ve never even heard of it.

We think our take on When Harry Met Sally might inspire you to look for the film’s many fascinating (but easy to overlook) historical details, so if you don’t mind being spoiled on the plot, give it a listen first, then watch the movie! Otherwise, come back to the show after you’ve watched it.

Where can you watch When Harry Met Sally? It’s available to rent on all movie streaming services and is free to watch on HBO Max.

Tags Carrie Fisher, Central Park, Katz's Delicatessen, Metropolitan Museum of Art, When Harry Met Sally

Bowery Boys Bookshelf Science

‘A Furious Sky’: A new book tracks the horrors of American hurricanes

Post author By GY
Post date October 28, 2020
1 Comment on ‘A Furious Sky’: A new book tracks the horrors of American hurricanes

This week marks the eighth anniversary of Hurricane Sandy, the largest Atlantic hurricane on record, which wreaked havoc upon the Northeast United States, causing billions of dollars in damage.

The storm hit just days before a presidential election and right before Halloween, plunging many areas of New York City into darkness and flooding the subway system.

But just a few months ago, Hurricane Isaias — downgraded to a tropical storm — left a smaller but still significant mark upon the New York City area. Tens of thousands were left without power and the streets were littered with trees and debris.

A FURIOUS SKY
The Five Hundred Year History of America’s Hurricanes
By Eric Jay Dolin
Liveright/WW Nolin

A gripping new history of American hurricane disasters by Eric Jay Dolin (Leviathan, Black Flags, Blue Waters), the reader is reintroduced to the unavoidable power of nature and its control over human affairs. Hurricanes have shaped American history in ways you might not expect — not just in their destruction but in man’s attempts to predict them.

The European powers which sought to control and profit from lands already occupied in the Americas and the Caribbean had the might to bring native populations to their knees. But they could do nothing in the face of weather’s most destructive forces. Hurricanes frequently conquered the conquerers.

OCTOBER 29, 2012 Hurricane Sandy destruction at the Brooklyn Battery Tunne. (Photo by Andrew Burton/Getty Images)

The Great Colonial Hurricane of 1635 was taken by some early Puritans in New England as a sign from God.

In 1715, Spanish treasure fleets destroyed off the coast of Florida distributed gold, silver and jewels over hundreds of miles of ocean floor, feeding “thousands of fantasies and led to a rush of mariners sailing to the Florida coast to recover some of the booty.” Welcome to the age of piracy.

North American attempts to predict the paths of hurricanes were predictably stunted by the ability to get information to endangered areas quickly. In that regard, Dolin rightly notes Samuel Morse and the invention of the telegraph as instrumental in the struggle to predict weather

Before the late 19th century, hurricanes could almost never be foreseen or protected against. The dreams of rising communities along the Gulf Coast could be erased overnight.

Galveston remains the most tragic example in American history. The hurricane which hit this coastal Texan town in 1900 remains one of the worst natural disasters to ever strike the United States.

“Galveston did rise again,” writes Dolin, “but the prehurricane trajectory that had positioned it to become the undisputed economic and commercial center of Texas had been derailed.”

Providence, Rhode Island after a hurricane in 1938 (courtesy Providence Journal)

In theory a book detailing a series of hurricane disasters might appear to be an exercise in gloom. And while each hurricane Dolin details does seem to be worse than the last, his tales are distinctly and vividly drawn, pulling from dozens of eyewitness reports — from doctors and housewives and police offices and even a few from famous folk (Ernest Hemingway, Katharine Hepburn).

The book heads towards a hopeful outcome as hurricane prediction and documentation improves over time, allowing a fuller picture of these forces of destruction. This only disguises the fact that the hurricanes themselves are getting more dangerous — and no community facing into the Atlantic Ocean is safe.

At top: Image of the Galveston Hurricane aftermath in 1900. Courtesy NOAA

Mysterious Stories Podcasts

Literary Horrors of New York City: Scary Stories from Lovecraft, Irving, Highsmith and Ripley

Post author By GY
Post date October 23, 2020
3 Comments on Literary Horrors of New York City: Scary Stories from Lovecraft, Irving, Highsmith and Ripley

EPISODE 343 In the 14th annual Bowery Boys Podcast Halloween special, we celebrate some classic tales of the strange and supernatural written by the most famous horror writers in New York City history.

