The tiniest plot of private property in New York

Or at least until the 1930s, anyway. At the corner of Christopher Street and Seventh Avenue South in the West Village, in front of the iconic Village Cigars store, lies this blink-and-you’ll-miss-it mosaic embedded in the sidewalk.

Its tough-talking message: “Property of the Hess Estate Which Has Never Been Dedicated For Public Purposes.”

What’s the backstory? In the 1910s, when the city was expanding the IRT subway line, officials tore down a nearby apartment building owned by the estate of a New Yorker named David Hess.

A small triangle of land was left over, and officials wanted the Hess family to donate it so the city could extend the sidewalk.

Nothing doing. The Hess Estate fought it out in court, won the right to preserve their little plot, and embedded the tile plaque as kind of a victory symbol. In 1938, however, they sold it to the Village Cigar owners.

The Brooklyn Bridge: not always so beloved

Well-dressed men and women circa 1890, suspended between the city of New York and the city of Brooklyn. Judging by all the smoke in the background, it looks like the camera is facing the Brooklyn side.

At the time this photo was taken, the bridge was only seven years old.

(Photo: B. Merlis)

And if the naysayers had their way, it would never have been built at all. When the “East River Bridge Project” was conceived in 1829, the sentiment was that a bridge would disturb the beauty of New York Harbor and the shipping industry that thrived there.

An editorial in The New York Mirror stated: ”The mischief that would ensue, according to our view of the subject, from the erection of a bridge, would be little less than infinite.

“To allow a merchant ship to pass under it without striking her topmasts, it would be necessary to elevate it to not less than one hundred feet above the water. . . . Who would mount over such a structure, when a passage could be effected in a much shorter time, and that, too, without exertion or trouble, in a safe and well-sheltered steamboat?”

A comedian caught in Chinatown’s Tong wars

In 1909, Chinese-American comedian Ah Hoon was a well-known actor, performing regularly at the Chinese Theater. Located at 5-7 Doyers Street (pictured below in 1909), the theater was a popular venue for Chinese- and English-speaking audiences, who enjoyed the trip to exotic Chinatown. 

Ah Hoon belonged to the On Leong Tong, and he had a habit of making jabs at rival Tongs the Four Brothers and the Hip Sings while on stage.

Bad timing. A Tong war had just broken out, and rival Tong leaders didn’t like the jabs. So they decided Ah Hoon had to be killed. They warned him of his fate and even told him which day would be his last—December 30.

Ah Hoon took them seriously. He had a police presence on stage with him at the Chinese Theater that night, and he escaped to his nearby boardinghouse through a tunnel. On Leong members guarded the boardinghouse entrance.

Still, he was found shot in the heart the next day in his room. How did the rival Tongs get in? Apparently they lowered a gang member on a boatswain’s chair off the roof and into a window in Ah Hoon’s room. He murdered the comedian using a silencer.

Mysterious building names on Ninth Avenue

Most city tenements are marked at the top by a name, presumably of the builder, and the year the structure was completed. 

But at 744 Ninth Avenue, off 50th Street, the tenement is named “9th. Ave. Flat.” It seems to be a pretty fanciful moniker for a typical red-brick tenement building; “French flats” at the time were usually higher-end apartments for middle-class New Yorkers. 

Perhaps the builder had amenities inside—private baths?—that put it a notch above the usual late 19th century tenement apartment.

Also on Ninth Avenue in Hell’s Kitchen is another strangely named tenement building. I wonder what “Foresters Home” was—just a tenement put up by a man named Forester? Or maybe some kind of charity residence that housed orphans or the indigent. 

Only two 8s remains from the two inscriptions announcing the date it was built: 1880.

Brownstoner’s Montrose Morris has more on the French Flats building boom. 

City park dairies: fighting the “swill milk” scandal

Brooklyn’s Prospect Park had one, complete with cows grazing beside it. Central Park’s still exists (minus the cows), but now it’s a visitors’ center.

We’re talking about a dairy: a place where kids could buy safe, cheap milk in the late 19th century.

The dairies and their on-site cows served a vital function at the time. Before pasteurization, milk—often brought in from upstate farms in warm wagons—routinely spoiled, sickening children.

And if they drank “swill milk,” it killed them. This rotten milk came from cows kept in city stables next to whiskey distilleries.

The cows were fed mash from the distilleries rather than grass, and the milk they produced was bulked up with flour or plaster to make it appear fresh. 

It wasn’t. An 1858 swill milk outbreak—aided by corrupt city officials whose sympathies lay with dairy owners—killed thousands of city residents. 

