When Norman Mailer ran for mayor in 1969

In 1969, New York was on a precipice. Crime was going up, teachers headed out on strike, a snowstorm crippled the city, and there was a sense that things could get a lot worse.

Enter pugnacious author and Brooklyn resident Norman Mailer. Using the campaign slogan “no more bullshit,” Mailer threw his hat in the ring for the Democratic nomination for mayor.

It wasn’t a joke. Columnist Jimmy Breslin signed on as his running mate, vying to be City Council president.

Their ideas? “I’m running on a platform of ‘Free Huey Newton and floridation,” Mailer told a crowd at the Village Gate. “We’ll have compulsory free love in those neighborhoods that vote for it, and compulsory attendance in church on Sunday in those that vote for that.”

They also advocated that New York City become the 51st state (which wasn’t a novel idea). They pledged the construction of a monorail, a ban on private cars in Manhattan, and monthly vehicle-free Sundays.

When primary day came, Mailer ended up fourth out of five candidates—and John Lindsay won reelection that November.

[Photo: Breslin and Mailer conceding the race, from Dissent magazine]

What happened to Central Park’s Swan Bridge?

This vintage postcard, stamped July 1928, shows off a really breathtaking part of Central Park, with boaters and swans on the lake and people sitting along benches.

But wait, isn’t that Bow Bridge—the one the postcard calls Swan Bridge? As far as I can tell, there’s never been a Swan Bridge or Swan Island in the park.

Bow Bridge was always the name for the 60-foot cast-iron bridge that gets its moniker from its gentle bow shape, reminiscent of the bow of an archer or violinist, explains centralparknyc.org.

The majestic sheep heads of East 13th Street

Lots of New York buildings are adorned with animals: horses, squirrels, even elephants.

But you don’t see a lot of sheep—except for the two bighorn sheep heads on the facade of a handsome 12-story limestone building at 114 East 13th Street.

The building was converted into a pricey co-op in 1984. Luckily the sheep heads remain; they provide a clue as to who the original tenant was.

The company that used to occupy the building, the American Felt Company, “made felt used in pianos,” states cityrealty.com.

It’s fascinating how many former factories and manufacturing buildings paid homage to the animals who helped fill their coffers—like the beaver and squirrel of West 29th Street and the silkworm clock on Park Avenue South.

The 1970 murder of an Upper West Side teacher

After graduating from Smith College in 1970, 22-year-old Patrice Leary did what thousands of other new grads do: She moved to New York City.

Patrice sublet a brownstone apartment at 310 West 73rd Street—then a sketchy block, but one that was likely affordable on a teacher’s salary.

She took a job teaching second grade at the posh Brearley School. She dated. She hung out with her roommate.

She worried about crime as well, “installing an extra lock on her steel door,” according to a New York Times article.

Weeks later, on October 29, friends noticed her apartment door was ajar. “Inside they saw her body, mutilated and bloody, clothed in a bra and underpants, lying on the floor,” noted the Times.

Investigators later determined that Patrice had been stabbed in the heart, a phone cord wrapped around her neck. Her head was also bashed in with a hammer.

Neighbors reported seeing a tall white man running out of the brownstone about the time Patrice had been murdered. But no suspect was ever named.

Police took the case hard. “This was no trollop or junkie,” said a lieutenant.

“This wasn’t someone who’s been pushing for trouble. This was a fine, decent girl, the kind of person you want to help and protect.”

The Times even pointed out that the Medical Examiner determined Patrice was still a virgin when she died, a detail I don’t think you’ll ever find in a newspaper today.

Even after a $1500 reward was offered for any information leading to an arrest, Patrice’s killer was never found.

[Photo: West 73rd Street between West End Avenue and Riverside Drive. where Patrice was killed, from Trulia]

The iconic subway signs of New York City

The subway we know today started out as three separate companies, all building stations at different times.

No wonder the signage at the entrance of each station—behind the MTA’s standard subway typeface, that is—varies so much.

As you duck into the station at 28th Street and Park Avenue South, you’re greeted by this lovely blue and white Roman numeral mosaic.

A Financial District IRT stairway looks like an original. The IRT was purchased by the city in 1940.

This 57th Street entrance is inside an office building that dates from the 1920s or 1930s. The lettering looks Art Deco.

I like this dignified Dyckman Street entrance in Upper Manhattan. It’s chiseled, subtle, not flashy.

Where was colonial Manhattan’s Richmond Hill?

If you live in the area bound by Varick, Charlton, MacDougal, and King Streets on the western edge of SoHo, then you’re a resident of a neighborhood once called Richmond Hill.

The name comes from the circa-1760 colonial mansion and bucolic estate that once stood nearby.

The Richmond Hill mansion (below right) was really something. “The big house, a massive wooden structure of colonial design, had a lofty portico supported by Ionic columns,” reports a Villager article from 1945.

“A long curving driveway led up to the house which was built on a wooden mound. Fretted iron gates guarded the entrance.”

It hosted a succession of famous names: George Washington, John Adams, and Aaron Burr.

Abigail Adams described the estate’s beauty: “On one side we see a view of the city and of Long Island. The river [is] in front, [New] Jersey and the adjacent country on the other side. You turn a little from the road and enter a gate. A winding road with trees in clumps leads to the house, and all around the house it looks wild and rural as uncultivated nature. . . .”

Burr sold it to John Astor around 1807. He subdivided lots for development, and the Richmond Hill neighborhood sprang up in early 19th century—small Federal-style homes, many of which are still on Charlton, King (above), and other blocks off lower Sixth Avenue.

The old mansion operated as a resort, roadhouse, and theater until it was razed in 1849. With the house gone, the neighborhood name died too.

The milk stations that saved the lives of city kids

After raking in a fortune as co-owner of Macy’s, Nathan Straus devoted himself to making life better for New York’s poor tenement dwellers.

In the depression years of 1892 and 1893, he gave away food and coal to thousands, and he built homeless shelters.

He also turned his sights toward what was dubbed the “white peril,” the raw, bacteria-ridden milk city children routinely drank—milk Straus and many experts believed was linked to New York’s high childhood mortality rate (two of Straus’ own kids had died young).

“Straus was convinced that the discoveries of Louis Pasteur offered the best hope for a remedy to the milk problem,” states jewishvirtuallibrary.org.

So in 1893 he built his own pasteurization plant on East Third Street, then opened 18 milk stations in the city, “which sold his sterilized milk for only a few cents and made free milk available to those unable to afford even that.”

Milk stations popped up everywhere: City Hall Park, Mott Street, Cherry Street, Washington Street, East 66th Street, Lenox Avenue, and eventually Columbus Circle (above, circa 1930), run by William Randolph Hearst’s wife.

When Straus showed health officials that childhood mortality rates had been drastically cut in neighborhoods with milk stations, the city—and soon all cities—banned the sale of raw milk.

Central Park and Prospect Park had their own milk stations: the dairies.