Since 2020 is already a year full of ridiculous twists and frights, we thought we’d celebrate the season in a slightly different way. But don’t worry! Tom and Greg are still delivering a new batch of frightening stories.

This time however the selected stories have been made famous by great writers who have lived and worked in New York City.

Flatbush Reformed Dutch Church, photo by Greg Young

Included in this year’s terrors:

— A celebration of the 200th anniversary of Washington Irving‘s “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow,” featuring the Headless Horseman and the backstory of this classic story’s creation;

— The unsettling nights of H.P. Lovecraft in Brooklyn where his xenophobia, racism and anxiety manifest into a pair of dark, claustrophobic tales, plucked from the waterfront and the West Village;

— A bizarre and allegedly true story (or is it an urban legend?) of an unconventional jewel thief named Fanchon Moncare, made famous by that 20th century purveyor of all things unbelievable — Robert Ripley;

— And a look at the life of Patricia Highsmith — celebrating the 100th anniversary of her birth a bit early — whose nasty little tales of mad murderers have inspired Hollywood and unsettled a new generation of suspense lovers.

Listen today on your favorite podcast player:

Portrait of Washington Irving, by John Wesley Jarvis, 1809

Weird Tales, the pulp magazine started in 1923 which gave Lovecraft (and many other budding fantasy writers) their start.

The former Brooklyn Heights home of HP Lovecraft. WIkicommons/Flickr/Eden, Janine and Jim

Robert Ripley of Ripley’s Believe It or Not.

You can read the entire story from the Gold Key comic book here.

Photograph by Ruth Bernhard / Princeton University Art Museum / Art Resource

Ghost Stories of Old New York: ALIVE at Joe’s Pub

Post author By GY
Post date October 16, 2020
2 Comments on Ghost Stories of Old New York: ALIVE at Joe’s Pub

EPISODE 342 A very special Bowery Boys: New York City History podcast presentation, recorded live on Halloween Night 2019.

For the past couple years we have put on a LIVE cabaret version of our annual Ghost Stories podcast at Joe’s Pub at the Public Theater.

For reasons related to the fact that it’s the hellish year of 2020, we cannot bring you a live performance this year.

Every Halloween night, a candle is placed in the lobby of the Public Theater in honor of its founder Joseph Papp.

But we miss the wonderful Joe’s Pub so much – and we miss being with our listeners in a cabaret setting with cocktails – that we’re presenting to you a live recording of our last show at the storied venue, recorded on Halloween night 2019, featuring pianist and composer Andrew Austin and vocalist Bessie D Smith.

Prepare to hear new versions of your favorite ghost stories including:

— A Brooklyn house haunting that may be related to the spirits from a colonial-era prison ship;

— A famous murder trial from the year 1800 and a mysterious well which still stands in the neighborhood of SoHo;

— The ghosts (or other supernatural entities) which guard the treasure of the famous Captain Kidd; and

— The mournful secrets of a famed Broadway theater and the inner demons of a Hollywood icon.

With an ALL NEW GHOST STORY — WHO HAUNTS THE FORMER ASTOR LIBRARY?

Listen today on your favorite podcast player:

136 Clinton Avenue in Brooklyn back when it was very, very close to the shoreline.

The remainder of old Manhattan Well. (Image courtesy Scouting NY)

Captain Kidd in early New York, depicted in a 1920 painting by Jean Leon Gerome Ferris

Astor Library, later the Public Theater. Courtesy New York Public Library

The Bowery Boys: New York City History podcast is brought to you …. by you!

We are now a creator on Patreon, a patronage platform where you can support your favorite content creators.

Please visit our page on Patreon and watch a short video of us recording the show and talking about our expansion plans.

If you’d like to help out, there are six different pledge levels.Check them out and consider being a sponsor.

We greatly appreciate our listeners and readers and thank you for joining us on this journey so far.

Tags Astor Library, Captain Kidd, Ghost Stories, ghosts, Palace Theatre, Public Theatre, Statue of Liberty

Bowery Boys Bookshelf Health and Living

‘The House on Henry Street’: A new book on the mothers of modern activism

Post author By GY
Post date October 13, 2020

If you’re looking to read something about the possibility of doing absolute good in the world, then a story about the Henry Street Settlement is a good place to start.

