MAY CONTAIN NUTS
HOME
Home

Search Shorpy

SEARCH TIP: Click the tags above a photo to find more of same:
Mandatory field.

Search results -- 30 results per page

Brave New World: 1925
... in the foreground to the right. Old 159th St Yard in Manhattan? Is that the side of the Polo Grounds on the right and the ... 
 
Posted by Dave - 11/01/2015 - 1:14pm -

A lantern slide of Frances Bode's photograph titled "Repetition," from the 2nd International Salon of Pictorial Photography (1925), New York. View full size. Wherever ya lookWherever you look, you see "it" again. I wonder if he saw that aspect after he took the image, or if he took the picture because he saw it. I like it a lot. [Frances Sophia Margaret Bode (1892-1974) was a she. - Dave] Mea culpa. I sincerely hope the kind lady will forgive me. IntricateThat is some seriously intricate trackwork. Just Wow!As an amateur gandy dancer that has stacked a switch for the local streetcar museum, I'm floored by this work! car ID suggestionsL-R: Flint Six, Baby Overland, Willys Knight, unknown, small Buick, unknown, Ford, large Chevrolet, Ford, Oldsmobile, Unclear behind tree. Yankee Stadium and Polo GroundsThat looks to be the recently built (1923) Yankee Stadium in the distance, with the Polo Grounds in the foreground to the right. Old 159th St Yard in Manhattan?Is that the side of the Polo Grounds on the right and the original Yankee Stadium across the Harlem River in the background? A Bridge Too Far"The two bridges in the photo both cross the Harlem River. The bridge to the right is the Macombs Dam Bridge, which still stands today. The bridge to the left no longer stands today." Lagniappe, I think Macombs Dam Bridge is the bridge on the left (not the right), and as you said, it is still standing. Rare ViewThis is a wonderful photo which I’ve never seen before. It is a picture of the 159th Street train yard just north of the 155th Street station of the 9th avenue el – the northern terminus of that line. The large structure along the right side of the photo’s frame is the Polo Grounds. In the distance to the east is Yankee Stadium in the Bronx. The two bridges in the photo both cross the Harlem River. The bridge to the right is the Macombs Dam Bridge, which still stands today. The bridge to the left no longer stands today. It was used by the “Polo Grounds Shuttle.” A line that went from the 155th Street Station to the Bronx where it terminated at the 167th Street station of the IRT Jerome Avenue line. The Giants played their last season in the Polo Grounds in 1957. Subsequently, the line saw very little patronage and it ceased operation at 11:59pm on August 31st, 1958. It is worth noting that the Polo Grounds Shuttle line ran right through the heart of the area currently occupied by the new Yankee Stadium. ViewThe view in this Shorpy photo was captured by standing on top of Coogan's bluff. The area today is filled with housing apartment buildings, the bridge today is gone, it was known as the Putnam bridge, and it carried subway trains from the Polo Grounds to the Sedgwick Avenue Station in the Bronx. McCombs Dam Bridge can be seen in the far right corner of the photo. (The Gallery, Cars, Trucks, Buses, Railroads)
Gotham City: 1910
... the process of being obliterated? - Dave] Lost Lower Manhattan For many years my dad would commute by Lackawanna train to Hoboken, then take the Hudson and Manhattan tube trains to Manhattan Terminal, from where he would walk across ... 
 
Posted by Dave - 08/13/2012 - 10:11pm -

New York circa 1910. "Looking down Broadway from the Post Office. Singer, City Investing and Hudson Terminal Buildings." Detroit Publishing. View full size. High HonorIn 1968 the Singer Building earned the dubious distinction of being the Tallest Building Ever Demolished. It still holds this "honor" if you don't count the World Trade Center, which was on the site of the Hudson Terminal seen here on the right. RoastingAs I sit here in my air conditioned office complaining because the cool can't keep up with the heat and humidity outside (its 74 degrees in here dagnabbit) I can't imagine how insufferable it must have been in those buildings in the summer. And as I am sure you have noticed, no matter what time of year, the men always wore jackets! The Red, White, Blue and ...?That American flag in the foreground clearly has three colors of stripes. What's that about? Or is it really some other type of flag? Skyline ghostsFive of my favorite early skyscrapers here, now all long gone. Ironically, the oldest building (St. Paul's chapel) is one of the few shown that survive to this day. Astor houseThe many-chimneyed roof of the famous Astor house can be seen in the right foreground - Built in 1836 it would be demolished during the 1920s. The towerI love this. Sometimes that kind of majestic architecture can be too big for humans, but the bustle and smoke of human activity is what comes through most in this picture. What's the metal tower top of the building across from the New York Law School? Thousands of windows... in this great photo. According to my calculations, over 4,000 on the four-building group on the right. SingerMy new favorite photo of the Singer Building. The cars are much more of a presence than photos just five years earlier. The suspense is killing meHow did the sign painter finish his sign? [Or is the sign is in the process of being obliterated? - Dave] Lost Lower ManhattanFor many years my dad would commute by Lackawanna train to Hoboken, then take the Hudson and Manhattan tube trains to Manhattan Terminal, from where he would walk across town to Wall Street. As a high-school kid, I would take the same route to visit the radio and surplus stores on Cortlandt Street. All demolished for the late, lamented World Trade Center. The Tallest in the World (for a year)The Singer Tower also held the distinction of being the tallest building in the world - 612 feet high - from 1908 until 1909, when the Metropolitan Life Insurance Tower topped out at 700 feet. A view that's impossible todayThe Post Office from which this picture was taken was demolished in 1938. It sat on the southern portion of what is now City Hall Park. New York Evening MailAnother photo of the Singer building still under construction shows the sign. Unfortunately it is still incomplete. The Evening Mail The Leading Evening (...) One Cent Buys the (...) (The Gallery, DPC, NYC)
Sweet Chariot: 1956
... RR. Dreyfus did the classic NYC Hudsons. Where in Manhattan Where in Manhattan is that? Central Park West The view is from Central Park, just ... 
 
Posted by Dave - 11/05/2013 - 10:47am -

Jan. 17, 1956. "Raymond Loewy's Jaguar car. No. 8." Happy 120th birthday to the famed industrial designer. Gottscho-Schleisner photo. View full size. That disk on the hoodIs it some kind of bug deflector? Yikes!He made it look like that on purpose? If I was a potential client, that tacky mess would definitely give me pause. LoewyI don't know which was cooler - the steam engines he designed for the New York Central or the Studebaker Avanti. Kind of a toss-up for me. Encouraging to us mere mortalsTo learn that even acknowledged geniuses can have a bad day. Nothing in this design seems to cohere, yet its components presage cars like the Datsun 240Z of the early '70s (nose and headlamp treatment), the Porsche Targa of the same period (chrome "tiara"), the Griffith/TVR of the '60s (compound-curve rear window), etc. The fender-mounted horns are just plain wrong, but most of the other design elements have worked well in other contexts. Here, most people's reaction is likely to be, "Really?" Loewy not guilty!Loewy sold the car to boxing champ Archie Moore in 1957. At sometime after that date, all the J.C. Whitney bling was added. The horns are bad enough, but what's that clear disc on a mirror mount in the middle of the hood scoop? The grotesque grille appears to be Raymond's fault though. Here's the story. [You have it backwards -- according to your link (as well as our photo, from January 1956), Loewy had the air horns added after he brought car back from Paris. They're gone in the 1957 photo with Archie Moore. - Dave] A whole new meaningIs this where 'Pimp My Ride' got started? Not my cup of teaI think I preferred the car that Homer Simpson designed. An Interesting ExperimentBut I think the original XK-140 Coupe bodywork was more attractive. Loewy and the PRRMost of Loewy's steam loco designs were not for the NYC, but for the Pennsylvania RR. Dreyfus did the classic NYC Hudsons. Where in ManhattanWhere in Manhattan is that? Central Park WestThe view is from Central Park, just in from Central Park West, looking to the west along 67th Street. The domed building is the Christian Science Church. To its left is 75 CPW, a 48-unit apartment building that opened in 1929. Further to the left, on the south side of 67th, are the apartment buildings at 2 West 67th (69 units, built in 1918) and 65 CPW (102 units, 1926). Out of sight to the photographer's left would be the ill-fated Tavern on the Green restaurant. (The Gallery, Cars, Trucks, Buses, Gottscho-Schleisner, NYC)
Joe's Clothes: 1942
... Jews in the neighborhood died off or retired away from Manhattan; their offspring weren't interested in that kind of entertainment. ... 
 
Posted by Dave - 10/27/2023 - 5:27pm -

September 1942. "New York, New York. Under the Third Avenue elevated railway." Starring Joe's Clothes Shop and the Variety Theatre, which had a bit part in the movie "Taxi Driver." Acetate negative by Marjory Collins for the Office of War Information. View full size. Cycle of the HoleNothing remains from this shot, except maybe - maybe - the block pavement (but if so it's buried under asphalt). The Variety went to that cutting room in the sky in 2005. However, where the doughnut shop once stood, more-or-less, is now the "Bagel Belly". A Bagel shop in NYC? I'm guessing it's not the only one. Sounds yummyI want to go to the Wheatland Doughnut Shop and Milk Bar. Lawrence LoansBoy, would I love to browse that pawn shop on the right to check out all those stringed instruments showing in the window. The Variety TheatreI grew up around there in the '50s and '60s, and I remember the Variety. It often featured live shows by old-school Jewish comedians who often performed in Yiddish. (There was a fellow named Ben Bonus who played there frequently.) That version of the Variety went away when the immigrant Jews in the neighborhood died off or retired away from Manhattan; their offspring weren't interested in that kind of entertainment. The Variety booked some rock 'n' roll acts in the late '60s and early '70s, but the interior acoustics were terrible. That was also when the inside of the theater started smelling less like a movie house and more like a public urinal. It had become a dump. [Also: Porn! - Dave] Bagel Belly... is at 114 3rd Avenue, where Joe's and probably the doughnut shop was. There is a film, c. 1983https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Variety_(1983_film) The story centers around a woman who worked in the ticket box. It was reviewed in the Village Voice by David Edelstein. I commented on the review and he wrote back a response. Just a wild guess1937 Buick. Films at the VarietyI'd like to add that the last legit film I remember playing at the Variety was the first Matt Helm movie, which cast Dean Martin as a James Bond-type spy. It was The Silencers, released in 1966. More VarietyThe Variety theatre also played a role in the 1983 independent feature Variety, directed by Bette Gordon and written by Kathy Acker - both of them leading counter-cultural figures at the time. Sandy McLeod, then Jonathan Demme's girlfriend, works in the box office of a porn cinema and becomes obsessed with a mysterious rich patron. The film is currently available on the Mubi streaming service. (The Gallery, Marjory Collins, Movies, NYC, Railroads, Stores & Markets)
8th Avenue Elevated: 1905
... [The car chase in that 1971 film was shot in Brooklyn; the Manhattan tracks seen here were gone by 1940. - Dave] Why Here? After ... 
 
Posted by Dave - 03/21/2023 - 11:55am -

New York City circa 1905. "The Elevated, Eighth Avenue and W. 110th Street." 8x10 inch dry plate glass negative, Detroit Publishing Company. View full size. Old meets newI superimposed the Google Street View over the Shorpy image to see the changes around the building on the left. Don't jump !!As they say, there's only one chance to make a first impression, and you don't want it to be in the pavement: the (in)famous Suicide Curve. Reckitt's BlueAn early manifestation of the consumer-goods conglomerate Reckitt Benckiser: Spectacular PhotographWhat an impressive perspective and composition. The foreground cobblestones taking an important part of our attention. The use of above ground rail is such a good conserve of space. The ground footprint of the support stanchions is very small in comparison to the benefit gained of mass transport without congestion. This idea should be implemented more today to ease traffic chaos on choked arterial roads. A second level can carry vehicles and/or trams/trains via point to point destinations. Much less intrusive than demolition of huge swathes of buildings to create more lanes. Is this the same Elthat appeared in the thrilling car chase sequence in "The French Connection"? [The car chase in that 1971 film was shot in Brooklyn; the Manhattan tracks seen here were gone by 1940. - Dave] Why Here?After reading about the numerous suicides at this location, I found myself asking "Why here?" Wasn't the elevation of the entire El the same height as at this spot? Why did so many choose to jump only from this curve? [This particular curve (actually two curves, shaped like an S) was the highest part of the IRT elevated line. - Dave] (The Gallery, DPC, NYC, Railroads)
Nashua: 1908
... lanes wide in each direction... feels like an avenue in Manhattan. I am also grateful that the Library of Congress has these Sanborn ... 
 
Posted by Dave - 10/20/2023 - 3:43pm -

1908. "Main Street -- Nashua, New Hampshire." At right, offices of the Nashua Telegraph and Fletcher's Optical Parlors. 8x10 inch glass negative, Detroit Publishing Company. View full size. 1908 and 2017 PigeonsJust try to tell me pigeons aren't trash birds! Safe spaceMaybe you heard this already but WalletHub just named Nashua, New Hampshire, the safest city in America. The other nine in the top ten are Columbia, Maryland; South Burlington, Vermont; Gilbert, Arizona; Warwick, Rhode Island; Portland, Maine; Casper, Wyoming; Yonkers, New York; Burlington, Vermont; and Scottsdale, Arizona. According to the same study, South Burlington, Vermont (the third safest city), "also tied with Cleveland and Cincinnati, Salem, Oregon, Washington, D.C. and Seattle for the most hate crimes per capita." Uh oh. Maybe move to Burlington, Vermont -- less than three miles away and coming in at ninth on the safest city list. Or just stay put and take your chances. CLOUDS!I don't know if it was luck or some type of different exposure process, but it's rare to see a sky with clouds in these old photos. The cameras couldn't pick up the subtle shades and usually the skies appear completely white even though at the time they may have been overcast or partly cloudy. Because now you can bank onlineWorking left-to-right: JennyPennifer's comment caused me to pay special attention to the police officer walking his beat, just to the left of the wagon parked at the curb. He's dressed like a London Bobby. The four-story building with the curved front is, regrettably, gone. This likely happened when Main Street was straightened, and a newer bridge was built across the Nashua River. The Romanesque church at the end of the street is on the other side of the river. The building at right, which became a bank in jrpollo's update, is now luxury condos, called The Mint. Not to criticize too much, but my first efficiency apartment had more kitchen space. I guess the residents are expected to eat out. A number of nearby restaurants have expanded their al fresco option to include both the sidewalk and the parallel parking spaces in front of their restaurant. Straight and trueI lived in Nashua for 12 wonderful years and lived in the North End right off of Concord. This image did raise a question about the curved building a block from the river crossing. Any straightening alluded to earlier would have taken place much earlier in the 19th century... The Sanborn Insurance maps of 1912 indicate that Main Street and the bridge were already where they are today. But the curved building, identified as the Howard Block gracefully curved to widen the main street from the width of the bridge (I am guessing). Main Street really is three lanes wide in each direction... feels like an avenue in Manhattan. I am also grateful that the Library of Congress has these Sanborn maps...! Terrific detail about buildings and their particular use. Here is the link to that image: https://www.loc.gov/resource/g3744nm.g3744nm_g053631912/?sp=32&r=0.517,0... Different process = CLOUDS!Eary photographic processes were primarily sensitive to only blue light. Numerous newer processes throughout the late 19th century added increases sensitivity into the greens and yellows resulting in what we now call orthochromatic materials. It wasn't until around 1906 that a truly panchromatic emulsion with full sensitivity to red was developed. This took several decades to become dominant. It wasn't until the panchromatic films and plates became available that we begin to see photos that can render skies anything other than nearly blank white. Orthochromatic materials remained in use for quite a while largely because you could develop them under a red safelight. Panchromatic materials required total darkness. [Here and here, some clouds from 1864! - Dave] Light grey/white clouds against a blue sky require a panchromatic emulsion, otherwise the clouds and sky reproduce nearly the same light grey. Only when the clouds are all grey and dark grey (think: storm clouds) will they reproduce on earlier orthchromatic or pure blue sensitive emulsions. Tea TimeThe Grand Union Tea Company delivery wagon in the Nashua photo made me curious. My local New Hampshire grocery store used to be a Grand Union. I found a brief history of the company here: https://oldmainartifacts.wordpress.com/2013/10/07/grand-union-tea-compan... (The Gallery, DPC, Small Towns, Stores & Markets)
Radio City: 1932
... RKO Building as backdrop, amid the Midtown Manhattan construction project, known early on as Radio City, that would become ... 
 
Posted by Dave - 11/02/2023 - 11:39am -

April 7, 1932. "New York city views. Radio City from the Goelet Building." The beginnings of the RCA Building ("30 Rock"), with the almost-completed RKO Building as backdrop, amid the Midtown Manhattan construction project, known early on as Radio City, that would become Rockefeller Center. 5x7 inch acetate negative by Gottscho-Schleisner. View full size. Worthyin its own right, the c.1930 Goelet Building was built adjacent to, and concurrently with the Center (and by some accounts intended to complement it architecturally). How well it succeeded in fulfilling that intention is, I guess, open to interpretation, but I believe most would find it a handsome building. Park Central HotelRadio City Music Hall fronts 6th Avenue, between W 50th and W 51st Streets. To the right of Radio City in the 1932 photo is the five-year-old, 25-story Park Central Hotel. It was and is located at 870 7th Ave, between W 55th and W 56th Streets. It's had its share of history. The Park Central has housed such figures as Jackie Gleason, Mae West, and Eleanor Roosevelt, who kept a suite there from 1950 to 1953. In 1928, Jewish gangster and well-dressed prototype of the modern don, Arnold Rothstein, was shot and fatally wounded in one of the suites. Mobster Albert Anastasia was assassinated in the hotel's barber shop on October 25, 1957. In 1933 silent-film actor Roscoe (Fatty) Arbuckle died of a heart attack in his sleep in his suite here. The hotel was also the venue for the National Football League Draft from 1980 to 1985. No chance of seeing the Park Central from the Goelet Building today. (The Gallery, Gottscho-Schleisner, NYC)
Gotham Grows Up: 1912
... to go for only about $3,000 per square foot. Changing Manhattan Pre 9/11 the Woolworth building folks were never the friendliest ... 
 
Posted by Dave - 10/16/2019 - 8:47pm -

The Woolworth Building under construction in 1912. One hundred years later, the top 30 floors of the former department store headquarters are being converted to 40 luxury apartments, with a five-story penthouse in the cupola. Other New York landmarks in this view include City Hall Park and its post office, as well as the Singer and Park Row towers. 8x10 glass negative. View full size. I'll Never Live There!From: www.gothamist.com: And suddenly, those fancy $100 million apartments on 57th Street look positively quaint. Because BOOM, whoever gets the penthouse apartment in the now-officially-going-residential Woolworth Building clearly wins at New York real estate. Hands down. After years of rumor and speculation, the Witkoff Group and Cammeby have sold the top 30 floors of the iconic tower to an investment group led by Alchemy Properties with the intention that they will turn it into apartments (the lower 28 floors will be leased as office space). And oh, sweet Peter Stuyvesant, we want to go to there: Penthouses in the building once called the “Cathedral of Commerce” will be among the highest-altitude residences in the city, soaring above 700 feet. A five-level penthouse of around 8,000 square feet will be housed in the copper-clad cupola that tops out at 792 feet. Originally designed as a public observation area, the cupola has a wraparound outdoor deck reached by a private elevator. Apartments will begin at 350 feet above ground level, with panoramic views and 11'-14' ceiling heights, when they are completed (in theory by 2015). Oh and that is not all. The $150 million conversion (which includes the $68 million purchase price) will also include restoring the 55-foot-long basement swimming pool for the residents. And, and, and... ugh, anybody want to go halfsies—or, more realistically, fiftysies? We could handle going SRO in that building—on one of those apartments with us? They are estimated to go for only about $3,000 per square foot. Changing ManhattanPre 9/11 the Woolworth building folks were never the friendliest lot. Looks like Verizon is going the same route. Verizon has announced plans to sell/lease the majority of 140 West Street (another persona not grata lobby) for residential use. It has a lobby that comes close to the Woolworth's. The worst building management anywhereThe management company that operates the building today is the target of much dislike, if not outright hatred. They refuse to let anyone see the beautiful lobby, posting "No tourists allowed" signs at the entrances along with scowling guards. All this despite the fact that as a landmark there is supposed to be public access to the lobby. I was in the "penthouse"We used to go on "building adventures" before the high security in office lobbies took effect back in the 80s and found our way to the top of some of these old classics. I remember finding that staircase which went to the very top of the Woolworth Building and looking out those windows, was awesome. If OnlyI don't know about the rest of you, but I would love to live at the top of the Woolworth Building. Why did the West Side never develop?I've never understood why Broadway was utterly lined with tall buildings but everything west of Church is short. Why did no one buy the land a few blocks west of the area from City Hall down to Wall Street and build tall structures there? (The Gallery, DPC, NYC)
Palais Royal: 1920
... to a golden-yellow smile. Even in sophisticated Manhattan Bond bread, the foundation of many a Midwestern mom's tasteless ... 
 
Posted by Dave - 07/03/2013 - 3:43am -

New York circa 1920. "Palais Royal, Broadway." Where, whether you're Prince Albert, Dorothy Dickson or a tube of Sozodont, you can see your name in lights. 5x7 glass negative, George Grantham Bain Collection. View full size. Carriage callMounted at the bottom of the corner sign, under "Dining Dancing," a minor Shorpy favorite, an electric carriage call. Other examples noted in this comment. Progeny The Latin Quarter Nightclub was owned by Lou Walters, the father of Barbara Walters. Nightclub hotspotLocated on the short block of West 48th Street between Broadway and Seventh Avenue, the Palais Royal was the city's first true nightclub. It was known for its exclusivity and very high prices, the spiritual predecessor of the modern clubs with their VIP rooms and $400 bottles of Grey Goose. All patrons were required to wear evening clothes. The Palais Royal closed sometime in the late 1920's/early 1930's. After going through some ownership changes, in 1942 the building became the site of what may have been New York's most famous nightclub, the Latin Quarter. It featured A-list entertainment and a chorus line and attracted tens of thousands of customers each year. Beset by labor troubles and changing customer preferences, the Latin Quarter closed in the late 1960's and the building remained vacant for years, though the owners made money from the many huge advertising signs adorning the exterior. It finally came down in the 1980's and the Renaissance Hotel now occupies the site. The sidewalk glass blocks noted in another comment were used to provide lighting not for basements per se, but for unfinished hollow spaces known as sidewalk vaults that extended under the sidewalks from basements. Contractors routinely built them when constructing commercial buildings and many building owners used the vaults as extra storage. Some time ago, I believe in the 1950's though I'm not certain, the city began charging building owners rent for use of the vaults, which technically were city property. In response most owners walled off the vaults from their basements and naturally enough lost any interest in maintaining the glass blocks. A Thousand Points of LightingThe grids on the sidewalk are glass blocks to allow light into the basements. Very few of these remain in New York City to this day. SozodontInteresting that by 1920 the Sozodont slogan is that it will "clean teeth" and that is "Our Only Claim". Perhaps this is because they had been making extravagant claims since the 1880's and even claimed that X-rays showed the difference between teeth with Sozodont and those without. According to Wikipedia, it was determined that the product actually destroyed the enamel on your teeth, leading to a golden-yellow smile. Even in sophisticated ManhattanBond bread, the foundation of many a Midwestern mom's tasteless bologna sandwiches. Paul Whiteman's Orchestra was first classIt premiered George Gershwin's "Rhapsody in Blue" just 4 years later at Aeolian Hall with Gershwin himself at the piano. Whiteman said later he was surprised to realize at some point during the main theme that tears were running down his cheeks. 1920Kissing Time at the Astor closed on December 4, 1920 (opened on November 8). The billboard for His Brother’s Keeper (opening February 14, 1921) must have been a “Coming Soon.” The King of Jazz Paul Whiteman, "The King of Jazz," led one of the country's most popular dance bands in the 1920s. He commissioned George Gershwin's "Rhapsody in Blue" and conducted its premier with Gershwin playing the piano. He also commissioned several works from Ferde Grofe', notably "Grand Canyon Suite". Bix Beiderbecke played in his orchestra. Bing Crosby was hired by Whiteman in 1926. He hired several African-American musicians. As a sign of his fame, his rotund physique and pencil-thin moustache were parodied in Looney Tunes cartoons. The Palais Royale was the place for Whiteman and his orchestra. What's Going on Shorpy People?The first comment that I expected to read would be about "Prince Albert in a can" and letting him out. What's going on with you Shorpy people? No booze!A nightclub at Times Square and no liquor! I'll bet a LOT of people brought flasks tucked away here and there. They certainly couldn't have operated as a speakeasy with such a high profile. I wonder what they served. Palais d'Or... was the establishment that succeeded the Palais Royal about 1928. Cuisine transitioned from French to "Chinese-American," and B.A. Rolfe's orchestra was the big attraction. He made Edison records, and later conducted on the Lucky Strike Hour. By 1932 Graham Prince's band was resident at the Palais. RCA brought them in for "cheap records" (the official term -- no one called them "budget line"), which are very rare because no one wanted recorded music any longer, even at 20 cents a throw. (The Gallery, Cars, Trucks, Buses, G.G. Bain, Movies, NYC)
Rockaway Bungalows: 1910
... development. These were vacation homes for folks in Manhattan and the other boros, not company houses for factory workers. How ... than a city block sound? In the Rockaways, as at Coney, Manhattan, Brighton, and other New York City beaches, the streets are set up ... 
 
