The bad old days of Tompkins Square Park

In December 1986, the city unveiled plans for a massive renovation of Tompkins Square Park—new landscaping, new playgrounds, no more bandshell. The goal was to create more open space and make it a lot less sketchy.

Well, those plans didn’t go over well with community leaders, reported an article in that month’s East Village Eye. 

“Open space would break up the traditional uses for the park. As it is, all the people in the community have a little part they feel comfortable in,” one local told the paper.

“There’s the Ukrainian old men’s area, and the bandshell, used mostly by younger people. There are four different playground areas, divided more or less by age group. And there’s the part where older black men play cards. Tompkins Square is like a mirror held up to our community.”

Eventually the park did get its renovation in 1991-1992. But not without a fight, namely the riots in the late ’80s sparked by cops trying to clear encampments of homeless people—like “Dog Man” above.

Girl gangsters of 19th century Manhattan

When you think of the criminal gangs of New York in the 1800s, ruthless young men probably come to mind.

But these gangs had female members as well, some of whom were notorious fighters.

There was Hell-Cat Maggie, a member of the Irish-American Dead Rabbits in the 1850s. Her home base was the Five Points slum, near today’s City Hall. Supposedly her teeth were filed into sharp points and she clawed rivals with brass fingernails.

Another was Sadie Farrell, aka Sadie the Goat. Reportedly she robbed East Siders by first head-butting them in the stomach. In the 1860s she joined the Charlton Street Gang, river pirates on the West Side.

Ida Burger, called Ida the Goose, was a prostitute and Lady Gopher, part of the Gophers of Hell’s Kitchen. In the 1910s she was lured away to the Lower East Side’s Eastman Gang, led by Monk Eastman, but eventually went back to the Gophers after a bloody shootout.

The illustration above, from the New York Public Library, depicts tough chicks rumming it up at a Five Points tavern in the 1870s.

Lower East Side loft! $1150/month!

The rent for these big duplex lofts (Spiral staircase! Full kitchen!) sounds pretty cheap today.

But in July 1984, when this ad ran in the East Village Eye, wouldn’t $1150 and $1300 a month be kind of on the pricey side?

I wonder what the location was and if these apartments still exist—or if they’ve been boutique-hotelized.

Vintage New York house numbers

These 19th century–looking numbers and letters on random buildings give the city such an old-timey vibe. A terra cotta relief on East Ninth Street marks a particularly lovely apartment building:

No. 1 Sylvan Terrace, in Harlem, has a very colonial feel:

This walkup on Weekhawken Street is especially sweet; the entire street name is painted above the door:

Building facades spared from the wrecking ball

I guess the developer of this residential high-rise at 931 First Avenue and 51st Street deserves praise.

He could have bulldozed the entire circa-1892 Romanesque revival elementary school building located on this corner and put up his high-rise at street level. 

Instead, he kept the beautiful facade in place and built a condo tower inside it.

It’s kind of the same story with this new New York University dorm, a sleek, 26-story tower in the East Village.

It was constructed behind what’s left of St. Ann’s, on East 12th Street near Fourth Avenue, which spent most of its life as a Catholic church. Put up in 1847, it started out as a Baptist church and even housed a synagogue in the 19th century.

When NYU made its plans for the dorm a few years back, they decided to preserve a portion of the church’s facade and the gothic tower.

Turn of the century Cooper Square

A web of elevated train tracks is flanked by sloped-roof buildings on the right and lovely Cooper Union—described in this postcard as “the Cooper Institute”—on the left.

Looks like some really sweet buildings have long since disappeared.

Soda and smack on Avenue D

Suburban drug-seeking kids of the 1980s: the cops from the East Village’s Ninth Precinct never believed your stories of randomly getting mugged on Avenue D on your way back to Great Neck.

Here’s what one detective had to say to The Soho News on March 16, 1982:

Later in the article, the reporter quotes another cop calling Avenue D “the world’s largest retail drug market.” 

The squatters who lived in “Hardlucksville”

The 1930s were a pretty rough time. Unemployment hovered around 20 percent nationally, while the city’s poorest neighborhoods, like Harlem, had a 50 percent out-of-work rate.

Where did Depression-era New Yorkers go when they had no money to pay rent? Some moved into the city’s many squatter camps.

These makeshift villages, many with disturbingly accurate nicknames, sprang up citywide, according to a March 26, 1933 New York Times article.

One called “Hardlucksville” formed off 10th Street next to the East River (at left). Five men resided there, selling firewood culled from the river:

“The three of them saw up the wood into stove lengths. the two others peddle the product in the East Side streets, trundling it from door to door in baby carts reclaimed from the junk pile. Among the five they earn a half-dollar a day, and that supports them,” the Times reported.

Another squat, “Camp Thomas Paine,” was home to dozens of World War I veterans; they lived in shacks in the West 70s near the Hudson River. And “Packing Box City” (above) popped up on Houston Street.

Central Park had its own Hooverville as well. Read more about it here.

The rustic cabins of Manhattan

Who says you’re limited to a walkup, loft, or big-box apartment building when it comes to your housing options in Manhattan? Consider a cabin or cottage, examples of which can be found in various neighborhoods. 

This little brick number is in the West Village—worth about a million times more than the Unibomber’s Montana cabin.

High in the sky on Third Avenue is this chalet-like structure, with a lovely chimney:

An East Village abode that may be more hut than cabin. But look at that cute pseudo-thatched roof!

Old phone exchanges: East Side edition

This one was spotted on an apartment building in Manhattan’s East teens. ST is for Stuyvesant; Peter Stuyvesant’s bouwerie occupied today’s East Village and Gramercy Park neighborhoods.

Hidden behind a contemporary banner is this swinging 1960s sign, for Frenchman, an air conditioner business on First Avenue and 19th Street.

OR for Orchard? Oregon? Both Manhattan exchanges spanned the East Side below midtown.