The Lower East Side settlement house, founded by Lillian Wald in 1893, became not only a salvation to the hundreds of thousands of immigrants in the densely populated neighborhood, it created a template for social work and community care during the Progressive Era.

THE HOUSE ON HENRY STREET
The Enduring Life of a Lower East Side Settlement
by Ellen M. Snyder-Grenier
Washington Mews Books

But in a new book about Wald and her historic institution, curator Ellen M. Snyder-Grenier makes the convincing case that many roads of 21st century social justice pass through the doorway at 265 Henry Street as well.

Wald charted this ambitious project as a means to provide individualized nursing care to those in the Lower East Side who could not afford or were too unwilling to visit hospitals. Writes Snyder-Grenier:

“Warm, inviting, and welcoming, the house on Henry Street was more than just a house; it was a home. Settlement women like Wald drew on a Victorian model of middle-class women presiding over their homes as wives and mothers with care, moral uplift and nurturing, redefining it for their modern endeavor, rejecting maternalism’s limiting aspects and owning its best and most useful parts.”

But Wald (pictured above) knew early on that struggling communities needed more than physical care. They needed advocates. “[H]er goal was not only to nurse the sick but to address the underlying social problems to poor public health.”

The Henry Street Settlement became a testing ground for social reform. Every child in America has been positively affected by Wald’s crusades, local endeavors which took wing across the country — for playgrounds, for free school lunches, for special education, for child labor laws.

A knitting class in the famous Henry Street dining room, May 1910. The fireplace at left is still very much intact. (Library of Congress)

But Wald (and the Settlement, the fullest extension of her personality) also fought for gender equality and organized against racial injustice.

She expanded the Settlement into black neighborhoods like San Juan Hill and was on the board of the directors for the NAACP. And during wartime, she and the Settlement championed for peace.

Naturally, during conservative periods, Wald and her “seditious activities” were painted by some as anti-American.

The settlement house, around 1920. (Henry Street Settlement Collection)

After Wald’s death, Helen Hall became director of the Settlement, and for over thirty years she led the institution in directions that would have made Wald quite proud.

In particular, Hall and the Settlement became instrumental during the development of certain New Deal programs. Although, from the vantage of a social worker, FDR’s visionary programs did not go far enough.

“Hall was unhappy about what the legislation had left out — compulsory (universal) health insurance — an omission that continues to resonate in American life in politics.”

In fact the parallel with modern progressive politics is made so clear in The House of Henry Street that the book even comes with a forward written by Bill Clinton, who visited the Settlement in 1992:

“As I looked around, I saw the best of America — young and old, immigrant and native born — all there because they wanted to create a better future for themselves and their families.”

You can also check out our show from last year Saving The City: Women of the Progressive Era for more information on Wald and a tour of the Henry Street Settlement.

Tags Bowery Boys Bookshelf, Henry Street Settlement, Lillian Wald, Lower East Side

Museums Podcasts

The Metropolitan Museum of Art: 150 Years of History on Display

Post author By GY
Post date October 9, 2020
2 Comments on The Metropolitan Museum of Art: 150 Years of History on Display

EPISODE 341 Celebrating the history of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in the 150th anniversary year of its founding — certainly one of the strangest years in its extraordinary existence.

The Met is really the king of New York attractions, with visitors heading up to Central Park and streaming through the doors by the millions to gasp at the latest blockbuster exhibitions and priceless works of art and history.

And who doesn’t love getting lost at the Met for an afternoon — wandering from the Greek and Roman galleries to the imposing artifacts within the Arms and Armor collection and the treasures of the Asian Art rooms?

The Theodore Weston addition to the Met 1893, J.S. Johnston, Library of Congress

But this museum has a few surprising secrets in its history — and more than a few skeletons (or are those mummies?) in its closet.

WITH Ancient temples, fabulous fashions, classical relics, Dutch masters, controversial exhibitions and the decorative trappings of the Gilded Age.

November 1928, photo courtesy The Metropolitan Museum of Art

AND Find out how the museum building has evolved over the years, employing some of the greatest architects in American history.

