Monk Eastman’s notorious Bronx gang fight

Even in gang-ridden 19th century New York, with mobsters being rubbed out by rival thugs with guns and other weapons all the time, the old-fashioned fistfight was still used to solve disputes.

That’s what happened in the turf war between criminal Monk Eastman and Paul Kelly, leader of the Five Points Gang.

The simian, wild-haired Eastman (right) controlled Chrystie Street to East 14th Street, wrote Andrew Roth in Infamous Manhattan.

Paul Kelly (below), a dapper Italian with an Irish name, ruled west of Bowery.

Both gangs were under the thumb of Tammany Hall politicos. Tired of their gun battles over disputed neutral territory, Tammany brass organized an old-school fight in a barn in the Bronx in 1903 between the two men.

This “fist duel,” as a 1923 New York Times article dubbed it, didn’t solve a thing.

Eastman and Kelly went at each other in that barn for hours before it was called a draw.

The turf war mostly resolved itself when Eastman was sent to Sing Sing for robbery in 1904, then fought in World War I (he became a decorated soldier).

Kelly had control of the Lower East Side until 1908, when a deadly gun battle—and then Tammany Hall’s desire to clean up the Bowery—reduced his criminal power.

The long, tragic history of a Chelsea bathhouse

The luxurious Everard Baths, opened in a former Romanesque Revival–style church at 28 West 28th Street in 1888, was supposed to be a place devoted to health and fitness. Really.

Started by James Everard, who made a fortune running the Everard Brewery on 135th Street, the baths launched amid the Turkish bath fad of the 1800s.

“Unlike ordinary public baths, where workers went to wash if they didn’t have bathrooms, Turkish baths were popular among the middle class and wealthy, who frequented them to relax in the pools,” explained a 1977 New York Times article.

Turkish baths had another clientele: gay men.

By the 1920s, the baths had become a “bathhouse and dormitories,” divided into tiny cubicles.

The Everard existed for decades as another unmarked bathhouse occasionally subjected to police raids.

But then on May 25, 1977, a fire broke out there, killing nine young men.

The Everard was open for another nine years until the city shut it down in 1986 in response to the AIDS epidemic.

Today, the unassuming building on a dingy Chelsea block houses a wholesale clothing distributor.

How pigeons came to love New York City

The lowly street pigeon is a common (and lets face it, often despised) creature here in the city. But they’re not lowly, and they aren’t even New York natives.

These hardy birds are also called Rock Doves, originally found on the cliffs of the Mediterranean. European aristocrats bred them for hunting and eating.

In the 17th century, colonists bound for New Amsterdam brought along domesticated rock doves, where they were destined for dinner plates.

Soon some captive Rock Doves escaped, and as the city developed, these gregarious birds took to the parks, statues, fire escapes, and skyscrapers New York offered.

Over the years, the city has tried everything to reduce their numbers: poison, traps, even avian birth control pills.

Perhaps the one thing that will work is an increase in the falcon population. “It’s been estimated that these predatory birds remove 200 pigeons from city streets each week,” states Wild New York, by Margaret Mittelbach and Michael Crewdson.

[Photo: a city pigeon takes it all in from the top of the Empire State Building]

The Bronx: once “the most Jewish borough”

When you think of Jews in New York, the Lower East Side, Brooklyn, and the Upper West Side come to mind.

But in the middle of the 20th century, the Bronx had more residents of Jewish descent than any other borough.

In 1930, about 49 percent of the Bronx was Jewish, according to the Bronx County Clerk’s Office, mostly centered in South Bronx neighborhoods and along the apartment houses of the Grand Concourse.

[Above: a daycare center today, but a synagogue decades ago on Crotona Park East]

A New York Times article put it at 37 percent in 1945; bronxsynagogues.org has the high at 57 percent in 1930 in the South Bronx.

“There were four synagogues organized within two blocks of Third Avenue before 1900 (before the elevated was completed in 1902). By 1910, thirteen had been organized in the same area and that constituted almost 40 percent of all the synagogues in the South Bronx.”

[Above: an abandoned synagogue at 1835 University Avenue]

After World War II, Bronx Jews split for the suburbs. The borough’s ethnic makeup quickly changed; by 1960, it was two-thirds Black and Hispanic.

[Right, an empty synagogue at 1650 Morris Park Avenue]

[All photos from bronxsynagogues.org]

The stone masons on a Clinton Hill building

The Royal Castle Apartments have towered over the corner of Clinton and Gates Avenues since 1912.

