The Whales of the Port Authority Bus Terminal

Sea life at the Port Authority? It’s easy to miss this 400-foot marine-themed mural, since it’s located in the dark and grimy 41st Street underpass through which Greyhound and New Jersey Transit buses regularly lumber through.

But one-name artist Wyland painted one of his 400-foot Whaling Walls here in 1993, coloring an exterior wall of the Port Authority in blues and greens and black.

Wyland’s Whaling Walls, featuring humpbacks, blue whales, and other marine creatures, exist all over the world. There must be an interesting back story as to how this one ended up pretty much hidden away in an urban underpass, out of view of commuters and passerbys.

The Great Central Park Zoo Escape

It’s 1874. Central Park is about 15 years old, the playground of New York’s leisure class. One of the park’s most popular attractions is the menagerie near East 64th Street, home to elephants, zebras, bison, big cats, and monkeys, among other creatures.

On November 9, the New York Herald ran an article reporting that all the animals had escaped their cages and were roaming free in the park, leaving dozens of people “mutilated, trampled, and injured,” not to mention killed. 

It wasn’t true of course; at the very end the writer admits it’s a completely made up version of what might happen if conditions in the menagerie aren’t improved.

But how many people read all the way to the end of the piece? Not many, considering the panic that gripped New Yorkers that day. The entire city fell into a frenzy before finding out that it was all a hoax.

The rival New York Times was miffed enough to editorialize about the stunt. The Times article called it “a violation not only of journalistic propriety and a due respect for the public, but also of common decency and humanity.”

I love this last line in the article at left, “Governor Dix Shoots the Bengal Tiger in the Street.” Can you imagine Governor Paterson doing that?

An airplane view of two East River bridges

The Hell Gate and Triborough Bridges—spanking-new and gleaming in this technical postcard—connect Astoria to Ward’s and Randall’s Islands. The islands are two separate entities here, but they’ve long since been united into one island via landfill.

It’s a strange view: Manhattan and the Bronx look like pastoral, barely populated villages. Astoria, on the other hand, comes off as an industrial wasteland.

The Triborough Bridge was renamed the Robert F. Kennedy Bridge in 2008. I hope they don’t rename the Hell Gate; it’s too colorful a name to lose.

An actor’s funeral procession down Broadway

Judging by the 100,000 people lining Broadway, you’d think the hearse in the photo below would be carrying the coffin of a politician or war hero. 

Nope, it’s Rudolph Valentino, the silent movie heartthrob who died suddenly in a New York City hospital in August 1926. He was 31. Before becoming one of the first A-list actors, he clocked in time as a busboy at city restaurants and then as a dancer at Maxim’s, a swanky Manhattan nightclub.

His body was brought to the Frank E. Campbell Funeral Church at Broadway and 66th Street. An estimated 30,000 fans tried to get a glimpse into his open casket, smashing windows and causing a near riot.

From there funeral home staffers orchestrated a Hollywood-like procession, driving the casket down to St. Malachy’s Church—the Actor’s Chapel—on Broadway and 49th Street for a mass. Crowds of young women swooned and cried as the procession passed. 

The Village’s lovely Rhinelander Row

If the very top of the Port Authority building a few blocks away on Eighth Avenue and 14th Street weren’t visible, you might think this photo captured a row of simple homes in some small city or country town in the pre-automobile, horse and wagon era.

But it’s actually a moment in time on the West side of Seventh Avenue between 12th and 13th Streets in the West Village. The photo was taken by Berenice Abbott in 1937, just before these 11 three-story, wooden-balconied homes were razed.

Built by landowner William Rhinelander in 1848, they were previously known as “cottage row,” and they shouldn’t be confused with Rhinelander Gardens, a fancier row of homes that once stood on West 11th Street.

A New York Times article from 1937 said of Rhinelander Row, “With their wide piazzas and ample balconies on the upper floors they have been for many years refreshing reminders of the simple but comfortable residential days in that interesting part of the city.”