PLUS An interview with the Met’s Andrea Bayer, Deputy Director for Collections and Administration, on the museum’s celebratory exhibition Making the Met 1870-2020.

How do you launch an anniversary celebration during a pandemic and lockdown?

Listen today on your favorite podcast player:

Opening reception in the picture gallery at 681 Fifth Avenue, February 20, 1872; wood-engraving published in *Frank Leslie’s Weekly*, March 9, 1872

‘The Barn’, the original Met from Calvert Vaux and Jacob Wrey Mould, courtesy the Metropolitan Museum of Art

1900, Detroit Pub Co, Library of Congress

The Richard Morris Hunt addition to the Met, 1903, Detroit Pub Co, Library of Congress

The Great Hall, 1907, Library of Congress

The Met in 1920, with the southern wing in place. Museum of the City of New York

Some excellent footage from the 1920s of the Met’s Egyptian excavations

The Temple of Dendur. photo by Greg Young

The American Wing sculpture garden at night, photo by Greg Young

Branch Bank entrance, 2012, photo by Greg Young

Washington Crossing the Delaware, taken 2017, photo by Greg Young

Dendur at night, 2018, photo by Greg Young

The Met at Christmas, 2018, photo by Greg Young

The European sculpture garden at night, with views of the original 19th century facade in red brick. 2018, photo by Greg Young

Views from Making the Met (photos by Greg Young):

The Bowery Boys: New York City History podcast is brought to you …. by you!

We are now a creator on Patreon, a patronage platform where you can support your favorite content creators.

Please visit our page on Patreon and watch a short video of us recording the show and talking about our expansion plans.

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FURTHER LISTENING

The Met was a bit behind the times when it came to celebrating Impressionism but New Yorkers could take a gander at the ‘shocking’ output from Europe — as well as examples from the New York’ Ashcan School — at the Armory Show of 1913.

The Met is a twin institution to the American Museum of Natural History which shares a similar origin story.

In the second half of our Fifth Avenue Mansions series, we look at how the wealthy mansions of Fifth Avenue left midtown and headed to the Upper East Side.

Tags architects, art, artists, Central Park, Cleopatra's Needle, Cloisters, costumes, fashion, J.P.Morgan, Metropolitan Museum of Art, Richard Morris Hunt

Bowery Boys Bookshelf Writers and Artists

American Daredevil: A New Book on Comic Book Anti-Fascist Lev Gleason

Post author By GY
Post date September 30, 2020
1 Comment on American Daredevil: A New Book on Comic Book Anti-Fascist Lev Gleason

Comic books were invented in New York City during the 1930s, the product of a low-key publishing trade combining the popularity of newspaper comic strips with the gloss of the magazine revolution.

That was also a decade of social activism — with the Great Depression at home and the rise of fascism in Europe — and many early comic book publishers happened to be progressive and politically engaged.

Perhaps none more so than Lev Gleason.

AMERICAN DAREDEVIL
Comics, Communism and the Battles of Lev Gleason
by Brett Dakin
Chapterhouse

Lev Gleason was Dakin’s grand-uncle. Some of my favorite biographies are written by those directly related to the subjects. (Recommended examples include The Vapors by David Hill and On Her Own Ground by A’Lelia Bundles.) The strengths of having a personal connection to a biographical subject are on nice display here.

Gleason was no ordinary comic book publisher; he was also a vibrant anti-fascist organizer, a suburban liberal who was eventually targeted by the federal government in the early years of the Red Scare.

Gleason was one of America’s most successful early comic book publishers. At first, like so many others*, he dabbled in superhero comics with heroes such as Daredevil — not related to Marvel’s later incarnation — and Silver Streak. Real-life enemies such as Adolf Hitler met their match in these colorful pages.

But his real notoriety came in adapting to a new genre — the true crime comic book. With his landmark Crime Does Not Pay, readers experienced stark violence, depravity and vice from a more unsettling vantage.

“What was unique about Lev’s contribution,” writes Dakin, “was that, rather than focusing on the detectives and the police, the tales in Crime revolved around the criminals themselves….

