New York City

Everyday here in the Milstein Division, we get questions from all over the city and around the country about the history of New York City. Questions range from the very specific, “What was the weather in Manhattan on May 7th 1864?” to the dauntingly vague, “My great-grandfather lived in New York, his name was Patrick Murphy. Could you send me information on him?” Fortunately, the library’s collection of reference material on New York City history is astounding and rare is the question that goes unanswered. But for those who don’t have direct access to our print collection and are interested in researching the history of our great metropolis, I invite you to a free research class at the library this week.

With all of our concrete and asphalt spaces, it is sometimes very difficult to find refuge from the summer heat in New York City. As a child I envied my neighbors in the apartment building across the street which had a pool. It was surrounded by a fence high enough so that you could only see swimmers plunge off the diving board. If only I had known then of the free public swimming pools scattered through all of the five boroughs!

“Cartographic materials” and “cartographic resources” are phrases that we use in the map library world to describe a whole gamut of map-like information sources. Elevation profiles and geologic sections are particular types of cartographic materials that represent vertical planes, perpendicular to the earth’s surface, in contrast to the typical horizontal-surface representations commonly referred to as maps.

Here are a couple of examples from the NYPL Digital Gallery that show the added dimension that profiles can provide for an understanding of the New York City environment. Click on the images to connect to them in the Digital Gallery, where you can enlarge and zoom into them.

Profile of the twelve avenues in the city of New York

[Profile of] Tibbits Brook route [of Croton Aqueduct from the Harlem River to the Battery in Manhattan]

(Note the distributing reservoir on the crest of Murray['s] Hill, the site of NYPL!)

Residents of New York City, members of a metropolis that somehow simultaneously operates as a small village, are all familiar with certain “characters” who frequent public spaces. Today it is the “Naked Cowboy” one can find entertaining the tourists in Times Square, the affable gentleman selling vegetable peelers in Union Square, or even the kids who perform gravity-defying acrobatics on the A train. A similar character who was surely familiar to many in the streets of NYC during the nineteen-teens through the nineteen-thirties was Kitty Marion, hawker of the Birth Control Review.

I've always been fascinated with landscapes changing through time as seen though the lens of the map. Shorelines, especially where there are lots of waves and tides, are particularly interesting things in that they are so clearly dynamic. These fire insurance maps of Coney Island, created between 1880 and 1907 document those changes beautifully. In addition to those covering Coney Island, the NYPL has digitized close to 2000 maps at this level of detail for all five boroughs of New York City.

G.W. Bromley, Atlas of the entire City of Brooklyn, 1880, Plate 35

E. Robinson, Robinson's atlas of Kings County, New York, 1890, Plate 20

G.W. Bromley, Atlas of the Borough of Brooklyn, 1907, Plate 28

If you like the "Satellite View" feature in Google Maps then you should enjoy these aerial photographs of New York City. In 1924 Arthur Tuttle flew over the city snapping pictures of every building and landmark there was. His images of NYC rooftops clearly show the outline of all the buildings. The atlas containing his photos is called:

Sectional aerial maps of the City of New York / [photographed and assembled under the direction of the chief engineer, July 1st, 1924].

Here are a couple of samples cropped from larger images:

The Staten Island Ferry Terminal (from image 21A)

What makes stretching out on the Bryant Park Lawn irresistible? This photograph taken in 1925 could easily be a scene of the park today. The similarities, however, would end there considering the Bryant Park depicted in the above photo and the Bryant Park of today. Those of you familiar with the park's evolution know that its history is dappled with periods of renovation and dereliction.

The power of the Manhattan Bridge cannot be denied. It is an orchestration of rivet studded girders, harp like cables and beautiful beaux art design and it spans the East River like a dancer leaping across a stage. Her audience is the city of New York and specifically its Brooklyn residents. I ride across her expanse daily via the subway. I always position myself by a window. Once the train is delivered from darkness, I stop what I am reading and look out: out the windows, through the massive metal beams, beyond the walkway and out into the city. It is a ride I never tire of because the beauty is apparent and it is relatively short lived. Slowly the train descends into the tunnel on the other side and the journey continues and my eyes return to the page in the book I am reading.

