Category Archives: New York City

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.

The Greensward Plan turns 160

28 Saturday Apr 2018

Posted by in New York City

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Detail of 1870s Central Park map

Hey all, I am sorry about the lack of posts recently. The semester has been in full swing and I have been involved in a number of different projects. In a few minutes I am headed to Grand Central Station to catch a train to Yonkers with a small group of others to show the World War One film we completed last November. We will be at the Yonkers Historical Society. It feels good to begin to the city from where our doughboy came. Today is an important and probably much overlooked day in New York City history: it wagon April 28, 1858–160 years ago today–that the Central Park commissioners awarded first prize to Plan Number 33. This was Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux’s Greensward Plan, the template for what became Central Park.

The original law creating a park for Manhattan was passed in 1853. As I point out in the manuscript of my book, we are all fortunate that no progress ensued because Olmsted in those years was touring the South and writing about his experiences witnessing slavery and Southern society. Had construction began then, his and Vaux’s vision for a “central” park would never have been realized, at least not in New York City. It is a theme I come back to with students and others often, but when we are in Central Park or other parks such as Prospect here in Brooklyn we get the impression landscape architects put a stone wall around nature and left it at that. Nothing could be further from the truth. These are fully realized man-made spaces, just like a building, a sculpture, or what have you.

Hopefully today when the many thousands of people are enjoying Central Park on this spring day, a few will pause and appreciate that the process of creating what they are experiencing started on this date all those years ago.

(image/NYPL)

Pausing to remember Lincoln in 1918

15 Sunday Apr 2018

Posted by in Memory, Monuments and Statuary, New York City, Those we remember

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Brooklyn Daily Eagle, April 14, 1918

New Yorkers stopped what they were doing in mid-April 1918 to remember the assassination of Abraham Lincoln. It is important to remember that Lincoln’s death was still within living memory for many Americans; it had only occurred fifty-three years previously. With so many young men now in training camps and soon to be on their way to France, the Lincoln commemoration was muted. As the headline here shows, the Brooklyn Riding and Driving Club remembered both Washington and Lincoln at its 27th annual dinner on Saturday 13 April. Present for that event at the Montauk Club were officers from the British and French Armies. During a toast to men for the BRDC who had joined the AEF, one poilu reflected “The German [1918 spring] offensive is to be taken seriously but the real days of anxiety were the days of 1914. Now we know that you are rushing troops to our aid. Then it was a question of ‘to be; or not to be.”

Lincoln was being remembered throughout the city that weekend. In its April 14 edition the New York Times published recently discovered letters by Lincoln and Robert E. Lee. Maybe I am reading too much into it, but it could be that in presenting letters from both Lincoln and Lee the Times sought to balance regional sympathies. That day the Calvary M.E. Church in Harlem hosted Laura D. Prisk, who for the past several years was pushing to officially designate June 14 as Flag Day. (That came to pass in 1949.) There were many veterans from the Grand Army of the Republic on hand to see Mrs. Prisk and others talk about the ongoing war in Europe. Prisk proclaimed that “Much attention is being payed to the long-range gun of the Hun but the real long-range gun is that of America, reaching 3,000 miles to the battle line.” Prisk was in attendance again the next day when she laid a wreath and spoke at the Lincoln statue in Union Square. On hand were sailors from the USS Recruit, the depot established in Union Square the previous May to sell liberty bonds and spur enlistment.

 

 

Hitting a benchmark

07 Wednesday Mar 2018

Posted by in Incorporating New York (book project), New York City, Writing

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William Cullen Bryant, Grolier Club

Occasionally during a semester we in my department take annual leave days to research and write. Today was one such day for myself. I was fortunate because the rain and snow came in buckets. I can hear people shoveling outside as I write this. I did not leave the house today. I did two loads of laundry downstairs and otherwise stayed in. It turned out to be an important day because I managed to finish the draft of Incorporating New York. The manuscript landed at almost exactly 75,000 words. Of course there is still a great deal of work to be done. I’ll be spending the next several weeks editing and fact checking. After that, I’m going to organize the references. These are not small things. Still, today has proven to be an an important benchmark in the project. The structure of my text is now set and these is no more primary research to be done. The task is more clerical now. I cannot tell you what a burden this lifts from me. I am going to keep grinding in the coming days and weeks to make the narrative as tight as I can make. I’m really happy with how things have turned out.

I had a small serendipitous moment last night. A friend and I attended a science fiction talk and reception last night at the Grolier Club on East 60th Street. When I was leaving I noticed the painting you see above. I did not know who it was at first but it turned out to be William Cullen Bryant, a member of the club and a good friend of, among others, Frederick Law Olmsted. Bryant is a minor character in my book. I love visiting places like the Union League and Grolier Clubs and never pass up a chance to visit when invited. I think that institutions like these provide continuity, which is no small thing in a place that changes as quickly as New York City does. This was in evidence last night; they’re constructing a modern building right next to the Grolier Club. Change is one of the themes of my book. I couldn’t help but take a quick snap of the painting before heading out last night to beat the snow home.

