Above the entrance to the W Hotel at 49th and Lexington are four elephant heads—each with a trunk that wraps around a metal flagpole.
Even though they’re grimy and their tusks could use some whitening, they make for a triumphant sight.
Here are more pachyderms in New York City.
The W Hotel went through a bunch of name changes: It used to be the Hotel Montclair, then the Hotel Belmont Plaza—Jerry Lewis and Dean Martin got their start in the Glass Hat club there—and finally the Doral Inn.
Fried rabbit on toast, canned Oyster Bay asparagus, hot mince and pumpkin pie—these and other delicacies were on the menu at M.F. Lyons’ Dining Rooms on the Bowery for New Year’s Day dinner in 1906.
And yep, those prices are in cents. I wonder what kind of residents showed up for this meal.
“Mike” Lyons’ restaurant has an interesting history. It was the sight of dinners featuring corrupt Tammany Hall politicians such as “Little Tim” Sullivan.
Opened in 1872, it met its end in 1907, long after the Bowery’s heyday as an entertainment district.
“From 1,200 to 2,000 people were fed every night,’ a 1907 New York Times article reported. “At 3 in the morning there was a man back of every chair waiting to grab it, on special occasions, and the police patronage which had always been considerable increased.
“There was one class of patrons who continued faithful to the Lyons standard. This was the Lyons food line, composed exclusively of women, who at 5 in the morning were at the doors now closed with baskets,” the article continued.
“The left-over food was given to them without question or discrimination. These will mourn the passing of Lyon’s.”
The menu comes from the New York Public Library’s menu collection.
Fourteenth Street near Union Square has gone through many incarnations. In the late 1800s it hosted New York’s theater district, home to theaters and music halls as well as piano and organ salesrooms.
You can see the Steck Pianos sign and a sign for Estey, an organ manufacturer, in this 1880s photo of 14th street. And the street car on the left has the word “theatre” printed on the front.
By the the turn of the century the area slid into more of a low-rent vaudeville and dance-hall hub. It must have been a colorful, slightly depressing place to visit.
The narrator of “The Princess With the Golden Hair,” a short story by Village writer Edmund Wilson, published in 1942, observed:
“In the restlessness of my after-dinner boredom, I began looking in on the dance-halls. The first one I visited was desolating and soon drove me out again. Sparse couples—uninterested hostesses and elderly stolid men—were shuffling or revolving to monotonous music under lighting that was glamorless and garish.
“I wondered whether they were all like that or whether there mightn’t be gayer places: was this the type of the popular recreation that a city like New York had to offer?”
In 1896, a young woman named Ashea Waba—who had adopted the stage name Little Egypt—was invited to do some belly dancing at a bachelor party held at swanky Sherry’s restaurant in Midtown.
Belly dancing had recently been introduced to America. Victorian-era audiences were shocked by the sexy stomach swiveling—so much so that the dance was given the nickname the Hootchy-Kootchy.
Normally the Hootchy-Kootchy was performed in belly-bearing skirts or pantaloons, like in the photo of Little Egypt at left.
But cops were tipped off that she would be dancing naked. The vice squad came to Sherry’s, and Little Egypt was arrested.
After a trial that made all the New York tabloids, she was cleared of violating any vice laws.
Little Egypt then launched a burlesque troupe of Hootchy-Kootchy dancers and raked in $500 a night.
She died in her West 37th Street apartment in 1908 of “gas asphyxiation.”
Some of the letters in this Gertel’s sign don’t look like they light up, yet that’s okay. Seeing the words “bakery” and “luncheon” one on top of the other in that old-time font more than makes up for it.
Luncheon: This old-school word is disappearing fast from the New York vocabulary.
Gertel’s home had been Hester Street since 1914. They relocated near Myrtle Avenue in Clinton Hill in 2008, taking the iconic sign with them.
I have no idea how long G&M Variety Discounts House has been on Broadway in Washington Heights. But judging from the shape of the sign, I’d say since the 1960s.
From the two types of turtle soup to the to the turkey stuffed with chestnuts to the 18 varieties of game offered, the Plaza’s Thanksgiving menu was clearly a feast for the well-to-do New Yorkers who could afford to dine there.
