Remember Me To Herald Square

Location:   Herald Square
Year:   1896

Macy*s Herald Square is an iconic building all on its own, the chain's flagship store and the largest Department Store in the Western Hemisphere. It occupies most of the corner plot.  However, directly in front of it is a five story privately-owned building that Macy*s has never been able to acquire. The Macy*s building jogs around it. Draped by a vast Macy*s shopping bag, the building is virtually invisible, but a close look will disclose the Sunglass Hut store that occupies the ground floor.  When the plot was sold to new owners in 1911, it cost one million dollars --- the first million dollar real estate deal ever.

The Hippodrome

Location:   Midtown Manhattan
Year:   1905-1939 

The Hippodrome in 1907

The Hippodrome was the world's largest theatre when it was built in 1905. It stood on Sixth Avenue between West 43rd and West 44th Streets in Midtown Manhattan and had a seating capacity of 5,300, and a 100 x 200 ft (20,000 square foot) stage. The theatre had state of the art theatrical technology for its time, including a rising glass water tank the size of a small lake.

The interior of the Hippodrome, 1905

During its heyday, the Hippodrome featured lavish spectacles complete with circus animals, swimming horses, opulent sets, and 500-member choruses. In 1918, on the brightly lit stage of the Hippodrome, Harry Houdini made a 10,000-pound elephant disappear, creating a worldwide sensation. It also featured musicals, operas, sports events, vaudeville acts, and, in the 1930s, movies. 

Houdini at the Hippodrome, 1918

The expense of maintaining the Hippodrome made it a perennial financial failure. It lost money throughout The Great Depression, and was finally torn down in 1939. The office building on its site is now known colloquially as "the Hippodrome building." 

The "20th Century Limited"

Location:   New York to Chicago
Year:   1902

In 1938, the 20th Century Limited was upgraded with Art Deco streamlined locomotives and cars

From 1902 to 1967, the 20th Century Limited was the primary form of passenger transportation between New York and Chicago via "the water level route" --- up the Hudson River, along the Mohawk River, through Buffalo, and along Lake Erie. The trip took about 16 hours.

The 20th Century Limited logo

Traveling between Grand Central Station in NYC and LaSalle Street Station in Chi-Town, the 20th Century Limited had gourmet food, elegant Pullman cars, and comfortable accommodations. Mail carried on the train had a special cancellation stamp. Lapel flowers for men's suits and perfume for the ladies were standard "extras" given to each passenger as they boarded. Not for nothing was it called "The Most Famous Train In The World." 

The solarium in the observation car

Entraining and detraining passengers walked along a red carpet to approach and leave the train, and the New York Central Railroad called this innovation "giving passengers the red-carpet treatment." 

In 1947, the "Hickory Creek" sleeping cars added a new level of comfort to the 20th Century Limited

Fort Terry

Location:   Plum Island
Year:   1898

Fort Terry was part of the ring of defensive forts that protected New York Harbor. Opened in 1898, Fort Terry was constructed in order to protect Long Island Sound from possible attack during the Spanish-American War. It remained a coastal defense until 1969. 

 

The Top Cop

Location:   Mulberry Street in lower Manhattan
Year:   1895-1897

In 1895, Theodore Roosevelt received an invitation from New York City's Progressive Mayor, William Strong, to become a Commissioner of the New York City Police Board.  Due to T.R.'s influence, he was elected President of the Board.  New York's Finest were infamous as the most corrupt cops in America at the time.

Police Board President Roosevelt established the first Police Academy in the U.S., pioneered bicycle patrols, promoted civil service reforms for recruitment and promotion of officers, hired minority officers (including female clerks), created meritorious service medals, had telephones installed in station houses, fought the endless and endemic corruption of the N.Y.P.D., and established a Municipal Lodging House for Waifs through the Board of Charities. 

T.R. was famous for disguising himself and patrolling the streets at night with his journalist friends Jacob Riis and Lincoln Steffens, hoping to catch policemen accepting bribes, drinking on the job, sleeping, or in flagrante delicto with prostitutes. 

His reformist zeal soon sickened a number of his fellow Police Board members who acted together to block his reforms (and incidentally maintain their own bribetaking systems). Finally frustrated, Roosevelt quit the Police Board in 1897, but subsequently, as Governor of New York State, T.R. signed an act in March 1901 to replace the corrupt, bureaucratic, and politicized Board of Police Commissioners with a single Police Commissioner.

Howland & Aspinwall

Location:   South Street, New York
Year:   1845  

The House burghee of Howland & Aspinwall

Howland & Aspinwall was a New York City-based merchant firm that specialized in the Pacific Ocean trade, especially the importing of goods from China. It is best known for taking a pioneering role in the financing of the first clipper ships, especially the Sea Witch, which made the New York-to-Hong Kong run in a record 74 days, 14 hours, and the Rainbow, the first extreme clipper. Both were built in New York in 1845.

Clipper "Rainbow"

Howland & Aspinwall imported high-status goods such as porcelain, silk, and tea from China. The import tariffs paid by Howland & Aspinwall made up a significant portion of federal revenues during the 1840s.

Clipper "Sea Witch"

The Howlands and the Aspinwalls donated lavishly to the Metropolitan Museum of Art and helped found the A.S.P.C.A.

Following the discovery of gold in California, Howland & Aspinwall focused primarily on the '49ers who were trying to reach California as fast as possible. Howland & Aspinwall turned their primary attention from wind-driven clippers to steam-driven paddleboats.  As part of a consortium of New York merchant shippers, Howland & Aspinwall formed the Pacific Mail Steamship Company. P.M.S. eventually became American President Lines, and then today's Neptune-Orient Lines.

South Street in Manhattan, circa 1845

Part of the Aspinwall family fortune was eventually bequeathed, through grandmother Mary Aspinwall Roosevelt, to Franklin D. Roosevelt, 32nd President of the United States.

Wall Street --- of pigs and patroons

Location:   Northernmost New Amsterdam
Year:   1653

In 1653, the Dutch patroons of the New Amsterdam colony decided to increase the safety of their settlement by building a defensive barrier across the northern boundary of the colony. It began as a picket fence, and was eventually developed into a twelve-foot wooden palisade. Ostensibly developed as a first line of defense against marauding Lenape Indians (who never marauded), the palisade faced greater danger from the settlers' livestock. The colonists' animals were allowed free range north of the barrier. While cattle and horses posed no problem, rooting hogs seeking out fresh roots and grass succeeded in unearthing the base of the posts that supported the barrier. 

The Director General of the colony, Peter Stuyvesant urged the government to take precautions against the pigs. He detailed with “great grief the damages, done to the walls of the fort by hogs, especially now again the spring when the grass comes out.”

The burghers appropriated additional funds to strengthen the fence, and hired a herdsman to keep the pigs from digging up the posts. They also built a service road that ran parallel to the barrier and allowed for easier, quicker repairs to the fence. With the usual pragmatism that marked Dutch activity in the New World they called the service road simply, "Wall Street."  

New Amsterdam. The wide north-south running street is Broadway. The street crossing the island from east to west is Wall Street. The hatches represent fortifications

The rut running alongside the picket fence is Wall Street, circa 1653.