Posted by Dave - 08/04/2012 - 3:56am -

Vacation bungalow colony at Rockaway, Queens, c. 1910. View full size. George Grantham Bain Collection. Note "front yards" of sand decorated with seashells. Sand in QueensI wonder if any of the buildings are still standing. Since they are tract of small bungalows, I wonder what company supplied that lot for workers to live in. Sand in...Queens?! Wow. [Never heard of Rockaway Beach? - Dave] BungalowsWere these for living or vacation rentals? They sure are cute. Does anyone know how far from the water they were? Rockaway[Never heard of Rockaway Beach? - Dave] Well I've heard of Rockaway Beach here in Oregon. :) Re: BungalowsThe were seasonal at first. More info at the Beachside Bungalow Preservation Association: By the 1920s, Rockaway Beach was the poor man's Riviera. It had a six-mile long boardwalk lined with amusements, and thousands flocked to the beach every summer weekend. Many families rented tents for the entire season, while those a little more affluent rented small bungalows. The concept of the bungalow in America was well established by this time as they were built for summer communities on both coasts. The plans could be purchased from catalogues and were designed in numerous styles. This last remaining bungalow colony was built by Richard Bainbridge in the 1920s. The one and a half story houses all have front porches and pitched roofs. The design and style vary from street to street. Some of the bungalows are in a Spanish Revival style of stucco with wood trim and green the roofs, and others are in an English Tudor of brick. Lacking heat, they were closed for the winter months. The lanes leading to the beach have permanent easements for common access. As development pressures change the Rockaways, this small district has become endangered. But it would be appropriate to preserve and restore this remnant of past summer amusements. The yards are super.The yards are super. Send the kids down to the beach to bring back sea shells to decorate with! Talk about a family project. Rockaway BungalowsI'm pretty sure these are not there anymore. In fact Rockaway Beach today is quite run-down. If you take the A Train out there, these must have been between the tracks and the water, where there are now streets with no houses. Only weeds. Sadly, most of theseSadly, most of these bungalows are gone, as Doug points out above. There are only a few left, and they face demolition by developers who want to turn the Rockaways into yet another bland housing development. These were vacation homes for folks in Manhattan and the other boros, not company houses for factory workers. How close were they to the beach? How does less than a city block sound? In the Rockaways, as at Coney, Manhattan, Brighton, and other New York City beaches, the streets are set up perpendicular to the beach and are only a few blocks long. The last block actually ends at the boardwalk. Across the boardwalk is the beach. The Ramones were from the Rockaways. Beach 29th streetMy family rented a bungalow on Beach 29th street until I was around 12 years old. As soon as school was over, my parents would pack up a van and off we went until Labor Day. It was the most amazing summers of my life. No locks on doors, showers in the backyard, fireworks Wednesday nights. My parents belonged to a group called FROGS- Far Rockaway Ocean Goers. The Bungalow owners, Mr. and Mrs. Herman, would let my Dad come before the season to fish. The last time I was there was about 36 years ago. It was so sad to see the destruction of these amazing bungalows. Ours was white and green, and all the furniture inside was painted a sticky tacky gray. My Grandma and Nana lived a few blocks up in a rooming house. It was very sad to watch as these homes burned to the ground. Such a day-gone-by era. Beach 29th StreetHi! I am very curious exactly where on 29th Street the bungalow was. I lived on 29th just off Seagirt Blvd. It was a year 'round dwelling. The area was VERY crowded during the summer and VERY empty from after Labor Day until Memorial Day. Do you have any pictures from there? I would love to see them! Thanks, Marc Far Rockaway refugee now living in Bayside, NY Rockaway BungalowsThere was nothing better than spending the summer in Rockaway. Most of your family members rented bungalows in the court. Everyone was out every night. The beach was just a few steps away. Fathers came out only for the weekends, even if you lived in Queens... Beach 107 StreetMy aunts, grandmother and uncle would whisk us away to Rockaway the minute school closed for the summer. We would stop at Weiss's for fish and chips, then drive over the old Cross Bay Boulevard bridge and see the top of the roller coaster and the ocean beyond. In a few minutes we would be at our bungelow in Highland Court, the second one in. We thought we had arrived since we had a hot water heater. It was a great place for kids to grow up. Every day my sister and I would open the window with the sun shining down on us. We would get into our bathing suits and run to the beach, riding the waves until we were dragged out by our relatives. Beach 106 StreetBetween 1951 and 1958 or so I stayed with my good friend Donald Sullivan and his family in bungalows on Beach 106 Street. I don't remember the court name - if it had one. I do seem to remember Highland Court but this was centuries ago and memory may play tricks. Sand in QueensA similar group of bungalows still exists in the Breezy Point Coop and Roxbury in Queens. Many have been expanded and converted to year round use now, though some are still used only for the season. They refer to Breezy Point and Roxbury as the "Irish Riviera" due to the strong Irish presence. B. 29th bungalowsI know EXACTLY where you were. My grandmother too had a bungalow, about 5-6 before the boardwalk ramp. They were on the left side, because on the right side was a parking lot or a building (I can't remember it exactly). But up the block was two hotels - the Regency and another one. They were both owned by the same people - Mr. and Mrs. Hecht, german/lithuanian-jewish folks. If you remember, there was a wooden bridge that connected the two buildings, and the courtyard was shared by the two. The showers were both underneath the front of the buildings behind the, lattice and then common showers/bathrooms in the hallways. There was one public phone on each floor and a television on each floor. When my grandmother could no longer stay in the bungalow (either they were sold, torn down or condemned), she went into the Regency Hotel. She was in the basement which was very cool in the summer. They dodn't need air conditioning. The last party of the season was Mardi Gras. My grandmother, being on the heavy side, loved to wear blackface makeup and put her hair up with a tied kerchief - she was "Aunt Jemima." I only wish I had a place like 29th street to bring up my children in the summers. We ended up renting cabanas in Atlantic Beach from when they were little, then moved to Atlantic Beach, but retained memberships at the beach club. We can't get the sand out of our shoes! Belle Harbor's Bungalows I was searching for a picture of Weiss's Restaurant and stumbled across this site. I found one taken before the war, but was hoping to find one more recently, like late 1950s or early 60s. Looking at the group of bungalows, there were similar ones along the beach 2 rows deep at B129th Street in Belle Harbor, Rockaway. They looked very similar to the ones in the pics if memory serves. I was there last year and although they still occupy the same footprint, most have either been completely reconstructed or torn down and replaced with more modern ones. I recall every summer going to the beach and seeking out the "city" kids here for a few weeks. We made lots of new friends every summer. Then there were the bungalows out on RockyPoint/BreezyPoint. My mother spent her childhood summers, probably right there in that picture. Her parents owned their own bungalow. I have a picture of it from around 1941. Mom's 83 and I'll have to print this off and show it to her. Maple Court, Beach 28th st.I've been searching for info on Far Rockaway. I've been strolling down memory lane thinking about my wonderful summers there. My family rented, and we stayed for a total of five summers. The last two were in Maple Court, which, I believe, was on beach 26th or 28th Street. Before that we were in B Court and A Court on 28th. I agree with the posters who spoke of these summers as paradise! I felt truly free there. And yes, nothing was locked up. There was no schedule to keep. Just pure fun. My last summer there was in 1969. I remember this because of the moon landing. We returned home from the fireworks display on the beach and watched it on TV. My grandparents owned a fruit store on the main street, and they stayed at a wonderful hotel called the Manor. My happiest memories from my childhood are from Far Rockaway. Maple Court bungalowMy family purchased a bungalow at 29 Maple Court in 1969 when I was 9 years old. I too had the greatest memories there. We took so much for granted thinking everyone lived as we did. Now I realize how lucky we were back then. Being able to stroll down the street to the boardwalk, watching the fireworks Wednesday nights, and winning prizes at the arcade games are fond memories. Do you remember the pizza shop on the corner? Because the bungalows were so small and cozy, to this day I prefer smaller spaces. Thanks for letting me relive those memories for just a short time. The EmbassyWe stayed in the Embassy on 29th Street (right next to the ramp to the beach). Many of my friends were in the bungalow courts between 28th and 29th. We stopped going in 1967 but those were the best times -- those summers were magical. My husband and I went back in 1998. There is a school where the Embassy used to be and nothing much else. I went down to the beach and I cried. Who were your grandparents?Carolyn, my parents owned the Manor at 2400 Seagirt Blvd (beach 24st). My last summer on Rockaway Beach was 1967 just before I entered the Army. My parents and I moved to South Florida shortly there after. I was 6 miles from the DMZ in Vietnam when we landed on the moon. Fruit storeCarolyn, if memory serves (pretty fuzzy by now), your grandparents were the Lebowitzes. The fruit store was on Edgemere Avenue just off Beach 24 next to Willy's Market. If I am right, I am amazed. The EmbassyMy family had a bungalow on B29th Street on "the ramp" from the 1950s until around 1970. I got thrown out of the Embassy by the owner because we didn't live there. I bought ice cream at the candy store under the porch of the hotel. I saw the school, it was a bummer. I remember Lenny's, skee ball, Jerry's knishes, Sally & Larry's pizza, movies on the boardwalk, Dugan the baker, softball games, basketball in the parking lot. I used to sell lemonade to the ball players on hot days. Memories ... I remember a girl named Cherie or Sherry. She had a boyfriend, Arnie. I used to hang out with Arnie's brother Marvin. lmc2222@aol.com Far RockawayI also have childhood reminiscences of Far Rockaway. My family lived in a small bungalow rented for a group of Russians in 1970s (yep, I am Russian, living in Moscow now). I was 3 or 4 years old at that time, so I do not remember much. What I know is that these are one of the brightest memories of my early childhood. My pa said the house was really small. I do not know what street it was on, or if it still exists. What matters are the snapshots of my memory: me sitting on a porch on a rocking chair, and the arches of the porches, of the same form and shape, go all the way down to the ocean. Me playing in sand, building garages for toy trucks, with other children running from waves that seemed - wow - so really huge. And above all and around all, the salty smell of Atlantic, which is different from any other seaside smell. Great pity the place is devastated today. Hope that everyone who has ever had good times in Far Rock keeps his own memory snapshots of the place, where it looks as it really should. Fruit StorePeter, you have an incredible memory! My grandparents were the Leibowitzes. That's such a specific memory. Did you know them personally? I would love to hear about any memories you have of them or the store. Were you a child at the time? The EmbassyCheri, I can understand your crying. I went back many years ago and was also upset to see the area so demolished. At that time, it seemed the only bungalow left standing belonged to a lady we were all so afraid of on Maple court. She seemed to hate kids (probably we just annoyed her mercilessly!). But going back as an adult, I saw her situation quite differently. The bungalow was all she had, and so she stayed there while everything around her seemed to be destroyed. Maple Court BungalowLillian, we must have known each other since we were there at the same time, and we were around the same age. I was in the first bungalow on the right, facing the main street. You might remember the pile of junk in front of the house (left by the owner, which we were waiting for them to take away!) Where in the court were you? I remember a girl named Elena, and a boy everybody had a crush on named Eddie. The ManorWow... your parents owned the Manor! What an interesting and exciting experience that must have been. If I recall correctly, there were an eccentric bunch of characters staying there. Carolyn! What a great happening!Hi Carolyn, Glad you found me on Facebook. Your ability to put me together with my earlier Shorpy post was remarkable, so I am posting this for the benefit of "Shorpy page readers." Your recollections and mine from the 1960's certainly attest to how great having the internet and pages like Shorpy's are. (Shorpy..thank you!) The fact that I remembered your grandparents is somewhat unique cause I can't remember anyone else's grandparents from way back then, other then mine. I must have really liked them and was destined to cross your path again. I remember sitting and talking with them on porch of the Manor in one of those green rocking chairs. They were "grandparent" types, had a European accent like most grandparents back then, and easy to be comfortable with. Just to put things into focus, I am now 63. That was back when I was 16 or 17 and younger, but your grandparents returned to the Manor for quite a few summers in the 1960s. How could I have remembered your grandparents' name? I too am amazed and flabbergasted. Memories of Far RockawayYes, this website is truly wonderful for allowing us to stroll down memory lane and recall the sights, smells and feel of Far Rockaway... and what an extra treat for me to find someone who actually knew my grandparents. Thank you Shorpy's for allowing us this exchange of information and memories... and thank you Peter for your kindness and your very sharp memory! Far RockawayMy sister directed me to this site. We stayed in the Jefferson Hotel, right between Beach 29th and 30th, next to the Frontenac. My good friend Faye's grandparents, the Kratkas, owned the Embassy and both Faye and I worked the concession stand which her parents ran. The memories of the boardwalk are still strong. Not only did we have the luxury of a fantastic beach at our doorstep, we also had nighttime fun. Cruising up and down the boardwalk -- eating pizza at Sally & Larry's, or Takee Cup (originally called Tuckee Cup until the owners got disgusted of painting out the alternate name it always received over the winter months) and listening to Eddie, with his ever-present songbook, sing requests. All added up to good, clean fun. I left in 1968, went back from time to time, but haven't been back in years. Unfortunately, you can see enough from Google Earth. My two auntsMy father's two aunts had a bungalow in Rockaway Beach in the late 50's early 60's. It had flowered wallpaper and a musty smell, but it was the most interesting home I have ever been in. I was allowed to leave and explore without my mother's glare. I cannot tell you what food we ate there. I have no memory of meals which is odd. I do remember being bitten by my aunt's dog, which scared me for a long time. I think their names were Bernice and Ruth Cohan. If you have any thing to share please do. thanks, Mary Donaldson neversynvr@aol.com Twin HousesThe houses with the bridge were known as "the twin houses", possibly the Claremore & Edgewater, both owned by the Hechts. I spent the happiest summers of my life there! Like Cheri, I've wanted to return, but haven't as I know how sad it would be. Better to revisit in memory, sometimes in dreams. I probably know Cheri (from Arnie & the Joey days) and Les rings a bell, as does singing Eddie... Marcy Sand in my shoes on Beach 107thMy mother's family went to Beach 107th in the summers of 1917 through 1929. After the Depression hit they couldn't afford it. I still have photos of that period. In 1951 our family went down to the Rockaways and rented a bungalow for the season. The courts I remember were Almeida and Holmenhurst. My dad came only for the weekends, arriving Friday evening. The first thing he did was put on his trunks and head for the beach with me. When he hit the ocean you could see all his cares and worries leave. At night the parents would gather on the porches and play cards, drink a Tom Collins or have a beer and just have a good time. As a 10-year-old I wondered what was so much fun doing this every weekend. It occurred to me many years ago that boy, did they have it made. Sitting on a porch with a nice summer drink, a cool ocean breeze along with good friends to talk with and play cards with. Life was so laid-back and simple then. Does anyone remember the doughnut shop Brindle's or the bakery Dudie's? What about Nat's Ice cream shop, where you could get a walk-away sundae. Bill's Deli had the best salads and cold cuts. Wonderful summers that will always keep me warm in the winters of my aging mind. Beach 28th Street & A B and C CourtsI too remember the pizzaria on the corner of Beach 28th street. I remember my friends Randy, Shmealy, Risa, Brenda and Jody. I don't remember Shmealy's given name, but I remember he was hyperactive and a lot of fun. Made up a song from the commercials of the time for Halo Shampoo. "Halo Sham-poo poo, Ha-a-lo! Jodi's mom didn't want me hanging around Jody because I blinked my eyes too much. Oh well. HEY: Jody from Beach 29th street who wrote a post here on 11/12/2007 - I wonder if you're the Jody I remember!? I hung around with Risa a lot. I still have a photo of us and my dog Suzie on the porch of my Bungalow. I once disappeared into the Courts of Beach 28th street while walking my dog. I ended up talking to a boy for 2 hours, not knowing my parents had called the police and had an all-out search for me. My father finally found me. I was the talk of the town that day! I hope someone remembers these people or IS one of these people, or remembers the lost girl incident and would like to contact me at orangechickens2@aol.com. It would be wonderful to hear from you!! Anyone remember dogball?My dad wrote about playing dogball on the beach at 110th Street on his blog at willhoppe.com. I'm going to show him all of your comments later tonight. The BungalowsI was born in Far Rockaway in 1942. I lived there for 16 summers. My dad owned a small grocery on B 28th street. It was the best time of my life. Maple Court faced 28th. To me it was a very exotic place. The renters/owners vacationed there, my dad was a workman. We lived in roominghouses with a bath on the floor. One year I begged my dad to live in Maple Court and we got a small apartment in the back of a bungalow there. The bungalows were the BEST. Rockaway native from HammelsBorn in Rockaway in 1941 at Rockway Beach Hospital. Went to PS 44, JHS 198, Class of '59 from Far Rock. Worked as a locker boy at Roche's Beach Club in Far Rockaway. For two summers I worked in Rockaway Playland. I lived on 90th, where my parents rented out the bungalow in the back of our house every summer. My father at the end of his years as a waiter worked in Weiss's dining room, and the Breakers restaurant on 116th Street. I met my wife in 1965 at McNulty's on 108th Street. She was from Woodhaven and Breezy Point. We got married in '68. I am writing this on the back deck as we are still enjoying the summer weather here at Breezy. We both still have sand in our shoes. Our 1940s summersA group of Bronx families spent the summers of the early '40s in a few bungalows. Sundays the working fathers would appear for a community breakfast. We celebrated V-J Day with a parade on the boardwalk. Takee Cup was a part of our diet. A noodle cup to be eaten after the chow mein was devoured. The ultimate hand held food treat. Beach 25th StreetI grew up in Far Rockaway in the 1960s and 70s. We lived in the Bronx and rented every summer on Beach 32nd Street (now two big apartment buildings -- Seaview Towers). When I was 9 or 10, we moved to Beach 25th year-round. The summers were great -- we didn't wear shoes most of the time. Every Friday night, "Bingo Al" held a game in the court behind the bungalows, between 25th and 26th. One summmer he had a "Chinese auction" and dressed up in an oriental robe and Fu Manchu mustache and beard. Many of the residents got seltzer water delivered in bottles at their back porch. They would gather in the evenings out in front of the bungalows and talk and joke. I would lie in my bed, with my ear pressed against the window screen, trying to listen, and also trying to stay cool -- no air conditioning. Sol "The Cantor" Gerb would play his little electric organ as people sipped their drinks, chatted or played cards. It was like a different world from the rest of New York. I read where one commenter talked about the bungalows rented for the Russians. This was on Beach 24th Street. They worked at the United Nations and rented a block of bungalows. Every Monday morning passenger vans would show up to take them to work at the UN. We played with the Russian kids. They were a good bunch. I stayed over at one of their bungalows and we had crepes for breakfast. I had no idea what crepes were! I learned to play chess, as the Russians were crazy about it. I recall one time when members of the Jewish Defense League blew up a small BMW belonging to one of the Russians. The news came out and I was in the background, behind the reporter. A sad time for Far Rockaway. One of the amazing things was the backgrounds of the bungalow residents -- former concentration camp prisoners, Russians, Irish, Jews, some Italians and Greeks, but we all got along so well. A great place to grow up! At the FrontenacMy family spent summers at the Frontenac from the late 40s until 1957. When I describe it to my daughter, I have to confess it was really more like a boardinghouse. My mother, father and I shared a room that was also the kitchen. Bathroom on the floor, showers were out back for when you came back from the beach. It was great community. Juke box for dancing, card room for gin and mah jongg and the television on the porch. I loved Jerry's cherry cheese knishes. I remember the movie theater on the boardwalk in the 30's (it could barely be called indoors) I bought the News and Mirror off the delivery trucks for 2 or 3 cents and sold them for a nickel. My parents would pay the guy who ran the first aid station under the boardwalk to hold our beach chairs overnight so we wouldn't have to "schlep" them back and forth. We played softball on the blacktop parking lot on 29th street right off the boardwalk. My wife, who I did not know then, stayed with a friend's family in a bungalow on 29th street. I think her best memory was playing Fascination. Best summers everI used to stay at my grandmother's bungalow on B 28th st. in the mid to late 60s. Those were the very best summers ever! Walking just a few yards to the boardwalk and beach, pizza from the store on the corner, hanging with Howie and the crowd there. Playing Fascination for a dime, huge french fries in those cone cups. If anyone knows the whereabouts of Howie Young I'd love to get in touch with him. My email is belongtoyou@hotmail.com Hugh McNulty Hotel, Rockaway BeachI am trying to learn about Hugh McNulty's Hotel. I am not sure what street it was on, but there was also a bar in it. Hugh was my mum's uncle and her father came to stay with him and work for him. The time period may have been 1924-1930. I know the hotel was still in operation in 1953, as my grandmother visited him at that time. Any help is appreciated. libtech50@comcast.net Edgemere memoriesMy family lived many places in the Edgemere section of Far Rockaway (I don't know the exact boundaries of Edgemere, if there were any), but my memories centered on Beach 48th Way and Beach 48th Street. Fantastic place to spend the summers and escape the hell of the South Bronx. I had wonderful Jewish friends and I worried that they would go to hell because they weren't Catholic. Now I laugh as such perverted theology, but back then it was serious stuff. I loved the beach, the ocean, the starts, the jetties, playing every group game known to humans, going over the the "bay side" to play softball with the "project people" -- those who lived beyond the marshes and spent the winter there. No doubt about it, the best part of my childhood was Rockaway. Too bad it was taken away from us and to my knowledge, still is just a bunch of sand with no houses where we used to live, right near the boardwalk. Beach 48th Way, RockawayIn the early 1960s there were two brothers that were lifeguards when my family was there, Dennis and Tom Fulton. Anyone remember them? Also there was a man named Warren who would feed pigeons at the end of the block every day. My parents would rent a bungalow in the summer months to get us out of Brooklyn for awhile. Great memories. Rockaway, a kid's dreamI remember growing up in Rockaway. We had two boarding houses on Beach 114th Street. When my mom was a kid, Carroll O'Connor, his mom and brother Frank stayed with them. He returned to see my parents back in the mid-eighties and I received one of his last e-mails before he died. I worked my way bartending at Fitzgerald's on Beach 108th and Sullivan's on Beach 116th (1967-1970). You could leave the house at 7 years old, walk to the beach without crossing the street and never had to worry one bit. The neighbors looked out for everone's children. Great memories and thanks to Shorpy for an incredible site. Brilliant job! Cohen's CourtThe picture above is very much how I remember the bungalow court where my parents rented in the summers of the early 1950s. I think my mom said it was Cohen's Court. Ours was at the end of the court on the left. I don't remember too much, I was really little. But I think there was a center row of garden where parents hid treats for us to hunt. I remember a corner candy store we kids could walk to and my mom confiscating a tube of plastic bubbles I bought. I guess she thought the fumes would get me high or something. There was a little girl across the court who would stand on her porch in a towel and flash us once in a while. And I have a memory of being on the beach with my parents, I in the sand and my mom in a beach chair, and my dad taking me into the water. I went back with my parents in the early 60s because they were thinking about renting it again. But it was so musty and dirty and ramshackle that they decided against it. I had a girl friend with me and I have to say I was embarrassed about the way the place looked and smelled. Too bad, that bungalow was a great summer getaway for a working class family from Brooklyn. Elisa on B 29thWas your grandma named Bessie? I lived in the Claremar, one of the twin houses, and I remember her. Did you have a brother too? My sister, parents, grandmother and baby brother and I all lived in two rooms in the basement. I remember Crazy Eddie and his huge black book of songs. Tina and Elise ... Elliot ... Donna ... Jackie ... smiling in memory! Palace HotelThe last place my family stayed at for quite a few years was the Palace Hotel on Beach 30th Street right near the boardwalk. Those were the days my friend. All the arcades and food places on the boardwalk, Cinderella Playland for the little kiddies, the Good Humor man , Ralph was his name. Life was simple. No internet, cell phones or video games yet we had great times and wonderful memories. We played board games and cards and rode our bikes. The guys played baseball in the parking lot adjacent to the Palace Hotel. The team was a mix of every race and ethnicity and everyone managed to get along and looked forward to playing together the next Summer. The beach was the best. Dads could go to work and come back every day rather than only on weekends as they do in the Catskills. Such a shame that this no longer exists. The last summer I went there for a few weekends was in 1976. The JeffersonMy grandparents rented a place in the Jefferson for many years. I have great memories of the place, the back stair cases, the porch, and the beach just a short walk away. Does anyone have relatives who stayed there? Rockaway summersI spent virtually every summer till the age of 22 in Rockaway. We stayed on Beach 49th till they knocked them down, then kept moving to the 20's. Best time of my life. My family was unique -- Italians in the Jewish neighborhood and we came in from Jersey! My mom grew up in Brooklyn and her family started coming in the '40s! Wish I could connect with friends from back then. If I sound familiar please let me know. You would be in your mid to late 50s now. Rockaway Beach Bungalows on PBSI received a message, last night, from my girlfriend who stated that "The Bungalows of Rockaway" was on PBS @ 8PM. I started watching at 8:30 and to my surprise I could not stop watching. I was born at Rockaway Beach Hospital and I am a lifer. I never lived in a Bungalow but I have always wanted to purchase one. I was taken aback by the fact that there were at least 6,000 bungalows and now there are approximately 300 (big difference). I also found out in this documentary that there is hope that the bungalows can be landmarked and I hope that it happens. The bungalows are a unique attraction to this area and I hope that the 300 remaining can be preserved. Elisa on B. 29th Street - the hotelsTo Anonymous Tipster on Fri, 08/13/2010 - 3:15am - YES! My grandmother was Bessie. I do remember your family - your grandmother, parents and the little ones. Your mom wore glasses and had blonde hair. She always wore her hair pulled back and up on her head, curlers in the evening. Also, Harry and Dottie lived in a large room in the corner of the basement of the hotel. I have 3 brothers and one sister. My Aunt Rose and Uncle Leo used to come to the hotel as well to visit with Grandma Bessie. Please e-mail me @ medmalnursing@msn.com Sally's Pizza and the Lemon & Orange Ice StandI spent the best summers of my life on Beach 28th Street. Coming from a Bronx apartment, it felt like our own private house. Our own family doctor came out to Rockaway every summer and stayed on Beach 24th Street. I now wonder what happened to his patients during July and August. How come nobody has mentioned Sally's pizza, on the boardwalk around 32nd Street? You couldn't forget Sally-- with her bleached blond hair, tight pants, and backless highheels. Near Sally's was the fresh lemon and orange ice stand with the fruit stacked against the wall. The ices even contained pits. No artificial coloring or corn syrup in those ices. Grandmother's bungalowsMy grandmother owned 10 bungalows on the beach on 35th Street from the 1930s thru the 1950s. They were the ones nearest the water. I loved going to help her get them ready each spring and clean them up each fall. Playing on that wonderful empty beach at those times of year with no one else in sight. We lived in Far Rockaway at 856 Central Ave., so going to the bungalows was not a long trip. Great memories. Mom's RivieraMy mother loved Rockaway so much that we called it "Mother's Riviera." She couldn't have cared less about the beautiful beaches across the ocean in France or Italy, for Rockaway Beach was her greatest joy. We spent many summers in a bungalow court on 109th Street and my grandmother and her sisters also spent their youthful summer days in Rockaway Beach. So our family goes back generations loving Rockaway. Every Memorial Day the court always had a party to celebrate the beginning of summer and the courtyard inhabitants were usually Irish. The courtyard came alive with Irish songs and jigs and reels. Of course, the people of the courtyard always chipped in for a big keg of beer. It was repeated on Labor Day as we all said our goodbyes to our neighbors and to our beloved Rockaway Beach. Saturday nights in Rockaway were spent at the closest Irish bar and some nights the local boys slept under the boardwalk after having a wild time. They always managed to get themselves together for Sunday Mass or otherwise they would get holy hell from their families. Sands of TimeI spent every summer in the Rockaway bungalows from the fifties until the mid eighties when we were forced to leave because of the deteriorating situation. I was a child on Beach 49th and remember George's candy store where you could get a walkaway sundae for 50 cents. Sue, I remember the Fulton brothers, who were lifeguards. Handsome devils, had a crush on Tom when I was 14. Times were safe. There were a thousand kids to play with. We went from 49th, 40th 39th, 38th, 26th and finally 25th Street with my own kids trying to hold on to that wonderful way of life. Unfortunately it disappeared. Some of the best days of our liveswere spent on Beach 25th. When I was 12 (1936) until I was 17, we stayed every summer at my grandmother's at Beach 66th Street. Those were glorious days on the beach. The boardwalk at night was wonderful, too. We played pinball, and games of skill for 5 cents to collect prizes. Bottled soda and ice cream were 5 cents then, too. We used to run up to the boardwalk to eat the delicious knishes. My summers at Far Rockaway were the most unforgettable of my growing up. Tuna fish and bologna sandwiches on a roll never tasted as good as it did at the waterfront. In 1961, when I was married with children, we rented a bungalow on Beach 25th and loved it! It was a rainy summer and we spent a lot of time in Far Rockaway shopping, eating and going to the movies. Every sunny day, however, we quickly rushed to the beach to enjoy it with family and friends. The Jefferson, Beach 30thI stayed with Grandma and Grandpa every summer for years in a small room at ground level. Grandpa would take me to the beach in the morning, then off to the stores on 24th Street. The back patio was for dancing on Saturday night and the concession inside had bingo. The porch! As I grew up to teenager, I met Ronnie Schenkman and family on the second or third floor (used the back staircase). I don't remember where Eleanor stayed. Crazy Eddie and his songs. Hal and his girl of the night. Warm nights and days. Very sexy! As a working girl I still took the RR to Far Rockaway, then the bus to Edgemere. Took my children to visit Grandma when it was becoming sad looking. Then went to the area years later and found a burnt shell with a wicked fence surrounding it. Took pics and had a good cry. We are all lucky that we were able to experience the wonderful warm sun and sultry nights. Belle Harbor BungalowsI think the two rows of Belle Harbor bungalows on Beach 129th to which another person referred were probably the Ocean Promenade Apartments. I have very happy memories of living there in the mid-i950s in the winter. Beach at 37th streetWhat a trip to see all of the these comments. I grew up and lived year round on Beach 37th until 1950, when we moved to Bayside. Takee Cup was a treat as well as the movie theater on the boardwalk, Italian ices and of course the arcade. For a penny you could get great photos of famous cowboys and movie stars. Rockaway in 1958My family spent the summer in Rockaway in 1958. Most of our friends were in the court, but we were outside it on the main street. I don't remember the street, but I suspect it was around Beach 45th, as the El was right on the corner. We had a bungalow with a porch. I was climbing on the outside of it, fell when I saw a neighbor's dog that I wanted to play with, and broke my wrist on broken concrete. Today, one would sue the owner. Back then, we just made do. Later that same summer, I ran across the street to get Italian ices from the local candy store, but looked the wrong way crossing the one-way street and almost got hit by a car. I didn't think that much of it, but the woman driving was hysterical. I also remember a movie theatre on the Boardwalk. In those days, an 8-year-old (me) could feel safe walking the boardwalk without an adult present. The back of the theater opened up at night so you could sit outside. I saw "The Colossus of New York" there, an incredibly bad "monster" movie. Most of the bungalows in the Rockaways were destroyed by Hurricane Donna in 1960. So-called "urban renewal" took care of the rest. Now some sections of the Rockaways, especially those facing the ocean, are filled with expensive new condos. The Jefferson 1950s I stayed at the Jefferson in the 1950s. It was far far away from the Bronx. Our father worked two, sometimes three jobs, so my brother and I could escape the Bronx and spend each summer --the whole summer-- in Rockaway. Dad took the train to work every day. We turned brown by July 4th; skinny brown kids always running, scheming, cunningly evading the watchful eyes of Jewish mothers. We played softball in the parking lot by the beach in the early mornings before the cars showed up. We played kick the can in the street, ring-o-lerio (sp?), off the stoop. And then there were the long long days on the beach, hopping on hot sand from blanket to shore, waiting the magic 45 minutes to go in the water after eating lim and sandy salami sandwiches, early versions of body-surfing, acting like we couldn't hear our mothers calling that it was time to come in from the water. Crawling into the cool dark sand under the boardwalk. Some kid named Howie always had a piece of fruit in hand, juice dribbling down his chin. And then there was a kid whose own family called him "Fat Jackie" -- at least that's how I remember it. Once in a while we were treated to Takee cups or lemon Italian ices, and chocolate egg creams. Always sneaking off with so much watermelon that your belly ached, and sand -- always sand -- in your bed. Jumping off the wooden steps to the beach, higher and higher, until you dared to jump from the railings along the boardwalk. I think it was Friday nights we would go to the boardwalk to watch the fireworks display from Playland. Flying kites over the surf when the weather cooled, and sneaking out to the Boardwalk to watch, awestruck, huge summer storms -- was it hurricane Carol? Evenings with men playing pinochle, women playing mah jongg. Ping Pong, hide & seek around the Jefferson. Costume parties with fat hairy men wearing grass skirts and coconut shell brassieres, and mothers with painted mustaches and sideburns, wearing huge hipster hats, chewing cold cigars. Then, dreaded September, back to school and insanely diving under your desk to practice for the upcoming atomic war, or wondering whether you were one of the kids who got the fake Polio vaccine. But somehow, during those summers at the Jefferson, there was nothing to fear. Nothing at all. Beach 45thDoes anyone remember Scott Whitehill or Laird Whitehill? If so, please e-mail me at scott@scottwhitehill.com Moe's Grocery Store on Beach 28thBarbara posted a comment earlier about her dad owning a grocery store on Beach 28th Street. The name of the grocery store was Moe's, and they carried lots of things for a small store. I lived in bungalows on Beach 28th and Beach 29th Street. These were the most memorable times of my life. I only wish that I could go back and see and relive these wonderful times. Beach 49thMy family and many of my relatives owned bungalows on Beach 49th and Beach 48th Street. We spent every summer there until the city condemned the properties. My father brought one of the first surfboards there in the early 60s. I have many fond memories of the beach and the friends I made. (The Gallery, G.G. Bain, NYC, Travel & Vacation)
Minnie and Topsy: 1962
... woman -- Woody Allen ponied up $18 million for their Manhattan residence. (Kodachromes, Boats & Bridges, Pretty Girls, Swimming, ... 
 
