Weegee’s New York Nights, Gangster-Style

Posted on August 24, 2012 by MsSusanB

Weegee, With Bomb, 1940. © Weegee/International Center of Photography.

See for yourself if much has changed in New York since the late 1930s, when Weegee worked the night beat, listening on the police-band radio for unfolding action, zeroing in on lurid murders, capturing the stares of bystanders, and doggedly getting the photo-story every night.

Check out the final days of the exhibition Weegee: Murder is My Business to see plenty of action. Weegee (Arthur Fellig) slept in a cold-water flat across from Police Headquarters downtown and sold his photos to one of twelve dailies published in the City in the late 1930s. He tried to “humanize” the news, so lots of the photos in the show feature reactions of bystanders to sensational crimes and scenes of mayhem.

The show occupies most of the International Center of Photography’s lower level, and is filled with a recreation of Weegee’s room, his camera equipment, flash bulbs, press passes, and terrific interactive displays that bring you closer to one New York’s great documentarians of the Thirties and Forties. There’s even a set of photos of a gangster rub-out alongside the actual police crime ledger that documents what happened in Little Italy that night.

Installation view of Weegee’s flat. © International Center of Photography, 2012. Photograph by John Berens.

Maybe the curators are having fun with us, but it’s interesting that there’s a slightly out-of-the-way wall of Weegee photos of cross-dressers being arrested in 1939 alongside a gallery of 19^th-century images of Jefferson Davis in a dress (President in Petticoats!), and another gallery with Christer Strömholm’s gorgeous shots of the early Sixties “ladies” working the Place Blanche in Paris.

It’s all sensational(istic) and Weegee would approve.

Christer Strömholm, Belinda, 1967. © Christer Strömholm/Strömholm Estate.

Pub Finale to NY Beer History Walk

Posted on August 22, 2012 by MsSusanB

Although we missed Brooklyn Brewery’s ’05 Black Chocolate Stout yesterday, there was plenty of beer and ambiance to welcome weary time-travelers relaxing in the beer hall at the finale of New-York Historical Society’s exhibition Beer Here: Brewing New York’s History –a friendly (and informative) barkeep, giant pretzels, and Brooklyn’s finest.

It’s a walk through time, starting with the American Revolution era, where taverns could be found everywhere in lower Manhattan with their own unique recipes for spruce beer and table ale.

Because we take water for granted today, the show emphasizes how important it was for breweries in the City to have access to a steady supply of fresh water and features a collection of 1804 wooden water pipes installed by the Manhattan Water Company in 1799. (Spoiler alert: Aaron Burr was an investor.)

Section of Manhattan Water Company wooden water pipe, ca. 1804. Source: NYHS

Hops growing became a key crop around 1808, but it wasn’t until the Croton Aqueduct was built in 1825 at Fifth and 42^nd (yes, where NYPL is today) that brewing could really take off in quantity. Wagons loaded with ice rolled in from Rockland Lane (north of Nyack).

Of course, German immigration in 1835 really blew the lid off, and by the 1890s, the City was chock-a-block (literally) with beer halls, gardens, breweries, and bottlers. And who knew that our ubiquitous beer bottle cap was born with the 1892 advent of the “crown” cap?

1950s ad shows Rheingold beer representative at work. Source: NYHS

You’ll enjoy lots of historic bottles and experimental beer containers, Miss Rheingold of 1956’s gold gown, and plenty of other colorful memorabilia to whet your thirst for real thing from Brooklyn, the Bronx, and upstate New York (in the beer hall).

Join the Revolution This Week in Brooklyn

Posted on August 19, 2012 by MsSusanB

Did you know that the British landing of 22,000 troops in Brooklyn in August 1776 was the largest sea invasion until D-Day? Or that the face-off along Flatbush was the largest and most fateful battle of the Revolution?

The site of the Continental Army’s line of defense at Battle Pass along the Flatbush Road during the Battle of Brooklyn on August 27, 1776 (Prospect Park)

It will be easy to get up to speed on this historic turning point this week by joining any of the activities happening in and around the key sites (Prospect Park, The Old Stone House, Green-Wood Cemetery, Fulton Ferry, and The Brooklyn Navy Yard) as Brooklyn hosts Battle Week 2012.