“At the end of every issue, it is true, the criminal was caught, and Mr. Crime [the story’s omniscient narrator] reminded the reader of the dangers of a life of crime. But by that point, the reader had come to know the criminal, and perhaps, to sympathize with him.”

This put Gleason in direct opposition with moral reformers of the day, who saw comic books as disreputable and corrupting influences. By the 1950s publishers were testifying to Senate sub-committees in defense of their industry.

But it was Gleason’s involvement in progressive publications and with anti-fascist organizations such as the Joint Anti-Fascist Refugee Committee that got him marked by the House Un-American Activities Committee, “created in 1938 to investigate alleged disloyalty and rebel activities on the part of private citizens, public employees and organizations suspected of having Communist ties.” [source]

Dakin creates a sharp and intriguing portrait of Gleason, taking the reader along on the journey to discovering his grand-uncle’s story.

From a narrative perspective, I found the personal asides to be the book’s greatest strength. If you plunged into the dark corners of your own family tree, what fascinating figure might you discover?

*For more information on the birth of the comic book industry in New York City, check out our podcast Super City: The Secret Origin of Comic Books.

Amusements and Thrills Podcasts

The Real Life Adventures of Tom Thumb

Post author By GY
Post date September 26, 2020
1 Comment on The Real Life Adventures of Tom Thumb

PODCAST The tale of one of the 19th century’s most unusual superstars, a man who spent his entire life in the media spotlight — thanks to promoter and friend P.T. Barnum and to his highly publicized ‘wedding of the century’ to Lavinia Warren at Grace Church.

EPISODE #339 Charles Stratton, who would become world famous as “Tom Thumb” in the mid-19th century, was born in Bridgeport, CT on January 4, 1838 to parents of average height, and he grew normally during the first six months of his life — to about 25 inches or so.

And then, surprisingly, he just stopped growing.

When P.T. Barnum, the master showman, would meet Charles and his parents, Charlie was 4, and he’d be signed on the spot to play the part of “General Tom Thumb” at Barnum’s American Museum. He’d be given a fancy new wardrobe, a new nationality (British), and a new age — 11 years old.

Charles would perform for the rest of his life as “Tom Thumb”. He’d enchant European royalty and American presidents, and sell out crowds around the world.

And in 1863, during the darkest days of the Civil War, he’d be married in New York’s Grace Church to Lavinia Warren, another Barnum employee and another performer of short stature.

Their wedding would be a sensation, and would actually knock news from the battlefields off the front page of the New York Times for three days.

FEATURING: Abraham Lincoln, Mathew Brady, Queen Victoria and a fellow named Commodore Nutt.

Listen today on your favorite podcast player or just press play here:

Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper, January 17, 1863

FEATURED GUESTS ON TODAY’S EPISODE:

Dr. Michael Mark Chemers is a Professor of Dramatic Literature and Director of Graduate Studies in the Department of Theatre Arts at the University of California, Santa Cruz. He’s the author of Staging Stigma: A Critical Examination of the American Freak Show published by Palgrave MacMillan in 2008, in which he looks into the career and reception of Charles Stratton.

Eric Lehman is an Associate Professor of English at the University of Bridgeport and the author of 18 books, including Becoming Tom Thumb, published in 2013 by Wesleyan University Press.

Kathy Maher is the Executive Director of the Barnum Museum and is celebrating her 22nd year with the Museum. Located an hour out of New York City, P.T. Barnum’s last museum continues to stand on Main Street in the heart of downtown Bridgeport, CT, his adopted home. Although the Barnum Museum is currently closed due to covid-19 regulations, the Museum remains active with social media, virtual programming and a major historic restoration and re-envisioning https://barnum-museum.org/

Robert Wilson has been the editor of The American Scholar magazine since 2004. Before that, he edited Preservation magazine and was the book editor and columnist for USA Today. His previous books include The Explorer King (2006), about the 19th-century scientist, explorer, and writer Clarence King, and Mathew Brady: Portraits of a Nation (2013), about the Civil War photographer. His most recent book, Barnum: An American Life (from 2019), has just been published in paperback.

FURTHER LISTENING

The Bowery Boys: New York City History podcast is brought to you …. by you!

We are now a creator on Patreon, a patronage platform where you can support your favorite content creators.

Please visit our page on Patreon and watch a short video of us recording the show and talking about our expansion plans.

