Born a slave, now on his way to sainthood

Only two city residents, Elizabeth Ann Seton and Francis Xavier Cabrini, have been canonized by the Catholic church. Next may be Pierre Toussaint.

Born a slave in Haiti in 1766, Toussaint came to New York with his master’s family, the Berards, during the Haitian slave revolts of the 1780s.

After the Berard fortune dwindled, he became a society hairdresser, supporting the family until Mrs. Berard freed him on her deathbed.

Deeply devout, Toussaint and his wife spent their lives building orphanages, nursing cholera patients, and raising funds for the original St. Patrick’s Cathedral, on Mott and Prince Streets (below, in 1859).

When he died in 1853, Toussaint was buried in old Saint Patrick’s churchyard. Catholic leaders re-interred his body at the uptown St. Patrick’s in 1990.

Touissant has made it to the second step on the path to sainthood: He’s been deemed Venerable.

Still, he’s a controversial choice. Reportedly some Catholics take him to task for staying with his master’s family rather than joining the slave revolt that forced the Berards to flee Haiti in the first place.

The battle over naming the Queensboro Bridge

What’s in a name? Plenty, especially among certain factions of New Yorkers at the turn of the last century.

That’s when the city began building a great bridge that would link Manhattan to Queens. City officials planned to name it the Blackwell’s Island Bridge, after the spit of land (now Roosevelt Island) it would skip over in the East River.

But real estate bigwigs from Manhattan and Queens objected; they felt the name had bad connotations. Blackwell’s Island at the time was infamous for its poorhouse and prison.

The real estate guys were afraid New Yorkers would shy away from the bridge—and their neighborhoods—to avoid the unsavory assocation.

On the other hand, many Irish residents were opposed to the Queensboro name because they felt it sounded too British.

The leader of one Irish group even suggested calling it the Montauk Bridge, thinking it had a more American ring to it.

In the end, Queensboro was selected as the official name before the bridge opened in 1909. And it’s stuck ever since.

Where is the West Village’s Mixed Ale Alley?

Even Village residents walk right by without realizing it’s there.

But locked behind an old iron gate between 10 and 12 Grove Street is tiny Grove Court, six Federal-style brick houses framed by sleepy trees and gardens. 

“There’s some debate as to when the six three-story houses were built, but the best guess would put the date around 1820, when the Village was still semi-rural,” reports a 1954 New York Times article.

Other sources say the enclave dates back to the 1840s, when it was known as Pig’s Alley or Mixed Ale Alley—monikers that hint at a less-than-genteel past.

The article continues: “All in the row except number 4 seem to rest on ancient Dutch foundations and there are vestiges of Dutch ovens in them.” 

A pump in the courtyard drew water from underground Minetta Brook until the 1920s, residents told the reporter.

Threatened with destruction in the 1950s (the city considered knocking it down and putting up a playground for nearby P.S. 3), Grove Court now is an exclusive stretch of Village real estate.

Iggy Pop plays the Peppermint Lounge

The October 1982 lineup looks pretty good at rock/new wave venue the Peppermint Lounge, which had just moved downtown to 100 Fifth Avenue earlier that year.

First up is Iggy, then Tom Verlaine performs a week later.

This ad comes from the September 1982 issue of neighborhood arts and entertainment newspaper the East Village Eye.

A deadly terrorist strike downtown

Saturday’s failed car bomb in Times Square brings to mind other bombings in crowded city spaces over the years.

Like in the 1970s, when the terrorist group FALN, seeking independence for Puerto Rico, planted several bombs in midtown and downtown.

Their deadliest attack: setting off explosives in Fraunces Tavern, the 18th century tavern in the financial district.

It happened on January 24, when the place was packed with a lunch crowd. Four men were instantly killed, and dozens were injured. The New York Times reported the next day:

“Victims in the tavern restaurant and the second-floor dining room of the adjacent Anglers Club were hurled from their tables in a confusion of screams and flying debris as the blast erupted just inside the front doorway of 101 Broad Street.”

The FALN quickly took responsibility for the bombing, but no one was ever charged.

Eventually, 16 FALN members were locked away for playing behind the scenes roles in other acts of terror. In 1999, President Clinton commuted their sentences.

Two in the morning in 1932

Three women in cloche hats and clingy dresses cross a desolate Greenwich Village street in Martin Lewis’ “2 a.m.”

Did sanitation workers really used to hose down the streets at night? 

Chop suey: New York’s homegrown Chinese dish

New Yorkers have been ordering chop suey since the turn of the century, when Chinese restaurants opened in large numbers and Chinese food became a trendy cuisine.

It was always a popular dish—and it may have been invented right here in 1896.

That’s when New York welcomed an official visit by Chinese premier Li Hongzhang.

Supposedly the personal chefs he brought with him from China created chop suey to win over American palates at formal dinners.

Another theory has it that chop suey is a bastardization of a Cantonese dish, and it became popular in the U.S. when Chinatowns sprang up in cities.

Whatever the story is, one thing’s for sure: It was always an inexpensive dish, as this 1960s menu, from The Rice Bowl Restaurant at 44 Mott Street, shows.

A rich neighborhood in 19th century Manhattan

Tribeca is a trendy place to live today, just as one little nook of it was in the 1830s and 1840s. 

All that’s left of this exclusive nook, however, are a few alleys: St. John’s Lane and York Street.

They’re remnants of a genteel enclave centered around St. John’s Chapel, built in 1807 on Lispenard Meadows, then a dreary swamp.

After the chapel was built, private St. John’s Park sprang up next, attracting rich New Yorkers who built Federal-style row houses along the park.

["View of St. John's Chapel From the Park," a sketch by The New-York Mirror, from the NYPL digital collection]

The St. John’s Park neighborhood was one of the city’s most fashionable, but as Manhattan grew northward, its appeal went south. The chapel, park, and the homes that surrounded it were all gone by 1920.

The oldest working phone number in New York

It just might be (212) 736-5000, otherwise known by its old-school moniker PA 6-5000.

It’s the main line for the Hotel Pennsylvania, the massive, worn and weary on Seventh Avenue and 33rd Street open since 1919.

The phone number dates back to at least 1930, when seven-digit numbers replaced five-digit and two-letter numbers.

And it’s immortalized in the Glenn Miller song of the same name.

Call the number, and a recording plays 10 seconds of the song before you’re connected to an operator.

The Hotel Pennsylvania may be reduced to a pile of bricks soon; reportedly it’s to be torn down and an office tower put up in its place.

Once the largest hotel in the world, this McKim, Mead & White building (they designed the original Penn Station) doesn’t seem to have many fans these days.

More signs that have seen better days

Three stylistically different store signs in three separate neighborhoods—each one a case of benign neglect . . . not a bad thing.

I love the typeface used in Casa Latina. It’s a record store on East 116th Street, a main drag in East Harlem.

Stationery, cigars, candy, toys . . . pretty much everything a tiny neighborhood store needs. This one is located on a little commercial strip on 187th Street in Washington Heights.

Ideal Hosiery, one of the last vestiges of Grand Street’s Hosiery Row and an iconic sign on the Lower East Side.

It dates to 1950. I think the sign must too!