Note the little crow mocking the turkey in the menu cartoon—who knew the Plaza at the time had such a sarcastic edge?
This menu comes from the New York Public Library’s incredible collection of 40,000-plus menus.
Ever wonder why it’s called Madison Square Garden—when it’s not near Madison Square?
The current Garden, on 33rd Street, is the fourth incarnation of New York’s premier sports and entertainment arena.
The first, at right, opened in 1879. Occupying an old railroad depot at Madison Avenue and 26th Street, it became a successful, 10,000-seat venue that featured boxing, bike racing, and ice hockey.
A decade later it was torn down. Famed architect Stanford White designed the second MSG in 1890, below left. This beautiful, 8,000-seat Moorish structure sported cupolas, arches, and a 32-story tower that made it the second tallest building in the city.
Madison Square Garden II’s rooftop restaurant became a chic place for New York’s Gilded Age elite to socialize. It’s also where White was murdered in 1906.
He was shot point-blank by Harry Thaw, the jealous husband of a teenage showgirl the 40-ish White had been having an affair with.
By 1925, White’s palace met the wrecking ball, and the third MSG was completed at 50th Street and Eighth Avenue. This arena was home to the Rangers, Knicks, and lots of boxing matches.
Outdated by the late sixties, it was replaced in 1968 by the fourth and current Garden, built on the hallowed grounds of the original Penn Station.
Back in the early to mid-19th century, when the Village really was a country village north of the main city, this quaint clapboard house became a tavern known as the Old Grapevine.
Located on the southeast corner of Sixth Avenue and 11th Street, it’s probably the first legendary Village bar. The Old Grapevine attracted artists, businessmen, Union officers, Southern spies, and politicians, who dropped by after visiting Jefferson Market Courthouse two blocks south.
It was such a gathering spot that the phrase “I heard it through the grapevine” originated there. (Yep, a grapevine used to cover the 11th Street side of the tavern.)
Its closing in 1915 merited the kind of nostalgic media coverage given to CBGB or the Cedar Tavern when they shut their doors:
“It was not only a place to warm the inner man with the fermented juice of the grape, malted beers, and fine musty ale, but a place where good fellows met, as in the more palatial clubs today, to match their wits, tell the latest story, and discuss in a friendly way the political destinies of the nation,” wrote The New York Times.
Speaking of warming the inner man, one ex-owner was proud that he didn’t serve women.
“Never in my career have a sold a drink to a woman,” the Times quoted him. “No women were allowed in the place. It was no hang-out for roisterers. . . . From the day I went there in 1870 [it] was a gentleman’s cafe.”
When a shop goes out of business, there’s a short yet sweet window of time during which the defunct store’s sign is down . . . and the ghost sign from a long-ago shop becomes visible. For a few days to a few weeks, you get this tiny glimpse into the city’s recent past.
Like Reisman’s Ladieswear at 226 East 14th Street. Not too many signs advertise “cut rate” clothing anymore:
Lafayette French Pastry, on Bleecker Street in the West Village, looks like it was a charming place to get a chocolate eclair in the 1960s. They moved over to Greenwich Avenue and West 10th several years ago:
I wonder what Richman, at 300 Canal Street, sold:
If the sign advertised a product or service, we’ll never know; it’s hidden behind a red blotch.
Small-town girl Mildred Gillars came to New York City to make it as an actress. But she wound up a household name for an entirely different line of work: Nazi radio propagandist.
Born in 1900, she moved to the city in the 1920s, earning small parts in vaudeville shows and musical comedies.
At some point she enrolled in Hunter College, then a single-sex school. There, the story goes, she began an affair with a professor-turned-Nazi who she followed to Berlin in the 1930s.
After World War II broke out in 1941, he convinced her to broadcast a regular show for Radio Berlin. Each broadcast attempted to demoralize U.S. soldiers stationed in Europe by implying that their families and government didn’t care about them.
Mildred was one of several “Axis Sallys,” the name given to women who spread propaganda for Germany, Italy, or Japan. Another Axis Sally was the daughter of midtown restauranteur Louis Zucca.
Once the war ended, Mildred was captured and brought back to the states for trial in 1948. Convicted of treason, she lived behind bars in West Virginia until being paroled in 1961. She died, with little fanfare, at 87.