What’s on that block now? It’s the site of the Maritime Building, which appears to be getting the ax so Saint Vincent’s Medical Center can put up a new hospital building.

“Good Food” at Toffenetti in Times Square

I love this 1940s postcard and its, um, poetic description of Broadway—”where glamour sparkles forever.” But I get the feeling Toffenetti was one of those massive establishments with a ton of tables yet not such good food, as the sign above the door promises.

Opened in 1940, Toffenetti served up big plates of mid-century American staples; think ham, roast beef, strawberry shortcake, lots of pies. It shut its doors in 1968.

A New York Times article announcing the closing said Toffenetti had recently begun advertising an all-you-can-eat menu for just $3.95. Must have been a popular deal; the article goes on to say that they served 3,000 meals a day.

“Night” at the Brooklyn Museum

The statue below, called Night, used to guard one of the entrances to the original Penn Station, a glorious figure greeting millions of commuters every year. Retired now, she sits in the outdoor sculpture garden at the Brooklyn Museum. 

 Night used to be paired with a similar figure, Day. Four sets of Night and Day were created by sculptor Adolph Weinman in 1910 for Penn Station; each pink-granite pair framed the sides of a clock.

So how did she end up in Brooklyn? When Penn Station was torn down in 1963, much of the art and architectural details that made the station such a jewel went straight to landfill. Night was soon retrieved from a dump in the Meadowlands. The whereabouts of her partner, Day, are unclear.

Another set of Night and Day, along with some original Penn Station eagles, somehow made their way to a park in Kansas City, Missouri. The photo below, with Night on the right, provides a better idea of what the originals looked like.

Two views of the Polo Grounds

The Polo Grounds, home of the New York Giants until 1957, doesn’t get the adulation Ebbets Field and the old Yankee Stadium receive. This photo dates to about 1920; check out the decorative motifs on the left:

The bathtub-shaped stadium was located at Eighth Avenue and 155th Street, at the bottom of a steep hill rising from the Harlem River called Coogan’s Bluff.

Why the Polo Grounds, when no polo was played there? In the 1880s, the Giants held their games at a polo field on Fifth Aveune and 110th Streets. When they moved uptown, they took the name with them.

After the Giants shipped out to San Francisco, the Mets played there for their first seasons in 1962 and 1963.

Torn down in 1964, it’s now the site of the Polo Grounds housing project. Reportedly the demolition crew wore Giants jerseys and tipped their hats in homage to the stadium. 

Remembering a pioneer of the NYPD

Robert H. Holmes wasn’t the first African-American hired by the New York City Police Department; that would be Samuel J. Battle, initially rejected by the NYPD in 1910 and then accepted in 1911, serving almost 40 years.

 Holmes joined the NYPD after Battle, appointed to the 38th Precinct in Harlem in 1913. 

He served only four years. On August 6, 1917, he was shot and killed by a burglar he’d chased into the hallway of a tenement at 14 West 138th Street. Struck five times, Holmes died at the scene.

“The dead policeman was known and feared by every criminal among the 70,000 negroes in Harlem, and was the hero of the law-abiding element, ” The New York Times wrote the next day. ”. . . when word spread that Holmes had been shot, the flat houses of the vicinity poured out crowds that choked the street, and eventually had to be dispersed by the reserves.”

Colorful tiles and terra cotta in the subway

You have to hand it to the transit officials in charge of designing subway platforms a century ago. They insisted that stations feature colorful ceramic tiles, terra cotta, and mosaics, and that the design elements be unique to each stop.

Today the MTA continues to restore these decorative motifs. They give each station a little bit of enchantment and a glimpse into the past.

Here’s the J for the Jefferson stop on the L train, in Bushwick:

The number 5 on this 50th Street sign for the 1 train harkins back to an Art Deco era:

A long, fat F for Fulton Street, downtown:

The Brooklyn Bridge 6 stop, with its backward B that looks hand-stenciled: