The camels who lived and died in Central Park

This little camel appears to be roaming the park freely. Perhaps he was an attraction and gave rides to kids. Or he may have been one of the resident camels of the menagerie in Central Park in the late 1800s. 

Camels were popular at the menagerie, and they got lots of attention in the press; newspapers updated New Yorkers on when new camels came to the park, when a baby camel was born, and when a beloved camel died—like Volstead, who perished in 1930 at age 14.

“Volstead, who was born in the zoo here, was the last of the male camels of the Central Park herd,” a New York Times article stated. “He is survived by his mate, Jeanette, and his 11-months-old offspring, Jeannette 2nd. The grief of the survivors was described by head keeper Robert Hurton as acute.”

1970s New York flashback: The Magic Garden

Were you a little New Yorker in the 1970s with access to a television between one and three o’clock on weekday afternoons? Then odds are you were captivated by The Magic Garden.

It was low-budget local TV at its best. Broadcast on channel 11, the show’s hosts, Carole Demas and Paula Janis (Carole had the dirty blond hair; Paula was the brunette), sang songs, read jokes from the Chuckle Patch, and talked to Sherlock the squirrel puppet. Very trippy, but very entertaining.

Former New York City teachers, Carole and Paula originally met at Brooklyn’s Midwood High School. They still perform together, and DVDs of the original show are now available. 

Where Macy’s got its modest start

$11.06. That amount was reportedly what Rowland Hussey Macy earned on the first day his new dry-goods store opened for business in a small building on the corner of Sixth Avenue and Fourteenth Street in 1858.

But after that slow start, the R.H. Macy store began grossing tens of thousands of dollars a year. It became a full-fledged department store in 1877 and eventually occupied many storefronts along West 14th Street (like the one in the photo at left).

Fourteenth Street was a more upscale shopping district at the end of the 19th century. But even then, department store moguls could see that the future of retail was farther uptown. 

So in 1902, Macy’s packed it up and relocated to a colossal new store at Herald Square on 34th Street—its current quarters today.

This weekend, Macy’s is sponsoring its 33rd annual Fireworks Spectacular, this time over the Hudson River. Macy’s pledged the first show as a tribute to America’s Bicentennial, and it quickly morphed into an Independence Day tradition.

Just another busy day on Park Avenue

North of 42nd Street, Park Avenue is a pretty, orderly street practically glowing in vibrant shades of green, pink, yellow, and blue, according to this postcard from the 1930s. 

Notice the lack of crosswalk signs and traffic lights. The reason? Metro-North tunnels directly underneath made it difficult for these structures to be properly anchored into the ground.

Why are tenements mainly named after girls?

Or maybe the question should be why unremarkable five- and six-story apartment buildings have names at all. Sometimes you see one with a male name, but mainly they’re named after women.

I guess it was a way for the builders to honor their wives, mothers, and daughters. I wonder who Henrietta was, and why her name graces this tenement on Madison Street:

The Bertha, with this lovely flower motif, is in Harlem:

Here’s more on the women who gave their names to New York City buildings.

Stickball on the streets of Brooklyn

Like egg creams and nickel subway rides, stickball is one of those long-gone cultural touchstones that New York City old-timers often wax nostalgic about. But you know, the game sure looks like a lot of fun.

No coaches. No expensive gear. No adults. All you needed was a car-free side street (not hard to find before the 1950s, when few city residents had cars), a broom handle, and a “spaldeen”—a small pink rubber ball made by the Spalding sporting goods company—and you were good to go. Chalk to outline bases or the strike zone was optional.

This photo, by Arthur Leipzig, was taken in Brooklyn in 1950. Bed-Stuy? Brownsville? East New York? The black and white players as well as the kosher market tell us it was an ethnically mixed neighborhood.

Stickball is still played by kids in some neighborhoods; there’s also an adult league, the New York Emperors Stickball League. To commemorate the game, a Bronx street was given the moniker Stickball Boulevard.

Tompkins Square Park’s first dog run

In a city obsessed with dogs, it’s hard to imagine that there were no dog runs in city parks until one was established in 1990 in Tompkins Square Park. Now, dog runs exist in about 60 parks across the five boroughs.

At Tompkins Square Park, the amenities aren’t bad. The privately funded “First Run” has a granite sand surface, wading pools, and separate sections for the big dogs and little guys.

These two shaggy pups are loving the picnic table—it brings them closer to the squirrels in trees.

Tompkins Square Park has a pretty colorful history going back a century and a half. 

The brutal murder of a Chinatown wife

The vicious killing of a Chinese “slave girl” named Bow Kum shocked New York City in 1909 and sparked a year-long Tong war and hard-won truce that required intervention from the Chinese government. 

Born in China in 1888, Bow Kum was sold for a few dollars by her father and brought to San Francisco, where she was sold again for $3,000 to Low Hee Tong, a leader of the Hip Sing and Four Brothers Tongs.

When Low Hee Tong was arrested four years later, Kum was taken in by Christian missionaries who helped Chinese girls escape the brutal life of gangs. 

A man named Tchin Len promised to make her his wife, so the missionaries handed her over, and Len brought Kum to New York City. Len was a member of On Leong Tong, a bitter rival of Hip Sing and Four Brothers.

They settled at 17 Mott Street. By this time, Low Hee Tong was out of jail. He tracked Kum down and demanded that Len repay him $3,000. Len refused; the Hip Sing and Four Brothers tongs got involved and told Len to pay up. He didn’t.

On August 15, Kum was found on the floor of her Mott Street room, stabbed multiple times in the heart with some fingers cut off. Two Tong henchmen were tried for her murder, but they were acquitted.

The top photo shows Mott Street around 1910; the bottom photo is Pell Street at the turn of the last century. 

A fine day for a swim at Coney Island

And a pretty crowded day too. I’d guess this photo was taken in the final years of the male one-piece, chest-covering swimsuit.

Bathing suits for men and women back then were made of wool. Supposedly this was because it would reveal less of a person’s body shape when wet. It just sounds soggy.

Any idea why this part of the beach is roped off? The water doesn’t appear to be any deeper or have more wave action than the rest of the beach in the background.

Fight night in New York: “Stag at Sharkey’s”

Until 1920, boxing was mostly outlawed in New York state. A loophole allowed fights to take place in athletic clubs, so many bars became on-the-fly athletic clubs in order to host matches. One of these bars-turned-clubs was Sharkey’s, a saloon on Columbus Avenue near West 67th Street. 

Owned by heavyweight fighter Sailor Tom Sharkey, it’s the setting for this dark, raw 1909 painting by George Bellows. Bellows was part of the Ashcan School—a group of artists bent on depicting realistic, gritty scenes of daily life.

Bellows had a studio close to Sharkey’s; it was in the Lincoln Arcade building, then on Broadway and 65th Street. “Stag at Sharkey’s” remains one of his most popular works.