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Hell's Kitchen (and Restaurant)

Hell's Kitchen (and Restaurant)

"Mission where Elsie Sigel met her slayer." Photograph circa 1915. The body of the 19-year-old missionary, granddaughter of Civil War hero Franz Sigel, was found in 1909 bound in a trunk in her lover Leon Ling's fourth-floor apartment at 782 Eighth Avenue in New York, next to the Chinese restaurant where he was a waiter. Ling disappeared, and the crime remains officially unsolved. View full size. Read more about this notorious murder here (continued here). 8x10 glass negative, George Grantham Bain Collection.

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Mission statement

This is the east side of lower Mott Street numbers 10-14 in New York's Chinatown. Not sure what mission the label on the photo refers to; St. Bartholomew's had a Sunday School at number 4 but that was before 1900.

Seen at the left with ornate balconies is a building belonging the On Leong: a sign for the Chinese Merchants Association can be seen between the windows on the top floor. Also at the left edge of the frame, the "R" of the electric sign for the Port Arthur Restaurant seen here.

 

The Wright brothers

I personally love the article on the front page about the wright brothers and their attempts at flight with their "recalcitrant" aircraft.
Jems like this just arn't seen in the paper today, all we get is dumbed down text.
"...the brothers remained in the balloon shed until the anemometer showed that the breeze had died down to a mere zephyr."

 

782 8th Ave today

 

8th Ave in 40's

Not sure about Chinatown but it was nicknamed "The Minnesota Strip" from the late 60's to the early 90's because supposedly prostitutes from Minnesota came to NY and settled on 8th Avenue to work. Generally the Minnesota Strip was known to run from about 42nd street to the high 40's and sometimes into the low 50's. It was a seedy place that was a meeting place for junkies, drunks, con artists, petty criminals, hustlers

 

Thank You!

And you get bonus points for using "verily." I also liked (from a historical-anthropological perspective, of course) the article about the office prank that ends with one guy shooting the other. Early cubicle humor!

 

I found almost every article

I found almost every article on that paper to be really amazing! The Wright Bros. one and the cabbie that was a victim of the Black Hand were among them. Cool post.

I just recently found your blog, but verily I am enjoying it. I love turn of the century photos.

 

Wright Brothers

Anybody else notice the reference to the Wright Brothers on the first PDF? Two columns to the left of the article on Ling.

 

Hell’s Kitchen

Hell’s Kitchen was the original title of this post, then I changed it after reading some old newspaper accounts. But you sound like you know what you’re talking about so I changed it back. Thanks.

 

Hell's Kitchen

Was that area of town (8th Avenue in the 40s) once considered Chinatown (which, for those of you who aren't familiar with Manhattan, is down on the southern tip of the island)? As far as I know, that would still have been Hell's Kitchen or the Tenderloin back in those days.

 

Details

Done ... links added to caption.

 

The murder...

Any chance on getting some kind of article or link that details the story on that murder? Nice work on the captions...

 

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