Where was Yankee Stadium almost built?

In 1921, after the Yankees had been sharing the Polo Grounds in Upper Manhattan with the Giants for a decade, the two teams were butting heads—especially with the Yankees selling more tickets.

Yankees honchos Jacob Ruppert and Tillinghast Huston knew a new stadium had to go up.

After checking out sites in Long Island City and in the West 50s at 11th Avenue, a location was picked: Harlem, on Convent Avenue between 136th and 138th Streets.

At the time, the site was occupied by the Hebrew Orphan Asylum, an 1884 Modern Renaissance structure that housed more than a thousand kids.

A design was selected, but in early 1922, Yankees brass announced that the new stadium would actually be built in the South Bronx on land once owned by the Astor family.

What did the Bronx have over Harlem? Stellar subway access.

“Ruppert and Huston had looked at the Astor property shortly after buying the Yankees in 1915. They ruled the site out because it lacked adequate transportation,” wrote Neil J. Sullivan in 2001′s The Diamond in the Bronx.

“The development of the subway solved that problem, and the Bronx location became even more accessible than many neighborhoods in Manhattan.”

[Hebrew Orphan Asylum image: the NYPL Digital Collection]

Edgar Allan Poe’s Upper West Side farmhouse

Edgar Allan Poe—arguably New York City’s first Bohemian—lived in a bunch of different places when he arrived in Manhattan in the 1830s.

There was a home at 130 Greenwich Street, another at 85 West Third (or Amity) Street, and a cottage on the Grand Concourse in the Bronx, where his young wife Virginia died of tuberculosis in 1846.

In 1844, fleeing high rents near Washington Square, he and Virginia moved to a farmhouse near today’s West 84th Street and Broadway.

Of course, there was no city up there, as this early 1900s postcard reveals.

Manhattan was country north of Greenwich Village, dotted with tiny hamlets.

Interestingly, the postcard calls Broadway “St. Nicholas Place.” I found one reference to that forgotten street name: a New York Times piece from 1893:

“The house where ‘The Raven’ was written stands on a rocky and commanding eminence, a few hundred feet from the corner of 84th Street and St. Nicholas Boulevard, formerly the Bloomingdale Road,” the Times reported.

This corner today claims Poe as its own, naming 84th Street from Broadway through West End Avenue after him and honoring the famous resident with a long-running cafe, Edgar’s.

Vintage Coca-Cola signage on faded storefronts

Are these real Coca-Cola store signs—or just temporary props put up for a film shoot?

I might say the latter if I didn’t see them myself. There aren’t many delis, drugstores, and luncheonettes left in New York featuring the familiar red and white Coke logo.

Spotting one is like a trip back in time. The Starlite Deli fluorescent sign continues to light up West 44th Street in Times Square.

A handmade sign advertising Coke and 7-Up, now that’s a rare find. This one is on Carmine Street.

This corner shop in Astoria apparently still stocks 20th century artifacts such as school supplies, cigars, and “pocketbooks.” It’s under the N train elevated tracks.

A gruesome mob hit at a Midtown Starbucks

Next time you’re waiting for your latte at the Starbucks in the Park Central Hotel on Seventh Avenue and 55th Street, imagine the place as it was on October 25, 1957: a blood-splattered barber shop with a mob boss’s body on the floor.

That was the scene there that autumn morning, when the hotel was known as the Park Sheraton. Albert Anastasia, head of Murder Inc., was inside, sitting in a chair awaiting a haircut.

Suddenly two men, their faces covered, burst into the shop, pushed the barber out of the way, and pumped a volley of bullets into Anastasia.

He lunged toward his killers, then hit the ground.

Officially, his murder remains unsolved. But it’s believed that Vito Genovese ordered the hit, carried out by Crazy Joey Gallo and one of his brothers.

Joey Gallo’s murder, outside Umberto’s Clam House, was just as gruesome.

Romany Marie’s bohemian cafes in the Village

If you were a struggling artist in the early 1900s, Romany Marie (left) was your ally.

Born in Moldavia, the former anarchist came to Greenwich Village in the early 1900s, when the neighborhood was gathering steam as a hotbed of radical politics and artistic creativity.

For the next several decades she ran a series of dimly lit tea rooms and taverns offering gypsy music, cheap eats, and a salon-like vibe where ideas flowed freely.

Oh, and she sometimes fed artists for free when they couldn’t afford a meal. No wonder she attracted such a devoted following of Village bohemians.

John Sloan’s famous sketch, “Romany Marye’s in Christopher Street, 1922″ (above) was drawn at her 20 Christopher Street restaurant.

Poet Edna St. Vincent Millay wrote her famous “my candle burns at both ends” line there.

Romany Marie also ran establishments at 15 Minetta Street, 49 Grove Street, and 64 Washington Square South at Thompson Street.

She died in 1961, when the Village still had its bohemian rep but was a very different place.

The Village Voice blog Runnin’ Scared reran her obituary here.

The sinking of the Titanic—in words and music

The demise of the Titanic—set to arrive at Chelsea Piers on its maiden voyage to New York—was shocking and traumatic.

And it didn’t take long after the ship went down April 15, 1912 for the city’s prolific music companies to release novelty songs about the ill-fated liner.

Maybe the songwriters were dealing with the horror of the tragedy through art, or perhaps they were simply capitalizing on a national disaster.

Either way, the lyrics were generally pretty melodramatic, like these from “The Band Played Nearer My God to Thee as the Ship Went Down,” produced by the Joe Morris Music Company on 31st Street:

“On a peaceful night
Thro’ the starlight bright
There a good ship plowed her way;
She was heading straight
For the port of fate
Ere the breaking of the day”

Some were aimed at specific audiences—like the music above, from the Hebrew Publishing Company on Canal Street.

The cover art features Isidor and Ida Straus, husband and wife who refused to leave each other as the Titanic was sinking. Instead, they urged their maid and other passengers to take their place in the lifeboats.

Isidor was the owner of Macy’s, and he and his wife were prominent German Jews.

“The Titanic Is Doomed and Sinking,” from the Mozart Music Library at 1431 Broadway, also lays the melodrama on thick:

“There are many aged mothers
In all the wide world o’er
Who will weep and wail in anguish
For some one who come no more”

[All images from the NYPL digital archives]