Posted by Dave - 09/16/2023 - 11:24am -

August 1962. Newport, Rhode Island. "Two of Newport's beauties, Minnie Cushing and Topsy Taylor, go water-skiing out near Gooseberry Island. In tow behind their boat is weekend visitor Dick Cowell, a former water-ski champion." 35mm Kodachrome by Toni Frissell for the Life magazine assignment "The Stately World of Newport." View full size. Lifestyles of the Rich and FamousI'll never know life as part of the American aristocracy, as both women did. On the plus side, unlike Topsy, I'll never sue my helicopter pilot to recover $3.5 million stolen from me. Present Tense SewickleyYou'll never know life as part of the American aristocracy as both of these women do. Minnie and Topsy are still with us. You have to have your Jim Backus onto even try to pronounce those two names correctly. Old Money, meet New MoneyWhen Leslie "Topsy" Taylor McFadden got dumped by her Wall Street financier husband in 1991 -- for a younger woman -- Woody Allen ponied up $18 million for their Manhattan residence. (Kodachromes, Boats & Bridges, Pretty Girls, Swimming, Toni Frissell)
S.S. Miami: 1910
... Atlantic City until sold and employed in the same trade at Manhattan in 1933. It found yet another owner in May 1934 when the Cape Cod ... 
 
Posted by Dave - 09/25/2023 - 5:19pm -

Miami, Florida, circa 1910. "Peninsular & Occidental steamer Miami off for Nassau, W.I." 8x10 inch dry plate glass negative, Detroit Publishing Company. View full size. Interesting vantage pointIf you look at the right side of the roof peak on the pavilion, you'll see a young lad lying on his stomach and looking toward the ship. I wonder what he wanted to see from that vantage point? Or maybe he just liked climbing on hot roofs. A bit of wrinklingto an embarrassed starboard stern. The famous William Cramp & Sons yardat Philadelphia launched the Miami on 23 October 1897 for Henry Flagler for semi-weekly service (tri-weekly during the winter season) between Nassau and Miami, then the southern terminus of his Florida East Coast Railway. It arrived at Nassau from Miami on its maiden voyage 18 January 1898. After decades in southern waters Peninsular & Occidental sold the vessel to the Atlantic City Steamship Company in June 1932, and renamed it the SS Steel Pier in honor of the Atlantic City landmark that opened the same year the Miami entered service. It ran excursions featuring live entertainment out of Atlantic City until sold and employed in the same trade at Manhattan in 1933. It found yet another owner in May 1934 when the Cape Cod Steamship Company purchased it to serve Boston, Buzzards Bay, and Provincetown during the summer, becoming a beloved fixture on that route until the end of the 1947 season, sold in October 1948 as a "new" vessel, the Diesel-driven Virginia Lee of 1928, replaced it. The Patapsco Scrap Company dismantled the Miami, as Steel Pier, in the spring of 1949 at Baltimore. (The Gallery, Boats & Bridges, DPC, Florida, Miami)
30 Rock: 1933
... of some kid from rural America or from Europe setting on Manhattan Island and seeing visions such as these for the first time. I can ... 
 
Posted by Dave - 07/17/2012 - 10:22pm -

New York. December 5, 1933. "Rockefeller Center and RCA Building from 515 Madison Avenue." Digital image recovered from released emulsion layer of the original 5x7 acetate negative. Gottscho-Schleisner photo. View full size. City of the godsIn 1933, my father was a seven-year-old living up Lick Branch Hollow in the Ozark Mountains. He would read books by kerosene light in the evenings. His family kept butter and milk (and Uncle Linus' hooch) in the cold spring-fed creek outside their house. It's astonishing to think he could have boarded a train and eventually arrived in this city of the gods, only a thousand miles away. Sign of the CrossThe double bar cross was the emblem used by the National Tuberculosis Association. Wonder if the lights were part of the campaign to fight TB. Gotta love those whitewalls!On the convertible by the front door. Double O's. Looks like it's ready to go somewhere in a hurry. Released emulsion layer?Dave, can you explain the technology of this image? How does an emulsion layer get released from a negative? [This is a process used on deteriorating acetate transparencies and negatives when they've begun to shrink. The negative is placed in a chemical solution that separates the emulsion from the film base. The released emulsion layer (the pellicle) is then placed in another solution to "relax," or unwarp, it. It's kind of like disappearing your body so that only the skin is left. More here. - Dave] Amazing viewThe shot is incredible! It looks almost surreal. I love it! Awesome scan job.I only wish I could see an even higher res version. Great work bringing this one back to life. WowI just can't believe how beautiful this shot is. Looks like the view from my New York Penthouse sitting there drinking martinis and listening to that new "jazz" music. High DramaThis marvelous building, reaching for the sky as if erupting from the ground, combines amazing delicacy, impressive size, and a feeling it is built for the ages to admire. SO much more breathtaking than today's typical glass box, although you need a view like this to really appreciate the classical lines and artful massing. A nice complement to the gothic cathedral in the foreground - a true temple of commerce! Churchly And Corporate SpiresThat's St. Patrick's Cathedral on the lower left, probably the only building from the 19th century left on Fifth Avenue, except for the Chancery House that's attached to it. Both styles of architecture are very dramatic. When I was a small child, at Christmas, my family would go to the Christmas Pageant at Radio City Music Hall every year, and then attend Midnight Mass at St. Patrick's. Ever since, I've never been able to separate religion from showbiz. Possibly because they really are the same thing. Take a peekThis picture makes me want to get out the binoculars and look in the windows. "Don't get much better"This image is a about as close to textbook perfect BW as you will find. It contains the complete range of grays from what looks like solid black in a few places to solid white in the highlights. The camera was level and the focus was dead on. As a photographer, I am envious. Old shooter Reaching New HeightsThe skyscraper is 30 Rockefeller Plaza before the RCA and current GE neon signage. Not that it wasn't famous before, but the TV show "30 Rock" has made it an even more iconic. Another claim is the gigantic Christmas tree on the Plaza, between the building and the skating rink, that when illuminated kicks off the Holiday Season in NYC. Hugh FerrissThis is like the photographic equivalent of one of Hugh Ferriss' architectural drawings, coincidentally of roughly the same era. MagicThe quality of this incredible photo captures the magic that New York City always longs for but seldom delivers. King Kong might have had a chance...had he chosen 30 Rock instead. OKLo mismo digo. Gracias. American Express BuildingThat hole in the ground, I believe, bacame the American Express Building. If you come out of the subway at the Rockefeller Center stop, and come up on the escalator in that building, you get an incredible view of St Pat's from below, with the spectacular statue of Atlas in the foreground as well. Very cool. Other noteworthy background details here include the Hotel Edison, and the old NY Times Building, at Times Square, before they went and utterly ruined it in the 60's by stripping all the detail off the skeleton. And check the skylights on the roof of what I think is the Cartier store, in the foreground! Send this to Christopher NolanHere's the art direction for the next Batman sequel. SpectacularWhat a wonderful, wonderful image! I love coming to Shorpy because you never know what Dave will come up with next. Thanks so much! The GreatestDave, this has to be one of the greatest photos you have posted. I work around the corner, and can look out my window at 30 Rock from 6th Avenue... my building wasn't built until 1973. Thank you. Time stoppedIs it 2:25am or 5:10am? Can you spot the clock? What Gets MeLooking at this photo - and it looks spectacular on my new monitor - is the sky. It has a sort of foggy twilight quality that is difficult to put into words but which emphasizes the the "star" of the photo - the RCA Building - and its nearby consorts or supporting cast over the buildings in the background which seem to fad into the mist. The building seems like the height of modernity, and one can easily imagine a couple of kids from Cleveland named Siegel and Shuster seeing this and making it a model for the cities of the doomed planet Krypton. Very neat picture...Can you give us an idea of what it looked like before it was restored? [There's an example here. - Dave] StunnedWhat a totally wonderful image, Sat here slack jawed at the incredible detail and the superb composition. I am amazedThe detail in the spires at St. Paul's Patrick's is fantastic. The amount of work that went into that building must have been enormous. I am very grateful not to have been on the crew detailed to put the crosses atop the spires! The Future Is NowInteresting that this photograph looks into a future in which many of the same buildings are still with us. At far left midground is the tower of Raymond Hood's American Standard Building. Next to it, with the illuminated sign on top, is the New Yorker Hotel (now Sun Myung Moon's) where Nikola Tesla spent the last ten years of his life. At center is the N.Y. Times Building with its flagpole convenient for deploying the New Year's Eve ball. And last, but not least, the Paramount Building topped by a globe and illuminated clock which is about as close to the Hudsucker Building as could hope to be seen. Of these four only the appearance Times Building has changed to any extent. A wonderful slice of time. TremendousTwo of my favorite photos on Shorpy consist of those like this one, showing the immense power of a huge city, even in the depths of the Depression, and those of small towns, especially when patriotic holidays were still celebrated. Samuel H. GottschoI'd never heard of him, but one look at this photo and I'm instantly a fan. This image is nothing short of spectacular. Ethereal, PowerfulThere have been many photos on this site that have impressed and pleased me, but this one is one of my favorites. Absolute magic. It's the quintessence of the power and style of 1930s design. Time machineI admire NY photos of the 1950s. And now I see that many of the buildings in NY I admire already were erected in early 1930s! What a discovery. What a shot. The Singularity of the MomentThis is an amazing photograph. As one earlier contributor observed, the pure technical aspects of the black and white composition are fabulous. The spread of detailed gray shadows and whites make this photo almost magical. It has the qualities of an Ansel Adams zone photograph that makes his work so arresting. But what really makes this photograph dramatic is what it reveals about New York City in 1933. A vision of the future of large cities, bustling twenty four hours a day and electrified. Today visions such as these can be seen on any continent in any large city. It has become the norm. But in 1933 there were only two places in the world that looked like this: New York City and Chicago. One can vicariously put oneself into the shoes of some kid from rural America or from Europe setting on Manhattan Island and seeing visions such as these for the first time. I can only guess it had the same effect as it had on 14th-century peasants in France, visiting Paris for the first time and entering the nave of the Notre Dame Cathedral. Beautifully put!I'm sure Samuel Gottscho would have been very gratified to know thoughtful and eloquent people like Bob H would be appreciating his work in the 21st century. PenthouseIs the Garden Patio still across the street from the skylights? I am in love with this photographExquisite doesn't even begin to describe it. In Your Mind's EyeYou can smell and feel the air and hear the traffic. It may be calm now...I have a feeling that all hell is about to break loose -- this picture was taken the day Prohibition was repealed. I worked hereI worked here in the 1960s for the "Tonight" show unit as as a production assistant for Dick Carson, brother of Johnny Carson. An attractive, dark-haired woman named Barbara Walters was working at the "Today" show at the same time. She is about 10 years older than I am. I also worked with the News department for a time. I was in the elevator with David Brinkley coming back from lunch when I learned that President Kennedy had been shot. We stayed up all Friday night and most of Saturday assembling film footage for a retrospective of JFK's life. When we weren't editing, we were visiting St. Patrick's Cathedral to light candles with others in the crowd. That's an absolutely amazing photo. I'm going to link this to other New Yorkers and broadcasters who might be interested. Thanks for all your work. Cordially, Ellen Kimball Portland, OR http://ellenkimball.blogspot.com 30 RockIs the excavated area where the skating rink is? I've been there once and it is very magical. Right across the street from the "Today" studio. Tipster's PhotoStunning, but in a different way than Gottscho's. It helps when the subject is beautiful. 30 Rock 09 Here's the view today made with a 4x5 view camera, farther back seen through the St. Patrick's spires and somewhat higher than the 1933 photo. Lots more buildings now. I was doing an interior architectural shoot, and went out on the terrace of a wedding-cake building on Madison Avenue. It was after midnight. Not much wind. Strangely quiet. As an architectural photographer I have great admiration for these Gottscho pictures. 30 Rock in Living ColorThat's a lovely photo, and it's nice to see the perspective so close to that of the original. Design Continuum of Bertram GoodhueThe proximity of St. Patrick's Cathedral to the newly constructed tower by Raymond Hood brought to mind two "bookends" to the unfulfilled career of Bertram Goodhue. During his early apprenticeship he undoubtedly worked on the St. Patrick's Cathedral, in Renwick's office, which greatly influenced his early career and success. The tower (30 Roc) represents what might have been...rather what should have been the end result of Goodhue's tragically shortened career (ending in 1924). Hood's career, which began to emerge after Goodhue's death is far better known, but is greatly in his debt. Hood's 1922 Tribune Tower clearly displays this link, as a practitioner of the neo-gothic style. Much of Hood's gothic detail is a through-back to design ideas that by 1922, Goodhue had already left behind. Goodhue was by this time already synthesizing elements of european modernism into an new original american idiom. Goodhue's last major projects were already working out the language of the modern/deco skyscraper; (the Nebraska State capital and Los Angles Public Library the best examples.) Goodhue's unique career was the crucible where concepts of romantic imagery of the Gothic, the sublime juxtapositions of minimal ornament on architectonic massing was being forged with modern construction technology. A close study of his career and work will show that not only Hood, but other notable architects of the era built upon the rigorous and expansive explorations that Goodhue was beginning to fuse at the end of his life. *It is also curious to me that Hugh Ferris is credited with so much of these innovative design ideas; no doubt he was a super talented delineator, his freelance services were utilized by many architects of the time including Goodhue. Some of his famous massing studies (sketches) owe much to Goodhue's late work. Amazing Execution and RestorationI agree with "Don't get much Better" ! This is as good as it can get for B&W. The exposure is so right-on and this in 1933!! Is this a "night" shot.. there is a lot of ambient light. Simply Amazing. I want it! Rock RinkThe not-yet-built skating rink is in front of the building. The empty space became 630 Fifth Avenue, where a statue of Atlas stands. Vanderbilt Triple PalaceA long time since this was posted, but I am surprised no one recognized the southern half of the iconic, brownstone-clad Vanderbilt Triple Palaces in the foreground (640 Fifth Avenue), just opposite the lower edge of the excavated building site. The northern half, with two residences, had been sold, demolished & replaced a long time ago, but the southern half stood until 1947 (Grace Wilson Vanderbilt continued entertaining in her usual style until WWII). The entrance vestibule to the three residences featured a nine foot tall Russian malachite vase, once given by Emperor Nicholas I of Russia to Nicholas Demidoff, now on display at the Metropolitan Museum of Art a couple of dozen blocks north on Fifth. (The Gallery, Gottscho-Schleisner, NYC)
Chrysler Building: 1932
... Welfare Island The Queensboro Bridge that connects Manhattan to Queens is seen straddling Roosevelt Island, a residential ... a self contained community with some of the best views of Manhattan. Its predecessor was called Welfare Island and housed the city's ... 
 
