New York’s first floating hospital

Here’s the “Emma Abbott,” painted by Julian O. Davidson. He depicts the city’s first floating hospital, launched in 1875 by a charitable organization composed of well-to-do New Yorkers called the St. John’s Guild. The ship sailed the harbors and rivers, taking care of slum kids and mothers too poor to afford decent medical care.

Emma Abbott was an opera star at the time who donated the money to help build the vessel.

Thousands of women and children were treated there until about 1900, when the Emma Abbott was retired. Subsequent floating hospitals continue to treat New York’s most vulnerable.

This painting belongs to the Museum of the City of New York.

When Houdini hung upside-down over Broadway

 Here’s magician and master of escape Harry Houdini performing his upside-down straitjacket stunt on Broadway and 46th Street in 1907. It only took two minutes for Houdini to get out of the straitjacket once he was suspended in mid-air.

Escapologist—now that’s a great professional title.

Houdini died in 1926 from a ruptured appendix; the story goes that after giving a lecture, he let a college student punch him in the stomach to see if he could withstand the blows. He couldn’t.

He’s buried in Machpelah Cemetery in Queens. The New York Times‘ City Room blog has more on Houdini’s unkempt  grave.

Brooklyn’s sad cemetery angels

From Green-Wood Cemetery. Someone really grieved the loss of this O’Donohue person, who was probably a soldier:

“Our Boy.” Another beautiful angel carving, but there’s pretty much nothing sadder than a gravestone for a two-year-old child:

Schaefer Brewing Company: “Beer at its best”

It was the oldest brewery in New York City, operating in various locations from 1842 to 1976 first in Manhattan (Chelsea, then Park Avenue and 51st Street) and then in Brooklyn.

Was Schaefer ever the beer of the pearls-and-corsage set? This 1935 New Yorker ad makes it seem so.

The Schaefer factory in South Williamsburg (right) opened in 1916.

Schaefer was the nation’s best-selling beer for most of the 20th century. The Brooklyn factory shut down in 1976 and the site is now occupied by Schaefer Landing, the luxury housing complex.

Hmm, wonder how apartments are selling in this economy and without the Water Taxi service promised to potential residents.

When Buffalo Bill thrilled New Yorkers

Buffalo Bill Cody was a bison hunter, Union Army soldier, Pony Express rider and all-around frontiersman. But by 1886 he’d become a showman. That year, he took his Wild West show to New York for a stint at Madison Square Garden. And New York audiences couldn’t get enough.

It must have been quite a spectacle. The show featured Cody, assorted cowboys and cowgirls, plus more than 100 Native Americans. They reenacted powwows, buffalo hunts, stagecoach trips, mining camp life, and other elements of the mythologized West.

“Taken as a whole, the show is excellent,” The New York Times wrote. “The scenery is more than good, the incidents of frontier life realistic, the dances and ceremonies of the Indians are spirited and effective.”

Cody returned to MSG with different incarnations of his show over the years until it went bankrupt in 1913. The photo above was taken at the Garden with chiefs Red Cloud and American Horse. Below, a poster for the 1886 Madison Square Garden show.

The arrival of the Wild West show in cities across the country was often accompanied by a parade. It’s unclear where this 1902 parade footage takes place—could it be New York?

The dragons guarding a Chinatown tenement

They’re grimy and could use a fresh coat of paint, but these dragon-shaped handrails at the entrance to a Chinatown walk-up are pretty neat:

The Webster Apartments: for women only

At the beginning of the 20th century, it definitely wasn’t acceptable for single females to rent an apartment of their own. Which is why women’s residences sprang up all over Manhattan.

 One was the Webster Apartments at 419 West 34th Street. The founders, Charles and Josiah Webster, were cousins of R.H. Macy; they left their fortune to the creation of a home for unmarried working women. 

“The apartments are to operated without profit, meals at nominal prices are to be served, and a library and other conveniences are to be provided,” The New York Times wrote in 1916, when Charles Webster’s will was made public.

The residence opened in 1923. A room and two meals a day on a lower floor ran $8.50 a week; upper floor rooms plus meals went for $12 weekly. The Webster also provided sewing machines, an infirmary, a roof garden, and a library, with books “selected by a trained librarian,” the Times noted.

 It all sounds quaint and unnecessary in today’s world. But The Webster is still going strong almost a century later, providing living quarters to hundreds of women at a time. 

Other women’s residences are also still thriving. There’s the Jeanne d’Arc Home in Chelsea.

In the defunct female hotel category, check out the Barbizon and the Trowmart.

Defunct Sheriff Street’s infamous resident

Sheriff Street used to run from Houston to Grand Streets on the Lower East Side. But then housing developments built in the 1940s obliterated it, and all that remains now is this lonely sign beside the Williamsburg Bridge.

 Not much distinguished Sheriff Street from other streets in the jam-packed immigrant neighborhood in the early part of the 20th century.

Except for one thing: Sheriff Street was the location of the childhood home of Ethel Rosenberg, executed with her husband Julius for espionage in 1953.

According to Ethel Rosenberg: Beyond the Myths, by Ilene Philipson, Sheriff Street was a loud, dingy block:

“[Ethel] was delivered at 64 Sheriff Street, a tenement house between Rivington and Delancey Streets. The trains traveling to and from Brooklyn over the Williamsburg Bridge, a half-block away, provided a loud and constant drone against which the street offered up its cacophony of voices and clatter.”

“A synogogue and several small machine shops were also on the block. Taken together, these various enterprises gave Sheriff Street a distinctly commercial cast, although the many  tenements housed hundreds of people above the din and tumult of the street,” Philipson writes.

The Verrazano-Narrows Bridge is turning 45

Best known for its supporting role in Saturday Night Fever, the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge has been linking Brooklyn to Staten Island since November 1964. Below, a sketch of the bridge drawn before construction began:

Okay, so it doesn’t have the cache of the George Washington or Brooklyn Bridges. But the Verrazano can hold its own.

Until 1981 it was the world’s longest suspension bridge. One end is at Fort Hamilton in Brooklyn, the other at Fort Wadsworth in Staten Island; these two forts are the historic guards of New York Harbor. And after the bridge was built, Staten Island’s population doubled.

Madison Square Garden sports calendar, 1939

Here’s what was on deck for the week of November 25, as reported in an MSG ad in Cue magazine:

A bike race. A union meeting for musicians. Several hockey games featuring the New York Rangers as well as the New York Americans, a team that disbanded in the 1940s. A boxing match between Henry Armstrong and Lou Ambers.

And then there’s the “Mass Meeting for America.” This was a rally organized by various religious and patriotic groups.

The main speaker, Rep. Martin Dies of Texas, “denounced communism, fascism, and nazism as alien forces tearing at American unity,” The New York Times reported the next day. “[Dies] also made a strong plea for racial and religious tolerance.”