If you’d like to help out, there are six different pledge levels.Check them out and consider being a sponsor.

We greatly appreciate our listeners and readers and thank you for joining us on this journey so far.

Podcasts Writers and Artists

A New Deal for the Arts: How the WPA funded an American creative revolution

Post author By GY
Post date August 28, 2020
3 Comments on A New Deal for the Arts: How the WPA funded an American creative revolution

PART TWO of a two-part podcast series A NEW DEAL FOR NEW YORK.

In this episode, we look at how one aspect of FDR’s New Deal — the WPA’s Federal Project Number One — was used to put the country’s creative community back to work and lift the spirits of downtrodden Americans.

EPISODE 338 Federal Project Number One — the ‘artistic wing’ of the Works Progress Administration — inspired one of the most important and lasting cultural revolutions in the United States, an infusion of funds that put musicians, painters, writers and the theater community back to work, creating works that would promote and celebrate the American experience.

The already-rich creative communities of New York City thrived during the program in several unique ways — from the stages of Broadway to the art studios of Harlem.

In this episode we present several tales from the four main units of Federal One — the Federal Music Project, the Federal Theatre Project, the Federal Art Project and the Federal Writers Project.

Including the stories of these WPA creators —

— Juanita Hall: A future Tony-winning actress whose WPA-funded gospel chorus performed over 5,000 times

— Orson Welles: A brilliant stage producer (not yet a filmmaker) whose bold stage inventions pressed the limits of government censorship

— Jackson Pollock: A budding painter just finding his artistic voice, making a living working on murals and canvas

— Berenice Abbott: Her series of New York City photographs would endure as a lasting document of 1930s New York City

— Zora Neale Hurston: The Harlem Renaissance anthropologist and novelist who used the WPA program to explore folklore and traditions in Florida

PLUS: The mural program, the WPA Guides and the contributions of WNYC and the New York Public Library

Listen today on your favorite podcast player or just press play here:

Juanita Hall and the Negro Melody Singers, featured in the WNYC clip.

WNYC audio clips courtesy the NYC Municipal Archives WNYC collection.

Our thanks to Andy Lanset from WNYC and Kenneth Cobb from the NYC Municipal Archives for allowing us to feature these clips on the show.

Here are the clips if you’d like to hear them in full:

The WPA also employed poster designers who went on to produce promotional tools for other WPA projects — such as this poster for ‘Voodoo’ Macbeth.

John Houseman discusses the WPA theater program in this fantastic clip from a PBS broadcast of the 1985 revival of the show, with Patti LuPone.

Patti LuPone’s rendition of “Nickel Under the Foot” from the 1985 PBS broadcast.

One of the Harlem Hospital murals, now on display at the hospital’s mural pavilion.

In 1935 Edward Laning produced murals for Ellis Island; today these murals appear at the Brooklyn Federal Court Building.

Berenice Abbott, Seventh Avenue looking south from 35th Street

FURTHER LISTENING

Please listen to Part One of our New Deal in New York series, then follow up with these additional episodes related to this week’s program:

Robert Moses and the Art of the New Deal

Post author By GY
Post date August 21, 2020
4 Comments on Robert Moses and the Art of the New Deal

PART ONE of a two-part podcast series A NEW DEAL FOR NEW YORK.

In this episode, we look at the impact New Deal funding had in shaping the city’s infrastructure — from bridges and tunnels to neighborhood parks — how New York City uniquely benefited from this government program.

EPISODE 337 New York City during the 1930s was defined by massive unemployment, long lines at the soup kitchens, Hoovervilles in Central Park.

But this was also the decade of the Triborough Bridge and Orchard Beach, of new swimming pools and playgrounds, of hundreds of new building projects across the five boroughs.

Faced with the nationwide financial crisis, former New York governor and newly elected President of the United States Franklin Delano Roosevelt chose to boldly take the crisis on a series of transformative actions by the government that became known as the New Deal.

No other American city would benefit more from the New Deal that New York City. At one point, one out of every seven dollars from the Works Progress Administration (WPA) was being spent in New York.

And the two men responsible for funneling federal funding to the city was Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia and his new parks commissioner Robert Moses.