Posted by Dave - 07/31/2012 - 2:52pm -

Jan. 19, 1932. "View from Empire State Bldg. to Chrysler Building and Queensboro Bridge, low viewpoint." 5x7 negative by Gottscho-Schleisner. View full size. For a moment...I was wondering where the Empire State Building was! Then I read the caption. What an amazing photo this is. Dave, you're outdoing yourself lately. Gottscho's negatives are a true treasure. Is this backwardsHas this photo been mirrored? The empire state building is to the southwest of the Chrysler building, which is southwest of the bridge. [Whoops. It was backwards. Now fixed. Thank you! - Dave] Welfare IslandThe Queensboro Bridge that connects Manhattan to Queens is seen straddling Roosevelt Island, a residential community of some 12,000 people. There are rentals, co-ops, and condos and it is a self contained community with some of the best views of Manhattan. Its predecessor was called Welfare Island and housed the city's tuberculosis hospital, before that it was known as Blackwell's Island, which was a prison complex and insane asylum. Roosevelt Island is connected to Manhattan by a tramway (59th Street) and a newer subway station (IND on the 63rd St Line). It can be approached by car or truck from the Queens side. The founders fought hard to make it part of Manhattan and not Queens, it has a Manhattan Zip Code, 10044, and Area Code, 212. Speaking of directionsIsn't that the Sydney Harbour Bridge out in the distance in the top-left corner? Great work DavePlease keep the NYC views coming, They have been great. This one is my new desktop wallpaper. Thanks for your tireless efforts. [You're (pant, gasp) very welcome! - Dave] Negative CommentIs the negative reversed here? It seems like the East River should be on the right, not the left. [Maybe it's the West River. - Dave] [Thanks for fixing it! Can you switch faucets, too? My hot is cold and my vice is versa.- Delworthio] Same ViewpointI believe I snapped a photo from the same viewpoint at Mr. Gottscho 70 years later on the occasion of my 40th birthday - November 1, 2002. Why, why, whyWhy, why, why is this picture so much more beautiful and magical and fascinating and dreamy than your average cityscape of today on film? Is it gothic/nouveau/art deco subject matter + the technique + the hardware? I don't know, but I sure love it. Equal TimeWashingtonians have had their day for quite some time now and New York is having its day in the sun, thanks to Dave. Can San Francisco be far behind? What happen?When I look at the magnificent architecture of these old pre-1950 buildings and compare them to the unimaginative glass boxes of today- I wonder- what happen? My first visit to NYCMany years ago my father took me to NYC for the boat show and we walked for miles seeing the sights. He took us to Macy's, St. Patrick's, Radio City and the top of the Empire State Building. Somewhere I have snapshots from the observation deck, all four directions at that. I'll have to find them and see how they compare. GasometersThe gas holders by the bridge caught my eye. I didn't realize how huge they are - a lot of the nearby buildings could fit inside one. Similar tanks were pictured in this previous post. It was positiveThe canyons of mid-Manhattan were places of positive joy for a early 20-something guy attending television and radio production school at RCA Institutes in 1963. At the time I held a grand position as mail boy in the then-General Electric Building at 570 Lexington Ave. (to the left behind the Waldorf Towers in the photo), and my dad had an office in the Empire State Building at the time. Apropos of nothing, I once saw Van Johnson striding down Broadway in a trench coat walking a brace of Afghan hounds. Ah, those truly were the days, my friend! Re: Speaking of directions>> Isn't that the Sydney Harbour Bridge out in the distance in the top-left corner? Kind of, it's the Hell Gate Bridge, which turned out to be an inspiration for the SHB. Also seen here on Shorpy. Another stunner!Another stunning view. And just when I'd thought I had found my favorite Shorpy picture....These cityscapes always blow me away. KEEP "EM COMING! Amazing!This is my new wallpaper, replacing the Detroit Aquarium. The 59th St. Bridge has never looked so good. Frustratingly, my neighborhood in Queens is just to the right of the frame. I got a kick out of seeing both the 3rd and the 2nd El's in the lower right corner. These have both been torn down now. You can read about them here. Re: White CastleNew York Hospital. Now Weill Cornell Medical Center. EvocativeWhen I look at this photo (and the other Gottschos), it summons up a lifetime's worth of emotion in viewing the astonishing landscape of the Capital of the World and I am yearning again for a city that has no equal anywhere. And to echo the tenor of several of the commentators, this period in time was perhaps the New York era ne plus ultra. Thanks again, Dave. What's that cool building?What's the building about a block to the left of the Chrysler building, with gothic arches near the top and what appears to be a penthouse with skylight? Is it still standing? The current viewYou can almost duplicate this view using Google Earth's 3D buildings feature. The building in the lower left is the Mercantile building, finished in 1929. The building with the gothic arches is the Lincoln Building and still stands. Cool Lincoln BuildingThe "cool" building with the Gothic Arches is the Lincoln Building at 60 East 42nd Street. I used to work in it. And yes it is still there! Seen clearly in this viewSeen clearly in this view are the towers at 295 Madison Avenue (SE corner of 41st Street) and 230 Park Avenue (now the Helmsley Building, between 45th and 46th Streets), the latter of which is surrounded by the east and west ramps of Park Avenue, as are the Met Life (once the Pan Am) building and the Grand Central Terminal complex. I worked at 295 Madison in 1959-60, and later at 230 Park in 1977-1981. It's great to see these classical skyscraper buildings again, and to hope they are never demolished for one of those glass monstrosities so prevalent today in this part of Manhattan. Perfect TimingBy coincidence, the Knowledge Channel here in Canada has recently been re-running Ric Burns's excellent documentary "New York." Watching the series again and seeing these great images on Shorpy is perfect timing. I can almost hear the splendid narrative of the documentary in my head as I gaze upon these wonderful photographs. More please! White CastleCan anyone identify the big gleaming complex on the river, north of the bridge? I'm guessing its around the E 70s. I can't spy anything like that in Google Maps or Earth and it seems like a mighty big object to disappear. Maybe it was in Robert Moses' way when building FDR Drive? [It's still there. New York Hospital. - Dave] The City is beautiful, but..I've been waiting to make a comment on the recent string of NYC photos. I grew up on Long Island and could see lower Manhattan from my school's playground. I always wanted to know what the skyline looked like before my time. That said, the hardest thing for me to realize is that although this view is absolutely stunning, it was taken at the height of the Great Depression. I cannot reconcile the stories of suffering and privation that led to my grandfather running away from his home not too far uptown from here and only four years after this picture was taken (at age 14) with the gleaming monuments to mankind that compose this photograph. SurroundedAhh, I see it, thnx. Wow, the neighborhood really grew, it doesn't stand out as much. The cool building is... The Chanin Building. You can see it in the 2002 photo I posted below. [Actually the "cool building" referred to below is the Lincoln Building. - Dave] Old pics vs new pics>> Why is this picture so much more beautiful and magical and fascinating and dreamy than your average cityscape of today on film? Is it gothic/nouveau/art deco subject matter + the technique + the hardware? A good question, not easy to answer-- but some people still take above-average cityscapes, e.g. http://www.pbase.com/rfcd100/image/83470981/original Gigapans from this viewpoint...Hi - I just completed a series of view from the Empire State Building. Can't really embed any of the photos, as they are several hundred megabytes each (10MB images stitched together), but here is a link with a view of the Chrysler Building. If you want more, simply search the gigapan.org website for my pictures (search for "JohnF" there), there are a number of them from New York and elsewhere... http://gigapan.org/viewGigapan.php?id=30511 John Legos or a Video GameI love this photograph. At first glance it looks surreal, like it is a Lego block building set or a video game where you build a city empire. (The Gallery, Boats & Bridges, Gottscho-Schleisner, NYC)
Broadway From Dey: 1900
... -- at least if the date is correct: unlike most areas, Manhattan went from cable cars to conduit-powered streetcars, so it's hard to ... the rails of each line. [The electrification of Manhattan's streetcar lines began in the 1890s. That's not a cable between the ... 
 
Posted by Dave - 04/06/2023 - 12:29pm -

New York, 1900. "Broadway looking north from Dey Street." Rising at left, the Western Union Telegraph Building. 8x10 inch glass negative, Detroit Photographic Company. View full size. Words travel by wire, people by cableA relatively rare glimpse of cable cars in NYC -- the Metropolitan Street Railway came late and didn't last long -- at least if the date is correct: unlike most areas, Manhattan went from cable cars to conduit-powered streetcars, so it's hard to tell by the trackwork alone. But the cars seem a match. [The streetcars in our photo look a lot more like the electric streetcars seen here. - Dave] Could be: the changeover date was May 25, 1901, so the premise rests entirely on exactly what the date is...I'll trade my comment for a "circa". - N And upon this rock they built a churchAt center left is St. Paul's Chapel. Built in 1766 in the Georgian style, it is the oldest existing church building in New York City. Here is the view at street level today. Wherefore art thou?A remarkable lack of women out and about in 1900. Rush hour traffIcNew York City has changed little in the last 123 years, huh? Clang, clang, clang went the trolleyAccording to one source, it wasn’t until about 1909 that electric trolleys were pressed into service in New York. Prior to that there were ‘cable cars,’ as evidenced in the post. Looking carefully one can see the cable stretched out between the rails of each line. [The electrification of Manhattan's streetcar lines began in the 1890s. That's not a cable between the rails -- it's a slot over the electrical conduit under the street. - Dave] Frequency of serviceFor me the most interesting thing about this picture is the interval between the streetcars, which is close to NOTHING. OK, maybe there's heavy traffic, and a bunch of them got jammed up together ... but looking off to the north it appears that there's just a steady stream of streetcars. Imagine how this would change city life if we tried this today, with trolleys and buses. New York City's first great hotelThat's Astor House up past St. Paul's. After it opened in 1836, it became New York's first great hotel, for many years the (unofficial?) headquarters of the Whig Party, and the favorite place of Senators Henry Clay and Daniel Webster, who told the NY Times he "would stay at no other hotel." Thurlow Weed supposedly lived there for 30 years. Photographer Mathew Brady lived there, and Thomas Edison stayed there when visiting from Menlo Park. William James was born there in 1842. http://www.tribecatrib.com/sites/default/files/imagecache/standaloneslid... https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/f/fc/Astor-loc.jpg/... (The Gallery, DPC, NYC, Streetcars)
Winter Ice: 1943
... January 1943. "Italian-Americans on Lower East Side of Manhattan. Ice vendor on Mulberry Street." Nitrate negative by Marjory Collins ... 
 
Posted by Dave - 08/01/2023 - 1:35pm -

January 1943. "Italian-Americans on Lower East Side of Manhattan. Ice vendor on Mulberry Street." Nitrate negative by Marjory Collins for the Office of War Information. View full size. Delivering to 261 Mulberry StreetAs close as I can figure, our iceman is making a delivery to 261 Mulberry Street, which is behind him. He is facing The Basilica of St. Patrick's Old Cathedral, which is flanked by a cemetery on both sides, behind the wall. The near building with the pointed windows is part of the cemetery. The next building with pointed windows is gone. What a beautiful jacketOn Antiques Road Show they'll tell you that jacket would have an auction estimate of a hundred times what this gentleman paid for it. With the gorgeous tones of the nitrate negative, you can feel how soft that leather is. I guess there were still a lot of iceboxes on Mulberry Street in 1943. Same spot. Things have changedApproximately the same spot. The building on the right, St. Michael's Russian Chapel, and the wall still exist. In the same block as The Basilica of St. Patrick's Old Cathedral. This is where Mulberry intersects Prince Street. Hard to tell about some of the other structures due to scaffolding but I suspect many are the same. I know that guy!Definitely Robert DeNiro’s father! Fire and IceCigarette in one hand - Kerosene cans on the cart. What could go wrong? The Leather JacketMy dad who was a torpedo pilot in WWII in the Pacific sported a kind of "flight jacket" in leather with insignias just like this one. Nice jacketI'd totally wear that today! (The Gallery, Marjory Collins, NYC)
Trade You for an iPod: 1979
... Incidentally, tterrace, too bad you didn't live in Manhattan, you would have been one hell of a good customer. Love this stuff ... 
 
Posted by tterrace - 06/30/2010 - 12:43am -

It's a sobering thought that this accumulation of consumer audio gear, though approaching high-end levels but not all that esoteric for the period, may look as archaic to present-day eyes as those examples of enormous, steampunk-like telephone and radio contraptions we've see here on Shorpy. Maybe if it was all black enamel rather than brushed aluminum it wouldn't look so old-hat, er, I mean retro. Of all this stuff all I have left is the turntable; a visiting friend recently took out his cell phone and snapped a photo of it in action, then emailed it to his daughter. He said she'd never seen a record playing. Lest anyone think that some form of perverse, fetishistic self-absorbtion inspired this as well as Beam Me Up, I took these photos as a status update for a fellow audio and video enthusiast friend who had moved out of state sometime previously. A Kodachrome slide which, in keeping with the theme of nostalgic technological obsolescence, was processed by Fotomat. View full size. Ripping a CD --- 1,411 kbps>> my kids laugh when I tell them they should rip/download everything at 320 kbps for best available audio quality Top Geezer, if you're ripping a CD, for best audio quality you should simply copy the native .WAV files off the disc, which is 1411 kbps. There's a setting in iTunes to let you do this. I can't let go eitherI still have most of my LPs, though I did sell all I could part with when I moved from California. Still Have my Linn Axis Turntable, My Wharfedale Diamond speakers from 1983 are barely broken in, but my NAD receiver bit the dust just last week. All this is up in the library along with my Nikon FE and my Rolleicord Twin-lens reflex. I think I'll go cry now. Jewel case #1When did you get your first CD player, and what was the first CD you ever bought? What did you think. tterrace: An Audio OdysseySome curiosity has been expressed, so here goes: I got into reel tapes because of what I hated about LPs, primarily tracking-induced distortion, particularly inner-groove toward the disc center, the grab-bag aspect of pressing quality, and of course the ticks, pops and inexorable deterioration. I got out of reel tapes because of what I hated about them: hiss and inconvenience. Hiss* was mostly taken care of by Dolby encoding, but that came during the format's final death throes and then new releases totally dried up with the advent of the CD. My first was in 1985, and I have to say I haven't missed in the slightest all the things I hated about tapes and vinyl. Tapes all went when I moved into a place too small to house them. LPs lingered because I missed the window of disposal opportunity when they still had some value, plus I was lazy. What I've kept have either nostalgia value - what was around the house when I was a kid, and some of my own first purchases c.1962 - or things not yet on CD, plus the aforementioned quads. I have to admit that I retain a certain fondness for the ritualistic aspects of playing physical media, but were it not for inertia - physical as well as mental, both undoubtedly age-related - I'd probably jump whole hog into hard disc storage, computer-controlled access and data-stream acquisition. And I'm not totally ruling out the possibility of getting there yet. *Desire to suppress tape his was the main reason I chose the Phase Linear 4000 preamp with its auto-correlator noise reduction circuitry. It kind of worked, but not transparently; I could hear the hiss pumping in and out. But it also had an SQ quad decoder that I eventually took advantage of when it was discovered that the audio tracks of some recent films on laserdisc and videocassette carried, unbilled, Dolby Stereo matrix surround encoding. By adding another small amp and two more speakers in back I amazed friends with Star Wars and Raiders of the Lost Ark in surround sound well before it became a home theater mainstay. BTW: my advice is to use the Apple Lossless Encoder when importing to iTunes if you want maximum quality. Like FLAC, it's a non-lossy compression scheme, so there's no quality difference vs. the CD original, and you use less hard disc space. The past is the future which is nowHa! I still have my Pioneer PL-400 turntable, the same one I've been spinning on for the past 30+ years. Would love to have a tube amp, but honestly I can't beat the convenience of my early 90s Sony digital receiver. Eight functions/inputs, of which I use seven. To wit: phono [for the PL-400]; AM-FM tuner [built-in]; CD [Kenwood CD player - I don't even use it anymore]; DAT [Tascam TC-222 - has in/out so I can burn directly from vinyl to CD - and what I use to play CDs]; cassette tape [again, Tascam TC-222], video 1 [Sony DVD/SACD player - US region only]; video 2 [cheapo all-region DVD player]; and video three [MacBook or iPod]. My dad was an engineer for Motorola, and a ham radio and audio geek so I come by it honestly [thanks, Dad!] What I would give to have the reel-to-reel deck from our old living room! My kids are mp3 only, they think me a dinosaur, and laugh when I tell them they should rip/download everything at 320 kbps for best available audio quality. "It doesn't matter!" they say. I've worked in the independent record biz for 25+ years, and yes, it DOES matter. And only a house full of vinyl to show for it. The weirdest thing to me is the cassette revival these days. And some are doing it right, producing beautiful sounding reel-to-reel cassettes - metal reels, chrome tape, screwed plastic shells. Anyhow....not bragging or anything, just wanted to share. What a great photo and post! Thank you! Re: RippageThanx, Anonymous Tipster. I've looked in the preferences on my MacBook and found the import settings for WAV files, but I'm stalled there. What next? Also, the whole system comes out through Bose 2.2 monitors set into the corners of my plaster-walled living room. Turns the whole thing into one giant speakerbox. My friends are always amazed at how the vinyl sounds, esp live recordings. Once again, thanx to Dad. He gave me the monitors for my 25th birthday many, many years ago. How I miss him. [Anonymous Tipster notes that this is a setting in iTunes. So open iTunes. Preferences > General > Import Settings. Choose "Import using WAV Encoder." - Dave] My roommate had the "good stuff"We still listen to my Pioneer SX-780 receiver and my wife's Yamaha CR-420 receiver (both mid-70s) every day... mostly to NPR radio. The Pioneer also has my HDTV audio running through it in the living room. (I'm too broke for surround-sound, yet.) And with the help of an Apple Airport next to the computer in the other room and an Airport Extreme next to the Pioneer, we can stream our iTunes library all over the house. I can't argue with the true audiophiles here... the highest fidelity is lost on me these days (I'm wearing hearing aids, now). But ya can't beat the convenience factor of iTunes and a classic iPod for the sheer volume of songs you can have at your immediate access, not to mention building playlists or randomizing them--and it's all portable! But back to the past... As for turntable cartridges, my old roommate and I were always partial to the Stanton 681-EEE. We used those at the album-rock radio station where I DJ'ed (1975-78); they were practically industry-standard. They would set you back a couple of bucks, and maybe they were better than the turntable we had them in at home. But they made everything sound really great. It was my roommate, though, who had the Good Stuff. Top-of-the-line Pioneer gear, separate amp and tuner and a Teac 3340S R2R that used 10-inch reels. My tape deck was one of those unusual, slant-faced Sony TC-377 decks. Between the radio station and my roommate and all my friends "in the biz", I always had access to really great gear. Sadly, it usually wasn't mine. But I still have a ton of vinyl. Gimme that Old (High) School AudioYou know what I really, really, really miss about old-school electronic gear? Functions that had dedicated control switches or knobs, rather than being buried down several layers within one of an array of menus. Also, instantaneous response to switching or adjustments rather than digitalus interruptus, now made worse by HDMI wait-for-a-handshake. Dave: you are my hero. Very nice!I come from a long line of audiophiles, so even though I was only born in 1974, that all looks very familiar. Our setup was very similar, but we also had an 8-track. My current stereo setup has a fine-quality Dual record player I inherited from my grandfather. Just this morning, my 6-year-old daughter did a convincing boogie to the Saturday Night Fever soundtrack. She will totally grow up knowing the sound you hear when the needle first hits the vinyl, what we call the "crisp." And I have to agree with an earlier poster -- that totally looks like a modern photograph. How strange! StyliShure V15 Type V replacement stylus (Swiss) on eBay. [A few years ago I went to the local Circuit City (remember those?) and said I needed a new needle for my record player. The kid gave me a look like I'd asked where they kept the Victrola cranks. Finally the manager found one "in back." - Dave] MagnavoxWe were Magnavox Dealers for many years. They had one great feature, they were price-fixed. It was one of the few lines we carried that allowed us a full markup. Magnavox didn't have to police the sales pricing, we dealers ratted each other out if they were discounting. Now Magnavox is just another has-been brand (like Bell & Howell, Westinghouse or Sylvania) that can be licensed to put on any product. It shows up every once in a while on a promotional brand LCD TV or compact stereo system. Incidentally, tterrace, too bad you didn't live in Manhattan, you would have been one hell of a good customer. Love this stuffI started collecting vinyl in the mid to late 90s. It never really went away but now it's really picked up. There is hardly a major label release that isn't offered on vinyl. They are also reissuing classics as fast as the presses can make them. I bought my neighbor a turntable last year. He's now a more avid collector than I am. The real trick is keeping the vinyl clean at all times. I made a vacuum cleaning machine out of an old turntable. It does a fantastic job reviving dirty records. After they are cleaned, I slide them into a new anti-static inner sleeve. I use an anti-static brush to remove dust before each play. That removes a huge amount of surface noise. Cleaning the stylus is also important. To me, it's hard to beat the magic of a vacuum tube amplifier. I built my stereo amp from a kit about 9 years ago. You can build almost anything yourself with the kits being offered today. I build copies of classic vacuum tube guitar amps as well. I basically supply friends in local bands with free amps since I don't play guitar. It's a great hobby and soldering is a useful skill. There is just something about vinyl and do-it-yourself audio that gets you involved with the music. It makes it so much more personal. Those were the daysI used to have some stuff like that, and JBL L-100 speakers. Nowadays all that sound is still around, just smaller and in the car instead of the living room. Age vs. DolbyI don't have to worry about Dolby hiss anymore because my tinnitus is bad enough to where I hear the hiss in a silent room. I never went through a proper audiophile period mostly because I didn't have the money, but also because I never had a place where I could really put it to use until it was a bit too late. I still have my turntable but, like everyone else's, it needs a new cartridge; and the place where the stereo sits now has way too springy a floor (you can skip a CD by treading too heavily, much less an LP). These days the stereo spends most of its time being the sound system for the DVD player. My father went through his audiophile period in the fifties, and for a long time his system consisted of a tube amp whose provenance I do not recall, a massive transcription turntable and tone arm, and a home-built Altec cabinet with a 36 in. speaker (it was the '50s-- what's a crossover?). The speaker magnet weighed something like twenty pounds; the whole thing was the size of an end table. His hearing has gotten much worse than mine so he has been spared further temptation. Weird but trueAddendum - my PL-400 has two speeds - 45 and 33. What do you get when you add them together? 78. If I hold the speed button halfway down between 45 and 33, it spins at 78 rpm! I use a C-clamp to hold the button between the two and spin my 78s and have burned many of them to CD to rip into my MacBook. My 78s are now portable on my iPod. How cool is that? Phase Linear and Infinity Mon IIasBack in the mid seventies I was a service teck at a HI FI shop, We were dealers for PL and Infinity. PL was the first high-power company out there. I fixed lots of 400s (200s 200b 700s and Series 2, too). The larger Infinity speakers needed lots of power to drive. The 400 was up to it, but the crossovers in the Infinitys were very hard on the amps. The PL "turn-on thump" wasn't very compatible with the speakers. The auto-correlator in the preamp took away lots of hiss and noise, but also took away the soundstage. Plenty of tricks out there to "sweeten" up the sound of the 400, but not too many lived long enough. ELO ("Lucky Man") and Supertramp ("Crime of the Century") helped us sell lots of PL and Infinitys! I still own a pair of Mon IIas, have a few friends that still have theirs. Mon Jrs too! On another note, it was common to find audio nuts who were also camera crazy! Never seen a record playing??Tterrace, I hope your friend's daughter catches up with the times. Vinyl is in style again. Just today I went shopping with some friends and we bought a total of 35 LPs. It's smelling mighty technical in hereWAV? On a Mac? Phf. (AIFF is the native uncompressed format on Mac.) If you don't have space concerns, use Apple Lossless format, which is about half the size of AIFF or WAV. But really, 320 mp3 or AAC should be more than good enough for kids listening on an iPod. Considering how all the pop stuff these days (if that's what they're into) is so compressed (aurally, not bitwise) and saturated, it already sounds bad on the CD, so why waste the space ripping it at a high bit rate? [Lots of us (yours truly among them) are moving their CD collections onto hard drives or dedicated music servers. The .wav format has several advantages. - Dave] The most common WAV format contains uncompressed audio in the linear pulse code modulation (LPCM) format. The standard audio file format for CDs is LPCM-encoded, containing two channels of 44,100 samples per second, 16 bits per sample. Since LPCM uses an uncompressed storage method which keeps all the samples of an audio track, professional users or audio experts may use the WAV format for maximum audio quality. WAV audio can also be edited and manipulated with relative ease using software. AIFF is also PCM in its uncompressed forms. And since "top geezer" specifically mentioned he's using a Mac, it only makes sense to use a format that was made for and will work better on a Mac. That'd be AIFF or Apple Lossless if he wants something without the [possible] audible colorings of mp3, AAC, or compressed WAV. Zero historyI recently finished reading the galley of the new William Gibson book, "Zero History." As with several of his earlier books (and about half of Pixar's films), it concerns itself with the relationship between humans and the things we create. We make clothes and stereos and computers, but then we define ourselves by these things as well, so which is really central -- us, or our things? Zero History raised an interesting point about patina, in that some things become more valuable if they show signs of use and others are more valuable if they are mint in box. A stereo system, I think, would fall into the latter category. Anyway, that's an eye-catching setup. Thanks as always for sharing. Questions, questionsRetro-audiophile lust! 1. Brands and model numbers please. 2. Where's your Elcaset deck? Ray GunI also have a nifty little anti-static-electron-spewing sparky gun, pictured to the right side of your "record player". http://www.tweakshop.com/Zerostat.html I BetBet your turntable plays 78s and 16s as well as 45s and 33s. I have a cheap Garrard changer of about the same vintage that does all four... which came in rather handy when I started picking up 78s at the local Symphony's book and music sale a few years ago. Oh, OKNever had an Elcaset deck, nor 8-track. I do still have a MiniDisc deck, though. Shelf-by-shelf going down: Technics SL-1300 direct-drive turntable w/Shure V15 Type V cartridge; ZeroStat and Discwasher. Phase Linear 4000 preamp; 10-band graphic equalizer whose details escape me for the nonce. Concord outboard Dolby unit atop Pioneer RT-707 reel-to-reel tape deck. Kenwood KX-1030 cassette deck. Phase Linear 400 power amp. Not shown: Infinity Monitors with the easy-to-blow-out Walsh tweeters. Somebody tell me how to get a replacement stylus for the V15 Type V. FashionsInteresting though that you -- the clothes and hair -- would fit in just fine today. Men's clothes haven't changed much in 30 years. Sure there's newer styles, such as the stupid "falling down pants" with underwear hanging out and such, but the newer styles haven't replaced the old standbys. We tend to think of fashions of the past lasting for a long time, but if you look at any 30 year time period in the pictures on Shorpy you'll see that the fashions change drastically. All in all, the picture looks like it could have been a picture of vintage equipment taken yesterday. Living it old schoolThe system here in my studio: Pioneer RT-909 open reel (10") Pioneer RT-707 open reel (7") Pioneer PL-530 turntable Pioneer CT-F1000 cassette deck Pioneer SX-727 receiver Elac/Miracord 10-H (turntable for 78s) Tascam 106 mixer Tascam 112 cassette deck Sharp MD-R3 cd/minidisc Kenwood KR-A4040 reciever TEAC X-3 Mk II open reel (7") TEAC X-10R open reel (10") Otari MX-5050 (open reel (10") KLH Model Six speakers Infinity RS-2000 speakers iPod 60gig (first generation) Let me do some mind reading.The Fotomat you took your film to was in the parking lot of Co-op shopping center in Corte Madera. Your stereo equipment was bought at Pacific Stereo in San Rafael. Or was it that high end place down at the Strawberry Shopping Center? All very cool looking stuff. I have just broken into my old gear I bought back around 1975 at P.S. I'm currently listening to some old LPs that were my grandmother's. It's fun, and they do sound better than CDs. As far as the stylus goes, check around online. There is quite a bit of interest and information about this hobby. Reel to reelI remember when "logic" was advertised as a technological breakthrough. I'm old. Call me old schoolAll I need is a vintage Voice of Music turntable to fit in my restored 1950 Magnavox cabinet model 477P radio/record player. It never had the TV option installed so I put in an inexpensive small TV from Wally World, the cable box and wireless gear. www.tvhistory.tv/1950-Magnavox-Brochure3.JPG I have the Contemporary in mahogany. Mice had been living on the original turntable. Construction of the cabinet is first rate. Sorry for drooling into your gearI always liked those Pioneer reel-to-reel decks, but still lust for a Teac. Nice Phase Linear stuff there. That's maybe an MXR EQ? Tiny, stiff sliders with rubber "knobs"? And a slide-out shelf for the turntable? But I think the real star here is the cabinet on the right with the neato doors. Jogging the tterrace memory banksThank you sjmills, that was indeed an MXR equalizer, and exactly as you described it. I eventually connected it with mega-long cables so I could fiddle with it endlessly while sitting in my acoustic sweet spot. What's under the turntable is actually an Acousti-mount, a spring-footed platform designed to minimize low-frequency feedback from the speakers. I still use it. The outfit that made it, Netronics Research & Development, is still in business I see. The smaller cabinet at right was actually my first audio equipment cabinet; my folks got it for me c.1964. It was originally designed as a piece of bedroom furniture, and was solid wood, unlike the later composition-board larger one. And rgraham, that's where the Fotomat was, and some gear did come from Pacific Stereo in SR, but the Phase Linears were beyond them; they came from some higher-end Marin place I've forgotten about. The turntable plays only plays at 33 & 45. My online searches for replacement Shure V-15 styli usually only turn up outrageously expensive new old stock or alleged compatibles whose descriptions give me the willies. Just within the past couple months my LP collection has shrunk from around 18 down to 4 linear feet. Tape squealWow, I was born the year this was taken, and when I was growing up we had one of those cassette players on the second-from-the-bottom shelf. At least, it looks very similar to what I remember. I hated it, though, in its later years while playing tapes it would randomly emit an extremely high-pitched, screeching, squealing noise. My parents couldn't hear it so one night when my dad put in a tape and it started squealing, he didn't believe that there was any and just thought I was covering my ears and begging for it to be turned off because I hated the music, until my brother came downstairs and asked what that screeching noise was. Gonna have to show this to the husbandHe will genuflect, then get a certain far-away look in his eyes. Shelli Is that a static gun?Just bellow his right hand in the background.... a static gun for zapping away the snap-crackle-pop static before placing the vinyl record on the turntable. That WAS state of the art! High School Hi-FiI will confess to still having my high-school stereo. Akai tape deck, Pioneer amp and tuner from 1977-78. The last of which I have duplicated (triplicated? Thanks, eBay) for Shorpy headquarters. Also some Sony ES series DAT decks and CD players. Acoustic Research speakers. Squirreled away in a closet, my dad's 1961 Fisher amp and tuner (vacuum tubes). Sold on eBay: Dad's early 1960s Empire Troubadour turntable. (Regrets, I've had a few.) AnalogueryNo way would I trade old analog gear for an iPod. Any good audiophile will take vinyl or a good analog source over the compressed, squashed and mastered with no dynamics file formats that iPods handle. I'm convinced that audio (recording techniques and gear) peaked in the '70s and '80s. While we have some pretty impressive gear available in this day and age, I've got some vintage gear that sounds pretty good yet and is arguably better than some more clinical sounding stuff made today. Vinyl is back as well. Local record stores are now stocking more and more vinyl. Consumer electronic shows are full of brand new turntables and phono preamps. I would love to have that Phase Linear stuff in my audio racks! Great shot. We've come a long way.But wasn't all that stuff cool? I happen to love the before MTV days when listening to tunes was a great way to relax and reflect. I think music was better too, but then I'm showing my age! I've got that same turntable.When I dug it out of the closet a few years back and needed a tune-up, I discovered I lived just a few blocks from what may be the last store of its kind. He'll have your stylus. No website and he deals in cash only -- pretty much the same set-up for the last 60 years. J and S Phonograph Needles 1028 NE 65th St Seattle WA 98115 (206) 524-2933 His LordshipI cannot read the text, or clearly recognize the person, on whatever is located to the right of the reel to reel unit but, the person looks a little bit like Lord Buckley. Heavy Metal n Hot WaxI still have about 500 pounds of old Ampex and Marantz gear, and over a thousand vintage and new vinyl sides. Sold that stuff in the 70s and worked for a recording studio in the 80s. Always a trip to give the old tunes a spin on the old gear. With DBX decoding some of those old discs can give CDs a run for the money as far as dynamic range goes. But to say any of that sounds better than current gear is wishful thinking (remember the dreaded inside track on a vinyl LP?). Most any reasonably good, digitally sourced 5.1 setup with modern speakers will blow it away. Those were the daysThis brings back memories of dorm rooms in 1978. First thing unpacked at the beginning of the year was the stereo equipment. Last thing packed at the end of the year was the stereo equipment. Love the brushed denim jeans. I only had them in blue. Back in the DayNothing could beat the sound that jumped off the turntable the first time a brand new LP was played. Electrifying! No tuner?Ah, the days of audio purity. Am I missing the tuner, or were you a holdout for the best-quality sound, no FM need apply? Great to see that stack of equipment. I'm still using my Sony STC-7000 tuner-preamp from 1975; it doesn't have all the controls of your Phase Linear, but just handling it takes me back to the good old days. Tx for the pic! R2RI grew up in a household like this, and the reel-to-reel was my father's pride and joy. But can anyone name the recording propped up next to it? It looks like Eugene Ormandy of the Philadelphia Orchestra, except for the unbuttoned collar. Vinyl's FinalI've never been without a turntable. Currently, I have a Rega Planar 3 with a Pickering XV15-1200E cartridge. Bought my first LP in 1956 and I'm still buying new ones. My receiver/amp is a Fisher 500B, a vacuum tube gem. My speakers are highly efficient Klipsch 5.5s, which are great sounding "monkey coffins." I've a Panasonic CD player and Pioneer Cassette deck for playback of those obsolete formats. Further audio responseNext to the reel deck is the box for a London/Ampex pre-recorded tape, conductor Antal Dorati on the cover; can't remember other details. No tuner, as FM audio had too many compromises for my taste. I had a receiver in the video setup for FM simulcasts (remember them?), plus I ran the regular TV audio through it to a pair of small AR bookshelf speakers. In defense of the iPod (which I use for portable listening - Sennheiser PX-100 headphones, wonderful - and did you know Dr. Sennheiser died just last month?), it can handle uncompressed audio files just fine, plus Apple's lossless compressed format, so you're not restricted to mp3s or AAC. For what I use it for, AAC is perfectly OK, and to be honest, my ears aren't what they used to be anyway. Still, for serious listening I plop down in the living room and put on a CD or SACD, or some of my remaining vinyl. Among other LPs I saved all the matrixed Quad (SQ and QS format) which Dolby ProLogic II does a reasonable job of decoding. Finally, thanks to everybody for the hints about the Shure stylus replacements, I'll check those out. Snobs!You guys and your fancy stereos. Here's mine from back in the 70s. Tuner and speakers were Pioneer I think. No idea about the turntable. Don't ya love the rabbit ears and the cord leading to the swag lamp? And of course the whole thing sat on a "cabinet" made of bricks and boards. Is that you, Arturo?Perhaps the 7-track box cover is showing Arturo Toscanini conducting a Casual Friday concert? Never saw it comingSo the future is here already? This story is both sad and frightening. Now I can't sleep without the lights on. Two-and-a-half questions: Didn't your PL 400 get a little toasty under that shelf, pushed up against the side? Did you have LPs up on the top shelf like that in October of '89? And, if so, did they stay there? That is (was) some nice gear. I'm tearing up just a little. DoratiThe tape is a 1975 recording of Antal Dorati conducting the National Symphony Orchestra in three works by Tchaikovsky. I knew I had it on LP at one time, but I had to resort to ebay to identify it. Vinyl livesWe still have a couple hundred LPs stored carefully in the garage (don't worry, they're safe from damage!). A few years ago, we had a yard sale and had the garage open but roped off. I had one guy nearly foaming at the mouth when he saw our collection. I nearly had to physically restrain him from going in and grabbing everything! We also have an turntable that's about two years old. No, it's not top of the line, but my teenage sons LOVE the silly thing and DS#2 just bought a NEW Metallica LP! He plays the *&$%## thing when he's doing the dishes. I sound like my mom: "Turn that racket down!" The PlattersThere were around 2½ million vinyl albums sold last year in the United States, which would account for 1.3 percent of music track sales. So basically it's a novelty format, like dial telephones. IncredibleMy father had everything you have in this picture, and it brings back some incredible memories I had as a child of the 70's. 1970's Man Cave!This guy had it going on. Reel too realSold off the last of my old stereo gear (nothing too impressive) at this year's neighborhood garage sale, but I've got that same Pioneer deck sitting next to me right now. Recent craigslist purchase, necessary to digitize some of my "historic" airchecks I've been lugging around for the last 40 years. Funny, I wasn't nearly as good as I remember but it is nice to have a piece of gear I always wanted! Hi-Fi FarkAs night follows day, so Farkification follows tterrace. Not to mention j-walkblog. Love the systemReally nice system. We have seven Telefunken consoles of different sizes and styles that we really enjoy. Nothing sounds as nice as vinyl played through those 11 tubes, and the quality of a stereo that cost the price of a new VW back in 1958 is as good as you'd expect. Enjoy these "artifacts," since they (in my opinion) outperform even a new high-end Bose, Kenwood or other system. Vinyl, Shellac, and Garage Sales Rock!I got back into vinyl (and shellac) about 5 years ago. There was a tiny hole-in-the-wall used high-end audio shop in my area where I got a gently used Technics 1200 series TT for $250. Got a 30+year-old Sure V15III cart and new stylus for a lot of money, about $175! I haven't looked back 3,000 LPs later, and if you've had a garage sale in SW Michigan, you've probably seen my happy face at some point! :-) Love having the artifacts in my basement, and love making MP3s out of them even more for portability. Living in the present does indeed rock sometimes. I can't remember the last time I purchased a CD... (Sadly, Bill's Sound Center closed when they demolished the whole place for a snazzy Main St. Pub.) Nostalgia never goes awayI'm not a technophile, but I know what I like...I'm going to go into the living room right now and fire up some Louis Prima on my old Benjamin Miracord turntable! Recovering Open Reel FanaticBack in the late '70s through sometime in the early '80s you could still get current-issue prerecorded open-reel tapes. Probably very few folks were paying attention, but YES for a SINGLE PENNY you could get a dozen of them when starting your brand-new membership with ... (shudder) Columbia House. It wasn't long before they stopped offering open-reel for all their titles, but the ones in the advertisements were available in any format, and I still have the ones I got early on, and some of the automatic monthly selections. (Damn they are heavy, too. Like a box of iron filings.) Somewhere around here I have Steely Dan and ELO albums on open-reel tape. It became hard finding things I wanted to listen to, though, so I had to finish out my membership agreement by getting some LPs, and that's about the time I started to realize the things from the club looked OK but were made of inferior materials and did not always sound quite right. But of course I was about fifteen years old and it was an educational experience. It took me a few more years to get over my fascination with open reel decks, but I still have two corroding in the garage. Anyone remembertape deck specs for "wow and flutter"? Vinyl - jazz and bluesI still have the bulk of my jazz and blues vinyl collection, though I did unload some of it. Had to buy a new amp last month to play them after my old one gave up after at least 25 year service. Got a Cambridge Topaz AM1, not very pricey but does the job. Muddy Waters and Thelonious Monk rule! Am I actually this old?This was stuff I longed for in the '70s, but never managed to afford. To me it still feels semi-contemporary and definitely impressive. BTW, is the very concept of high fidelity now as out of date as this old hi-fi equipment? Judging from the execrable audio I've heard coming out of a series of cell phones I've owned over the last decade, I'm beginning to think that the basic ability to notice audio distortion may have been lost as interest in hi-fi was lost. Reel-to-reel had an advantageOne could copy whole albums, and the length was for hours. In the late 80's, I knew some serious audiophiles who had Carver CD players, Nakamichi cassette players, and reel-to-reel players, on which they'd store hours of jazz music. Turntable MemoryMy buddy and I have been mobile DJ's for close to 30 years. Back in the days of lugging three large boxes of LP's and 4 heavy boxes of 45's, sometimes up flights of stairs, and index cards for looking up song location, we had two QRK turntables we got from the radio station where my friend worked. One evening we were on the upper level of a hall with a very spungy floor. We didn't realize how much the floor would move until we started a polka and the dance floor filled with people. A few moments later the record skipped and we realized that we were bouncing, a lot. We grabbed a few quarters out of our pockets and put them on the tone arm, and then both of us pressed down with all our might to keep our stand from moving. We were very, very afraid to play anything uptempo. I still have a turntable, a bunch of vinyl, and a Teac open reel deck. I'm converting some shows I did many years ago to digital. (ShorpyBlog, Technology, Member Gallery, Farked, tterrapix)
Desk Job: 1942
... generated the vast quantities of electricity needed by the Manhattan Project's uranium enrichment plants at Oak Ridge. - Dave] (The ... 
 