There's a great selection of Staten Island maps and Atlases in the NYPL Digital Gallery. Using the "Pan and Zoom" feature the maps can be enlarged to the point where you can read street names and even the names of residents of individual houses. "Pan and Zoom" is not available on all maps, however.

Here are some of the maps and atlases available:

Atlas of Staten Island, Richmond County, New York, from official records and surveys; compiled and drawn by F. W. Beers.
Published in 1874, this Atlas contains 35 maps of neighborhoods on Staten Island including property lines, names of property owners, and outlines of individual buildings.

Borough of Richmond, Topographical Survey. (1906-1913)

Have you lived in New York City long enough to remember when it used to be dangerous? Even the Worst Case Scenario Handbook:Travel has a section on how to handle riding the subway here! While this city is now arguably a safe place to live it certainly has a history marked with violence.

Take riots for example. New York City has had many of them; in fact the anniversary of a bloody and misguided riot is upon us. On May 10, 1849 violence erupted, due not to a draft, or a food shortage, or low wages. The Astor Place Riot ensued over a petty dispute between two actors, Edwin Forest, an American and William Macready, an Englishman. The deeper issue, however, was one of nationalism and classism as expressed in this surviving broadside. You can read a very dramatic account of the riot and the events leading to it in The Great Riots of New York City, by J.T. Headley. The event was so dramatic that it actually inspired Richard Nelson's play Two Shakespearean Actors.

Can you think of a present day equivalent to the Astor Place Riot? The closest I came was a fight between the Blue Man Group of Berlin and the one working at Astor Theater over which city has the hippest art scene. But that wouldn't be dangerous, that would just be bizarre.

While riding the subway over the past weeks I couldn’t help but notice the posters promoting the month of May as the month of the bike. Since 1990, May has been officially designated as Bike Month NYC, celebrating cyclists, bicycles and generally, all things bike, by sponsoring bike tours, rallys, and other events. Every May I see thousands of bicyclists pedaling through my neighborhood in the Five-Boro Bike Tour (which sold out rapidly this year) and every year I’m pleasantly surprised by the sheer number of people involved. New York City has had a long relationship with the bike. Admittedly it’s been a bumpy road, but really it was love at first sight, though perhaps infatuation might be a better term.

Way back in 1868, New Yorkers were swept up in a craze over the fore-runner to the modern bicycle, the velocipede. Developed in France, the two-wheeled velocipede made its way across the Atlantic to the United States in the 1860s and was taken up by middle-class New Yorkers as a novelty. However, within a few years a full-fledged velocipede-mania developed, eventually dying down in the early 1870s. In 1868 and 1869 alone, nearly a dozen riding schools and tracks opened up across Manhattan and Brooklyn and a number of velocipede manufacturers set up shop in the city as well, fueled by the high demand for more and better versions of the velocipede. Newspapers and periodicals of the day were constantly commenting upon the craze and the effect it had on city life, particularly in the streets and parks. The consequences of the introduction of the velocipede in New York City were many, ranging from discussion of the need for new laws to regulate traffic to debate over the propriety of women riding velocipedes. A nice little article from the New York Times describing the intensity of excitement over the velocipede can be read here

The New York Public Library, of course, has tons of material on the history and development of the bicycle. There are books on the velocipede as it was in the mid-nineteenth century such as, The Velocipede: Its Past, Present and Future, published in 1869, as well as more recent takes on the history of the bicycle like Herlihy’s Bicycle: the History. However, as I enjoy reading contemporary accounts of events I went to our historical newspaper and periodical databases to get some first hand takes on the mania that swept New York and the rest of the country. A good database to start with is the ProQuest Historical Database which provides access to historical runs of major U.S. newspaper and over a 1,000 periodicals. But there are many more electronic resources available, like Harper’s Weekly and America’s Historical Newspapers , both of which provide tons of material on 19th century America.
Another source to keep in mind, especially when researching a machine such as the velocipede, which was constantly being improved upon, is Google’s Patents Search. While periodicals in the 19th century, such as Scientific American, frequently updated readers on new patents and other technological advancements they don’t show readers the patent in all of its glory. My favorite thus far is the Land & Water Velocipede of 1869; but really any patent search for “Improved Velocipede” yields testimony to the endless inventiveness of Americans.

Happy Bike Month!

Yesterday…

…and today!

OK, so this is the thing about which just about all Staten Islanders, no matter what their background or politics, have over the years been least proud. The Fresh Kills Landfill (or as we used to call it, “the dump,”) closed on March 22, 2001, certainly in part as a reward from then mayor Rudy Giuliani to Staten Island for its political support.

The dump opened up in 1948 and was supposed to be temporary. It grew to be by most accounts the largest garbage dump in the world.

I had the pleasure(?!) of growing up about two blocks away from one section of the dump. I can remember before it was there. It was a salt marsh that today we would call wetlands. There was a guy whose nickname was “Yonk” and his family owned horses and a barn, and he used to ride a wagon pulled by horses (I swear this is true!) and harvested the hay to feed his horses. This was in the late 1950s or early 1960s. When they started filling in the area with garbage, some were glad because they felt it would kill the horrible infestations of mosquitos we used to get during the summer. However, the mosquitos didn’t go away, and we had the horrible stench to go along with the skeeters. It was good for weather forcasting, though, as right before it rained it REALLY stunk!

Once they covered the garbage with a dirt layer, however, it became somewhat of an unofficial recreation area. Shallow pools of water quickly froze in the winter and we went ice skating there. Some guys went hunting, sometimes getting pheasants but more likely killing rats and sea gulls. Some went fishing, and some went swimming in the Fresh Kills creek. There was a dock with boats there that pre-dated the dump.

I never ate any fish or animals from the dump, (or went swimming there) but I did eat some vegetables that grew up there. They were pretty good (great fertilizer, I guess) but heaven only knows what kind of chemicals were in them. Well, no apparent effects up to this point!

Today, the West Shore Expressway (Route 440) cuts right through the dump. (It wasnt’t there when I was a kid.) It is amazing how quickly nature took over after the dump closed, along with some human help, to make it look like it does in the second picture above. It is actually quite pretty now. Really! The whole thing is going to be turned into parks. Hope it isn’t the usual city project and takes years and years. I’d like to go up there again before I throw off this mortal coil!

About six years ago when I started working at the Mid-Manhattan Library in the General Reference Collection, a man came to the desk, wanting a book on New York Public Library history. He said the book was written by a woman. The first book that came to my mind was Phyllis Dain’s New York Public Library: A History of its Founding and Early Years. At that moment I did not know the call number but I knew its location on the shelf. I pulled the book from the shelf and gave it to him. I gestured for him to take a seat and with a smile he walked over to a table. I went back to my seat.

A half hour later, he came to the desk to return the book and thanked me. I asked if he found what he was looking and with that he told me he was giving a lecture at the National Arts Club that evening. He had come to Mid-Manhattan to do a last bit of fact- checking. The topic of his lecture, New York Public Library history in relation to Andrew Haswell Green. Our conversation was not long, but at the end of it I decided to ask him for his business card. “Gladly!” he replied and then pulled the card out of his wallet and handed it to me. We shook hands and said goodbye. I looked at his card carefully, looked at the name. Up to that point though we had engaged in a lively conversation, however we had not exchanged names. The card said in bold lettering “Rediscovering Andrew Haswell Green NYC’s Forgotten Visionary” and under this in small letters was the name Michael Miscione. Almost half the card was taken up with a photo of a man from the neck up, his bearded visage serene, confident. The man, no doubt, Andrew Haswell Green. Once off the desk, I put the card away in my desk and thought about what an interesting hour it had been.

Later I looked up Andrew Haswell Green. He was a very prominent figure among the movers and shakers in New York City in the late 19th century and he was integral to the establishment of Central Park and New York City as we know it today, by combining the boroughs in 1898. Green was instrumental in creating the famous grid of streets and avenues that help to define Manhattan. He also was a major participant in the establishment of The New York Public Library and the Metropolitan Museum. You name it--Haswell was involved in every iconic facet of what we know to be New York City for the latter part of the 19th century. Unfortunately, he was murdered by a crazed individual who mistook him for someone else and his name sank into obscurity. That is until Michael Miscione came along. Michael Miscione has been a one-man force in trying to revive the name Andrew Haswell Green and his importance in New York City History.

