Dorothy Catherine Draper is a truly forgotten figure in American history. She was the first woman to ever sit for a photograph — a daguerrotype, actually, in the year 1840, upon the rooftop of the school which would become New York University.
The circumstances that got her to this position were rather unique. She was the older sister of a professor named John William Draper, and she assisted him in his success and fame even when it seemed a detriment to her. The Drapers worked alongside Samuel Morse in the period following his invention of the telegraph.
The legendary portrait was taken when Miss Draper was a young woman but a renewed interest in the image in the 1890s brought the now elderly matron a bit of late-in-life recognition.
LISTEN NOW: THE FIRST WOMAN EVER PHOTOGRAPHED
This episode originally appeared on Greg’s podcast called The First which had a respectable run a few years ago. The feed for that show will be going away soon so we wanted to present some of that show’s greatest hits over the next few months, in between regular episodes of the Bowery Boys as bonus stories about American history.
For information on how to visit the Draper homestead, head over to the website for the Hastings Historical Society. And the site is right off the Old Croton Aqueduct Trail which we visited in a show last year. So why not make a day of it?
Dorothy Catherine Draper in the first portrait photograph ever taken (no previous test examples survive) and the first photograph of a female face.
Draper in the 1890s, in a photograph taken by her nephew.
For this year’s annual Bowery Boys Halloween ghost stories podcast, we cautiously approach the dark secrets of Greenwich Village, best known for bohemians, shady and winding streets and a deeply unexpected history. You will never look at its parks and townhouses again after this show!
The stories featured on this year’s show:
— The hidden history of Washington Square Park featuring the oldest tree in New York — nicknamed the Hangman’s Elm — and some truly grave secrets beneath its lovely walkways
— The Brittany Residence Hall for New York University students has a very famous ghost, a child who experienced a horrible death and continued to haunt the halls of this former hotel, looking for friends to play with
— Mayor Jimmy Walker once lived across from an old burial ground in the West Village. But when its ancient plots were replaced with a city park (later renamed after the former nightlife mayor), the bodies and the tombstones were mostly paved over. To this day, a single grave marker sits astride the baseball field, a sole reminder of the area’s macabre past.
— And finally the ceiling of a old Bank Street townhouse reveals an unusual object. This is an epic ghost tale that stretches from the mid 1920s to the early 1980s. And from the haunted streets of the West Village to a peaceful respite in Northern California.
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In 2009 a complete headstone was found in Washington Square Park, near the area of the dog park.
Washington Square Park Blog
In 2015, while working on the water pipes underneath the park, workers discovered this grisly find.
Department of Design and Construction
A 1945 advertisement for the Hotel Brittany and a couple other ‘off the beaten path’ hotels.
The former St. John’s burial ground was turned into a park in the 1890s. “One Door that has been opened: St. John’s Park in Hudson Street, — once a graveyard,” says Jacob Riis in the caption for his image of the park.
This show joins our growing collection of Bowery Boys Halloween specials. Creep yourself out while listening to these spooky legends of New York City. From the haunted woods of Van Cortlandt Park to spirits haunting Captain Kidd’s treasure on Liberty Island. Psychics at Carnegie Hall, unsettling spirits in Cobble Hill, undead party animals at Grand Central!
Highlighting haunted tales from the period just after the Civil War when New York City became one of the richest cities in the world — rich in wealth and in ghosts! In the Bronx once stood a haunted house in the area of Hunts Point, a mansion of malevolent and disturbing mysteries. Then we turn to Manhattan to a rambunctious poltergeist on fashionable East 27th Street. Over in Queens, a lonely farmhouse in the area of today’s Calvary Cemetery is witness to not one, but two unsettling and confounding deaths. And finally, in Staten Island, we take a visit to the glorious Vanderbilt Mausoleum, a historic landmark and a location with a few strange secrets of its own.
2015Haunted Landmarks of New York Ghost stories associated with the city’s most popular and recognizable places from baby-faced spooks at the Dakota Apartments to spirited revelers at Grand Central Terminal. What’s still lurking in the hallways of the Chelsea Hotel? And whatever you do tonight, do not linger too long on the Brooklyn Bridge at night! A figure from the bridge’s past may still be looking for his head.
2014 Ghost Stories of Brooklyn Four tales of spirits haunting Brooklyn back in the 19th century when it was still an independent city. A horrific gangly ghost on the railroad tracks, a historic Clinton Hill home with an invisible hand that would not stop knocking, a Coney Island hotel in 1894 with a secret in room 30, and the wacky wraiths of Bushwick’s Evergreens Cemetery.
