Category Archives: New York City

Brooks Brothers, 1818-2018

11 Saturday Aug 2018

Posted by in Chester A. Arthur, Edwin D. Morgan, Incorporating New York (book project), New York City, Style

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I was in the city running a few errands and having a little fun yesterday, buying a chambray shirt, renewing my library card at NYPL, and taking in the Brooks Brothers exhibit on display through September 5 in Grand Central Terminal’s Vanderbilt Hall. Brooks Brothers began in 1818 on the more southern portion of Manhattan, where most New Yorkers still lived and worked. Grand Central opened in 1913 and Brooks Brothers opened its now-flagship store across the street at 346 Madison in 1915 to serve the commuting businessmen. It was fortunate for the Great War effort the the spacious train terminal was built when and where it was, accommodating as it did the mass influx of men and material on their way to France.

an October 24, 1861 letter from Assistant Quartermaster Chester A. Arthur letter to Brooks Brothers…

Taking in the Brooks Brothers exhibit was a journey in time and made me a little rueful at how far the once iconic temple of men’s style has fallen. Really it is not all Brooks’s fault; societal changes, many of them for the better, have rendered much of traditional men’s styling obsolete. That said, when they put me in charge of the world, jackets and repp ties will again be required for all men. There were many striking and iconic things to see but two that struck me the most were these. The first is a letter to Brooks Brothers from New York State Assistant Quartermaster Chester Alan Arthur requisitioning 300 overcoats. The letter is from October 24, 1861, three days after the Battle of Ball’s Bluff.

…and a contract signed by the four Brooks brothers and Governor Edwin D. Morgan on August 3, 1861, two weeks after First Bull Run. Note the fabric swabs in the upper right corner.

The second is a contract signed by Governor Edwin D. Morgan two month and a half months earlier. It is a mark of the great import of the transaction that all four actual Brooks brothers signed the document. This came at an important time in the war effort, just two after the fiasco at Bull Run. I write about this moment in the manuscript of Incorporating New York. By early August men like Morgan and Arthur were cleaning up the mess and preparing for what everyone now knew would be a long war. I know the images are not that great, having been taken through the glass in the display case, but note the red wax next to each signature marking it official. Governor Morgan’s is on top and then the four brother’s below. I don’t know for certain but my guess would be that the fabric swabs were included in the contract after earlier incidents of clothiers–including Brooks Brothers–providing the Army with inferior shoddy goods.

Prospect Park, 1966

04 Saturday Aug 2018

Posted by in Frederick Law Olmsted, New York City

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Prospect Park centennial invitation, June 1966

These past two Fridays I visited the Brooklyn Historical Society, last week the new satellite facility on the waterfront and yesterday the main site in the Heights. If you live in New York City I cannot recommend the BHS strongly enough. The DUMBO facility, situated in an old warehouse, is quite striking. Their inaugural exhibition is a long-running (four year) exhibit discussing the significance of the waterfront. I found the snippets of oral histories with Rosie the Riveters to be poignant. I ruefully texted a friend noting that the interviews were mostly from the 1980s and 1990s and that the subjects were probably deceased by this time. It saddens me to see the end of the World War 2 generation.

Yesterday at Pierrepont Street I took in a small exhibit about Prospect Park. Part of it dealt with the 1966 centennial observation of the Olmsted and Vaux masterpiece. The two won the commission for the Brooklyn park on May 29, 1866, about six months after Olmsted returned from California after the Civil War. I had never heard of the 1966 Prospect Park commemoration and so did a bit of digging. I noticed that May 29, 1966 fell on a Sunday and am therefore curious as to why they did not have the event on the anniversary itself. Perhaps Sunday blue laws were still stringent enough to move it to another day; or, maybe a weekday was better to accommodate school groups. I’ll never know.

There was an 8-10 minute film from the period produced by the Brooklyn Union Gas Company, today part of National Grid, with wonderful images. The signage next to the plasma screen noted that Brooklyn Union had placed the film in a time capsule to be opened for Prospect Park’s bicentennial in 2066. Apparently they made a few copies and gave one to the BHS. Civil War veterans were a frequent sight at events like this in Prospect Park well into the 1930s. That is why they changed the name of Prospect Park Plaza to Grand Army Plaza in 1926. By 1966 they were of course all gone. I was a little surprised however not to see any Great War veterans, who were still very much around in significant number, at this time.

