Celebrating New Year’s in old New York

The whole Times Square-ball drop thing didn’t start until 1904. Before then, the hip place to celebrate the holiday was at the base of  Trinity Church, on Wall Street and Broadway.

Huge crowds would show up, something like 15,000 some years, looking to see and be seen as well as to hear the tolling of the bells to welcome the New Year.

The second Trinity Church, 1788-1841. The original burned down in the Great Fire of 1776, and the third one still remains there today.

And just like Times Square, it attracted a bridge and tunnel group of revelers, as this New York Times article from 1897 reports: 

“The crowds came from every section of the city, and among the thousands, who cheered or tooted tin horns, as the chimes were rung out on the night, were many from New Jersey, Long Island, and even Staten Island.”

New Year’s Day dinner on the Bowery

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.

How New York invented Santa Claus

It’s not really a stretch for New Yorkers to claim the jolly, red-suited dude as one of our own. “Sinte Klaas” was the nickname Dutch settlers gave St. Nicholas, a serious figure depicted in bishop’s robes celebrated every December 6.

Legend had it that St. Nicholas gave gifts to the poor, and he also rewarded children who had behaved all year.

St. Nicholas evolved closer to the Santa we know now in Chelsea resident Clement Clarke Moore’s 1823 poem “A Visit From St. Nicholas.”

Here he’s depicted with a white beard and a sack on his back, climbing down the chimney to fill stockings.

Rather than a big guy in red, St. Nick is elfin, a “little old driver” in a “miniature sleigh” decked all in fur.

He finally became today’s large, red-suited hero thanks to Thomas Nast, the 19th century cartoonist for Harper’s Weekly. In 1863, Nast drew a plump character in a fur-trimmed coat with a stocking cap giving out presents to soldiers.

An 1865 Santa illustration by Nash for Harper’s Weekly has him holding a pipe, that familiar twinkle in his eye.

Christmas with a Ziegfeld Girl

The Ziegfeld Follies—the popular part-vaudeville, part-burlesque revue staged on Broadway every year between 1907 and 1931—was never known as a Christmas show.

But the 1915 Follies did feature one holiday-themed number, entitled “I’ll Be a Santa Claus to You.”

The lyrics go like this:

“I’ll be a Santa Claus to you
If you’ll but say you will be true
I’ll bring you toys
Millions of joys
Presents that money can’t buy
Yuletide will be our honeymoon
You’ll ride beside me and we’ll spoon
Christmas it comes only once ev’ry year
I’ll make it come ev’ry day for you dear
I’ll be a Santa Claus to you.”

Sweet and kind of suggestive for a song written almost a century ago.

The perfect Christmas present in 1934

Radios were kind of like the iPod of the Depression. The December 19, 1934 edition of the Daily News is thick with ads for them—like this model, which features “foreign reception.”

What happened to Spear’s, an appliance store with five locations in the five boroughs?

Sounds like they were the 1930s version of Circuit City, the Wiz, Crazy Eddie, and all the other electronics stores that never seem to last very long.

Christmas at a Village settlement house

That’s quite a festive Christmas tree these Greenwich Village kids are posing in front of. They’re celebrating the holiday at the Greenwich Settlement House, which still stands on Barrow Street today. 

The photo, from the New York Public Library, is undated. Looks like it’s from the early 1900s, when settlement houses popped up in lots of poor New York neighborhoods.

They were funded by wealthy residents to help “settle” new immigrants by providing health care, job training, and art classes.

They taught their little charges well. A New York Times article from December 1914 reports that the kids from the Greenwich Settlement House would be singing carols in hospitals on Christmas Day:

“In addition, the children are rehearsing a play to be produced at the settlement house on Tuesday,” the article states. “After the play, each little girl and boy will receive a big bag of candy and an orange. Many of the children have decided to give their candy to the sick folk for whom they are to sing.”

Turkey Day with the inmates at the Tombs

On December 1, 1903, The New York Times ran a long article covering how city orphanages, missions, hospitals, “Magdalen” asylums, and other charitable institutions celebrated the holiday. That almost always meant a big turkey dinner and religious speakers.

The Times also reported how Thanksgiving was celebrated in city jails—like the Tombs, the nickname given to a secession of jail complexes located downtown. The moniker stemmed from the original Tombs, built in 1838 on Centre Street, which looked like an Egyptian mausoleum. 

Here’s a couple of inmates—or guards?—hanging out in the interior of the Tombs in the late 19th century.

What the Times had to say about how the men there spent turkey day:

“There were 424 prisoners in the Tombs. They had 150 turkeys, chicken ad lib, 200 pounds of potatoes, 100 mince pies, and cranberries, nuts, and other goodies. Then they listened to addresses by the Rev. J.J. Munro and the Rev. W.W. Gilliss, respectively Presbyterian and Episcopal clergymen. Mr. Gilliss passed a cigar to each of the men prisoners.

“Such an array of prisoners were in the various Police Court prisons as to lead to the suspicion that many had gotten themselves locked up in order to be sure of a Thanksgiving dinner. None was disappointed.”

Thanksgiving dinner at the Plaza Hotel, 1899

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.

New York’s other big November holiday

During the final week of this month, buck tradition and celebrate Evacuation Day, November 25—a huge holiday in old New York marking the day the last British troops sailed out of the city in 1783. 

For most of the Revolutionary War, New York was under British control. Hours after the Red Coats left, a Union flag was yanked down from a flagpole at Battery Park and replaced with the Stars and Stripes. George Washington returned to Manhattan, leading the Continental Army triumphantly down Broadway.

General George W., post-Colonial New York’s first celebrity

Evacuation Day used to be celebrated every November 25 with the raising of the U.S. flag at Battery Park. But once relations with England warmed up during World War I—and a certain other late-November holiday grew in popularity—Evacuation Day slipped into the dustbin of holiday history.

The Village Halloween Parade’s humble start

For years, it’s been a colossal spectacle, with deep crowds lining Sixth Avenue, thousands of marchers donning fantastically creative props and costumes, and live TV coverage capturing each moment.

Plus tons of cops, police barricades, drunken kids, and litter—lots of litter.

But in the early 1970s, the Greenwich Village Halloween Parade was more of a small-scale bit of street theater, a mile-long walk planned by a local mask-maker and pupeteer for his West Village neighbors.

The giant caterpillars of the 1998 parade, standing tall on Sixth Avenue

It started in the courtyard of Westbeth, the factory-turned-artist lofts on Bethune Street. From there, a few dozen revelers in masks and costumes—including a man in a lobster outfit and a two-headed pig—wandered along the Village’s side streets to Washington Square.

The parade’s popularity took off fast—as did the number of marchers and viewers. By 1984, the parade grew so massive, the route had to be relocated to Sixth Avenue from Spring Street to 22nd Street to accommodate the hundreds of thousands of people who came to the Village to see it.