Yesterday was the vigorous, cross-country hike up to Battle Pass in Prospect Park to learn about the brave defense, and on to the grand finale at The Old Stone House to relive the historic battle with expert William Parry. The good news is that Parry will be doing it all again on Tuesday, August 21. Don’t miss this or the rest of the schedule posted on the Stone House’s Battle Week calendar. Highlights:

August 22: You’ll have to decide between a canoe tour with the Gowanus Dredgers or a history lecture on our waterfront’s role in the battle at Pier 1 at Brooklyn Bridge Park.

August 23: The spectacular pub at the top of BLDG 92 at the Navy Yard hosts Battle of Brooklyn-inspired team trivia.

August 25: Witness a reenactment of how Glover’s Marblehead Regiment facilitated Washington’s undercover escape with our Army at Brooklyn Bridge Park’s pebble beach.

August 26: Have a full day at the big battle site, Green-Wood Cemetery, with tours, parades, the Continental Army, horses, cannons, muskets, Hessians, Redcoats, and George Washington. (We’ve also heard that Ben Franklin could make an appearance, but shouldn’t he be concentrating on the U.S. Postal Service?)

The Old Stone House, where 400 brave Marylanders fought against 2,000 British, Hessians, and Cornwallis to delay their assault on the Continental Army, which escaped

August 27: The Battle on Bergen art performance by Proteus Gowanus at Smith & Bergen at their Liberty Pole.

August 29: A follow-up talk about Washington’s Retreat at Pier 1 of Brooklyn Bridge Park.

If you want to prepare, watch the video tour recorded by John Turturro, and check out the interactive map on the Old Stone House website.

380-Year Old Dutch Girl Plays House

Posted on August 15, 2012 by MsSusanB

When the Brooklyn Museum invited four artists into their period rooms for Playing House, who knew that one would be channeling her own family history, complete with her ancestors’ dramatic flight to America over 380 years ago and a tribute to the first girl in her family born in New Amsterdam?

Mary Lucier’s video Still Life #1 atop the table inside the 1675 Jan Martense Schenck House in the Brooklyn Museum

Mary Lucier created a compelling multipart installation above, around, and inside the Jan Martense Schenck House (1675), which stood in Brooklyn for about 275 years and is currently the oldest “home” in the gallery. Lucier evokes the 1572 persecution of the Huguenots in Europe through a clip from D.W. Griffith’s Intolerance overhead, and invites visitors to sit in a modern replica of an old Dutch chair to watch a slide presentation about the Rapaljie family – a story that also happens to be her own.

The chronology takes you graphically from the religious wars in Europe to a 19-year old couple who escaped, to their colonization of Albany in 1624, and to the 1625 birth of their daughter Sara at their homestead in Wallabout Bay (now the Brooklyn Navy Yard). Lucier’s video installation inside the older Schenck house evokes New Amsterdam; her transformation of his grandson Nicholas’s house (right next door in the gallery) depicts the faces and stories of Sarah’s over one million current descendants 380 years later.

Take a look at my Flickr feed to glimpse installations by Lucier, Ann Agee, Ann Chu, and Betty Woodman. Then go to Brooklyn’s site to see all four at work installing their art in the period rooms.

When the 1675 Jan Martense Schenck House stood in Brooklyn. From the digital archive of the Brooklyn Museum of Art

If you have time, browse through Brooklyn’s digital archive for the Schenck house and what it took to get it installed inside the museum in 1971.

Manhattan’s Digital Grid

Posted on May 14, 2012 by MsSusanB

How much fun can you have with the Manhattan Grid? Plenty, if you have computer access and can make a trip (before July 15) to the The Greatest Grid exhibition at the Museum of the City of New York.

Plan to spend a couple of hours wrapping your mind around how the farmland in your neighborhood was leveled by hand and horse cart to make the wide, smooth streets and sidewalks we’re used to today. (You’ll quickly see that the East Side’s Second Avenue Subway construction isn’t that big a disruption after all!)

