Categories
Brooklyn History

The horror of moving to Brooklyn — from a 1905 comic strip

Above: Food can do strange things to you at night: an excerpt from McCay’s January 7, 1905 strip, published two days after the one printed in full below. Dream of the Rarebit Fiend was one of America’s first great comic strips and easily one of the weirdest. Each eight-panel or nine-panel strip featured an individual… Read More

Categories
Gilded Age New York

“The First Dandelion” and Walt Whitman’s very bad timing

In 1888, the New York Herald ran this poem by the great Walt Whitman:                                          The First Dandelion                                    … Read More

Eleven breathtaking views of the New York Herald Building, one of midtown Manhattan’s earliest tourist attractions

Click into the images within this post for a more closeup view! When the extravagant James Gordon Bennett Jr. decided to move the offices of the New York Herald from grimy, old Park Row to the frenzy of uptown Manhattan, he wanted something spectacular and eye-catching.  As we mentioned in our newest podcast on the… Read More

Eleven breathtaking views of the New York Herald Building, one of midtown Manhattan’s earliest tourist attractions

Click into the images within this post for a more closeup view! When the extravagant James Gordon Bennett Jr. decided to move the offices of the New York Herald from grimy, old Park Row to the frenzy of uptown Manhattan, he wanted something spectacular and eye-catching.  As we mentioned in our newest podcast on the… Read More

Buster Brown and a phalanx of Bloomingdale Santas

Happy holidays! The good news is there will actually be a new podcast posted this week, by the evening of Christmas eve or Christmas morning, depending on the reliability of my available internet. The bad news is, this blog will probably not be updated for the next couple days due to some holiday travel. I’ll… Read More

Categories
Holidays Podcasts

PODCAST: Macy’s – the Man, the Store, the Parade

What year is this picture taken? (Click on it to view details.) Note the elevated rail line, no automobiles, and the New York Herald building still standing. You can also tell that the building’s later additions have not yet extended it down towards 7th Avenue. A little research on the Hippodrome and when the shows… Read More

A goddess in Herald Square gets a makeover

Lovely Herald Square once again becomes the center of manic activity next week for next week’s Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade. Few realize that Santa Claus, the Rockettes, and a throng of tourists share the square with a Roman goddess and two fellows named after Hebrew demons. Or that this year, said goddess and demons will… Read More

Categories
Podcasts

PODCAST: Central Park Zoo

From an odd assortment of abandoned creatures, to one of the most notorious zoos in the world, take a tour with us through Central Park’s storybook zoo. In the podcast I erroneously stated that a famous political cartoon using the Central Park Zoo as a political metaphor also featured Ulysses S Grant depicted as an… Read More