I kept Michael Miscione’s card in my desk along with other cards that I felt may somehow be important to me one day. That day came last year, many years after we had first met. When I was asked by my supervisor to begin doing programs in late 2006, I was at first a reluctant participant. Once I started doing programs, I discovered I really liked it and that is where my programming passion began. As I searched for interesting and dynamic programs, my thoughts went all over the place. Everything I read, saw or heard suddenly had an import beyond its initial interest. A potential program was in everything I experienced.

I decided to contact Michael Miscione to speak at the library. I knew he lectured based on our one encounter many years ago. And more important I knew he would be interesting. New York City- related programs are always a draw. We get hundreds of questions about New York City; patrons can’t get enough of the subject, me included.

After many attempts at contacting Michael Miscione, I finally reached him. I relayed the story of how we met many years ago and why I saved his card and ultimately why I was calling him that day. Initially he hesitated and then like a rubber band being shot, he remembered the encounter almost exactly as I did, except he could go onto to remember a really successful lecture he gave that evening at the National Arts Club. I thought to myself “Bingo! Cyn you just got yourself a really good program.” Michael was more than happy to come and speak at the library. I learned that he was the Borough of Manhattan Historian, that he was a filmmaker, and he was in fact as interesting as I found him to be many years before.

Michael Miscione has come twice to speak at the library. The first program he presented in the spring of 2007 was The Combining of the Boroughs of 1898 and the Establishment of New York City. He presented his second program this past February: The People vs. Wayne Boyd: The Murder Trail That Nearly Redrew The Map of New York City.

Both talks were the best that programming could offer. Slide lectures with wonderful historic photographs were supported by a dynamic speaker whose command of his subject takes the viewer on a most exciting intellectual ride. One hundred people attended each program. Michael Miscione will be speaking again on Monday, November 17, 2008. I encourage New York City history enthusiasts to mark their calendars now. You won’t be disappointed!

In light of Monday’s announcement of the Pulitzer Prizes in journalism I wanted to highlight the birth of the New York Tribune on April 10, 1841, and the paper’s first editor, Horace Greeley. Greeley was a highly opinionated man not afraid to print his views on temperance, worker’s rights, women’s suffrage, socialism and even vegetarianism. The newspaper, shaped by Mr. Greeley's views, was highly influential and was even called by some the “political bible,” of its time. You can take a look at issues from 1900-1910 through the Library of Congress's website Chronicling America, but by this time the paper had changed a great deal. For other years you'll have to refer to the microfilm.

Spring has sprung, and for many of us that means the beginning of the baseball season. A few years ago, a ballpark, named Richmond County Ballpark at St. George, was built right next to the Staten Island Ferry terminal. It is the home of the Staten Island Yankees, a Class A minor league team of the New York Yankees. They play a short season (this year from June 17 to September 6). Prices for tickets are cheap; in past years they have been in the $10 range for the best seats. Food prices are cheaper than the major leagues, but not as inexpensive as one might hope, at least in my opinion. Most of the players are right out of high school or college, and for most this is their first professional baseball experience. They play with a lot of enthusiasm and hope.

Current NY Yankees Chien-Ming Wang, Melky Cabrera, and Shelly Duncan all played here before moving on in their baseball careers.

It is a great place to take in a game on a hot summer night, getting a nice breeze from the water. A lot of people rave about the view of the Manhattan skyline, but I think my favorite non-baseball thing is watching all the the ships passing by. It reminds me that we live on an island, which in the day-to-day running around many of us tend to forget. At least I do.

Check it out this summer if you get a chance! Even if you aren't a big baseball fan, I think you will still enjoy it!

The St. George Library branch is right up the street and is open till 8:00PM Monday thru Thursday.

Want to see some amazing photographs of New York City in the 1940’s and 1950’s? We recently acquired Vivian Cherry’s Helluva Town, a book of black and white photographs with images of New Yorkers at street corners and fruit auctions, on the el train and on bocce ball courts. The photographs capture the kind of New York that always seems damp and chilly, kind of like today.

I know its awfully unseasonable to post a wintry scene but I wanted to point something out to you in this image. It is the cover of a holiday card depicting the Humanities and Social Sciences Library on a very snowy day. You'll also notice two flags on the card. When my uncle received it last Christmas he asked me why the library would fly a French flag. I thought to myself "that's a good question."