Tales set mostly before the 1840s featuring sinister stories of murder, shipwreck and death by fright! Spirits of dead Lenape Indians may haunt the forest of Van Cortlandt Park. A romantic West Village restaurant finds its home inside the former carriage house of Aaron Burr. Might the vice president still be visiting? We bring you the legend of an old Brooklyn fort that once sat in Cobble Hill and terrified those who traveled along on old Red Hook Lane. And finally, over at St Paul’s Chapel, a respected old actor wanders the churchyard, looking for his body parts.
Grab a drink at the Ear Inn, one of New York’s most historically interesting bars, and you might meet Mickey, the drunken sailor-ghost. A frightening story of secret love at old Melrose Hall conjures up one of Brooklyn’s most popular ghostly legends. A woman is possessed through a Ouija board, but while she accept the challenge by one of New York’s first ghostbusters? And a tale of Harry Houdini,Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, and the line between the supernatural and mere sleight of hand.
What’s horrors are buried at the foot of the Statue of Liberty? What’s below a Brooklyn Catholic church that makes it so dreadfully haunted? What ghost performs above the heads of theatergoers at The Palace? And what is it about the Kreischer Mansion that makes it Staten Island’s most haunted home?
2010 Supernatural Stories of New  York The scary revelations of a New York medium, married Midtown ghosts who fight beyond the grave, a horrific haunting at a 14th Street boardinghouse, and the creepy tale of New York’s Hart Island.
2009 Haunted Tales of New York: Urban Phantoms The secrets of the restless spinster of the Merchants House, the jovial fright of the Gay Street Phantom, the legend of the devil at Spuyten Duyvil Creek, and the spirit of a dead folk singer.
2008 Spooky Stories of New York The drunken spirits of the Algonquin, the mysteries of a hidden well in SoHo, the fires of the Witch of Staten Island, and ‘the most haunted brownstone in New York.’
2007 Ghost Stories of New York The ghosts of a tragic Ziegfeld girl, a scandalous doyenne of old New York, a bossy theater impresario and the ghoulish bell-ringer of St. Mark’s-in-the-Bowery.
Here are the locations mentioned in all of our ghost podcasts:
A Welcome Debut: Our podcast this week was on the history of New York University, an institution which spent decades in the Bronx neighborhood today called University Heights. When they returned downtown to Greenwich Village, the campus passed into the hands of Bronx Community College, a part of the City University of New York system.
From that moment, the students of Bronx Community College have been essentially educated in second-hand properties, a collection of storied structures designed by Stanford White and a couple kooky Brutalist additions. But no longer! The New York Times reports on the opening of North Hall and Library, the first new building for the college since they moved in.
And what of the fate the Stanford White-designed Gould Library (pictured above), home to the Hall of Fame For Great Americans? Read about it in the Times article here.
What The World Needs Now: Songwriter, NYU graduate and New Yorker Hal David, known for his collaborations with Burt Bacharach, passed away over the weekend. David was a student at the NYU journalism school, although he would quickly find his calling in the world of pop music, and specifically at Brill Building, the venerable songwriting factory in midtown.
I shall now use this occasion to honor Mr. David by presenting the one of his greatest collaborations with Bacharach. When do I ever get the opportunity to post a video by the Carpenters?
Hogwarts of Washington Square: The beautiful and supremely ostentatious University Hall at the northeast corner of the park, circa 1850. [NYPL]
PODCAST They once called it the University of the City of New York, an innovative, non-denominational school located in a intellectual castle on the northeast corner of the Washington military parade ground. Today it’s better known as New York University, one of America’s largest private schools of higher education, inhabiting dozens of buildings throughout the city.
Find out more about its spectacular and sometimes strange history, from the inventors among its early faculty to some of the more curious customs among its 19th century student body. But the story of NYU is often defined by its growth, the need for expansion, and conflicts with the community.
Featuring: The prisoners of Sing Sing Prison, the Hall of Fame for Great Americans, the usual controversial plans of Robert Moses, and a strange custom known simply as The Bun.
The Bronx campus of New York University was an attempt to affix the school into a more traditional campus. And a bucolic one too, from the looks of this postcard. [NYPL]
The silver casket (pictured here in 1915) which contained the remains of the coveted ‘Bun’. Who holds the Bun today? [Courtesy the NYU archives]
New York University’s Bronx campus became a critical training facility during the World Wars. According to the caption, this is a picture from 1943 of a ‘camouflage class’, with “men and women are preparing for jobs in the Army or in industry.” [LOC]
A 1948 model of the building that would become Vanderbilt Hall. Its construction on the northwest corner of Washington Square Park created tensions with the residents and activists of the neighborhood, one of many such conflicts NYU face in its expansion plans. [LOC]