Moses amassed a great amount of unchecked power, generating thousands of projects through out the city — revitalizing the city landscape.

How did Moses manage to funnel so much federal assistance into his own projects? And where can you see evidence of the New Deal in the city today? (HINT: Pretty much everywhere.)

Listen today on your favorite podcast player or just press play here:

New York City, 1932 (Irving Underhill/Library of Congress)

A Hooverville in Central Park, 1932 (New York Daily News)

Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia and Gov. Robert Moses (Photo by Bob Mortimer/NY Daily News Archive via Getty Images)

Orchard Beach, 1937 (Museum of the City of New York)

The Triborough Bridge as seen from the Astoria swimming pool, in a 1940 postcard. (Museum of the City of New York)

Aerial view of the Triborough Bridge, 1936 (Museum of the City of New York)

Article from the Brooklyn Daily Eagle, 1937 (Courtesy Newspapers.com)

FURTHER LISTENING

After you’ve checked out this episode, go back to some of our past episodes for further insight into this period in American history.

H.P Lovecraft’s very bizarre hatred of Red Hook and Brooklyn Heights

Post author By GY
Post date August 17, 2020
2 Comments on H.P Lovecraft’s very bizarre hatred of Red Hook and Brooklyn Heights

Howard Philip Lovecraft — aka H.P. Lovecraft — was born 130 years ago this week (on August 20, 1890) in Providence, Rhode Island.

The pulp-fiction storyteller, known for claustrophobic tales of the occult, lived for a time in Brooklyn. He did not enjoy it.

In 1924, he moved to 259 Parkside Avenue in Flatbush, Brooklyn, close to Ebbets Field and Prospect Park. When his new wife relocated for work in Cincinnati, Lovecraft moved from the pleasant Flatbush neighborhood to a small flat at 169 Clinton Street in Brooklyn. He only lived here until 1926 but during his stay, possessed of anxiety and neurosis, he practically starved himself.

Below: The boardinghouse at 169 Clinton Street, pictured here at left, from 1935. The first four buildings still exist. The building at the far right is the old Brooklyn Athenaeum.

Lovecraft had contempt for New York’s thriving immigrant population and those workers who sustained Brooklyn waterfront in the 1920s. In particular he negatively interacted with the residents of Brooklyn’s so-called “Little Syria” on Atlantic Avenue.

I find his invective ugly and even a little obsessive, but it illustrates that occasional truth that the culture of New York City is simply not for everybody, especially if you have certain racist dispositions mixed with a little mental instability.

Below: Lovecraft in Brooklyn Heights in 1925. The house behind him may be his Clinton Street boarding house. Compare to the image above and the current view here. (Photo courtesy HPL.com)

In a comparison with Philadelphia, Lovecraft wrote “[Philadelphia has] none of the crude, foreign hostility and underbreeding of New York — none of the vulgar trade spirit and plebian hustle.” He further described New York as “an Asiatic hell’s huddle of the world’s cowed, broken, inartistic, and unfit.” [source]

According to author Donald Tyson, “when [H.P.’s wife Sonia] and Lovecraft were walking the streets of New York and encountered a group of immigrants, Lovecraft would become so animated and enraged that she feared for his sanity.”

The renovated, wealthy houses of today’s Brooklyn Heights were often working-class housing in the 1920s, many turned into affordable boarding houses. Lovecraft disliked his ethnic neighbors and held particular scorn for his Irish landlady. “Only later was I to learn of her shrewish tongue, desperate household negligence, miserly watchfulness of lights and unwatchfulness of repairs, and reckless indifference to the class of lodger she admitted.” [source]

He would have lived with mostly single men of differing ethnicity, many employed along the congested docks that lined the waterfront all the way down to Red Hook, culminating in two self-contained shipping areas — the Atlantic and Erie basins. Back in the 1920s, it was the busiest freight port in the entire world.

Below: Ships along the waterfront heading towards Red Hook, circa 1890

He seemed to filter all his untethered anxiety into the very building at 169 Clinton Street. “I conceived the idea that the great brownstone house was a malignly sentient thing — a dead, vampire creature which sucked something out of those within it and implanted in them the seeds of some horrible and immaterial psychic growth.”