To read the old New York Times articles about this event is to see a Brooklyn that is no more. The borough had not yet hit rock bottom but the post-industrial decline and white flight are there for the observant to notice. A May 30, 1966 headline reads “Centennial Celebration Will Open Thursday for City Oasis, Now in Decline Attendance Falling off.” Still, there were signs of hope. Mayor Lindsay and Robert Moses were both on hand and addressed the park’s issues. Federal and local funds had already been appropriated to renovate the boathouse and other venues. The park would fall much farther over the next three decades before turning around in the mid-1990s but is heartening to know that there were people, some prominent, others less so, studiously holding the line and doing what they could in what was a difficult situation.

Sunday morning coffee

29 Sunday Jul 2018

Posted by in General Grant National Memorial (NPS), Jazz, New York City

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Grant’s Tomb from Sakura Park, July 2018

I took this photo last Sunday and thought I would share. From the view from my window right now it looks like it should be a beautiful if warm day. Today marks the start of Harlem Week. Apparently this event is also called A Great Day in Harlem, after the Art Kane photograph taken sixty years ago this August. The photo is actually called Harlem 58. If you have never seen it take a look at this Daily News article from a few years back.

When this photo was taken the Harlem Renaissance was still within living memory. Many of the musicians profiled probably played in Paris in this years just after the Great War. By the late 1950s New York City was already beginning its post-industrial decline, even if that was not readily apparent at the time. From the Daily News: “The world represented by those 57 men and women — a world of late-night clubs, of gents in suits and hats and ladies in gloves, of martinis and Lucky Strikes — was already vanishing in the rear-view mirror of popular culture.” It all sounds good to me, except for the martinis and Lucky Strikes. I remember when the documentary about the film shoot came out in the mid-1990s and even that seems like five eras ago. Many of the principals, like Dizzy Gillespie, were still alive to participate in the film. It is hard to believe Sonny Rollins and Benny Golson are the only two who remain.

Harlem Week began as Harlem Day in 1974. Someone was telling me that this event used to be more anarchic back in the wild years of the 1970s, 80s and early 90s, with people sleeping overnight on benches in Riverside Park and that type of thing. The beauty of this city is that it is constantly reinventing itself. Today Harlem Week stretches a month, through August 25 this year. Come to Harlem this Summer of 2018 and experience it for yourself.

 

Percy Grainger, 1882-1961

12 Thursday Jul 2018

Posted by in Governors Island, Guest Posts, Jazz, New York City, Those we remember

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My good friend Molly Skardon, a fellow volunteer with the National Park Service here in New York City, wrote this guest piece about Percy Grainger, who was born this week in 1882. The musician and composer was already in his 30s when the war broke out in 1914. The next five years however would prove crucial in his personal and artistic development. Molly is uniquely suited to writing about Grainger. She has run the Oral History Project at Governors Island for many years and has interviewed many Army band musicians who were stationed on the island. She also works at Juilliard. New York City was the focal point for the American war effort, and even then becoming a nexus for the nascent jazz scene.

Happy Birthday to Australian musician Percy Grainger, born July 8, 1882. Grainger was pursuing an international career as a pianist and composer when the Great War began in Europe. Publicly criticized for not joining the British war effort, he sailed for America in 1915 and enlisted in the U.S. Army in June 1917, at age 34.

His first Army assignment was with the 15th Coast Artillery Band, stationed at Fort Hamilton, which is the ensemble pictured above. Grainger is the saxophonist in the center, above the small white X. Since it appears to have been chilly when the picture was taken, the time might be late 1917 or early 1918.

In June of 1918, Grainger came to Governors Island as an instructor in the program founded by the Institute of Musical Art (later part of what is now The Juilliard School) to train Army bandmasters and band musicians. Classroom instruction took place at the Institute, at Broadway and 122nd Street in Manhattan, and performing and conducting were taught on the Island.

Grainger was not particularly skilled on either the saxophone or the oboe, which he also played, but he was fascinated by wind, brass, and percussion instruments and wrote a great deal of music for them in various combinations, thus earning the gratitude of concert and military band players of succeeding generations. However, his most popularly known work is probably “Country Gardens,” an old English tune that he arranged for piano while at Fort Jay, as noted at the end of the published sheet music (“Written out, Fort Jay, Governor’s Island, N.Y., June 29, 1918”).

