Governor Charles Seymour Whitman spoke at the 13th Armory in Brooklyn on 27 December 1918. He had just lost a narrow race to challenger Al Smith and had asked for a recount, which was ongoing at the time.

As I said yesterday I intend to do deeper dives into the various reviews that took place in late 1918/early 1919 when the time comes. In the meantime I wanted to note the 98th anniversary of Governor Charles Seymour Whitman’s 1918 visit to the Brooklyn 13th Armory. I knew that there were parades and such in the aftermath of the Armistice, but it did not occur to me until these last few days just how ubiquitous they were. I suppose that in those heady days after the Kaiser’s abdication and Germany’s surrender that people felt that war really might have been rendered obsolete. Wilson was certainly optimistic while in Paris.

These ads ran all week in the Brooklyn Daily Eagle announcing the date change.

Governor Whitman of New York had lost to Al Smith in the November 5 gubernatorial race. Smith was the Democratic candidate and Seymour the incumbent Republican and Prohibition candidate. It’s almost a cartoon of late nineteenth and early twentieth century New York politics: Smith was a Tammany man and Whitman a Union League Clubber. The old and new were mixing in this period. On Memorial Day 1918 Whitman was in Brooklyn’s Grand Army Plaza for the GAR parade; a month after he was at the state GAR encampment in Ithaca. Still, his Prohibitionism and Smith’s Catholicism show hints of what was coming in the 1920s.

(images/Library of Congress and Brooklyn Daily Eagle)

I took this picture from the third floor of the Brooklyn Public Library this morning. It got down to 37 degrees today.

Yesterday’s Doughboy Day at Governors Island National Monument drew over 12,000 visitors, a significant increase over a usual Saturday. Here with some capsule comments are a few images from the day.

The forty-eight star flag went up over Fort Jay to begin the day.

Ryan Hegg of the World War One Centennial Committee for New York City spoke of the significance of the Great War.

The Ebony Doughboys drew large audiences at venues throughout the island.

George King III and colleague Jeff Klinger spoke to many about Ambulance 255 and the role of the AFS in the war effort.

Neil O’Connor introduced The Lost Battalion and answered questions afterward.

Living doughboy historians of different units marched through the historic district for the closing ceremony.

Meuse-Argonne Point at the northern tip of the island was where several speakers made the closing remarks of the day.

The original Ambulance 255 tending the wounded in the Woevre, September 1916. Note the bell on the left, which was used to warn of gas attacks.

While you read these words this Friday morning George King III and his
colleague Jeffrey Klinger are loading George’s ambulance onto a
trailer and heading for Governors Island. It is a circuitous route
that will take the two from Connecticut, through White Plains, NY,
into Manhattan, and finally onto the Governors Island ferry sometime
in mid-afternoon.

George King III and his restored Ambulance 255, Paris 2014

Ambulance 255 is a 1916 Model T Ford ambulance representative of the
1,200 ambulances donated by Americans and driven by U.S. volunteers in
France prior to America’s entry in World War I. This life-saving work
was carried out by the American Field Service. Join the National Park
Service and World War One Centennial Commission tomorrow at Governors
Island National Monument in New York City tomorrow, September 17, when they host Ambulance 255, the Ebony Doughboys, film historian Neil O’Connor and others in a
commemoration of the First World War.

Images: Long journeys are nothing new for George King III and his
restored Ambulance 255. For six months in summer 2014 he and the
ambulance traveled 10,000 miles through France revisiting the places where
the American Field Service performed its life-saving work. See the
ambulance and meet George and Jeff tomorrow.

(images/contemporary image via George King III; historic image courtesy of the Archives of the American Field Service and AFS Intercultural Programs.
http://www.afs.org/archives)

I took the afternoon off yesterday to have lunch and hang out with an old friend, an architect who moved away from the city several years ago. Though born here in New York City, his mother is French and he brings a strong strong European perspective to his worldview. We got to talking about The Beatles and how through some force–coincidence?, luck?, divine intervention?–their rise coincided with the transition from Austerity Britain to Swinging London. In the grander scheme of things Britain’s transformation was a process that began in 1914 in the chaos and destruction of the Great War and ended with Britain bankrupt and stripped of its empire in the wake of the Second World War. I often tell my students that history is all around them if they care to look. This morning, relaxing with my coffee, and came across this trailer for a 2013 British film called How We Used to Live, which I had never heard of before.

Enjoy.

I am in a Starbucks on Lower Broadway getting ready to taking the Governors Island ferry in a few minutes. A few minutes ago I hurriedly took the photo above of Trinity Church as seen from the Wall Street stop of the 2/3 line.

I hope everyone had a good Easter Sunday. I was walking back from Prospect Park earlier when I came upon this sign in a front yard. I naturally stopped to read it when I noticed that sure enough they had a cannon in their front yard. Note how professional the wayward marker is. In terms of quality and appearance, the battle map looks like something one sees on the Civil War Trust website. My favorite part is the wooden pail, presumably there to imitate a sponge bucket. Color me impressed.

It’s early Sunday morning. I am sitting here for a spell before going in to work to teach a class. The week is going to be a bit of a push but next weekend I’ll be getting a longer weekend taking off Good Friday. If our early spring continues I may go to the New York Botanical Garden. I wrote about 2000 words this week on the Civil War New York book. The goal is to finish the draft in mid-summer. I spent the day with friends yesterday and then came home last night and wrote about 220 words. It’s amazing how when you just sit down and begin the process takes over. I took the above photo around 10:00 last night as I was wrapping up.