A faded ad painted in brick on a Chelsea building is all that’s left of Miss Weber, a hat maker who ran a store at 48 West 22nd Street.
“Take elevator”: If instructions were necessary, I’d guess that elevators were relatively new at the time the ad was painted.
So when does it date to? Well, Frank Jump posted a photo taken in 1997; he dates the ad to 1910.
And 14to42 says an Ida Weber ran a hat shop here from 1911 to 1913 before decamping to the millinery district on 39th Street.
It’s hard to imagine that elevated train tracks traveled down narrow, relatively quiet West 53rd Street at one time.
And it’s even harder to imagine the terror of being on an elevated train there one random rush hour morning when it veers off track and plunges into a tenement or the street.
But that’s what happened on the morning of September 11, 1905. At least 12 people were killed when this train crashed at Ninth Avenue and 53rd Street, a notorious curve where the Sixth and Ninth Avenue Els diverge.
The crash was blamed on human error; a switch on the tracks was set wrong.
Both elevated lines were dismantled by 1940.
On January 3, 1973, a young woman was found stabbed 14 times in a cluttered studio apartment at 253 West 72nd Street.
Her name was Roseann Quinn, a 28-year-old special-ed teacher.
It was a tabloid-ready slaying for the singles bar era: Quinn was reported to be a regular at the singles bars along a slightly seedy West 72nd Street.
Patrons at one bar supposedly said she often sat alone there and read—and sometimes picked up men.
After few weeks, cops arrested John Wayne Wilson. He was accused of going back to Quinn’s place with her after meeting at a bar called W.M. Tweeds, then killing her a few hours later.
Wilson was never tried; he committed suicide in jail six months later.
Quinn’s murder became the inspiration for the book and movie Looking for Mr. Goodbar as well as an emblem of the 1970s singles scene in a much more rough-around-the-edges New York.
New York City is home to some pretty luxe hotels. But how many featured their own working hospital with four operating rooms?
Only the Hotel New Yorker, still hosting guests on 34th Street and 8th Avenue but without the extravagance it had when it opened in 1930.
Among the amenities back in the day: More than 2,500 rooms (each one with its own radio). Ten private dining rooms. A 42-chair barber shop. Five restaurants.
This 1940s postcard, with the slogan “where night turns into play,” makes it sound like a decadent destination.
The New Yorker had a sports past too. Leo Durocher made it the Dodgers’ headquarters during the 1941 World Series. Joe Di Maggio even lived there.
Photojournalist Arthur Fellig, aka Weegee, is best known for his raw crime-scene photos.
But he also captured some tender moments of street life in New York City—such as this photo of a ragtag group of kids cooling off under the spray of a fire hydrant in 1937.
It must have been hot that day . . . so hot, some of these kids didn’t even bother taking their clothes off to cool down.
In 1822, New York City was gripped by a deadly yellow fever epidemic.
To escape the outbreak, many residents relocated a few miles north to pastoral Greenwich Village.
William Hyde, the man who built this lovely Federal-style house, may have been among them.
Hyde was a window-sash maker who put up the then–two story home as well as a small back workspace before wooden structures were outlawed in 1866.
The photo above, by Berenice Abbott, captures Hyde’s house in 1936. Another floor and a fire escape have been added.
The single family home was carved into apartments around 1920; the back workspace also became a separate residence.
Today, it looks like a single-family home again. The fire escape is gone, and part of the wood siding has disappeared as well.
It’s still one of the sweetest homes in the Village, a reminder of its country past.
The Socony-Mobil building, built in 1956 at 42nd Street between Lexington and Third Avenues, was an office tower way ahead of its time.
The world’s first stainless steel skyscraper, this former headquarters of Mobil Oil was sheathed in thousands of panels studded with pyrimid-like designs.
Some early reviewers called the 42-story tower the “waffle building.” Architectural critic Lewis Mumford wrote that the building looked like it had the measles.
But the stamped, tin ceiling–like facade gained enough fans over the next five decades to garner landmark status in 2003.
Well, he could be, perhaps—with a wooden cart rather than a truck and a bucket of ice instead of a freezer.
He’s not quite Mister Softee or the Good Humor guy, but then, his cart probably doesn’t play the same jingle over and over again.
This sketch is dated August 11, 1885 and is titled “A Summer Scene in the Streets of New York—the Ice Cream Man.” It’s from the NYPL.
June 15th marks the 106th anniversary of the General Slocum disaster, when a paddle steamer packed with mothers and children on a church trip caught fire in the East River.
More than 1,000 people, mainly residents of the East Village’s huge German community, perished.
Most New Yorkers know of the S.S. General Slocum. But who was General Slocum the man, and why did his name land on excursion boat associated with the greatest loss of life in city history, aside from 9/11?
Henry Warner Slocum was a Union general during the Civil War who fought in Gettysburg. Prospect Park is home to a heroic bronze statue of Slocum on horseback in battle.
After the war, he became a congressman from New York, then served as commissioner of public works for the city of Brooklyn.
When he died in 1894, thousands of Brooklynites paid their respects by lining the streets to watch his funeral procession go from his home on Clinton Avenue to Lafayette Street, South Oxford, Hanson Place, and then Fourth Avenue.
He was buried in Green-Wood Cemetery unaware of the horror that occurred aboard his namesake ship.
“Beer” is the word that draws the eye to this very weathered ad painted (in color!) on the side of a building at Canal and Lafayette Streets.
“Importers and Bottlers of” is above it. The “liberty” script is lovely. The rest of the ad, however, is indecipherable.
This Sonn Bros. Whiskies ad still stands on Desbrosses Street in Tribeca. Hyman and Henry Sonn were Bavarian immigrants who became liquor dealers in the late 19th century.