Grainger was discharged from the Army in 1919, and lived for the rest of his life in White Plains, New York just north of the city.

(image/Library of Congress Bain Collection)

JP Mitchel’s funeral, July 11, 1918

11 Wednesday Jul 2018

Posted by in Film, Sound, & Photography, John Purroy Mitchel, New York City, Theodore Roosevelt Jr (President), Woodrow Wilson

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Here is some stunning footage of John Purroy Mitchell’s funeral at St. Patrick’s one hundred years ago today. Note Theodore Roosevelt and, I believe, Charles Evans Hughes, who ran against Wilson in 1916, walking behind the casket as the pallbearers take Mitchel into the cathedral.

John Purroy Mitchel, 1879-1918

06 Friday Jul 2018

Posted by in John Purroy Mitchel, Leonard Wood (General), Lusitania, Memory, New York City, Preparedness (WW1), Theodore Roosevelt Jr (President), Those we remember, Woodrow Wilson

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Major John Purroy Mitchel in pilot gear, 1918

The have my article up and running over at Roads to the Great War about the life, times, and death of John Purroy Mitchel. New York City’s Boy Mayor was all of thirty-four when he became mayor in 1914. Initially he was an ally of Woodrow Wilson, who in 1913 had appointed him Collector of the Port of New York. Men like Chester Arthur had previously held the collectorship. Mitchel and Wilson soon had a falling out over what the mayor saw as the president’s poor leadership during the war. Soon, Mitchel was very publicly allying with friends like Theodore Roosevelt and Leonard Wood advocating for Preparedness. When he lost his re-election bid, Mitchel became a military aviator. He died in a flight exercise in Louisiana on July 6, 1918, one hundred years ago today.

(image/courtesy of Margaret Maloney via Wikimedia Commons)

 

New York City, July 1868

04 Wednesday Jul 2018

Posted by in Andrew Johnson, Gettysburg, Horatio Seymour, New York City, Reconstruction, Ulysses S. Grant (General and President), Vicksburg

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I would be remiss if I did not at least briefly mention that the Democratic National Convention began here in New York City 150 years ago today. This was the first presidential election since the end of the war, the assassination of Lincoln, and impeachment of Andrew Johnson. The Republicans had nominated Ulysses S. Grant in Chicago almost two months earlier. Grant would face the winner in the general election that fall. The Democratic field was wide open. President Johnson even sent a representative to take the pulse of the situation and see about maybe running. Few thought that Johnson would get the bid. Instead, George H. Pendleton of Ohio was the favorite coming in. Other leading prospects included Horatio Seymour of New York, Thomas A.Hendricks of Indiana, and Winfield Scott Hancock, one of the heroes of Gettysburg. The Democrats were meeting at Tammany Hall’s new wigwam on 14th Street that had been rushed into completion in time for the convention.

Very little actually happened at the wigwam on July 4, 1868. They did have a reading of the Declaration of Independence, which was a Tammany Fourth of July tradition. There was some talk about holding meetings that evening but that was quickly scuttled because of the holiday. This was all taking place five years after the victories at Gettysburg and Vicksburg. If you know your Gettysburg, you know that the Tammany regiment played a big role in that battle and has a prominent marker at the High Water Mark.

Most of the action that day took place a little farther south at the Cooper Institute. In a sort of shadow assembly, the Soldiers’ and sailors’ Convention was taking place there. Many former general were present including William B. Franklin and Henry Slocum. The preferred candidate here seemed to be Winfield S. Hancock. The South and West were widely represented at Cooper Union, just as they would be at the wigwam starting on July 5. In a precursor to the events that would transpire at the wigwam over the course of that hot week, Major General Ewing’s speech was a refutation of reconstruction.

In the next week I intend to go at least a little deeper into the convention held here in New York City 150 summer ago. Suffice it to say that the 1868 Democratic Convention was one of the most tragic and painful in American history. The only political gathering that may–may–have been worse in its ugliness was the convention in Chicago 100 years after it.