Go online and check out one of the exhibit’s highlights – a digital composite of 92 farm maps drafted in 1818-1820 by John Randel, Jr. to show how the grid would bisect various hills, rivers, streams, swamps and pastures in years to come. Zoom in on your street and see who owned your property in the early 1800s, and read how MCNY worked with the City create this cool online map.

Also, take a look at the digital maps posted by The New York Times, including Randel’s big 1811 map of the grid (the centerpiece of the MCNY show), the 1836 farm map, and other interactive images created by the NYT team. Clicking through the views on the left will reveal all sorts of interesting history.

Check out the Channel 7 Eyewitness News video, featuring an interview with the curator (NYU’s Hillary Ballon) and a peek inside the show.

Want to do a little time travel on the modern version of the Manhattan grid or another borough? It’s easy. Go to NYCityMap and type in an address. When the schematic map appears, clock on the “Photo Camera” icon at the top of the map and you’ll see an aerial view of the neighborhood. Move the slide bar to enjoy the view to any time between 1924 and today to see what the block was like way back when.

When Coffee Houses Were Facebook

Posted on April 10, 2012 by MsSusanB

You have one more week to find out what the 18^th century social network was like at the intriguing exhibition at New-York Historical on the events that propelled simultaneous American, French, and Haitian revolutions.

Girodet’s 1797 painting of Jean-Baptiste Belley from Versailles

As soon as you enter Revolution! The Atlantic World Reborn at the New-York Historical, you find yourself inside the social hub a Caribbean seaport city in the mid-1770s – the coffee house, where people reread month-old newspapers, asked arriving seamen for news, discussed European imperials, and complained about taxes, trade, and tyranny.

Winding your way through the history maze, you’ll encounter the original penned version of the Stamp Act (1765), the first edition of Thomas Paine’s Common Sense (1776), and Napolean’s approval to sell Louisiana to the United States (1803). The story line weaves in the slave trade, the Haitian revolution, and the rise of voodoo in the Caribbean – a unique retelling of rebellion in the time of colonialism.

See the artifacts on line, but connect the dots to revolution by dropping into the exhibition this weekend.

And don’t miss the lobby painting featuring New York’s first big-time 18^th c. social network — the Tontine Coffee House on Wall and Water, built by the brokers in 1793 to organize The New York Stock Exchange.

Last Look at Soon-to-Close Theater Museum

Posted on March 17, 2012 by MsSusanB

Friends enjoy reviewing the wall of 1900s showgirl cards, showing scantily clad actresses in “classical” garb

With Rick McDonald at the piano of the 1924 speakeasy, Bill’s Gay Nineties, last Thursday night, the crowd was singing, the joint was jammed, and dozens of hungry diners were climbing the stairs to sit in the gaslight glow of the second-floor dining room, packed with carefully preserved playbills, theater cards, and lithographs of the men and women who built the foundation of the American theater and founded the form that is American popular entertainment — George M. Cohan, Buffalo Bill Cody, Enrico Caruso, Tony Pastor. The list goes on and on.

This temple to theater, created in the 1920s by the original Bill’s wife, a former Ziegfeld girl, is about to close on March 24.

How fortunate that we met a master vaudevillian and Coney Island sideshowman, Todd Robbins, who (between a few tableside magic tricks) walked us through the history of the place, the legacy of the hundreds of show people gazing down on our dining table, and stories of how George Burns, Jack Benny, and the pantheon of American entertainers found solace around Bill’s piano (just like us) in decades past.

How comforting to be amongst other time-travelers in this unique and soon-to-be-gone living, breathing archive of the last 150 years of American entertainment. Take a walk around Bill’s with us. These Flickr photos are sometimes a little blurry and hard to make out, but they seem appropriately evocative for a room, history, and gathering spot that will soon be like the celebrities on these walls…fading but important memories of spectacular, vibrant nights spent singing and sharing the high points of the latest Broadway debut.

itsnewstoyou

Susan B's advice on what you shouldn't miss in NYC and other museums

Tag Archives: history