Posted by Dave - 08/06/2023 - 9:16pm -

August 1942. "Tennessee Valley Authority. Generator hall of the powerhouse at Chickamauga Dam. Located near Chattanooga, 471 miles above the mouth of the Tennessee River, the dam has an authorized power installation of 81,000 kilowatts, which can be increased to a possible ultimate of 108,000 kw. The reservoir at the dam adds 377,000 acre-feet of water to controlled storage on the Tennessee River system. The power that goes out over its 154,000 volt transmission line serves many useful domestic, agricultural and industrial uses." Acetate negative by Jack Delano for the U.S. Foreign Information Service. View full size. MegaWhatThose are the largest hard drives I've ever seen! Minimal architecture, maximum powerHere is the outside of the Chickamauga Dam powerhouse. Swing to the right to see electricity leaving the plant, powering thousands of computer screens upon which users enjoy viewing Shorpy. No way we were going to loseNo way we would have lost WW2. A country than can build huge power generating facilities like this prior to WW2. I mean you have to admit it's pretty awesome what our grandparents achieved and during a depression. [More than that -- TVA hydropower was what generated the vast quantities of electricity needed by the Manhattan Project's uranium enrichment plants at Oak Ridge. - Dave] (The Gallery, Industry & Public Works, Jack Delano)
Throck and the Kats: 1921
... Cabrini Medical Center. She was 82 years old and lived in Manhattan. Mrs. Throckmorton had in recent years been a contributor to Yankeee ... 
 
Posted by Dave - 08/05/2012 - 4:49pm -

July 15, 1921. Cleon Throckmorton at the easel on the terrace of the Krazy Kat, an establishment described by the Washington Post two years earlier as "something like a Greenwich Village coffeehouse." Scroll down to the comments for more on "Throck," an engineering graduate who made his name designing sets for Eugene O'Neill's plays, and was the first art director for CBS in the early days of television. View full size. National Photo Company Collection. Krazy Kat Raided! Washington Post / Saturday, February 22, 1919 ROW IN KRAZY KAT LANDS 14 IN JAIL Carefree Bohemians Start Rough-House and Cop Raids Rendezvous. Fourteen would-be Bohemians yesterday appeared in police court and demanded a jury trial on various charges preferred against them by Policeman Roberts, who, with the assistance of two night watchmen, raided the Krazy Kat, which is something like a Greenwich Village coffee house, in an alley near Thomas Circle. Roberts, under orders to watch the rendezvous of the Bohemians, heard a shot fired in the Krazy Kat shortly after 1 o'clock yesterday morning. The watchmen were quickly pressed into service and a raiding party was organized. When Roberts climbed the narrow stairway leading from a garage to the scene of trouble, he found himself in the dining room of the Krazy Kat, confronted with gaudy pictures evolved by futurists and impressionists and what appeared to the policeman to be a free-for-all fight. At the Second Precinct police station 25 prisoners, including three women — self-styled artists, poets and actors, and some who worked for the government by day and masqueraded as Bohemians by night — were examined. Those against whom charges were placed gave the following names: John Don Allen, Cleon Throckmorton and John Stiffen, charged with keeping a disorderly house; Charles Flynn, drinking in public; J. Albion Blake, disorderly conduct; Walter Thomas, assault and disorderly conduct; Harry Rockelly, drinking in public; George Miltry, disorderly conduct; Mitchell McMahon, drinking in public; Joseph Ryon, disorderly; Anthony Hanley, drinking in public; Frank Moran, disorderly conduct, Leo Cohen, drinking in public and disorderly conduct, and Raymond Coombs, disorderly conduct. ---------------------------- February 17, 1957 ATLANTIC CITY, N.J. — A $50 bet, an engineering diploma and a hobby turned Cleon Throckmorton from the world of structural design to a lucrative career in art. A native of nearby Absecon, Throckmorton, now in semi-retirement, has designed settings for over 300 plays all because a friend bet him $50 he couldn't earn a living from art. "A few of my artist friends and myself were kidding around years ago in a restaurant in Pittsburgh and I said anyone with an common sense could paint," he explained. Art was his hobby and the bet was collected after two of his works were accepted by the Corcoran Gallery in Washington, D.C., for its semi-annual exhibit. "That made me really serious about art," he says. Although he had just earned an engineering degree from Carnegie Tech, "Throck" started on a career in theatrical setting design and is still going strong here as a designer and painter of party backdrops for a beachfront hotel. Unlike the conventional artist, "Throck" uses gallon jugs of paint and does his work on the floor with a brush attached to a long bamboo pole. Throckmorton, now 59, spends about six months each year at his Atlantic City work with the raimainder of his time scattered at spot jobs in Hollywood and New York. ------------------------- October 25, 1965 ATLANTIC CITY, N.J. (AP) Cleon Throckmorton, 68, who gained prominence as a set designer for playwright Eugene O'Neill, died Saturday in hospital after a brief illness. Throckmorton joined O'Neill at the Provincetown Playhouse in Massachusetts and prepared the sets for O'Neill's Emperor Jones, The Hairy Ape, and Beyond the Fringe, which were later produced at the Theatre Guild in New York. During the pioneering days of television, Throckmorton became the Columbia Broadcasting System's first art director. He is survived by his wife. Krazy ManThis is becoming quite the detective story! I cannot wait for the continuing adventures of Throckmorton & his crew. Given that the bust happened two years before these pictures, it seems that Cleon kept his establishment running for a while. Thomas Circle looks, unfortunately, fairly well re-developed as of the last time Google snapped a picture. I will be in DC in May (I grew up not far from Glen Echo Park, actually). I may take a little visit down to Thomas Circle to see if there are echoes of the Krazy Kat in some alley there... [Throck was enrolled at GWU. Still to come: Photos of the alley. Which, coincidentally, is just a couple blocks from my day job of the past 13 years. - Dave] Mrs. ThrockmortonJust a quick search of the 'Cleon Throckmorton' name dug up something kind of fun -- an archived letter to Time magazine from 1947. Pages two and three have Mrs. Throckmorton's sister disputing TIME's claim that it was Mrs. Throckmorton photographed puffing a cigar at opera. If I'm chasing the right trail, Throckmorton married Juliet St. John Brenon. Her father was a (highly respected it would seem) NYC music critic, Algernon St. John Brenon. It would be cool to know if one of those girls was Juliet, wouldn't it? ThrockI wonder if there is any chance the young lady he is painting became Mrs. Throckmorton. ThrockGoogle this guy. He was a major player in the theatre world. Very interesting. Gaudy pictures evolved by futuristsWhat a great line, in a fascinating story. These women look dangerous to me; not just flappers, but vamps! Alley KatsIs the alley in question Green Court, off 14th near Thomas Circle? I worked in one of the buildings on 14th and could look out on the alley which then, the '90s, housed the Green Lantern, a gay club. I think it became the Tool Shed. Ahh, yes, looks like my hunch was correct... From "Gay Life Remembered" by Bob Roehr in Independent Gay Forum... Krazy Kat in 1920 was a "Bohemian joint in an old stable up near Thomas Circle ... (where) artists, musicians, atheists, professors" gathered. Miraculously the structure still stands, five blocks from the White House, as a gay bar called the Green Lantern. I really do empathize...with "Throck." My wife is always charging me with "keeping a disorderly house." I keep trying to tell her she just doesn't understand my absurdist aesthetic. It's not easy being a visionary, I guess. No Connection!(Washington Post / Saturday, February 22, 1919 ROW IN KRAZY KAT LANDS 14 IN JAIL Carefree Bohemians Start Rough-House and Cop Raids Rendezvous.) ........................................... There is no connection ..... but the date of this Post article was the same day my father (bless his soul) was born. This is good stuff Dave. Thank You. My new hero(ine)... is the woman who is having her portrait done. Not only is she beautiful, but as evidenced in the other photos, she seemed to have a bit of a rebellious streak for daring to show so much skin (someone earlier referenced that she seemed to be wearing - *gasp!* - a miniskirt, in 1921.) That rules, in my book! Plus, she has such a coy look about her. It's fun to think that maybe she's a gypsy who has found the fountain of youth, and she's still roaming around and haunting places like Soho artists' lofts and tiny Parisian cafes, looking exactly the same now as she did then, smoking cigarettes and taking everything in through those dark eyes.... A sword? Looks like the lady on the table might have some future swashbuckling planned. Heart Stopping , Sucking In Air GreatThis photo is so good on so many levels it hard to take it all in. Whew About that Cigar & Mrs ThrockmortonThe 1920 Washington Census shows Cleon's father, Ernest U. Throckmorton, as proprietor of a cigar shop. Could be it's true she was smoking a stogie? Other info on this sheet has the parents at 55 yrs old. Mother's name is Roberta, born in Indiana. Cleon was 22. Home address is 1536 Kingman Place (something) NW. [According to his N.Y. Times obituary in 1965, Mom & Dad's full names were Ernest Upton and Roberta Cowing Throckmorton; Cleon was born October 18, 1897; his wife was the former Juliet St. John Brenon. - Dave] Green LanternBy coincidence, after reading about the Green Lantern here yesterday, I was watching a 1918 Charlie Chaplin comedy called "A Dog's Life", and noticed that the saloon in that film is called "Green Lantern". It made me wonder if that phrase has some particular "folk meaning" or significance, or relevance to saloons or drinking, but I can't find anything on google but the comic book hero by that name. Throckmorton Place $895K in '04!Shucks...you missed your chance to buy the Throckmorton home. From some 2004 Washington Blade (another gay connection!) classifieds... LOGAN CIRCLE New listing! Fabulous renovated TH. 1.5 blks from Logan Circle, Whole Foods & more! 3 story TH w/ separate bsmt apt and 2 story owner’s unit w/ beautiful gar- dens and deck. Live in 2 BR, 2.5 BA unit w/ hdwd flrs, lots of light,& lrg bathrooms. Rental 1 BR w/ private entrance. Great condo alternative. Must see! $895,000 OPEN SAT 5/15 & SUN 5/16 (1 - 4 pm) 1536 Kingman Place. (202) 332-3228 Jeff Shewey, COLDWELL BANKER / PARDOE. CleonWhile looking online for his paintings I found this: Throckmorton, Cleon (1897–1965), designer. Born in Atlantic City, he studied at Carnegie Tech and at George Washington University before embarking on a career as a landscape and figure painter. After a few years he turned to the theatre, assisted on the designs for The Emperor Jones (1920), and later created the sets for All God's Chillun Got Wings (1924), S.S. Glencairn (1924), In Abraham's Bosom (1926), Burlesque (1927), Porgy (1927), Another Language (1932), Alien Corn (1933), and others. By his retirement in the early 1950s he had designed sets for over 150 plays. Throckmorton also drew up architectural plans for such summer theatres as the Cape Playhouse in Dennis, Massachusetts, and the Westport (Connecticut) Country Playhouse. Cleon & JulietCleon's wife, Juliet St. John Brenon, according to her IMDB bio, was born in 1885, making her 37-ish during the time these photos were taken. Her uncle Herbert Brenon was a well-known silent film director who worked frequently with Cleon. Apparently they had some connections to Society: Baron Franz von Papen, three postcard autograph messages signed in the mid-1930s to American friend Mrs. Juliet Throckmorton in New York. [Her November 1979 obituary in the New York Times gives her age at death as 82, which would mean she was born around 1897. Of course actresses (and actors) have been known to fudge their age. - Dave] Throck of AgesFor what it's worth...the SSDI lists her as follows: JULIET THROCKMORTON 01 Sep 1895 Nov 1979 It would appear that IMDB is quite mistaken, Hollywood fudging notwithstanding. Juliet's ObitNovember 22, 1979 (NYT) JULIET B. THROCKMORTON Juliet Brenon Throckmorton, a stage and screen actress in the 1920s, and widow of Cleon Throckmorton, a noted stage designer who worked closely with Eugene O'Neill, died Sunday at Cabrini Medical Center. She was 82 years old and lived in Manhattan. Mrs. Throckmorton had in recent years been a contributor to Yankeee magazine, writing, among other subjects, about Eugene O'Neill, E.E. Cummings and other well-known people who had frequented her husband's Greenwich Village studio. Juliet BrenonAre we sure Juliet is the one pictured? Juliet & Throck were not engaged until 1927 in NYC. Here's the announcement:
D.C. Transit: 1961
... slot between the two running rails. Washington DC and Manhattan were the only two significant installations of conduit traction in ... 
 
Posted by Dave - 08/03/2023 - 4:48pm -

March 12, 1961. "D.C. Transit trolley in front of the U.S. Capitol." 8x10 inch gelatin silver print by railroad historian Ara Mesrobian. View full size. Pulling the PlowA great photo of a classic streetcar, but what really sets it apart is the unusually clear view of the plow (behind the front truck) which drew electric power through the conduit slot between the two running rails. Washington DC and Manhattan were the only two significant installations of conduit traction in North America. It was costly to build but spared the street the clutter of overhead wires. The car does carry a trolley pole, but this was for use in suburban areas where conventional overhead was used. Car 766 was already an antique when this photo was taken, used only for charters and special trips. It's preserved at the National Capital Trolley Museum, mentioned in a recent Shorpy post. Must Have Been a Special OccasionThe pre-PCC 1918 vintage 766 was an older car relegated to excursion only use at the time of this snap. It's currently being restored at the National Capital Trolley Museum: http://www.dctrolley.org/dccollection/27 (The Gallery, D.C., Railroads, Streetcars)
Flatiron Rising: 1902
"Flatiron Building, New York." The Manhattan landmark under construction circa 1902. 8x10 inch glass negative, ... Awesome Flatiron is my favorite building in Manhattan. This is a super shot. They knew what they were doing But I ... really mind-boggling. Definitely my favorite building in Manhattan. Click to enlarge. Fuller Building The Fuller ... 
 
Posted by Dave - 08/02/2012 - 3:16pm -

"Flatiron Building, New York." The Manhattan landmark under construction circa 1902. 8x10 inch glass negative, Detroit Publishing Co. View full size. StreetcarsAs noted elsewhere, by this time most of the streetcars in New York were running on electricity, with the electric supply on almost all the lines being underground. The same plow-and-shoe system as used in Washington, D.C. IconicOne of my favourite buildings and, speaking as a Brit, a real iconic image of New York. Stunning photo. The facadeIs limestone and glazed terra cotta. I looked it up in Wikipedia. 23Skidoo! The building that coined the phrase due to the updrafts. Times are a ChangingThe lone auto is I believe a curved dash Oldsmobile. Note the tiller steering. Probably scared the horses half to death. Gotham Gem!The Flatiron Building and the Chrysler Building in NYC are two of the most beautiful structures in the United States. To see them in person and to tour them is an education in itself! With my little eyeI love shots like this -- it's like "I Spy." AstoundingThis is absolutely one of the best early shots of the Flatiron I have seen. The detail is amazing, and there are so many of the surrounding buildings still there today. Thanks for posting! AwesomeFlatiron is my favorite building in Manhattan. This is a super shot. They knew what they were doingBut I still can't understand why the stonework was interrupted between the 4th and 5th floors and continued above. One would think they'd start at the bottom and continue up. There must be a reason. [Only the lower part of the facade is stonework. The top part is terra cotta tiles. They're still working on the bottom (limestone) section. - Dave] HorselessNote one horseless carriage lower right. Right smart fellows I reckon. Dear George ReadI'll take footage on the 18th Floor facing north, please! This picture shocked meSomehow it seems like this icon has always been. To think of it as being constructed is, well, kind of freaky. What a visionary design. What powers the streetcars?Is there voltage under that third rail? It would short out all the time in rain, so it's doubtful. No overhead wires though. [The underground power supply is accessed through a slot running between the tracks. There is no third rail. - Dave] George A Fuller Co.The contractor was a major player in the field of early skyscraper construction. Fuller built many buildings that are still around today and was credited with many innovative techniques for this type of construction. The company was liquidated in the 1970s. Spectacular!Everyone should stand at this intersection someday: Fifth Avenue on the right; Broadway receding into the distance on the left; 22nd Street running behind the building (where the buggy sits at the corner under the "Slosson" sign); 23rd Street just below the bottom edge of the photo. Stand on the sidewalk right at the rounded (northern) corner of the building, where today there is a Sprint cell phone store, of all things, and contemplate a city street scene from a century ago, filled with horse-drawn buggies, street cars, and Victorian finery. It will take your breath away. Egad!How thin! NervousApplying the skin stones looks like a job for the non-timid. Those scaffolds are hung from ropes! It's interesting to see how things were done before the invention of the tower crane. That boom on the right and the one on the roof did all the heavy lifting of stones and beams, I'm guessing. TransitionWhat I find fascinating about this photo is it shows the transitional nature of tall construction at the turn of the century. The steel frame here is clearly very sturdy and over-engineered, and yet they're wrapping it in brick and massive stone blocks, and not curtain-wall hung panels as would become the norm in 20 years or so. AmazingI think it's an amazing building. A work of art indeed! Super InsightAn icon in the making and the photo shows what we can't see today: the skeleton of this wonderful building before the "skin" was installed! Great find! Thanks, Dave. Water Wagon?I wondered where all the water was coming from & then I spotted it, maybe: up the street you can see a wagon with a rounded tank and what looks like water spraying from the back. Looks deliberate, unless the wagon got up enough speed for the wheels to do that. What could it be? Dust Control? [Poop control. See all those horses? The Department of Sanitation cleaned up after them. - Dave] One of these daysGorgeous building and the longtime object of my faraway architectural dreams. It's on my so-called bucket list to see this beauty in person some day. Flatiron TodayThe detail on this building is really mind-boggling. Definitely my favorite building in Manhattan. Click to enlarge. Fuller BuildingThe Fuller Company made sure their next HQ didn't get renamed by popular fancy: they set the name in stone over the door, and there it remains to this day. http://www.nyc-architecture.com/UES/UES107.htm Another Flatiron FanLike most of you, I've always loved this building. I've also had the privilege of working in it, on the 14th Floor (for Tor Books, a company I now consult for, so I'm still there periodically). There are lots of interesting facts about it, such as that the Flatiron name predates Fuller's construction of this icon, being applied to the block itself in those days. I first visited the building in the 70s, when I applied (unsuccessfully) for a job at St. Martin's Press, which is still there. Back then, the building still had its original painfully-slow hydraulic elevators. Those were replaced before I began working there in 2000. What I was most surprised to learn after I began working there is that almost all photos taken of it are misleading. That's because they're usually framed to emphasize the structure's thinness, as in the 1902 image here, or to make it look symmetrical (like an isosceles triangle), as in Seinberg's lovely color shot. (Great lighting, btw. What time of day was it?) So what was the surprise? Its footprint (or floorplan, if you prefer) is actually a right triangle, with the long side on Broadway. As you'd expect, the view from "the point," as occupants call it, is fabulous, looking straight uptown toward the Empire State Building, and down on Madison Square Park. An architectural tidbitGenerally speaking nowadays when buildings of this era are renovated, damaged or missing pieces of decorative masonry are replaced with fiberglass replicas. These cost much less than stone and are easier to install. The exterior of Shepard Hall at CCNY, for example, would probably blow away in a strong breeze. A few years ago, when the Flatiron building underwent a significant cleaning, tons (literally) of the decorative stonework was discarded in favor of replicas. Friends of mine who lived nearby dug through dumpsters and collected pieces they could cart home as souvenirs. Thanks to Team Shorpy for these excellent New York images. Love it!I love this building. I've visited Tor in their offices there (hi, Moshe!) and got to look out, as well as seeing the place from the outside. It's wonderful. Is the plan to convert it into a luxury hotel still in place? How are they going to deal with the historic elevators? (This building has hydraulic column elevators, and is really too tall for them, so they require constant maintenance. Plus they're fairly old by now. But it's a historic landmark, which strongly limits what can be changed.) [Another commenter (below) tells us the elevators have been replaced. - Dave] (The Gallery, DPC, Flatiron Building, NYC)
Dead End: 1905
... and other materials cropped up on the far western end of Manhattan Valley, around what is now West 125th Street, with its direct ... the dairy (comments, 1/21, 9:06) is definitely West 125th (Manhattan Ave, as it was called around the time that pic was taken), the ... 
 
Posted by Dave - 06/09/2018 - 5:26pm -

Circa 1905. "The close of a career in New York." Photo by Byron. 8x10 inch dry plate glass negative, Detroit Publishing Company. View full size. Not ready for a poke.You really want to wait a day or so, until the legs on top are lifted skyward, before poking the horse with a stick. Grew up in cattle country, and had the chance to do so as a kid. Great photo, this one, for showing what life was like. Also enjoyed the Little Italy 1900 view posted today (or was that yesterday?). Urban ArchaeologyWho'll be the first to figure out what street this is? The smellI would not last very long in the olden days. Gag. Future GlueFascinating photo. Apparently this was a very common sight. NYC had men with wagons in place to pick up carcasses and bring them to rendering plants, many of which were located next to Dead Horse Bay in Brooklyn. I hear that bones are still occasionally found! Nowadayshe'd be plastered with tickets. For Jack FinneyIf I could dedicate a photograph from this site, I'd dedicate this one to Jack Finney, author of "The Third Level," "I Love Galesburg in the Springtime" and the novel "Time and Again," among dozens of stories all focused on the notion that any normal, healthy, sane person would want to flee the oppression of modern life and escape to the healthier and more beautiful world of 1905. Which, in Finney's mind, apparently consisted entirely of men in straw boaters, women in leg-o'-mutton sleeves, and band concerts in the park on summer evenings. There are no dead half-starved horses in Finney's world, no ragged children, no shaved heads to get rid of the lice (note the extremely short haircuts on a couple of these kids), no mud. That's why I love this site: it's like getting a glimpse into the past, unfiltered by the wishful thinking of modern filmmakers or fictionalists. Google Street ViewBefore too many people post Google Street Views of 527 West 125th Street (the address noted in the excellent comment below), two observations. 1. 527 West 125th Street is the address of the dairy (photo below), not of the rundown stable whose entrance is shown in the dead-horse photo. Dairy and stable not necessarily same street address! 2. Please DO NOT make a screen grab of a Google Street View and then upload the screen grab here or elsewhere. If you want to show a Google Street View in the comments box, all you need to do is copy and paste the Google "embed" code, which is super-easy. Thank you and good day. Stop right there boyo!Don't you dare poke that animal with that stick. McDermott-Bunger DairyThe McDermott-Bunger sign is a clue. The company built a new dairy at 527 West 125th Street in 1903 (NY Times), so the delivery stable was probably not too far away. Beginning in the 1860s, factories producing lumber, paint, beer, dye and other materials cropped up on the far western end of Manhattan Valley, around what is now West 125th Street, with its direct connections to the rail line along the Hudson River and the ferry. While I am loath to beat a dead horse, I speculate this photo was shot in that area. In the movies from that eraI always wondered why even really poor people were always clean and had good teeth. Also thought it was strange that there were never any dead horses in the streets--except the ones shot in gun battles. West Side DairyThere was another McDermott-Bunger facility at 525-27 West 38th Street. I think the older boy cares.Though horse death was a regular part of life in the dairy delivery business I'm sure people did get attached to some of the animals. When the time came a horse had to be gotten out of the property and out to the street where the carcus could be picked up. I'm thinking the boy with shoes and a hat works in the stable and has been tasked with waiting for the pickup. I'm also thinking he is not too happy with the task nor what has happened to one of his charges. It's entertainment for the kids and it's a responsibility for him. His affect says, "Aw crap, this sucks." "Mind your horse for you, Mister?"The kid in the flat cap looks a bit guilty to me. The Knackers TruckGetting a dead horse up off the street was hard work. Here is a photo of one being winched into what looks like an early Daimler municipal knacker's truck somewhere in Germany. Another note re: Jack FinneyAnother note re: Jack Finney and his wonderful book, "Time and Again", as posted by Cactus Wren. I've read it at least three times over the years, and it would be a book that I'd want to have with me to read once again, if marooned on a desert island. We tripped the light fantastic on the sidewalks of New YorkWell, a few of us, anyways. Others, not so much. Dave, some of the photos you find astonish me. They have changed me. This is one of the saddest ever. Looks LikeThe Yellow Kids of Hogan's Alley Look at the old facesThese kids had such old looking faces...this was the most depressing photo yet...interesting, but depressing! I could have lived the rest of my lifewithout seeing this photo. Why oh why did I click on this email this morning? Ok, I'm a woman who loves animals, babies, children etc. I'm no member of Peta and I eat meat but this picture is heartbreaking. To see a magnificent animal like the horse lying in a ditch looking starved and unkempt just makes me want to cry. I wish I could go back to that time and whip that owner for abusing that horse the way he did. This just makes me even more thankful for our modern ASPCA. I hope this horse is in horse heaven now galloping over the hills and valleys of heaven and eating all the oats he desires. Please don't reply about all the other misfortunate beings that existed then. I'm not really interested. Any architectural historians out there?The clapboard house next to the dairy looks considerably older than the brick structures elsewhere on the street. Any clues as to its potential age? It looks fairly rattletrap when this photo was taken. Is this a Saturday or in the summertime - or are all these boys playing truant? And I bet none of them wash their hands before eating. You can do better, DaveJesus, man - don't we see enough death and violence in modern media? You can actually select the pics you post, right? [Boo-hooey. - Dave] For Cactus WrenNot to get in an argument with you, but I recently read "Time and Again," a work of FICTION, which was written in 1970. I didn't get the idea from reading it that 1882 was such a fabulous and glorious time to live in. In fact, there's a part in the book where the main character Simon Morley is riding in a taxi and discussing with the driver the poverty he and his family live with constantly. If people really want to know how the "Other Half" lived, they ought to read Jacob Reis. Look at their facesI see an obvious resigned sadness in each little boy's face over the demise of the equine as though, even at their tender ages, they accept the sorrowful but inevitable finality of death. Even the kid that has spotted the photographer wears an undermask of mourning. (Yeah, I am one of those morose drinkers who cries in my beer). The poor horse was a good animal, he didn't deserve this. He served his master well, worked his carcass off and this is how it all ends up. Where is the justice? Great Photo Dave!Not sure what everyone's gripe is about you posting this photo. As a history buff, I am thankful that such photos are available to view. They give us a peek into history, and the way things were. A great photoSure it's depressing, but it's as real as the pictures of death taken by Mathew Brady during the Civil War. When I was a kid in New York, circa 1944 to 1948, there were still a number of horses drawing vendors' carts. Vegetables, rags, and a knife sharpener were the ones I remember. I also remember a traditional organ grinder with a monkey, and guys building skyscrapers tossing red hot rivets through the air. This way to the Egress.The comments regarding the "depressing" subject remind me of a comment left at the Children's Museum at a certain major Canadian institution when I worked there. "You should only put up pictures of pretty things like flowers and butterflies instead of the Satanic things you have" (which were, amongst other things, costumes from other countries and an inflatable igloo). I, for one, am glad that no punches are pulled, here. Life isn't always flowers and butterflies. Cost of HorsepowerThe fate of horses worked to death, and elimination of their droppings from the street, were big reasons why automobiles were looked on as a great advancement. By comparison, automotive smoke and oil drips seem minor. On PhotographersAn eloquent, honest, even wrenching photo. And it has inspired a range of emotions. This is what the best photography does - beyond the merely documentary. Thanks for unearthing and posting this. Thanks, DavePut me in the category of readers who appreciate photos like these. The great thing about so many of these historical photos is that they show the dirty fingernails and the sweat-soaked clothes of past times, not just picture-postcard views of town and country. When thousands of horses pulled thousands of carts, wagons, and carriages through cities every day of the week, some horses obviously died. Let's not be so meek and prim that we complain about seeing photos that depict everyday reality. If you're too fragile to view these photos, maybe the problem is with you, rather than the truth portrayed in the photos. And Shefindsu, what makes you think any cruelty was involved in this horse's death? The horse doesn't look "starved and unkempt" to me. He just looks dead. Geez, people, get a grip. Losing the rose-tinted glassesI've been enjoying the photographs on Shorpy.com for over the year now. During that time, I noticed a certain tendency of some commentators to shake heads at our present while nostalgically looking at pictures of men and women of the past century. I hope this photo will serve as a sharp reminder of how primitive and brutal life could be in a average Western metropolis, barely a century ago. Mind you, I don't think present times are anywhere close to utopia. But comparing the place I live in today with the way it was a hundred years ago... I'd say I'm better off then my grand-grandparents. Blogging a dead horseThis was a common sight in any big city at the time. Just because this horse is on the street waiting to be picked up does not necessarily mean that the animal died from abuse. I wrote an article last year about the history of carriage horses in New York, and in the course of my research I found numerous pictures just like this (and none of the horses in the pictures looked "healthy," probably because they were, you know, dead). Freak accidents, disease, and simple wear and tear from years of pulling carriages on the city streets are just a few of the things that could send a horse to an early grave. Although it may seem sad, horses in this era were still considered a means to an end, and their usefulness was determined by how much they could work. I'm sure that there were owners that mourned the death of a cherished animal, but truthfully people around the turn of the century were generally a bit more realistic about the inevitability of death than we are today. Horses still need disposalI worked for the National Park Service for many years and we had mounted patrol rangers who rode the back country trails. I vividly remember the card we kept in the Rolodex file for a "dead horse removal" service. Never had to call on them, thank god. Our horses were loved and cared for like no others (a small army of volunteers assisted in feeding and currying) but they were still animals that might fall victim to sickness or injury. Yes, not 125thGreetings -- just discovered this fantastic site. Amazing stuff. Kudos to webmaster Dave. Adding to what's probably already been confirmed, a friend on 126th Street notes that while the photo of the dairy (comments, 1/21, 9:06) is definitely West 125th (Manhattan Ave, as it was called around the time that pic was taken), the picture of the dead horse does not look like West 125th. There is no place on West 125th that has that kind of perspective, straight to the vanishing point. It could possibly be East 125th, or, much more likely, someplace well downtown from there. Thanks for this pictureA sad photograph, but an interesting one that shows something about history that we don't ordinarily think about much. That's what I like about this site: old photographs show us the forgotten details. For me the most telling thing is that the kids are more interested in the camera than they are in the horse. It's not that the kids are particularly inhumane, but for them a dead horse isn't all that unusual. A camera is. And is that so bad, for children to focus on the new? I'm sad for the horse, but let's not forget the kids. They're vibrant, alive, interested in new things around them and in each other, even in the face of death and their own poverty. There's hope here. The kidsI agree that this is a sad picture, but alas, it is real life. The horse does not look that well fed, but perhaps it is because it was ill, not starved. What I really find interesting is how many kids are just sort of running around on their own - no supervision, no shoes, and that one little guy on the sidewalk by himself looks no more than 3 or 4. That's Life (& Death)I am new to this site but must comment on this picture. I grew up in Brooklyn in the 1950s. There was a livery stable on Dean Street where peddlers stored their wagons and boarded their horses. Occasionally a horse would die and wind up in the street just like this. The owner of the stable would cover it with a blanket (presumably to keep the flies off) until the Department of Sanitation (around the block on Pacific Street) could pick it up. I remember one instance where we kids watched as the dead horse was winched onto a flatbed truck and hauled away. Horses (even the most loved and well-cared for) die, as do all living things eventually. The horse in the photo may well have been 25 to 30 years old. Possible Location ...I have been spent a little while trying to solve the puzzle of where the location of this picture was and I may have found it. Not only was the McDermott-Bunger Dairy located at 527 West 125th Street in NYC, but they also had an additional location at 525-531 West 38th Street in NYC. I have found several references to this, including one in a November 1902 issue of the Jefferson County Journal (of Adams, NY.) Unfortunately, when I looked at the location on Google maps, I found an open space that is an overpass for one of the entrance/exit ramps to the Lincoln Tunnel. Additionally, there are no old buildings that are identifiable on the block. (The Gallery, Bizarre, DPC, Horses, Kids, NYC)
Times Square: 1943
... these two buildings before I started read more about Manhattan skyscrapers. Now I'm old NYC highrise fan and I love your site. ... 
 
Posted by Dave - 08/01/2012 - 1:35pm -

New York, March 1943. "Times Square on a rainy day." Medium-format nitrate negative by John Vachon for the Office of War Information. View full size. Color me grayThis would be fun to see in color: the brightness of the billboards and the taxis would really stand out against the steely cold damp drabness of everything else. Colorizing after the fact wouldn't quite capture the atmosphere, but maybe I'll try anyway. Unless someone else wants to...? Saludos Amigos en la Plaza del TiempoThe Globe Theater on the right has put up a lavish display for Walt Disney's "Saludos Amigos," a 42-minute feature cartoon that encouraged our wartime "Good Neighbor Policy" with South America. Here's the Disney lobby poster that the Globe copied for its building-high banner. March 1-17, 1943Well, the only way I can narrow down the date is to find out that the movie at the Globe changed beginning Thursday, March 18 (Saludos Amigos had its last showing on the 17th). Are there any other little hints in the picture to help date it? Blackout!Check out the blackout headlights on the taxicabs. My mother remembers those. Taxi!Those taxicabs look particularly strange, kinda like a 1930s front plastered on a 1940-ish body shell. And the coupelet back makes them even stranger! Any idea what they are? [Circa 1940 Checker Model A. - Dave] Mother & Father DuffyAt the far left, you can see the Father Duffy Statue. Here's the statue in 1944. The pretty woman in the middle is my mother. BeerSchaefer is the one beer to have...when you're having more than one! Now you know the rest of the jingleSchaefer is the one beer to have...when you're having more than one! Schaefer's pleasure doesn't fade even when your thirst is done. The most rewarding flavor in this man's world, for people who are having fun. Schaefer is the one beer to have when you're having more than one. I wonder how long it's been since that was on the airwaves... Stop n GoIs that one of the old-fashioned stoplights that only had red and green lenses? I would have thought those were all gone by 1943. BroadwayThis picture shows Seventh Avenue, which looks like it was a two way street then. Out of the photo, to the left, would be Broadway. Mayor Bloomberg has shut off any traffic between 47th and 42nd Streets on Broadway. It is now a mall, complete with folding chairs and is mobbed on the nicer days. GloomyIt makes me shiver just to see this photo. How gray and cold that rain must be. I also notice the "Buy War Bonds" sign on the Flatiron Building, and the WAAC sign. Is that a recruiting station or something? Also visible above the marquee is an Orpheum sign, presumably from the old Vaudeville days. A real step back into America's past. I wonder if it was Sunday, with so few people on the street. [That's not the Flatiron Building. Which is taller, and not on Times Square. - Dave] Laffmovie Here, a 5/15/43 NY Times entry about the theater to the right of the Astor. http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9802EFDD103CE03ABC4D52DFB... Parts of the 42nd Street sister-theater mentioned in the article have been put to good use as the AMC Empire 25. http://cinematreasures.org/theater/255/ Depression That brilliant facade of the night, the signs that scream see this, drink this, buy this, are stripped of their promise by the harsh drab light of day. Across the street is the Orpheum. A gilded palace where baggy pant top bananas tell stale jokes and cheap B girls shimmy and strip to the cat calls and wolf whistles of the lonely and desperate. I pull up my collar against the wind and start across. My feet make pearlescent rings in the oil drenched street. It's a cold rain, but not enough rain to wash the dirt from this city. Depression is daylight, and rain and Times Square. Crossed StreetsPerhaps Mr. Mel has Bway and Seventh reversed. In the foreground Broadway is on the right -- a two-way avenue at the time, one-way going south when I moved here, no-way as of last month (pedestrians only). Seventh Avenue is out of view on our left. In the distance where the Times building is (with a V for "Victory" and War Bonds), the two cross and Broadway goes away down the canyon to the left and Seventh Avenue continues down the canyon to the right. WAAC = Women's Army Auxiliary Corps, soon changed to Women's Army Corps (the famous WACs of the WACs, WAVEs, WASPs, and SPARs). Re the Flatiron Building misidentifications, I myself got the Times tower confused with yet a third building in the Central 40s (still standing) in another Shorpy last week. It's too easy to get confused because with the ugly sheathing obscuring all the turn- of- the- century beauty, the Times tower shell we see today isn't recognizable to its appearance in photos. This is wartime and the neon signage is a sad subdued shadow of its peacetime glories. Admiral -- Canadian ClubNot only is that not the Flatiron, it's the building Times Square was named after -- the old New York Times headquarters. Known mainly for the past 60-odd years as the building that holds up the big billboards at the end of Times Square. It's encased almost entirely in signage. Now that's Times Square!Mysterious and alluring, rain or shine, night or day. Not the sterile, Disneyfied pedestrian mall that's closed off to traffic now. Red and GreenI'm not sure when New York replaced all the older two-color lights, but I can remember them still being around during my childhood in the mid- to late-1950's. As I recall, at one point they had them showing both red and green to mean "caution" in place of the yellow light. Some things never changeThe manhole covers look the same today. The potholes, too. Taxi grabThat shot of the Checker Model A taxi is a frame grab from the film Kiss of Death (1949). The one where Richard Widmark pushes the old lady in a wheelchair down the stairs. Trash basketsI love the wire trash cans. They're right out of a Looney Toons reel. Do these still exist? 47th StreetThis is looking south from 47th Street. The building on the right has been replaced by the W Hotel and the Marriott has replaced the building just south of that. This is where the TKTS booth is nowadays. And as a matter of fact, my office window (where I am sitting right now) is on the left -- just to the right of the letter A in "State". MasterpieceAlso visible is a billboard for "The Human Comedy," a superb movie, a bit maudlin now, but still a classic and well worth watching. Admiral-Canadian Club ReduxThat Admiral - Canadian Club stack of signs was at the north end of Times Square and not hung on the Times Tower on the south end. Notice that the Astor Hotel is on the left, or west, side of the Square. The Astor Theater was a favorite with my family, when we were in town just to see a movie, and not to go to the Paramount, Roxy or the Music Hall (or to the Center Theater for the ice show), all of which complemented their movies with stage musical and comedy shows, such as The Phil Spitalny All-Girl Orchestra featuring Evelyn and Her Magic Violin, Phil Silvers, and Danny Kaye. Wow! There were giants (managed by Bill Terry and Mel Ott) in NYC in Those Days! And weren't those funny-looking cabs DeSotos? [The ones in this photo are Checkers. - Dave] Movie schedule"The Human Comedy" opened at the Astor Tuesday, March 2 so that eliminates one day. The Lonely CrowdI love the complete anonymity of the few people in this photo. You can't see their faces. They could be anyone, lost somewhere in the sprawling metropolis. Horn and HardartThe building just to the right of the Globe Theater (partially shown) is Horn and Hardart Automat. If this is 1943 it may not have been the Automat yet, as I didn't get to New York until 1947, at age 15, but by then it certainly was the Automat as I was in it a lot. Coming from Boston and all alone I was a scared kid to be in middle of Times Square. The Palace theater was across the street showing "The Spiral Staircase." I believe to the right of the Astor was the Victoria Theater, probably yet to be where the Laff Movie seems to be in 1943. I think the Globe was later to be the Times Square Theater or something like that. I remember seeing "An American in Paris" there around 1953. Times bldg. & Flatiron bldg.Sorry, Dave, but according to emporis.com Times is taller than Flatiron (110.64 m vs. 86.87 m). Funny thing is that I too misidentificated these two buildings before I started read more about Manhattan skyscrapers. Now I'm old NYC highrise fan and I love your site. [Maybe you're still a bit confused. The Times building is behind the "Buy War Bonds" building, which is just 16 stories tall. - Dave] The 1943 Father Duffy area in 2009As of 2009, the large Celtic looking stone cross to the left in the 1943 pic is now directly at the bottom of the steps of the TKTS booth in Times Square. The other side of the cross has the statue of Father Duffy so the 1943 pic is facing south. I think that spot is still called, Duffy Square? Interesting how the subway entrance used to be in what is now pavement in the middle of the two streets. Here's an example to compare it to. "Times Square: 1943" http://www.nytix.com/repository/broadway/TKTS/times-square-steps1.gif And the ladies under the Father Duffy pic in 1944. "Mother & Father Duffy" http://gothamist.com/attachments/jen/2008_10_tkt18.jpg +66Here is the view from the identical location and angle from August of 2009. As Azelzion noted, the Horn and Hardart Automat is visible on the right of the original photo (my father told me that the one time he visited New York City was when he was in the Marines in the early 1950's and had Thanksgiving dinner at that automat). The Grand Slam souvenir shop now occupies that site. I believe it is the same structure but under a new facade (no traces of the automat can be seen inside, either). The Globe Theater, which also has an "Orpheum" sign, next door to the automat was replaced by a Howard Johnson's restaurant in 1955 and was a Times Square landmark until it closed in July of 2005 (I was fortunate to have had lunch in the aged but still charming restaurant in November of 2004). The site is currently undergoing construction of a new building to house a retail store. WAAC BoothHere's a closer view of the WAAC booth with my Mom and her friends. Taken the same day as the pic below with Father Duffy. Locus of creativityThis wonderful image adds another dimension to the descriptive work from that era left to us by Kerouac; it is the Times Square of Edie Parker, Huncke, Lucien Carr, Burroughs, Ginsberg, and late-night camaraderies that inspired some of the best writing of that generation. Almost exact location, 11 years laterAbout 11 years later, my grandfather took a picture on a very similar, rainy day. He was about half a block farther south, and little bit to the left. One thing that surprises me is that the first movie theater just south of 46th has a Planters ad over the marquee, and not an ad for what's showing, like in the 1954 image. Other little changes, like light poles are different, no WAAC globe in 54, and many more pigeons! In Living ColorA large full colorized version can be found here. More on the Checker Model A here. About that traffic lightA couple commenters noticed the traffic light with only red and green; New York City didn't start using red-amber-green until the early 50's, and the transition took about 40 years to complete. I remember seeing some red-green signals still hanging on here and there in the city through the 70s. The other interesting thing about this particular light is that you can see here that the lenses are masked for war-time darkening. There is only a very small cross of light visible for each indication, rather than the whole 8"-wide ball that would normally be visible. I find it amazing that anyone could see these signals darkened like that. (The Gallery, Cars, Trucks, Buses, John Vachon, NYC)
Clam Chowder Today: 1905
... Thank you. Tudor City 308 East 40th Street in Manhattan is just off Second Avenue on the south side of the street and just a ... kinds of chowda, New England with a creamy, white base, Manhattan with a tomato base and lots of vegetables and Rhode Island which was ... 
 
Posted by Dave - 08/14/2012 - 2:37pm -

New York City circa 1905. "Exterior of tenement." The longer you look at this, the more you'll see. 8x10 inch glass negative, Detroit Publishing Co. View full size. Time for some road repairWow, that's a nasty bit of road in front of that building. HauntingBest face-in-a-window shot in a long time. Looks like a painting, and speaks of timeless solitude across a century. 308Who'll be the first to post a Street View? S&H Green StampsAnd here I thought they were a product of the 1950s, or earlier. ["Earlier" would seem to be correct. - Dave] Pop. 2So far I see two people in this photo. Not counting George McClellan. I wanna buy that mason a beer!Those are the coolest headers I've ever seen! There's probably a term for that style, for all I know. The cobblestones on the street are another story. No doubt a mosquito plague after every rain. DeepI think I lost a truck in that pothole. Scared the bejesus out of me!The shadowy lady in the doorway! And the pensive woman in the window looks so lost in thought. The people in this photo are the best part! Down in flamesHmmm, fire escapes that go nowhere. Maybe notI was thinking of swiping something out of that tool chest, then I read the label! Loafer DeterrentThose sharp triangles on the top of the railings look to be very effective at keeping people from sitting on them. [Also effective for loafing pigeons -- note that they're also on the lower rung. - Dave] Trading stampsThat S&H Green Stamp sign would be quite a collectible now. Sperry & Hutchinson began in 1896. They're still around, just virtual. Give the man a steak to go with the beer!The brickwork is fantastic. Look at the fancy work above the second floor windows and the double diamondwork up the walls. I have never seen diamondwork in brick before. It does not survive.308 East 40th Street (courtesy of the 1915 city directory). View Larger Map Chillin at the windowI count two windowsill milk bottles. Plus some paper-wrapped packages, maybe meat or butter. I just figured it outWhy do vintage street lamps always those two arms sticking out? To support a ladder for maintenance! Thank you!Clicking on these photos to get the full-size view is like opening gifts! I'm thrilled every time. Thank you. Tudor City308 East 40th Street in Manhattan is just off Second Avenue on the south side of the street and just a few doors away from the Tudor City apartment and park complex. Back in the 1980's, there were some terrific restaurants in that immediate area. Tenement?In New York City a "tenement" is considered to be a small (under five story with no elevator) overcrowded run-down building. The houses on the Lower East Side in the early 1900s were tenements. 308 East 40th Street does not fit that description. [Meanings change over time. Strictly speaking, a tenement is any tenanted building, i.e. apartment house. Below, NYC real-estate listings from 1905. - Dave] GaslightThe lamplighter would lean his ladder against those arms. It's a gas!I see that H. Kino the Tailor still uses gaslights (in the front window) -- but seeing as how this building was a "tenement," I suppose electrification was a low priority. Fire EscapesThe two "Fire Escapes" I guess are not balconies but have no apparent way to get down to street and away from the conflagration. The only thing I can figure is the NYFD would come and raise a ladder to them. We can't tell how tall the building is but I imagine no more than four or five stories [Actually, seven. - Dave]. The fire escapes for the floors above must be on the sides and rear of the building. I am having trouble identifying the metal bracket affixed to the wall between the tailor shop window and it's door. It looks like it could have held a hanging sign but appears to be too low. Morning scrubbingThe lady in at the doorway seems to be scrubbing the floors. You can see the water dripping down the front step. Graffiti If you zoom in you can see initials chalked on the bricks. JuniorIn spite of the apparent distaste someone in this neighborhood had for George B. McClellan, he won his mayoral campaign. The name sounds familiar, of course, and the man on the poster is the son of Civil War General George B. McClellan. He served as mayor of New York City from 1904 to 1909 (he was elected first for a two-year term, and then for a four-year term). Apparently he was a little moralistic, and canceled all motion-picture exhibition licenses on Christmas Eve 1908. Perhaps that's why he was not encouraged to run for reelection for the 1910 term. Once, tenements were even respectableLovely curtains, with lace or bobbles or fringe, at every window. No broken glass. Well-kept and middle-class. Jacob Riis had shown New York tenements as nothing but degrading slums. "How The Other Half Lives" was only 15 years old when this photograph was made. But there was always a strong sense of middle-class values that resided in the people who lived in the "better" tenements. They embraced the Settlement House movement, strove to present a "decent" face to the world, and certainly didn't want to be tarred with the same label as those dirty, disreputable slum-dwellers downtown. What an amazing image. There's so much we've forgotten. Thank you for reminding us. George B. McClellan JrMayor of New York 1904-1909. Born in Dresden, Germany, and son of Gen. McClellan of Civil War blundering. Elmer's GantryOn the wall above the cellar stairs, there's a triangular rig for hoisting stuff up out of the basement. Where'd the cart go?There are two other photos of this tenement in the Library of Congress collection. They look much more inhabited and show how this image might have been manipulated for effect -- the other images show the address number (curiously missing here), the awning down, and a cart of produce in front of the building, a much more inviting view. [Nothing was "manipulated." You can't see the address numbers because they're on the front doors, which are both open in this view. - Dave] Lace Curtain IrishIf this is chowda, it must be Friday. When I was a kid, every Friday was meatless and during that era, the better-off Irish were referred to as titled. Likewise the Polish people who were "comfortable" were "silk stocking Poles" and my father used to call us cotton stocking Poles. Both ethnicities were Catholic and Friday always meant seafood, (Irish were also referred to as "mackerel snappers) and odors of frying fish, tuna salad and chowda permeated the neighborhoods. My mom made three kinds of chowda, New England with a creamy, white base, Manhattan with a tomato base and lots of vegetables and Rhode Island which was a lighter version of the N.E. kind but with added broth. I love them all but also miss the smell of everybody's tuna and onion sandwiches at school lunch and fish frying aromas wafting through our town at supper time. I do remember that fresh mackerel was ten cents a pound and almost everyone could afford it. Thanks for the great nostalgic picture, the despairing lady in the window seems trapped and scared, there has to be a story there. Windowsill gardenI love the window with all the plants in it! Hard to tell what they are, though it looks like one may be an orchid. I wonder if they were purely ornamental or if some were herbs for cooking. Either way, you've got to cram as many as you can into your available sunny spaces! Francie is gazing out the windowIt could be Francie. It could. A Tree Grows In Brooklyn was my favorite book as a young adult and this detailed photograph brings a better understanding of the novel. Almost "Norman Rockwell"Imagine a 5000-piece picture puzzle with this photo as the topic! I LEARN so much from the comments!This is one of my favorite sites for resting my weary eyes during work breaks. And while I certainly savor the photos, so many layers are added by the comments. Thank you, everyone, for sharing your knowledge. Holy horse dung!Having lived in Manhattan for 12 (yes, only 12) years and having moved away, this photo leaves me speechless. The detail of the photographic process is amazing and the subtle (and somewhat hidden) joys on view here make me wanna head back for any chowder--even the famous Gowanus Canal Chow. All the sights, smells and sounds of the greatest city on earth come back to me. Many thanks. I now live on this spotOr possibly right next to it. I live in the Churchill, a 33-story apartment building at 300 East 40th Street - it takes up the entire block between 39th and 40th Street, and 2nd Avenue and Tunnel Entrance Street. 308 was either torn down to make room for the Churchill (built 1968) or possibly during the building of the Midtown tunnel and its approaches (1936-40). What am I missing?Just wondering how "swein" determined that this was E. 40th; might I be enlightened on this "1915 directory"? I'm half-cringing in anticipation of a "duh" moment but I've looked over the pic & the comments -- and I'm not getting it. [Swein consulted the 1915 Manhattan City Directory for Wm. Inwood, Grocer, and found a listing that matched the 308 address in the window. - Dave] Do You Supposethe Sicilian Asphalt Company also offered a line of concrete shoes? (The Gallery, DPC, NYC, Stores & Markets)
Death Avenue: 1910
A detailed circa 1910 Manhattan streetscape of rail cars at West 26th Street and Eleventh Avenue, ... which is rebuilding it into an elevated linear park in Manhattan's Chelsea district. 11th Ave train If you look at the largest ... 
 
Posted by Dave - 08/10/2012 - 4:16pm -

A detailed circa 1910 Manhattan streetscape of rail cars at West 26th Street and Eleventh Avenue, known as "Death Avenue" for the many pedestrians killed along the New York Central's freight line there. View full size. Removal of the street-level tracks commenced on December 31, 1929. 5x7 glass negative, George Grantham Bain Collection. Update: Click here for the largest version. A Freight TrolleyI think this is one of my favorite photos ever. There's so much going on here that is representative of the time that I could spend hours scrutinizing it. I'd never even heard of there being freight trolleys that would rumble down city streets (I know, I need to do my homework). All the activity and storefronts and normalcy of it all. Simply incredible. "How do I get to the Susquehanna Hat Company?" Re: Freight TrolleyHere's a closeup of the engine. The coal seems to be in a bin on the front. Bain took several photos of this rail line and the freight cars. I'll post some more in the coming days. Any railfans out there who can tell us more about the 11th Avenue line? What's she holding?Out of all the details in this picture, there is one that has drawn my attention. On the left side of the street, about in line with the front of the train, there is a woman holding something white. Can someone with a better monitor tell what that is? I'm thinking large dog (though I think it's unlikely that a dog that large would be carried--unless maybe it was scared by the train?) or squirming child, or possibly a massive sack of flour (not that likely, I admit.) Anyone? [Looks like a bundle of packages wrapped in paper. - Dave] Freight Trolley?I don't think so, at least not by most definitions. A trolley draws power from overhead lines and I can't see any power lines above the tracks or the necessary connecting wires (and their poles) to keep it in place. I do see a steam engine [Coal-powered. See photo below. - Dave] of a fairly specialized type and in the distant background a line of freight cars crossing the street. Given the proximity of the location to the Hudson River (it's near what is now Chelsea Docks) it wouldn't surprise me if this wasn't a New York Central spur line to connect the docks to a main line, in the period before most of the rail traffic in New York City went underground. There is a street car in the shot, but I'm guessing that it's a horse car (pulled by at least one horse). What I find really interesting is that there's not a motor vehicle in sight, just horses, and the sheer amount of what the horses left behind (to put it euphemistically). "Freight Trolley"The engine, as noted below, is clearly not a trolley. It appears to be a "steam dummy," a small locomotive, largely enclosed, often looking like a streetcar so as not to frighten the horses. A conventional locomotive, even a small one, with large driving wheels and flashing connecting rods, would certainly frighten the animals. Mounted FlagmanI guess the guy on the horse on the foreground is also a mounted flagman... he is preceding the steam train to protect pedestrians! Remember... "2000 killed in ten years" on the Death Avenue (Eleventh avenue)! ----------------------------------------- Funimag, the web magazine about Funiculars http://www.funimag.com Funimag Blog http://www.funimag.com/photoblog/ Guy on the roofDid you see the guy on the top of the roof of the third wagon? I am wondering what he is doing! Maybe watching pedestrians!!! Incontinent horse!Did you see the incontinent horse?!!! Gash...! What a big river!!! That picture is really fantastic!! Re: Guy on the RoofThe man on the roof is a brakeman. Riding a car roof is better than hanging on a ladder on the car side. Horse-drawn tramJust to the right (our view) of the "train" is a horse drawn tram car being drawn along the track in the opposite direction. BrakemanPlease note that there are no brake hoses on the locomotive. All handbrakes, so the brakeman rides on top because the staff brakes are on the car tops. to stop the train the engineer signals the brakeman and he starts ratcheting down the handbrakes How fast?I'm wondering just how fast these trains were barreling through the street to hit so many people? If they were being preceded by a guy on horseback they couldn't have been gong all that fast. And yet people still did not notice them coming? How does one not hear a steam locomotive? Tank DummyPerhaps the locomotive is one of these (scroll down to the bottom of the page): http://www.northeast.railfan.net/steam22.html The sheer amount of detail in this is incredible.E.g. the kids' chalk scrawls on the sidewalk. I'd imagine that a lot of the deaths occurred at night or in bad weather. My favorite partMy favorite part is the kid running down the sidewalk on the lower left. Perhaps he's trying to outrun the train? He reminds me of the drawings of Little Nemo. [Lower left? Or right? - Dave] The beer wagonIncredible photo! The detail is fantastic. I like the beer wagon (wishful thinking?) in front of the train. I am just amazed.... CrutchesWhat about the guy on crutches on the right. I wonder what the story is behind that. 26th and 11thI went and looked up the intersection on Google maps, and the whole right side is a parking lot now. Triangle Shirtwaist FireThe worst factory fire in the history of New York City occurred on March 25, 1911, in the Asch building, where the Triangle Shirtwaist Company occupied the top three of ten floors. Five hundred women, mostly Jewish immigrants between thirteen and twenty-three years old, were employed there. The owners had locked the doors leading to the exits to keep the women at their sewing machines. In less than fifteen minutes, 146 women died. The event galvanized support for increased safety in the workplace. It also garnered support for labor unions in the garment district, and in particular for the International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union. Much material was provided by several websites, but two in particular I want to call attention to, the first for an overall exceptionally presented look back at this tragedy and a stunning presentation of the labor movement. Truly a brilliant multimedia presentation. The Triangle Factory Fire – Presented by The Kheel Center, Catherwood Library, ILR School at Cornell University. and National Public Radio ... I can not recommend those two sites too highly. They are top-notch. And on YouTube, The Cloth Inferno. 11th Avenue TrainBeneath the "dummy" shroud, it's actually a two-truck Shay locomotive, a type of geared power popular on many logging and industrial operations with sharp curves and steep grades. High LineThis rail line was replaced with an elevated line that entered the warehouses of the west side on their upper floors. It continued to be used into the early 1980s mostly for boxcars of produce. The boxcars shown are refrigerated for perishable items. The roof hatches are for loading ice into bunkers at the ends of the cars. The elevated rail line still exists but is now owned by the city which is rebuilding it into an elevated linear park in Manhattan's Chelsea district. 11th Ave trainIf you look at the largest version you can see that it says 11 on the front which would make this an 0-6-0, class B-11. The Shays also show the offset boiler. Great photo. 26th and 11thWest 26th & 11th is the location the fabulous old Starrett Lehigh Building, a block-long warehouse looking like a stylized ocean liner, with train tracks from the pier leading right into the building and up the freight elevators. Its time was past before it was even finished in 1931 as the trucking industry eclipsed rail freight. Funky old place to wander around if you ever get the chance. 26th & 11thThe right side of 11th Ave & 26th St will be the terminus of the 7 Train extension from Times Square. (last station will be 11th Ave and 34th) . They are currently boring down to the bedrock. NY Central dummy engine>> Beneath the "dummy" shroud, it's actually a two-truck Shay locomotive It seems the NY Central Shays weren't built until 1923-- so looks like he's right about the engine being an 0-6-0 beneath the dummy housing. N.Y. Central ShayA city ordinance required that a horseman precede the rail movement, and that the locomotive be covered to look like a trolley car so as not to frighten horses. When the line was elevated it was electrified, I believe with locomotives that could also run on batteries to access trackage that had no overheard wires. At that time the Shay locomotives were put to use elsewhere on the New York Central system. Here is a photo, from my father's collection, of one of the Shays in service near Rochester, I believe. The spout on the left is not part of the locomotive but is on a water stand behind it. Not The Sound of Silence!Just try and imagine the sounds here! The shod horses clomping down the brick street. The wagons creaking along as the wheels roll on the bricks and dirt. The various bells (church, train, etc) pealing, the subtle sounds of conversations and pedestrian footsteps, the whisk of broom bristles as the street is cleaned! Much preferable to the honking, boom-boxing, brake-screeching, muffler-rapping scenarios we endure today! 10th AvenueAnother pic shows what 11th Avenue north from 26th St actually looked like; someone mislabelled this negative of 10th Ave. Building Still ThereAccording to a post here, this is actually the intersection of 10th Ave and W 26th Street. I looked up this intersection on Google Maps and it appears that one of the buildings in the old photo is still there. It's way down the street..behind the train, the 3rd building from the end on the left side of the street. (The windows look like there is a white stripe connecting them). I think that is the same building on the northwest corner of the intersection of 10th Ave and 27th Street. Just thought I'd throw that out there :) 29th StLooks like you're right, that bldg is still there, but it's on the NW corner of 29th St and 10th Ave. In the Google streetview it's about a twin of the bldg at 28th St. At the left edge of the Shorpy pic you see 267 10th Ave, which means the engine is about to cross 26th St. The train moved from the yard onto 10th Ave at 30th St. Pic of 11th Avenue https://www.shorpy.com/node/12859 (The Gallery, G.G. Bain, Horses, NYC, Railroads)
The Car Bar: 1925
... carry any VW parts anyway. Later The Hersons owned Manhattan Auto in Bethesda, where in the 1950s, you could go and ogle the ... of Interest Surprisingly, at least to me, the later Manhattan Auto Inc. and still-existing dealerships, were formed by a ... 
 
Posted by Dave - 08/07/2012 - 2:17am -

Washington, D.C., circa 1925. "Northeast Auto Exchange, H Street." My favorite kind of National Photo photo, something that might be called unintentional-slice-of-life. National Photo Company Collection glass negative. View full size. One for the road"Alcohol for Automobiles" -- I'm assuming it's engine-related, and not driver-related! Well, I triedAll I get at "www.d.c.comm" is "server not found." Shucks. MethanolMethanol, or as they also called it wood alcohol or methyl alcohol, was used as an antifreeze to keep the engine coolant from cracking the block in cold weather. [A potent poison as well. - Dave] Morris HersonI wonder if that is M. Herson in the coveralls. According to the census, Morris Herson was born in Russia and immigrated to the States in 1895. Washington Post, Jun 4, 1929 Morris Herson, 44, is Dead. Morris Herson, 44 years old, an automobile dealer, died at his residence at 514 F street northeast. He is survived by the widow and three children. ContinuitySee the name M. Herson in the window? Now Herson's Honda in Rockville, Maryland. And Now ...The 'hood had a smidge more charm back in the day. If it still existed, 62 H Street NE would be somewhere under this overpass near Union Station. View Larger Map Coulda used these guys a couple years agoThe shift linkage of my car broke in the parking garage beneath the office building that now stands where this garage once was. On second thought, they probably didn't carry any VW parts anyway. LaterThe Hersons owned Manhattan Auto in Bethesda, where in the 1950s, you could go and ogle the spiffy Jaguars, Porsches, and various other future classics then go across the street to Giffords for a really classic banana split! That's why they're called "the good old days"! Turning left.When I was a kid, in the 60's before turn signals were common on motorcycles, we all signaled our left turns with a gesture identical to this fellow's. Alcohol for AutomobilesMethanol (wood alcohol) was used as an antifreeze for the car cooling system, but it gradually boiled off and had to be replaced. There were testing devices, similar to the bulb-type battery testers, that could be used to tell when the alcohol needed to be topped off in your radiator in order to remain effective. Eventually wood alcohol was replaced by "permanent" antifreeze, usually made with ethylene glycol. This is normally dyed fluorescent green, and is what comes to mind when we think of the term "antifreeze" today. Both types of antifreeze are poisonous. As a big bonus, the ethylene glycol based antifreeze also facilitates the cooling function of the radiator. Those of us over a certain age will remember car radiators "boiling over" when driving in hot weather or climbing mountains. Those days are long gone, thanks in part to modern antifreeze/coolant! To remember which alcohol is the drinkable kind[A potent poison as well. - Dave] To remember which alcohol is the drinkable kind: "Ethyl can't drink methyl." Hersons of InterestSurprisingly, at least to me, the later Manhattan Auto Inc. and still-existing dealerships, were formed by a completely different Herson family: three Lithuanian brothers who emigrated circa 1914. Robert Herson (1892-1975), founder of Herson Auto Parts & Glass. David L. Herson (1896-1959), president and owner of Manhattan Auto Inc. Nathan Herson (1906-1971), president of Herson's Auto stores in Washington and Rockville. The Herson familyMorris was my uncle. David Herson was my father. Morris' sons were Mitchell, who became a dealer for Kaiser Frazer, and Abe, who worked with my father and later me at Manhattan Imported Cars. Abe was head of Jaguar service in the sixties and later was a Jaguar salesperson at Manhattan in Rockville. Nathan Herson, another uncle, was the Herson of Herson's Honda, not Morris. Nathan's son Gerald is the current CEO of Herson's Honda and Mitsubishi, both in Rockville. ResultsIsn't it interesting how my memory of Manhatten Auto could bring such results. All appreciated; good memories of Manhatten Auto on Wisconsin Avenue and of Mr. Mann who worked there. Thanks to J. Herson, as well. This is one of the joys of Shorpy; a comment can be expanded or corrected by others. So it is often a valuable learning experience. [Today's lesson: There's no "e" in "Manhattan." - Dave] A strong personIs Morris Herson, if that is indeed him in the coveralls. He looks like he could have bench pressed that car in his prime. Five decades laterHere's a sidelong view of that building (looking almost due east along H St.) in the late 1950s. In 1974, it would be demolished for construction of the overpass rerouting traffic over the Union Station tracks. (The Gallery, Cars, Trucks, Buses, D.C., Natl Photo)
The Iron Pier: 1903
... New Iron Pier (built in 1882). They served steamboats from Manhattan piers and Rockaway that brought patrons of the beach and its ... 
 