And so have these serious-minded stone masons, carved into the facad—reminding passers-by that constructing gorgeous architecture takes skilled hands.

This corner is one of the loveliest in a neighborhood bursting with interesting, well-preserved mansions and brownstones.

But then, they didn’t call Clinton Avenue the Fifth Avenue of Brooklyn for nothing.

Brownstoner has a cool writeup with more photos and history of the Royal Castle Apartments here.

The pleasure gardens of Lower Manhattan

Pleasure gardens: The term sounds dreamy and enchanting.

And for 18th and 19th century city residents, these gardens definitely were: recreational spaces open day and night that featured landscaped grounds, lights, music, theater, fountains, and grottos.

Kind of a cross between a botanical garden, country club, and the Playboy mansion, pleasure gardens offered a coed social scene plus the latest fancy refreshments—the alcoholic kind as well as the new craze: ice cream.

New York Vauxhall Gardens, opened in 1767 on Greenwich Street by the Hudson River, was one of the first. Vauxhall eventually relocated between Broadway and the Bowery (practically the countryside at the time) in 1805.

Exclusive Niblo’s Garden (at left) soon became hugely popular, taking over an older pleasure garden at Broadway and Prince Street in 1825 and expanding it with a theater and open-air saloon.

Contoit’s Garden, close to Niblo’s on Broadway, was an elegant rival. And one of the last pleasure gardens to open, in 1858, was the Palace Garden (top), on the northwest corner of 14th Street and Sixth Avenue.

The pleasure gardens were gone by 1900. Blame the newly opened Central Park, cheap transportation to seashores like Brighton Beach, and more adrenaline-pumping diversions, like the Coney Island amusement parks.

Ice cream, whale-oil illumination, and a breezy promenade through a landscaped pasture just couldn’t compare to the razzle dazzle of Coney.

John Jacob Astor: New York’s first drug dealer

German immigrant John Jacob Astor, who arrived in Manhattan dirt poor in 1784, made his first fortune (about $5 million) trading furs with native tribes, eventually shipping the pelts all over the world.

But in 1816, opportunistic, ruthless salesman Astor got into another lucrative new business: smuggling opium.

He had already been selling furs to China, bringing skins from the Pacific Northwest to warehouses in New York, where they were then shipped to Canton.

So it was easy for Astor to join the booming worldwide narcotics trade.

He purchasing thousands of pounds of Turkish opium and shipped it to China—illegally, as China had banned opium in 1799, according to this PBS/Frontline opium timeline.

Astor snagged a lucrative slice of the drug biz before quitting after a few years and putting his millions in another sometimes slimy venture: New York real estate. Astor Place, Astoria, and Astor Row in Harlem all bear his name.

Lovely posters advertising the New York Herald

In the late 19th century, the city supported close to 20 English-language daily newspapers, with the New York Herald one of the most popular.

The Herald’s winning formula? A sensationalist tone, reliance on illustrations, and coverage of fashion, arts, and culture.

Yep, all the lifestyle fluff newspapers today need to attract readers.

Perhaps these sweet, apparently hand-drawn posters advertising the coming Sunday edition had something to do with it though.

Cartoons, new fiction, and illustrations of Central Park plus new routes concerning the cycling craze: good reading on a May Sunday in the mid-1890s.

[posters from the New York Public Library Digital Collection]

Bond Street: chic and exclusive in the 1830s

Noho’s Bond Street is trendy—just as it was 170 years ago.

That’s when the city’s wealthy residents relocated from bustling, overcrowded downtown to this newly built street, a two-block stretch east of Broadway.

“In the 1830s, Bond Street was one of the city’s most fashionable. Lined with Greek Revival–style houses, it was a secluded, peaceful street whose most celebrated resident, Albert Gallatin, lived at No. 1,” writes Gerard H. Wolfe in New York: A Guide to the Metropolis, from 1983.

Bond Street was surrounded by luxury, particularly Colannade Row, the nine Greek Revival marble mansions around the corner on the elegant cul-de-sac Lafayette Place (now Lafayette Street).

Theaters and chic stores popped up nearby on Broadway. Bond Street “swells” hung around, visiting young women from well-off families.

But of course, Bond Street’s moment in the sun had to end. After the middle of the 19th century, light industry began moving in, and the wealthy moved northward.

Today, a few of the old Greek Revival houses survive. But it’s mostly cast-iron loft buildings for manufacturing, plus modern glass monstrosities.

At least the Belgian Block pavement hasn’t been replaced.