 

A new museum for a new era

30 Saturday Dec 2017

Posted by in Incorporating New York (book project), Museums, New York City, Theodore Roosevelt Sr (Father)

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I have been working on the draft of Incorporating New York for much of these past several weeks. I am now in December 1868. The book ends in 1878. I thought I would share the document you see above, which was sent on 30 December 1868, 149 years ago today. The letter was written by a number of New Yorkers to the commissioners of Central Park seeking permission to place what would become The American Museum of Natural History within the grounds of the park. The signers include Theodore Roosevelt Sr., Howard Potter, J.P. Morgan, Levi P. Morton and others. This is an interesting period in the city and the nation’s history. Being the end of the year, the individuals were naturally in a mood of reflection and thinking about prospects for the future. It was more than that however. December 1868 is less than a month after the election of Ulysses S. Grant. The country had just gotten over the Andrew Johnson impeachment and trial. Johnson would leave office in just over three months. Just three weeks prior to this letter the Union League Club of New York held a reception for Grant at which many of these very were in attendance.

(image/1870 AMNH annual report)

Sunday morning coffee

03 Sunday Dec 2017

Posted by in New York City

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Flatiron Building, December 2017

I am sitting here listening to Bill Evans with my coffee getting ready to write. The first 50 words of the day are always the most difficult. Before doing that I thought I would share the above picture that I took at 8:30 on Friday morning. That area around Madison Square Park is my favorite part of the city. Seeing the Flatiron the other day reminded me of an image (below) I showed to two English classes during our Great War module a few weeks back. This is “Britannia,” a British Mark IV used around the United States in these weeks and months for Liberty Loan drives. The image was taken on October 25, 1917 during a parade in which about 20,000 New Yorkers marched. There too that day were Mayor John Purroy Mitchel and Al Smith.

Embed from Getty Images

 

 

 

Found in Yonkers

01 Friday Dec 2017

Posted by in Film, Sound, & Photography, New York City

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Good morning, all. I know the blog has been quiet for much of this past week but there has been so much going on. This morning I emailed the draft of a small thing I wrote over these past few days. I won’t go into the details here, but will wait until it is published. I am having my morning coffee before heading to Baruch College for a library conference. I always enjoy the 69th Regiment Armory there on 25th Street as I’m on my way to Baruch. I spent the morning sending a few emails about a film showing we are having a week from tomorrow in Yonkers. I am glad we are going to the community where our doughboy, Thomas Michael Tobin, lived and built a legacy for himself and his family. Here is the flier in case one is in the New York City area next weekend.

 

When in doubt, blame Robert Moses

21 Tuesday Nov 2017

Posted by in Monuments and Statuary, New York City

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The powerful New York City Parks Commissioner (1934-60) Robert Moses makes a convenient foil.

Last week a friend at work brought this small blurb about World War monuments and Robert Moses to my attention. The vignette is a capsule summary of why there are so few World War Two monuments in New York City, in contrast to the significant number of memorials to the First World War. Though he does site other factors, the author in a nutshell blames Robert Moses. This led my friend and me to quip that when one wants to blame anything gone wrong in New York City, blame that once seemingly all-powerful builder and planner. Moses makes a great target; he held significant authority over huge public works projects for decades and was not afraid to use that influence. Thirty six years after his death, New Yorkers still very much live in the city and state that he gave us.

By the time Robert Moses became Parks Commissioner in 1934 New Yorkers had built hundreds of monuments large and small. Kevin C. Fitzpatrick chronicles these memorials in his recent book World War I New York: A Guide to the City’s Enduring Ties to the Great War. By the time Moses came to power the Treaty of Versailles had taken place fifteen long years previously. Gone were the romantic notions of fighting for civilization and to end war. Hitler was by now in power in Germany, and Stalin was firmly entrenched in the Soviet Union. Besides, the Depression was full on and even if people wanted to build monuments to the Great War dead there was little money to do so. When World War Two ended in 1945 Moses was adamant that there be no repeat of the cacophony of doughboy memorials we still see today in our parks. Each borough was to get one public monument. Of these, the only one actually built was the Brooklyn War Memorial in Cadman Plaza, something my students studied and wrote about last year. Whether this was good or bad depends on one’s perspective.

Moses indeed played a strong hand in all this. He had a vision for the city, state and region and wanted no obstacles that might intrude on that. Nothing would be built in his parks if he didn’t want it there. Still, the paucity of memorials was as much demographic and cultural as it was political. The soldiers, sailors and marines of 1941-45 were away much longer than the doughboys of 1917-18. When they came home they wanted to get on with their lives. There were four times more American in uniform–16 million vs 4 million–during the Second World War than in the First. They had seen killing and devastation on a scale that Americans had not witnessed in the trenches of France. Sixty million people had been killed around the world. The Second World War ushered in the Atomic Age and the Cold War. The veterans new full well it hadn’t been a “good war.” On the personal level, unlike their doughboy fathers, they had the GI Bill when they came home to attend school and get an education. Upon graduation, they had low interest loans that allowed them the opportunity to own their patch of grass in the suburbs. The question really is not why there were so few monuments built in the decade or so after the Second World War, it’s why there were any at all.

(image/New York Public Library)