Yet Lovecraft saved his greater fantasies for the neighborhood south of here. He eventually funneled all this tortured and deranged hysteria into his horror writing with the publication of “The Horror at Red Hook,” a story that literally depicts the neighborhood as a gateway to Hell. Naturally he wrote it over a two-day period from the Brooklyn Heights boardinghouse.

Below (the next two pictures): Some striking illustrations by Robert Cummings Wiseman of shanties around the Atlantic Basin in 1930, courtesy the Museum of the City of New York

The short story, one of his best known, is an amusing curiosity to read today. Its a muddled, sometimes incomprehensible work with some occasional flashes of creepy description. Clearly the story is self-therapy as much as it is an actual story, an early 20th century entry in the field of conspiratorial fiction. It’s undeniably haunting if you manage to forgive the vast amount of virulent, anti-immigrant description:

“Red Hook is a maze of hybrid squalor near the ancient waterfront opposite Governor’s Island, with dirty highways climbing the hill from the wharves to that higher ground where the decayed lengths of Clinton and Court Streets lead off toward the Borough Hall. Its houses are mostly of brick, dating from the first quarter to the middle of the nineteenth century, and some of the obscurer alleys and byways have that alluring antique flavour which conventional reading leads us to call “Dickensian”.

The population is a hopeless tangle and enigma; Syrian, Spanish, Italian, and negro elements impinging upon one another, and fragments of Scandinavian and American belts lying not far distant. It is a babel of sound and filth, and sends out strange cries to answer the lapping of oily waves at its grimy piers and the monstrous organ litanies of the harbour whistles.”

I won’t spoil any of the plot points of the story. (If you’re interested in reading ‘The Horror At Red Hook’, you can check it out here. ) But let’s just say the author confirms his suspicions — the street gangs and liquor rackets of the Prohibition era are really just dens of age-old evil:

“The soul of the beast is omnipresent and triumphant, and Red Hook’s legions of blear-eyed, pockmarked youths still chant and curse and howl as they file from abyss to abyss, none knows whence or whither, pushed on by blind laws of biology which they may never understand. As of old, more people enter Red Hook than leave it on the landward side, and there are already rumours of new canals running underground to certain centres of traffic in liquor and less mentionable things.”

The story would be published in 1927 in the pulp magazine Weird Tales. Notably, their offices were in Chicago, not in New York

Once he left New York, he pursued some of his more famous writing projects, using his anxiety to more disturbing effect in runic, terror-filled stories of the occult. He died in 1937, revered by many as a truly boundary-breaking writer, greatly inspiring writers like Stephen King.

It would be almost fifty years before an author attempted to look at south Brooklyn with similar monstrous intent — in the 1970s horror novels The Sentinel and The Guardian by Jeffrey Konvitz.

Top picture: Detail from a 1897 Rand McNally map of Brooklyn

Tags Brooklyn Heights, Ghost Stories, racism, Red Hook

For more information, check out these Bowery Boys podcasts:

PODCAST: EPISODE 346 How Beatlemania both energized and paralyzed New York City in the mid 1960s as told by the women who screamed their hearts out and helped build a phenomenon.

A very big THANK YOU to the women who sent in recollections about their love of the Beatles in the 1960s.

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The Bowery Boys: New York City History podcast is brought to you …. by you!

The Bowery Boys: New York City History podcast is brought to you …. by you!

FEATURED GUESTS ON TODAY’S EPISODE:

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The Bowery Boys: New York City History podcast is brought to you …. by you!

PART TWO of a two-part podcast series A NEW DEAL FOR NEW YORK.

In this episode, we look at how one aspect of FDR’s New Deal — the WPA’s Federal Project Number One — was used to put the country’s creative community back to work and lift the spirits of downtrodden Americans.

FURTHER LISTENING

FURTHER READING

The Bowery Boys: New York City History podcast is brought to you …. by you!

PART ONE of a two-part podcast series A NEW DEAL FOR NEW YORK.

In this episode, we look at the impact New Deal funding had in shaping the city’s infrastructure — from bridges and tunnels to neighborhood parks — how New York City uniquely benefited from this government program.

FURTHER LISTENING

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The Bowery Boys: New York City History podcast is brought to you …. by you!

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