This bridge changed everything on Staten Island, changing it from a rural area of small towns and open spaces and farms (which I recall) to one of suburbia. I remember going to Fort Wadsworth with my family in the early 1960s to check the progress of the building of the bridge. The fort is now open to the public, and it is managed by the National Park Service and is part of the Gateway National Recreation Area.

Staten Island was a Tory area during the American Revolution. However, I read an account that said Americans were standing in the area of the picture above when British ships left New York after losing the revolution. Apparently the British fired a shot at the new citizens of America as they were yellling insults at the departing soldiers and sailors of their former country.

Two books about the bridge that are available for borrowing are The Bridge by Gay Talese and Spanning the Narrows by Brian Merlis.

The South Beach branch is close by this scene.

Caption-After School at Kreischerville: children lined up at librarian’s table behind bookwagon.
No date given.

Kreischerville is the next town north of Tottenville, but today it is called Charleston. Kreischerville was named after the owner of a brickyard, an industry that once thrived here as the clay-type soil here was good for making bricks. Some of the excavations were filled in by water and today are called Clay Pit Ponds. Mr. Kreischer’s mansion is still here. It was converted into a restaurant a few years ago, but it is now closed. I believe the brickyards were closed in the 1920s or 1930s.

Picture from NYPL Digital Gallery

In bits and pieces of metal and muck a different type of life rained down upon the street below and I could not stop thinking about what goes on high above our heads. This as a result of the recent spate of tragedies of men and debris falling to the street from above, far above. Before Christmas two window washers crashed to the street below along with their scaffolding from 47 floors above. Miraculously one man lived. Just last week a construction worker fell from roughly the same height along with part of the floor and thousands of pounds of wet cement.
At any given time, many, many floors above our heads there is a whole world taking place. We see it only in spats, most of us carry on oblivious to what is happening above us. Things are being hauled up and down, unbelievably heavy things, things that would cause great damage if they were to fall, things that would splatter the flesh in an instant. For the most part nothing comes down upon us unexpectedly. From time to time things drop from the sky as though giant invisible hands with nimble fingers have plucked people and metal and tossed them down. Sometimes massive objects do topple over upon us. Will the scrim of scaffolding really protect us? Despite our ability to reign in nature, from time to time, she says “tsk, tsk, tsk little darlins that is not physics, you can’t fool mother nature…KABOOM!” And so it was with the most recent tragedies. Horrifying, terrifying and exhilarating incidents that make the heart race when you stop to think about it. Surprisingly, for the most part, the innocent below are untouched. Even more disturbing is that these incidents occur on the bustling streets of New York City.
Midtown construction work is constantly going on, often high above our heads. In the warms months of spring and summer I was a regular audience at many of the sites. It was fascinating and exciting I returned again and again for the thrill. I was riding a virtual roller coaster and the price of admission was free. How could I resist?
Once I was on a side street between 5th Ave and Madison when I noticed almost in the clouds a crane slowly turning with a load attached to a long cable. Enormous weights were in motion to counter balance. It was a ballet of metal and muscle and I had to press my back against the wall of a building as I looked up. Vertigo took my breath away. I could not believe what I was witnessing juxtaposed against the lunch time crowds rushing to and fro. I was mesmerized, enthralled. I vowed to come back everyday and I did. After a while one of workers noticed me and he was willing to answer my myriad of questions. I tried to imagine what it was like to be way up there, the man driving the crane whose only contact with the world is via walkie-talkie. I visited this site often. I was even lucky enough to watch them bring the crane down. I have watched huge cooling systems being hoisted to the tops of tall buildings. I have watched heavy loads of I-beams go up with the wave of a hand above 42nd Street as crowds and traffic go about their business below. I even saw a load of construction material ready to go up suddenly spring loose from the thick metal cables that bound it. The look on the workmens’ faces revealed how truly lucky we all were.
I look forward to the warm months when I can watch the events of the building on the corner of 6th Ave and 42nd St unfold and discover new sites where I can watch this mechanical matinee. The canopy layer of our concrete forest is as rich with life as any tropical forest.