(top image/Library of Congress; bottom, title page of Ewing convention speech)

Flag Day

14 Thursday Jun 2018

Posted by in Great War centennial, Memory, New York City

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Flag Day 1918 was a fairly big endeavor here in New York City. For one thing, the United States was now fully engaged in the war in Europe. The Battle of Cantigny for instance had taken place just weeks earlier, with significant casualties and American deaths. Labor, management, public school children and other constituencies turned out that June 14 to show their colors. Overall Flag Day 1918 seems to have been a positive thing. However it commenced what to some may have appeared a more worrying event: June 14, 1918 was the kickoff to what national organizers were calling Loyalty Week, in which the foreign-born, especially Germans, were being asked to demonstrate their adherence and show their support for the war effort. Here we see a whiff of the nativism that had been escalating for some time. Anti-German episodes had occurred in the United States since the start of the war and had increased after the Ludendorff Offensive had begun in March 1918.

Still, tens of thousands of New Yorkers from across the five boroughs, including Russians and Slovaks from Brooklyn, Jews and Italians in the Lower East Side, German-Americans from Yorkville, and those whose roots dated the Revolutionary War Era turned out in a celebratory mood. Here are a few photos, just three of many, from that day.

The Sons of the Revolution in the State of New York held this gathering at the Sub-Treasury building near Wall Street. The sign reads: Eat less. Feel better. Look better. Help win the war.

Central Park

New York City schoolchildren

(images/National Archives)

 

46 years ago today…

10 Sunday Jun 2018

Posted by in New York City

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I left Grant’s Tomb in mid afternoon and was walking south on Broadway when I saw this at 102nd Street. It’s an electronic billboard that the city uses to let the public know about subway changes and things like that. Actually Elvis recorded two live albums this day, though one of them was not released until twenty years after he died. The King played four shows at Madison Square Garden during his June 1972 stint, the first time he had performed in New York City since the late 1950s. The shows on Saturday the 10th ended up as An Afternoon in the Garden and Elvis As Recorded at Madison Square Garden. The latter was rushed into production and released just one week after the concert, and the afternoon show was released in 1997.

Fiorello La Guardia’s Memorial Days

28 Monday May 2018

Posted by in Franklin Delano Roosevelt, John Purroy Mitchel, Memory, New York City, Preparedness (WW1)

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John Purroy Mitchel, New York’s boy mayor, died 100 years ago this coming July. Mitchel was in office from 1914-17, thus overlapping almost entirely with the early years of the Great War. Mitchel was a proponent of Preparedness and as such became a natural ally of Theodore Roosevelt, Leonard Wood, and others advocating for American readiness to join the fight. After Mitchel left office he joined the Army Air Service and was killed in Lake Charles, Louisiana when he fell out of an airplane during a training exercise in July 1918. Friends dedicated a memorial to him in Central Park near 90th Street and Fifth Avenue in November 1928. For years, especially throughout the 1930s and 1940s, the Mitchel monument was a focal point of Memorial Day commemorations in New York City. One regular attendee was Fiorello La Guardia, who over the course of his tenure in office from 1934-45 observed at least nine of twelve Memorial Days at the monument to his mayoral forerunner, Fusion Party associate, and fellow World War 1 aviator.

New York Times, May 31, 1934: La Guardia is second from the right.

The photograph above shows La Guardia at the Mitchel monument on Memorial Day 1934. This would have been just over a year into the FDR Administration and with the Great Depression in full effect. This was also La Guardia’s first Memorial Day as mayor. There were still Civil War veterans marching in New York City’s Memorial Day parades in these years, about 25 this year. In the years after this their numbers dwindled into the single digits.

New York Times, May 31, 1944: La Guardia was pressing for full Axis surrender in the tense days before the Normandy Invasion.

The headline here in which La Guardia advocates for an “aviator’s peace” comes from the 1944 Memorial Day observation. While obviously the public did not know the exact day that the offensive to liberate France would begin, Memorial Day 1944 took place one week before D-Day. Thus we see La Guardia pressing for all out victory. Poignantly, 1944 also happened to be the first year that a Civil War veterans did not participate in Manhattan’s Memorial Day observation. Brooklyn and Queens each had one G.A.R. veteran in the ranks. Spanish-American War veterans, doughboys from the First World War now well into middle age, and active duty servicepersons including WACS, WAVES, and SPARS were all represented.

La Guardia was on hand again at the Mitchel memorial on Memorial Day 1945. He had gotten his “aviator’s peace,” at least in Europe. By Memorial Day 1945 V-E Day had passed and everyone was waiting anxiously to see what would happen in the Pacific.