Stronger food handling laws, pasteurization, and refrigeration helped make the park dairies obsolete in the 20th century. Prospect Park’s was torn down in the 1930s; the ornate, Victorian dairy in Central Park (at right) was restored a few decades ago.

A black-tie dinner on horseback

Millionaire C.K.G. Billings loved horses and a fine meal. So on March 28, 1903, he combined the two and hosted an opulent dinner on horseback for 36 of his closest male friends.

The dinner was supposed to take place at the luxe new French chateaux-like estate he’d built for himself near Fort Tryon Park. But once reporters heard about it, Billings secretly switched the location to Sherry’s, then the city’s ritziest restaurant on Fifth Avenue and 44th Street.

The event was a prime example of gilded-age excess. Sherry’s ballroom was made to mimic woodlands, complete with dirt on the floor. The horses were brought up via an elevator and had dinner trays attached to their saddles.

Each horse had feedbag of oats to chomp on as well. Courses were served by waiters dressed as grooms; guests drank champagne through rubber tubes.

Total cost: about $50,000.

“View at New Amsterdam,” 1665

If you were sailing up the East River in the mid-1660s and catching your first glimpse of New Amsterdam, this is what you could expect to see. 

Painter Johannes Vingboon depicts the colony as a tidy little Dutch hamlet, complete with row houses, a windmill, and, eerily enough, a gallows right on the shoreline. 

 
In the 1660s, Peter Stuyvesant was Director-General of New Amsterdam. Life wasn’t easy for the 1,500 souls living here: There were just a handful of muddy main streets and constant skirmishes with the Lenape Indians. But the City Tavern, built in the 1640s, probably made things bearable.

This painting is part of the National Archives of the Netherlands. It’ll be on display—along with other New Amsterdam artwork, maps, and plans—at the South Street Seaport Museum starting September 12.

It’s all part of NY400, a celebration of the 400th anniversary of Henry Hudson’s voyage along the river that now bears his name.

Wigstock: New York’s other Labor Day tradition

The first Labor Day parade was held in September 1882; thousands of workers marched and rallied in Union Square for better workplace conditions and pay.

A century later, the first Wigstock was held in September 1985. One thousand spectators came to Tompkins Square Park to see founder Lady Bunny and other drag queens perform in sequins, sky-high platforms, and big wigs at the park’s bandshell.

Wigstock’s genesis was a little less serious than Labor Day’s: It was conceived by Lady Bunny and friends after a drunken night in 1984 at Avenue A’s Pyramid Club.

An instant, outrageous hit, Wigstock became a Labor Day tradition. By 1990, the crowd swelled to 10,000. If you were stuck in the city that weekend with no friends inviting you out to the Hamptons or upstate, you could always head downtown and get a kick out of the crowds and performers spilling over into the streets.

When the park closed for renovations in 1991, Wigstock moved to Union Square, and in 1994, it relocated to the Christopher Street Piers. 

Until 2001, that is, when the last Wigstock took place. In subsequent years it was absorbed into the Howl! festival in the East Village. But it seems that 2009 will be Wigstock-less. 

Here’s more Wigstock info and ephemera.

The man who walked to Brooklyn in a day

From Montauk, that is. Native American Stephen Talkhouse, a member of the Montaukett tribe, lived in Montauk Point, Long Island in the mid–19th century.

He was known for his daily walks around the South Fork and reportedly once walked from Montauk to Brooklyn and back in just one day.

Round trip, we’re talking about 200 miles.

That’s not Talkhouse’s only brush with notoriety. Somehow showman P.T. Barnum heard about him and signed him up as “The Last King of the Mountauks.” Talkhouse became a sideshow attraction, probably at Barnum’s American Museum on Ann Street and Broadway in Manhattan.

He wasn’t a king, and he wasn’t the last Montaukett, but it must have made for a good exhibit. Barnum’s American Museum was a huge sensation, showcasing conjoined twins Chang and Eng and little person General Tom Thumb, among others.

The museum burned to the ground in 1865; Talkhouse died in 1879.

Kitschy and colorful 1960s store signs

Vintage signs like these have such a Jetsons-era feel. They liven otherwise drab city blocks with color and fun swinging-’60s fonts.

Superior Florists are off Sixth Avenue in the ever-shrinking flower district of the upper 20s:

The Carnegie Deli sign, on Seventh Avenue in the 50s, features a similar retro cursive font and an even brighter yellow hue:

At Greenpoint Avenue and Queens Boulevard in Sunnyside is the King Boulevard Mens Shop. (Suits for $79.99!) 

The poor Trowel & Square Ballroom, on 125th Street in Harlem, looks neglected and forlorn: 

Strange to name a ballroom after a tool used to spread dirt or cement. Does anyone know the history of this place?