Recently in This Day in New York History Category
Exactly seventy years ago today, radio signals emanating from the twentieth floor of 485 Madison Avenue caused a panic. The occasion was the 8:00 p.m. broadcast of the CBS show Mercury Theater On Air, a special Halloween episode that featured an adaptation of H. G. Wells's novel War of the Worlds (1898). The broadcast was the brainchild of Orson Welles, who became famous as a result. The radio adaptation was written Howard Koch, who departed from Wells's novel by setting the action not in England but in Grovers's Mill, New Jersey. The conceit behind the radio play was to present the story as if it were actually happening in real time, and Welles used recordings of the Hindenburg disaster to inspire the cast and crew.
Events from the novel were presented as if they were news bulletins interrupting the regularly scheduled programming, with Welles first appearing in the guise of Professor Richard Pierson, "a famous astronomer." Because many listeners tuned in late to the broadcast, they believed the fake bulletins to be real, causing a panic. A front-page article in The New York Times the next day described the furor:
The broadcast, which disrupted households, interrupted religious services, created traffic jams and clogged cqmmunications systems, was made by Orson Welles, who as the radio character, "'The Shadow," used to give "the creeps" to countless child listeners. This, time at least, a score of adults required medical treatment for shock and hysteria.Wikipedia has a good account of the broadcast and its aftermath. A television film called The Night That Panicked America dramatized these events and was broadcast on Halloween night, 1975. A documentary called The Day That Panicked America was released in 2005.
In Newark, in a single block at Heddon Terrace and Hawthorne Avenue, more than twenty families rushed·ont·of their houses with wet handkerchiefs and towels over their faces to flee from what they believed was to be a gas raid. Some began moving household furniture.
It is tempting now to read Welles and Koch's adaptation as a meditation on world events, and the public's response may well have been fueled by a sense of national unease at the increasing belligerence of Germany, which had annexed the Sudetenland on the first of the month, and Japan, which spent October invading Canton. Steven Spielberg's effective 2005 adaptation of Wells's novel seems, in retrospect, also to be a meditation on fears of invasion from abroad. Although Spielberg and screenwriter David Koepp follow Welles and Koch by setting the tale in New Jersey, the film is clearly marked by the events of 9/11. "Is it the terrorists?" 10-year-old Rachel Ferrier (Dakota
Fanning) screams, as she and her father, Ray (Tom Cruise), attempt to escape from Bayonne in a minivan.You can stream or download the 1938 broadcast from the Internet Archive, which also has an interesting set of materials related to the Hindenburg.
One hundred-twenty-five years ago today, the Metropolitan Opera House opened at 1411 Broadway, between 40th and 39th Streets. It had been built by a number of newly rich families -- including the Vanderbilts, the Morgans and the Rockefellers -- who felt shut out at the fashionable Academy of Music on 14th Street.
The company gave a performance of Charles Gounoud's Faust, sung not in French but in Italian, as was then the fashion. The opening night cast featured Italo Campanini as Faust and Christine Nilsson as Marguerite, with Sofia Scalchi, Mme. Lablache, Franco Novara, and Ernesto del Puente in supporting roles. The conductor was Auguste-Charles-Leonard-Francois-Vianese. (Edith Wharton's novel The Age of Innocence [1920] opens with a scene set at the Academy of Music during the "early seventies": Nilsson is singing Faust, and Wharton's narrator wittily comments on the use of Italian: "She sang, of course, 'M'ama!' and not 'he loves me,' since an unalterable and unquestioned law of the musical world required that the German text of French operas sung by Swedish artists should be translated into Italian for the clearer understanding of English-speaking audiences.")
The original building was designed by J. Cleveland Cady; it was nicknamed "The Yellow Brick Brewery" because of its seemingly industrial interior. A fire destroyed the building on August 27, 1892, forcing the cancellation of the 1892-93 season. Although the building was completely renovated and the opera re-opened for the following season, it soon became apparent that the building's facilities were too small for the growing company.
Various locations for a new building were proposed over the years, including Columbus Circle and the site of the present Rockefeller Center. Finally, in 1966, the company moved to its present location at Lincoln Center. The Old Met was not given landmark status, so it was torn down the following year. Its original rival, the Academy of Music, had met a similar fate forty years earlier in 1926.
THIS DAY IN NEW YORK CITY HISTORYForty years ago today Jacqueline Kennedy, the most famous widow in the world and resident of 1040 Fifth Avenue, married Greek shipping magnate Aristotle Onassis. She was not quite forty years old; he was born in either 1900 or 1906, but no one knows for sure.
I made this discovery at the gym this morning, along with an even bigger discovery: NY1 has a daily feature called "This Day in New York City History"! I promise we won't mine it too often to fill our own feature, but NYC history buffs may want to bookmark the page.
The first recorded celebration of "Columbus Day" took place in New York City on October 12, 1792, three hundred years to the day after Columbus first reached the Caribbean. The ceremony was organized by the Society of St. Tammany, also known as the Columbian Order, and included the dedication of a monument, a 14-foot "portable monumental obelisk" that was illuminated and made to simulate black marble. It depicted scenes from Columbus's life. The New York Times ran a piece about this monument on August 4, 1889, describing it in some detail, though even then its whereabouts were unknown.One hundred years later, a statue of Columbus by the Italian sculptor Gaetano Russo was erected in Columbus Circle, which would become the point at which distances to and from New York City are officially measured.
In the same year, President Benjamin Harrison issued a proclamation urging Americans to celebrate "Columbus Day," and communities across the country responded with plays, pageants, and other festivities. The following year saw the opening of the World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago, remembered for its famous "White City" and for Frederick Jackson Turner's address to the American Historical Society on "The Significance of the Frontier in American History." [Click here for a virtual tour from the Crossroads site at the University of Virginia and here for the University of Illinois's digital exhibition.]
In 1937, President Franklin Roosevelt proclaimed that every October 12 would be a federal holiday known as "Columbus Day." President Richard Nixon changed the official date of the holiday to the second Monday in October (which happens, incidentally, to be Canada's Thanksgiving Day).
In 1992, the insights of multiculturalism led to both introspection and protests around the holidaty. An editorial in the New York Times noted that "today, in New York City, Spain officially commemorates the 500th anniversary by observing a 'Day of Respect for Native American Cultures.'" The editorial concluded, however, that "it is as unfair to burden Columbus with all the depredations that followed his voyage as it is to credit him alone with the development of the Western Hemisphere. It is enough that a long and different time ago, he opened the way."
On October 12 and 13, 1982, the Clash opened for The Who at Shea Stadium. The Clash were touring support of their album Combat Rock. "Right away when we heard we were going to play there we thought about the Beatles at Shea," guitarist Mick Jones told the Associated Press. "Everybody knew about it." The band played fourteen songs in the rain:
London CallingI didn't see the Shea Stadium shows, but I did see the band about a month earlier at Pier 84. It was an amazing show, and when the rain began to fall -- hard -- at the end of the show, it seemed only to energize the band. There's an account of that gig online here, along with descriptions of existing bootlegs of the show.
Police On My Back
The Guns of Brixton
Tommy Gun
Magnificent 7
Armagideon Time
Rock The Casbah
Train In Vain
Career Opportunities
Spanish Bombs
Clampdown
English Civil War
Should I Stay Or Should I Go
I Fought The Law
Meanwhile, the second Shea Stadium show has just been released on CD. According to Rolling Stone's review of the album, "the album captures a rousing, crystalline-sounding Clash show." You can find out more about The Clash Live at Shea Stadium via this YouTube video:
The Chicago Cubs defeated the New York Mets last night, 9-5, clinching home field advantage throughout the National League playoffs and damaging the Mets' playoff hopes.
This morning's New York Times reminds us of a match-up between baseball clubs from Chicago and New York that took place one hundred years ago today in the old Polo Grounds in Harlem, which also adversely affected the New York team's playoff chances.
On September 23, 1908, the New York Giants had a one-game lead over the Chicago Cubs in the standings, and their game was tied 1-1 in the bottom of the ninth. With a man on first and two outs, nineteen-year-old Fred Merkle, the Giants' rookie first baseman, hit a single, sending the runner to third. The next batter hit a fastball over second base, a clear base hit, and the man on third scored, giving the game to the Giants. Had the ball not been hit out of the infield, Merkle could have been called out at second on a force play, but because the ball was hit out of the infield, Merkle didn't run all the way to second -- which was customary. But Johnny Evers, the Chicago second baseman, retrieved the ball, took it to second, argued that Merkle should be called out and the run nullified. The umpire at second refused to rule, but at 10:00 p.m. -- from the safety of his hotel room -- he ruled Merkle out.
To make a long story short, the game was ruled a tie; the Cubs and Giants ended the regular season tied, forcing a one-game playoff -- which Chicago won. They went on to defeat the Detroit Tigers in the World Series -- and that was the last World Series the club ever won. Make of that what you will.
Merkle went on to have a respectable 14-year career, but he never really lived down his "mistake" -- which, given the conventions in use at the time, wasn't really a mistake at all.
Kevin Baker's account in the Times is more detailed and a lot more vivid. Take a look.
And you can read the Times account of the game from one hundred years ago here.
This is a week of endings for New York baseball. The Yankees played their last game at Yankee Stadium last night and will move across the street to a new stadium next year. The Mets final season at Shea Stadium also seems also to be coming to its end, though (as of today) they remain in the hunt for both the division title and, failing that, a wild card berth. But when you have to start a rookie pitcher against the National League's best team (the Chicago Cubs, who have already clinched the Central Division title) and that rookie gives up a grand slam to a pitcher; and when the governor of New York, David Patterson, jokes about the unreliability of the Mets' relief pitchers ("The Mets bullpen is gonna kill me. It's not the Fed, it's not AIG, ...it's the Mets bullpen.") . . . well, perhaps the handwriting is on the wall.
So it might be a good time for New York fans to find some cheer by remembering the city's association with the beginnings of the game.
One hundred-sixty-five years ago today, on September 23, 1843, a bank clerk named Alexander Joy Cartwright (1820-1892) codified the constitution and by-laws of the New York Knickerbocker Base Ball Club. While still a member of Knickerbocker Engine Company No. 12 during the previous year, Cartwright had been playing regular games of "town ball" on a vacant lot in Manhattan. The by-laws for the New York Knickerbocker were signed by the team's Committee on By-Laws, which included Duncan Curry, the president; William Wheaton, the vice-president; and William Tucker, the secretary and treasurer. The by-laws also contained a set of 20 rules, written down by Cartwright, which were later published in pamphlet form. Many of the Knickerbockers had been members of the Gotham Base Ball Club, which had been formed in 1837, and it is thought that the Knickerbocker Club may have existed informally before its official founding moment.
Something close to baseball was being played in the New York area since at least 1823. In 2001, George A. Thompson Jr., a research librarian at NYU, discovered two newspaper accounts of a game played in April 1823 in New York City on a site just west of Broadway between what is now Eighth Street and Washington Place (largely occupied, appropriately enough, by buildings belonging to NYU). It seems that both the National Advocate and the New-York Gazette and General Advertiser had received the same letter from someone who had observed the game.
The Gazette summed up the letter in a paragraph that began: "We have received a communication in favor of the manly exercise of base ball." The Advocate published a longer account: "I was last Saturday much pleased in witnessing a company of active young men playing the manly and athletic game of 'base ball' at the Retreat in Broadway (Jones'). I am informed they are an organized association, and that a very interesting game will be played on Saturday next at the above place, to commence at half past 3 o'clock, P.M. Any person fond of witnessing this game may avail himself of seeing it played with consummate skill and wonderful dexterity." Thompson noted at the time that the letter contained no explanation of what "base ball" was, suggesting its author assumed that it would be familiar enough to newspaper readers.
It was Cartwright's rules, however, that ultimately distinguished "baseball," which became known as the "New York Game," from both "town ball" and another variant called "The Massachusetts Game." Cartwright's rules laid the foundation for modern baseball:three strikes to a batter, three outs to an inning, tags and force-outs in lieu of hitting a runner with a thrown ball, and the addition of an umpire. (Throwing the ball at a runner is still played in some schoolyard variants of baseball, and it's called "pegging.") The rules also established the idea of "fair" and "foul" territories; in town ball, the batter could run no matter where the ball was hit. You can find a listing of the rules in the Wikipedia entry for the New York Knickerbockers and more information about the team at 19thcbaseball.com.
The Knickerbockers eventually began to play their games in Hoboken, New Jersey at a place called Elysian Fields. What baseball historians refer to as "the first officially recorded game" took place at Elysian Fields on June 19, 1846. Cartwright's Knickerbockers lost to the New York Nine that day, 23-1, but in the end they prevailed: the game was played according to "Knickerbocker Rules," which were then widely imitated. Their style of play ultimately proved more popular than the variant played in Massachusetts.
So you see, as my father-in-law would put it, the New York Yankees and the Boston Red Sox come by their rivalry honestly.
"We publish today the first issue of the New-York Daily Times, and we intend to
issue it every morning (Sundays excepted) for an indefinite number of years to come."
So wrote the paper's founders, Henry Jarvis Raymond and George Jones, on September 18, 1851. Raymond was speaker of the
New York State Assembly and a journalist who had worked for Horace Greeley at the New York Tribune. Their goal was to publish a paper that avoided sensationalism. The first issue had four pages and sold for one penny. The paper's offices were located at 113 Nassau Street. (The building was demolished at the end of last summer.) Three years later, the paper moved to a building closer to City Hall.
UPDATE: The New York Times will be publishing The New York Times: The Complete Front Pages, 1851-2008 in October. The set features 3 DVD-ROMs that contain every front page ever printed. All of them will be indexed and linked to the complete articles on the online archives of nytimes.com. The package will also include a book of essays by Richard Bernstein, Ethan Bronner, Roger Cohen, Gail Collins, Helene Cooper, Thomas Friedman, William Grimes, Caryn James, Gina Kolata, David Leonhardt, Steve Lohr, Frank Rich, Carla Anne Robbins, Gene Roberts, William Safire, Serge Schmemann, Sam Tanenhaus and John Noble Wilford. You can pre-order the collection here.
[Cross-posted to one of my favorite blogs, The Edge of the American West -- the folks from whom we stole the "This Day in History" idea in the first place.]
On August 26, 1970, the fiftieth anniversary of the Nineteenth Amendment, the notorious feminist author and activist Betty Friedan, out-going president of the four-year-old National Organization of Women, led tens of thousands of women in a march down Fifth Avenue toward Bryant Park, where, packed on the lawns behind the New York Public Library, the crowd heard addresses from Friedan, Gloria Steinem, Bella Abzug, and Kate Millett, among others.
But I digress.)
The Times coverage seems by turns both excited
by the prospect of the women's movement and bewildered by the day's spectacle,
noting the support of state and national political figures for commemorative
celebrations as well as the apparently surprising fact that the Bryant Park rally
was uninterrupted by hecklers. The article also reports on oddball moments: for
instance, a smaller crowd had gathered earlier in Duffy Square (Broadway
between 46th and 47th), where one "Ms. Mary Ordovan,
dressed in cassock and surplice as a 'symbolic priest,'" consecrated the spot
for a statue of Susan B. Anthony, which would replace the one of Father Francis
Duffy, a WWI chaplain and Hell's Kitchen reformer. Crossing herself, Ordovan
called on the name of "The Mother, the Daughter, and the Holy Granddaughter.
Ah-Women, Ah-Women."
In a brief aside, the reporter then explains that "'Ms.' is used by women who object to the distinction between 'Miss' and 'Mrs.' to denote marital status." (Within a year Ms. magazine would be founded by Steinem.)
I first came across this Times
article--which was itself my introduction to the history of the Women's Strike
for Equality--a decade ago when, as a grad student in American Studies, I had
the chance, by an odd set of circumstances, to teach several semesters of U.S.
Women's History. The experience was rewarding and humbling for several reasons--not
least because the classes often included one or two elderly women who spent
their retirements as "evergreen" students, taking a class a semester in topics
that interested them. Their presence initially made me somewhat uncomfortable
once we'd reach the 1940s and I'd realize that from here on out some of my
students had lived--as women--through the very history I had to lecture on, as a
28-year-old male.
But the courses were also made challenging by the advent of what
was just then being called "post-feminism," a fact that made me somewhat
uncomfortable when I'd inevitably realize that a lot of my younger students
thought they had no need for feminism in their own lives. To them the world as
all a hold-hands-and-sing Coca Cola Christmas commercial; they thought gender inequality
belonged to the past or to distant cultures whose traditions, short of female
circumcision and slavery, needed to be respected. When I asked them to recall
Hillary Clinton's controversial "stay home and bake cookies" moment during the
1992 campaign--after all, it had happened only five or six years earlier--they
reminded me that they had been in middle school at the time; such things were
as remote to them as playground bullies and kickball.
Only a quarter-century after the Women's Strike for
Equality, as we were routinely told in the late 1990s, the television series Ally McBeal had driven the last nails in
the movement's coffin. Remember that Time Magazine cover? Looking back, it also seems like a
watershed moment when feminist studies in the academy gave way to cultural
studies of feminism; rather than argue about what women had or hadn't gained,
how they'd done it, and when, we'd henceforth talk, for better or worse, about
how feminists exploited or were exploited by celebrity culture and mass media. Was the
Equality march really a landmark
event in American women's history? Or had Friedan's media tactics simply
ensured it would be remembered that way?
Either way, what those 50,000 women had
done--their march spilling over from the police-approved single lane, filling
the Avenue from curb to curb--seemed almost impossible to imagine, not so much because
their feminism seemed outdated, but because so many younger women had become
politically apathetic, appeased by a modest set of gains that masqueraded as
equality. The media were full of stories about younger women who bought the
line that feminism had done them wrong, powerful women who decided to quit
their jobs, once they'd begun to reproduce, and give traditional stay-at-home
motherhood a chance. And voila! We
have contemporary Park Slope,
At
Sixty women jammed into the
reception area of the
About
10 members of NOW, starting at 9 A.M. and continuing on into the afternoon,
visited six firms, business and advertising agencies, to present mocking awards
for allegedly degrading images of women and for underemploying women.
Gloria Steinem, on whom I developed a mad, Harold-and-Maude style
crush on hearing her speak in the early 90s, is now in her 75th
year; during the recent primary season she endorsed Clinton and wrote in a Times op-ed that gender, rather than race,
remained the bigger obstacle to equality in American life.
Bella Abzug wore big
hats and talked refreshingly brash talk until she died in 1998; I hope she was
spared the debate about Ally McBeal's
impact on the movement.
Kate Millett, who in 1970 had just published her excoriating if wooden Columbia Ph.D. dissertation as Sexual Politics (the only really exciting parts are the summaries and quotations from dirty, sexist books) survived years of troubled relations with media outlets and, more recently, Bowery developers; though her Christmas tree farm has gone the way of her downtown loft, she continues to run an upstate artist's colony for women at age 74.
Shea Stadium, the home of the New York Mets, is in its final year. It opened on April 17, 1963 and cost $28.5 million to build. The Mets' new home, Citi Field, will open next April with a projected cost of $850 million ($450 million of which is being subsidized with public funds).
On August 15, 1965, Shea was host to a historic non-baseball event: the first concert in the Beatles' 1965 North American tour. It was the first stadium concert in the history of rock 'n' roll, with a a then-record audience of 55,600. The band was introduced by Ed Sullivan, on whose show they had appeared the previous night.
The setlist for the show at Shea: "Twist And Shout," "She's A Woman," "I Feel Fine," "Dizzy Miss Lizzy," "Ticket To Ride," "Everybody's Trying To Be My Baby," "Can't Buy Me Love," "Baby's In Black," "Act Naturally," "A Hard Day's Night," "Help!" and "I'm Down."
This video clip from YouTube will give you a sense of what it was like.
The concert was filmed and aired on television in the U.S. in December the following year. Much of the concert is included in the The Beatles Anthology on DVD.