Posted by Dave - 03/27/2023 - 8:47pm -

1903. "Bathers and the Iron Pier -- West Brighton Beach, Coney Island, N.Y." 8x10 inch dry plate glass negative, Detroit Photographic Company. View full size. What, again?Good grief, Ma wore her lampshade instead of her bonnet! ShenanigansI like the horsing around in the front there, especially the stern look on the face of the woman hoisted by the lifeguard. Oh, and where’s Waldo -- um, everywhere? Cullen's Coney CapersApparently the life saving wasn't always fun and games The musical stylings of Harry Von TilzerVintage ditty referencing the eponymous iron pier: https://youtu.be/-X7q6brOeZw?t=159 (Cued up to the key bit.) Unusual beach sceneFirst time I've seen a two-story pier. Pier reviewThere were two "Iron Piers" constructed on Coney Island in the post Civil War era (one known as the Old Iron Pier (built in 1879) and the other as the New Iron Pier (built in 1882). They served steamboats from Manhattan piers and Rockaway that brought patrons of the beach and its attractions for day and overnight trips. But that came to an end at the beginning of the 1911 season, when the Dreamland amusement park burned after a clumsy worker repairing a roof kicked over a bucket of hot tar into some light bulbs, starting a nine-alarm fire. The two Iron Piers were effectively destroyed by the blaze, with their usefulness negated. Only Steeplechase Pier remained. A Chorus LineIt appears some of the male bathers are auditioning for the Rockettes. (The Gallery, DPC, NYC, Swimming)
The Tenement: 1905
... today, however the very upscale Upper East Side of Manhattan has them on almost every block east of Madison Avenue. A few are run ... lived in 97 Orchard Street, a tenement built in 1863 on Manhattan's Lower East Side. There are TONS of picture archives, a virtual ... 
 
Posted by Dave - 07/23/2012 - 3:40pm -

Circa 1905. "New York tenement." With a number of tiny inhabitants in evidence. Dry plate glass negative, Detroit Publishing Company. View full size. Typical catWon't hold still for a photo! Lord of the FliesSee the little black kitten in front of the stove? Hopefully he (she?) won't get a paw in either of the two sheets of flypaper, one on each table. Plenty of flies to keep Kitty entertained. The dressing tableNotice the hat pins, scent bottles and other such items on the dressing table. This tenement dweller did not leave home unadorned! Photo on shelfLooks like a National Guard Company group photo Not your typical tenementWhile we can't quite see through the window to the left of the oval bedroom mirror, it is evident from the amount of sunlight coming through that the window opens to the outside. It's a sign that this tenement is of higher quality (and rent) than most. Tenement bedroom windows usually opened onto narrow airshafts that admitted dim light and very little fresh air. Also, many tenement dwellers in 1910 would have been first-generation immigrants, mostly from southern or eastern Europe. If immigrants, the occupants of this tenement are at least knowledgeable enough in English to be reading an English-language newspaper. Again, if they're immigrants at all: the picture of soldiers looks like it could have been from the American Civil War, more than a generation in the past when this picture was taken. Basement catThe first known photo of Basement Cat emerging from the shadows. Tenement 1910Million-dollar condo 2010. Evening JournalThe New York Evening Journal was a daily (except Sunday) published by William Randolph Hearst from 1897 to 1909. The paper was sold in 1909 and ceased publication in 1911. Tenement MuseumIf any Shorpsters find themselves in NYC, they can visit the Tenement Museum and see a re-creation of a tenement much like this one. It is a fascinating place with, yes, some old photographs. It is on Orchard Street on the Lower East Side. RemodelThe disk high on the wall is a decorative cover used to plug an opening where an old flue pipe went through the wall, probably from a coal stove. Judging from the matching cover in the bedroom, the flue went horizontal for a while before heading up and out. The cover had spring clips on the back that snapped into the circular opening. Anyone make out what's in the mirror? Location, Location, LocationThe photo doesn't let us know where in NYC it is. 1910 tenements usually conjure an image of the Lower East Side, a neighborhood of immigrants. In this picture, which could be in Midtown, Yorkville or the Upper West Side or even Harlem, we have reasonable living quarters for 1910. The newspaper on the table appears to be in English. One picture on the wall show a Military unit, possibly a Spanish-American or Civil War Unit that a resident or relative served in. A tenement building was and is a way of life in many American Cities. Many remain in the poorer neighborhoods today, however the very upscale Upper East Side of Manhattan has them on almost every block east of Madison Avenue. A few are run down, but most are well kept and the monthly rents, where they are not controlled, are in the multiple thousands. The vacancy rate is around 1%. IronIt is faint in the photo, but it appears there is a flatiron leaning against the baseboard behind the corner of the stove. What is it?Can anyone tell me what the woven wooden object is that in propped up on the wall shelf? [A fan. - Dave] Home Sweet HomeAs somebody who lives in a 274-square-foot tenement from 1871 in the West Village, I find this photo wonderfully revealing. My home as been updated (in 1934), but still retains a lot of quirks. This shot is such a wonderful view into the personal lives of folks that lived in homes like my own. I can only imagine how warm the home must have been in the summertime with the cast iron stove and gas lighting. More photos like this please! The Evening Journal revisitedSince the old New York Journal-American was my late father's favorite newspaper, I'm going to have to quibble with Old Molly's history of the New York Evening Journal. The history account I found has William Randolph Hearst publishing both the morning American and the Evening Journal in New York from 1895 until they were combined in 1937 into the afternoon Journal-American, which continued as a Hearst publication until 1966, when it was merged with the old World-Telegram and Sun and the Herald-Tribune into the very short-lived World-Journal-Tribune. Love the Rohrshach tableclothNot about to divulge the things which popped into my imagination by that design along the bottom edge. Okay, one. I see a bearded gent with spectacles peering through an arbor. Another thought came to mind while examining the photos in the room. Which was the chance we just might come across a Shorpy photo hanging on the wall in another Shorpy photo. I'm too old to use the phrase "that would be so cool," but that would be apt. Quibble acceptedOld Molly agrees with the Tipster and stands corrected. Through mergers and various name changes, the paper survived until relatively recent years. Yarn swift The thing reflected in the mirror appears to be a yarn swift, or winder. The bag would be used to store it. Those are definitely flatirons (or, as they are known down here in the South, "sad irons," as it was a sad day when you had to use them because no matter the weather a lot of heat was involved). Great photo with lots of history which is somewhat lost except in museums or as one contributor pointed out a Tenement tour in New York. Stove Update A little Google research indicates my earlier thought the stove was a conversion may have been wrong. The Gem City Stove Company in Dayton, Ohio, produced a gas stove from the late 1800s up until the Depression known as the "Perfect." Boat modelTo the left of the doorway is a half-model of a boat hull with a centerboard. It's a technical rather than a decorative object and makes me suspect that someone in the tenement was a boatbuilder. It's definitely a well kept room and a superior tenement, but I bet that on a hot day it SMELLED. Basement CatI often wondered where Basement Cat got his start. Now I know. (I wonder if anyone else got that). Lewis Hinemust think everyone lives a wealthy life. This apartment looks clean and lovingly "decorated" to the best of the tenants' ability. I don't think it is all that bad!! [Perhaps, but this is not a Lewis Hine photo. And did anyone say it was bad? - Dave] The Gift of the MagiI have never felt closer to O. Henry than at this moment. Flash of memorywhen I noticed the wooden match holder next to the stove! Haven't seen one of those in a kitchen since the '50s. What are those pipes for?Does anyone know what use the pipes from above have? They might be a fire suppressant, but I am not sure. [The "pipes" are gas light fixtures. - Dave] Tenement DefinedIt's a little puzzling how the word "tenement" came to imply poverty or deprivation. I suppose the constant association by Lewis Hine and others of the word to their photographs of dire poverty would do the trick. Technically, the word tenement, as defined by New York City anyway, means any building that houses three or more unrelated families. The doorman buildings on Park Avenue are, by strict definition, tenements as well. GaslightDid one have to climb a ladder or stand on a high chair whenever they wanted to light the gas jets? PerfectI actually have an ad for this very oven - posted in a Dayton publication from 1904. It was placed by the Dayton Gas Light and Coke Company. COKE COKE COKE SMOKELESS FUEL Recommended by all Range and Furnace Manufacturers as being the cheapest, cleanest and most reliable fuel. Orders received at the Dayton Gas Light and Coke Co's Office etc. etc. Try and visitGeezerNYC submitted the comment that shorpsters can visit the Tenement Museum in NYC and see a recreation. In fact,you can enjoy an in depth online recreation and 360 degree walkthroughs of these wonderful tenements at http://www.tenement.org The site is dedicated to the stories of immigrants who lived in 97 Orchard Street, a tenement built in 1863 on Manhattan's Lower East Side. There are TONS of picture archives, a virtual tour, collections, first hand accounts of several families that lived there and LOTS more. I've visited it several times and I love it every time. I'm sure it is NOTHING like taking an actual walking tour of the tenement museum but it's as close as I can get for now. I suggest that everyone check this out. I'd also like to say that the comment such as how it had to have "smelled" in the heat of summer, etc. just bummed me out. So it may have smelled. so what. Many of these people struggled and busted their rear ends like no tomorrow just to get bread on the table and clean clothing to wear, to put shoes on their kids feet and on and on. We truly can't even begin to compare our lives today to the lives of the vast majority of those who lived in these tenements. They made the best of what they had. It was home. PipesThe pipes above the stove are gas pipes. Note the shut-off valves on the pipes. (The Gallery, DPC, Kitchens etc., NYC)
Third Avenue El: 1910
... Square stop. In 1910 that was quite a seedy part of Manhattan. Third Avenue El If you're interested in the Third Avenue El, ... and the noise from the trains was deafening. The El in Manhattan came down in the early 1950s and Third Avenue became a business ... 
 
Posted by Dave - 09/09/2011 - 6:16pm -

New York circa 1910. "Looking toward City Hall. Third Avenue 'L.' " 5x7 glass negative, George Grantham Bain Collection. View full size. OtherworldlyThe large view is quite rewarding. Quite otherworldly. Interesting sign claims a business is in its 106th year at same location. LongevityCowperthwait & Sons in business since 1804. Wow. Third AvenueI used to work near here. The municipal building visible in the upper right still exists. I have been inside only once, when my wife and I were getting our marriage license. The domed building to the left, also extant, sits behind City Hall. I am pretty sure that the eastern wing of City Hall is the rectangular building visible between the cigar company and Cowperthwaite, to the left. The tallest building in haze in the back is, of course, the Singer Building. That's one of the most famous architectural silhouettes of all time, even though the building was torn down in the 1960s. Easy PaymentsCowperthwait & Sons pioneered installment credit at their Third Avenue store at about the time this picture was taken. They sold Singer sewing machines to their most reliable customers for scheduled payments. This was the forerunner of credit cards. Previously if a store allowed charge accounts, the entire balance had to be paid in 30 days. Chatham SquareThis was the Chatham Square stop. In 1910 that was quite a seedy part of Manhattan. Third Avenue ElIf you're interested in the Third Avenue El, check out this vid: Third Avenue El VideoThis was very well done. Occasionally I would take the Third Avenue El from the 169th Street Station, in the Bronx, to City College on 23rd Street. I remember the RR tracks overhanging the sidewalk in some places only 2 or 3 feet from the buildings on Third avenue. You could get a glimpse of the old tenements that housed working families, and the noise from the trains was deafening. The El in Manhattan came down in the early 1950s and Third Avenue became a business center with highrise office and residential buildings. Many of the original tenement structures, built in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, still survive, and the apartments that are no longer rent-controlled command outrageous prices but have no problem attracting tenants. Chatham Square, 3rd Avenue El1950s views from the El at Chatham Square. In 1878, a ride on the El. Cowperthwait & Sons, since 1807Cowperthwait & Sons was founded in 1807 and grew along with New York City "to supply household requisites to all classes of homes as they multiplied over and over." It was one of the earliest stores to actively cater to and serve the black population in NY from its Harlem store on 125th St. In 1907 they published the Cowperthwait Centennial March, with words and music by Abe Holzmann for their 100th anniversary 1807 to 1907. So this might be in 1913. Cowperthwait TodayThe row of buildings including Cowperthwait and the cigar company may be on Park Row. In which case, I would guess about half of them still remain, mostly housing various branches of the J&R electronics empire (JandR.com). The Cowperthwait building in Harlem has been demolished and is currently an empty lot awaiting the official rezoning of 125th street before it can be developed. The planned building would be 630,000 square feet, and Major League Baseball would be the anchor tenant. Domed buildingThe dome with the flag was the New York World Building, yet another one of those structures that were once the tallest in the world. It was torn down in the mid-1950s and Pace University now occupies part of the site. I will have to walk through the area - now largely occupied by government buildings - to see whether any of the foreground buildings remain standing. "L" trainthis has got to be one of my all-time favorite photos. So beautiful! The damage to the negative actually adds to its impressionistic quality. Cowperthwait & Sons I just found a six inch ruler that was used by Cowperthwait & Sons as a means of advertisement. It lists the addresses of all three stores on front and lists what they sell on the back with a line about installment payments. I am interested to learn more about this store and when they ceased operating. Cowperthwaite UpdateI know this is really late to the game, but if you look at this map, and zoom into the top right end of Park Row, you'll see Cowperthwaite and Sons owned a few buildings. All of these building on both sides have been demolished, to make room for Federal court, Manhattan correctional facility and Police Plaza. Also ramps off the Brooklyn bridge. While it doesn't show the Cowperthwaite building exactly, my grandfather took a pretty nice picture of Park Row on a location that would have been just about in front of the store, give or take a block or two. Tarrying in Mulberry Shade... beneath the disused City Hall spur shared by the 2nd and 3rd Avenue elevated lines. By the time of Frank Larson's shot, the branch was out of commission and being dismantled. He took this shot directly in front of what had been Cowperthwait's, where Mulberry joined Park Row. In the window of the first building, the fractured reflection of Cass Gilbert's 40 Centre Street is cleverly captured. The four-story second building was also part of the store, sitting at the widely advertised 193-205 Park Row location. The fire escape hangs upon a taller third building, 191 Park Row. Although it sported the big sign, it was not part of the store. What follows is slanted to rail heads, but helps to confirm Larson's position. The Bain shot shows a section of Chatham Square station serving exclusively the City Hall spur. The four-track, two-platform section was part of an extensive set of elevated-line service improvements that went into effect in early 1916. Untangling an awkward junction, enabling 2nd Avenue el trains for the first time to serve City Hall station, and eliminating the infamous bridge that had been used by transferring passengers -- the Chatham Square work was a major reconfiguration. On the left platform in the photo were the 2nd Avenue trains - uptown on the outside, downtown on the inside - serving the remodeled City Hall station on its upper level. Third avenue trains ran on the lower level using the platform on the right; uptown on the inside, downtown on the outside. Bain's photo captured but a portion of the station, and although it may look like it dates from the Pierce administration, showed things as they would not have looked before late 1915. Note track workers on the outside 2nd Avenue tracks, occupied near a signal. The signal is the precursor of a more elaborate one whose platform's skeletal remains protrude from the partially dismantled el in Larson's shot. Back TrackThanks to TJ Connick for all that information about Cowperthwaite and the elevated line to the Brooklyn Bridge, it's much appreciated. Living in New York, I often wish I could jump back in time, where one of the things I would surely want to do is ride some of the Manhattan elevated lines. As you know I'm sure, we still have them in Queens and Brooklyn, a few, but as far as I know, none in Manhattan (perhaps way uptown, I'm not sure about that). 3rd Ave. El Chatham Sq StationMy father worked as a station agent and station master at this Chatham Square station, among many others on the four Manhattan El Lines. The fare control area at that station was in a large mezzanine under the platforms and tracks. There were two Chatham Square stations. I rode 3rd Ave El trains to and thru both of them many times in the 1950s. The photo shows the 4 track, 2 island platform City Hall branch line Chatham Square station. The left (south) portion 2 tracks and one platform were for 2nd Ave El trains, that El which closed and trains stopped running in June 1942, and that side remained abandoned but still intact thru late 1953 as it was structurally attached to the 3rd Ave. operated side. The right (north) portion 2 tracks and one platform were used by 3rd Ave El Trains up until the City Hall branch was closed in late 1953. The entire huge station complex was torn down thru to the City Hall Terminal station a few blocks S.W. along Park Row. The other adjacent Chatham Square station was a double-decked structure over St. James St. The lower level was for 2nd Ave El trains to South Ferry and the lower level station and track ways were abandoned in mid-June 1942 with the closing of the 2nd Ave El. The upper level was for 3rd Ave El trains to South Ferry and was used as a thru station until the South Ferry branch line closed in November 1950, and structure removed in 1951 just below that double-decked Chatham Square Station. The upper level 2 tracks and single island platform became a secondary, and a terminal, station at Chatham Square in addition to the adjacent Chatham Square station for the City Hall branch. After the City Hall branch closed in late 1953, the former South Ferry line Chatham Square upper level station, 4 stories above the street, became the new and only remaining southern terminal for all 3rd Avenue El trains, until that El closed for good after 7PM, Thursday, May 12, 1955. All 3rd Ave El structures in Manhattan were removed by February 1956. (The Gallery, G.G. Bain, NYC, Railroads)
Brooklyn Bridge: 1903
... New York circa 1903. "East River and Brooklyn Bridge from Manhattan." Among the many signs competing for our attention are billboards for ... Wikipedia, he was a very successful laxative maker. Did Manhattan need it very badly? Ferry Boats Wonderful collection of ... 
 
Posted by Dave - 07/31/2012 - 2:56pm -

New York circa 1903. "East River and Brooklyn Bridge from Manhattan." Among the many signs competing for our attention are billboards for "Crani-Tonic Hair Food" and Moxie. 8x10 glass negative, Detroit Publishing Co. View full size. Carter's Liver PillsCarter's Liver Pills may not have had the exposure that Chas H Fletcher's had on these billboards but they gave them a run for the money. Those early 1900 nostrums lasted into the post WW2 Era and even after that. The public finally caught on and I don't believe they're easily found anymore. However the pharmaceutical ads of today are blasting the same cure-all messages but they cost a lot more money. Lots of LaxativeCharles H. Fletcher certainly made his presence known in this vicinity. According to Wikipedia, he was a very successful laxative maker. Did Manhattan need it very badly? Ferry BoatsWonderful collection of vessels on this very busy waterway. In contrast, an almost leisurely pace on the bridge. Top o'the World?This view looks like it was taken from the top of the New York World Building on Park Row, which was seen earlier on Shorpy. Although the advertised height of the World Building (349 feet) was somewhat exaggerated, the top was still pretty high up! Hard to starboard !Looking to the right of the bridge,on the Brooklyn side,you'll see a ferryboat at a really bad angle! She's tilting hard to port while making a starboard turn, churning up the water real bad. Almost looks like she's trying to avoid the dock. Land Ho!What an amzaing picture. Could study it for days and not get bored. From Uneeda Biscuit, to Carter's Small Pill - Small Dose - Small Price Pills; to the two railcar ferries, to the WHOA! WAIT A MINUTE! What's up with the ferry listing hard to port with lots of propwash behind it heading for Brooklyn, just south of the bridge?!? Looks like it's trying hard to bank to port with props in reverse to avoid slamming the pier (but looks like it's too late to miss it!). Maybe the captain had to go too fast to make it across the busy water traffic and didn't have enough room to slow down. But if the captain hadn't sped up, there'd have been a collision. Damned if you do, damned if you don't. The captain probably needed one of the many advertised tonics after that ferry landing! What a country!The year this was taken was during the huge migration from Europe which lasted several decades. Just imagine the amazement of those often poverty-stricken, downtrodden, oppressed people arriving at Ellis Island with everything they owned on their backs and being brought to the city in which they must now make a new life and seeing, for the first time in their lives, this magnificent panorama of mind-boggling industrial activity, ships from around the world, sky scrapers everywhere, phenomenal bridges and modes of transportation, bustling well-dressed, smiling healthy people, ads everywhere for appetizing, abundant food and other worldly pleasures, religious steeples and domes, the smells of ocean and fumes and foods all mingled together and offering an endless buffet of opportunity and freedom. I find this beautiful picture breathtaking. Thank you Shorpy from a descendant of the huddled masses. For those of you good at spotting details:Did anyone notice any "Fletchers Castoria" ads? Mixed trafficIt must be the rush hour. Look how close the electric elevated train from Brooklyn with the trolley poles is to the cable Bridge Only train in front of it. The white disk on the front of the cable train tells which cable, set of interlaced rails, and station platform it is using. The elevated train uses its trolley poles when it runs on the ground beyond the end of the El structure in the outer reaches of Brooklyn. I want more Chas. H. Fletcher ads!Wonderfully detailed photo. I could study it for hours. Ah, memoriesWow, think there are enough ads for Fletcher's Castoria? I remember that gawdawful stuff from my childhood. Whenever we'd visit my grandmother she'd slip us a dose in some chocolate milk. Apparently daily BMs were high on her list. HyphenatedDon't forget the billboard for Pe-Ru-Na! One more thingAnd at least eight signs for Fletcher's Castoria! Steeplechase Park Bargain10 cents for five hours! Heck, I'd give $100 for five hours to be able to travel back to 1903 to experience Tilyou's Steeplechase Park. From the old photos and video clips of it I have seen, it was a happening place. Even today with all our technology, I'd bet folks would still have a wonderful time! Decisions, decisionsWith this dime burning a hole in my pocket I could either buy two Cremo cigars or spend five hours at Steeplechase Park. My BridgeWhat a wonderful picture of my bridge that I just bought last week from a nice man who told me that I could buy the Brooklyn Bridge for a few hundred dollars. Looking at this picture I believe it was a good investment. Running the gauntlet on the Brooklyn BridgeHaving a close eye on the rails for the El, interesting that they are running a gauntlet track on both sides across the bridge...no switch points, just a frog. Under a closer look, it looks like there is a cable between the rails for a...cable car? Seen just past where the switch points would be if it was a normal switch. BTW, first post here at Shorpy! Love the site!! Chas. H. FletcherI believe I count at least 21 Chas. H. Fletcher signs. Some are a bit obscured, but the text is quite distinctive so I believe I have it correct. If I ever get catapulted back in time, I am opening a sign company! Must have been a lucrative business. Fletcher's CastoriaI found 20 signs in this photo and there might be more! World SeriesNow that it is World Series time, in the middle of it actually; can anyone from New York confirm that it's called the World Series because the New York World newspaper promoted the first of these events, and the Series name has no international implications? [That notion is debunked here. - Dave] Fletcher AdsI found 20 of these ads. There might be more! 22 Fletcher Signs !!One wonders what his advertising budget was - apparently unlimited - Personally, I feel this was overkill and would be annoying enough to cause me to choose the other brand - I easily counted 22 if his signs, including 5 on the Brooklyn side of the river. Scuffy the TugboatThis fantastical scene reminds me of the old Golden Books story of Scuffy the Tugboat, when the two children were peering over the bridge on the harbour, watching Scuffy, as he found himself in a bewildering maze of giant ships all around him. What's with the ferry steamer in the upper right side of the photo? His paddles look "full-ahead," while the vessel is listing hard aport and about to ram the wharf? Uh-oh! Great photo; begging to be colorized by some Shorpy artista. Blowin' in the WindThere are almost as many rooftop clotheslines loaded with laundry as there are Fletcher's Castoria signs. It is interesting to note that even though the Brooklyn Bridge had been open for twenty years, the ferries were still running and would continue to do so until 1924. Hang On!Lots o' signs, yes, but my attention was drawn to that hard heeling-to-port ferry approaching the pier on the opposite shore (right in the photo). Was somebody showing off for the citizenry, or were they perhaps initially headed into the wrong berthing space? [Probably not. - Dave] TrafficCan you imagine the insanity on the river? There's even a ship hitting a bulkhead while turning into its dock. Lucky for them the wind was in their favor. (I now see Denny covered this the first comment. D'oh.) And Castor Oil had a predecessor? I never knew. Why pilots are regular officersInteresting factoid about castor oil: WW1 airplane engines were lubricated with it and sprayed a steady stream of the stuff back into the pilot's face, with predictable consequences. More RecentlyI was told that this Fletcher's Castoria sign at Henry & Market Streets, on NYC's Lower East Side, was around until about 2003. There are probably others that are still visible. Cable Power on the Brooklyn BridgeThe original Brooklyn Rapid Transit line that ran over the Brooklyn Bridge to the Park Row terminal was indeed a cable-powered line. The line was eventually electrified. Rapid transit service over the Brooklyn Bridge ended permanently in 1944 when the NYC Board of Transportation decided to terminate Brooklyn elevated train service at Jay Street/Bridge Street station. Trolleys then were briefly used on the Bridge tracks. The huge Sands Street and Park Row terminals were later torn down and the Bridge itself was rebuilt in 1952 and converted solely to automobile use. Today, there are three lanes in each direction on the Bridge for cars. The innermost lanes are the rights of way for the rapid transit/trolley lines. (The Gallery, Boats & Bridges, DPC, NYC, Streetcars)
« first‹ prev…2 [3]4…next ›last »
Syndicate content  Shorpy.com is a vintage photography site featuring thousands of high-definition images. The site is named after Shorpy Higginbotham, a teenage coal miner who lived 100 years ago. Contact us | Privacy policy | Accessibility Statement | Site © 2024 Shorpy Inc.