As seen from MacDougal Street in 1942. Alfred S. Mira painted this scene of one of World War II–era Greenwich Village’s main drags.
The shop on the right-hand corner eventually housed Eighth Street Books, one of those fabled Village bookstores in pre-Amazon, pre-Barnes & Noble days.
And the Eighth Street Theater, which survived until the 1990s, was right around the corner.
This stretch of Eighth Street looks almost exactly the same today, except the crowds are a little sketchier. Too bad Mira didn’t reproduce the store signs and names.
One was at Ninth Avenue and 33rd Street. Another stood on Spring Street. In all, fire-prone 19th-century New York City was dotted with 11 fire watchtowers.
Made of cast iron, each tower contained a huge bell that a guard, positioned there at all hours, would ring whenever flames were spotted nearby.
The only fire watchtower still standing is in Mount Morris Park—aka Marcus Garvey Park. This unusual structure sits high on a hill known to Dutch colonists as “Slangberg,” or Snake Hill, in Harlem’s East 120s.
Completed in 1857, the watchtower was only used for a couple of decades, replaced by telegraph alarms.
But the cool old bell still rang regularly until 1905; residents asked the city to strike it twice a day to let locals know the time.
Before cars, subways, and trucks took over transporting residents and objects around the city, the job was the responsibility of horses. And of course, not everyone treated those horses humanely.
Spending their days pulling streetcars and wagons, horses were routinely beaten by drivers, and they often were literally worked to death.
This prompted wealthy resident Henry Bergh to found the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals in 1866. With Bergh at the helm, the ASPCA helped write anti-cruelty laws and built public water troughs for horses (at least one of which still exists near Sixth Avenue and 59th Street).
They also created the first horse ambulance, as seen in the photo above.
Today the ASPCA is a national animal welfare organization that operates a shelter on 92nd Street where four-legged New Yorkers can be adopted.
Another adoption option: New York City Animal Care & Control, which operates three shelters in Manhattan, Brooklyn, and Staten Island. NYCACC doesn’t have the funds and history of the ASPCA, but they too have lots of sweet, loving dogs and cats looking for new homes.
Near the Central Park carousel is a child-size wood post featuring carvings of merry-go-round horses. They look like miniature versions of the hand-carved, painted horses on the circa-1908 carousel itself.
It’s an enchanting little post, a marker letting adults know that they’re about to enter the park’s kid territory.
But near the bottom of the post is this somber plaque:
Michelle Bernstein
March 25, 1984 – June 19, 1987
The Carousel Landscape
was restored in 1991
in honour of Michelle
who loved
all the pretty little horses
Some of New York’s old village names survive today: think Chelsea, Yorkville, New Utrecht, and Gravesend. Others get unceremoniously wiped off the map, with not even a train station bearing the old name.
That’s what happened to Harsenville. In the late 1700 and 1800s, this little hamlet spanned 68th Street to 81st Street between Central Park West and the Hudson River. It got its name from Jacob Harsen, a farmer who settled there in 1763.
This is his house below, at today’s Tenth Avenue and 70th Street, in an 1888 New-York Historical Society photograph.
Other farm families followed, and soon, a real town formed. Harsenville Road went through what is now Central Park; schools, churches, and shops opened.
By 1911, however, Harsenville was kaput, reports a 1911 New York Times piece on old-timers reminiscing about their ‘hood. The blocks of brand-new brownstones and apartment houses were soon to be known collectively as the Upper West Side.
Interestingly, one new condo building on West 72nd Street capitalizes on the Upper West Side’s small-town history: The developers named it Harsen House.
What in the world did they do or sell at the Robotorium? In the early 1980s, it occupied a small storefront on Mott Street near Prince Street, back when this little crossroads was considered part of Little Italy and Nolita had yet to be dreamed up.
Robot paraphernalia—sounds like a cool little place. Now, 252 Mott Street houses a designer eyewear store.
This ad appeared in a 1982 edition of the East Village Eye.
This 1918 photo, from a postcard available at the South Street Seaport Museum, gives a nice snapshot of life at one ordinary Manhattan street corner.
There’s a street lamp with humpback-style street signs, a tenement building that would have been about 20 years old at the time, an ad for a long-gone cigarette brand, a fire box, and a newspaper box extolling pedestrians to “read the New York Herald.”
A corner bar advertises “pure lager beer ales & porter.”
The best details are the people. A little girl snacking, a woman in a doorway with something wrapped around her head, and a figure leaning out the second-story window, a blanket draped out the windowsill.
If it were November 26 and we were in the 1890s, it would be The Village Postmaster, strangely described in this Brooklyn Daily Eagle ad “as full of good, healthy fun as an egg is of meat.”
The Grand Opera House used to be between Fulton and Livingston Streets in downtown Brooklyn. Check out that great old 4-digit phone number:
Well, that was the price in the mid-1980s, according to this time-capsule snapshot of what lofts and apartments were going for 25 years ago. It’s from the classified section of the now-defunct East Village Eye.
There’s also an interesting personal ad in the same classified section. I wonder who Krissy Arbus was and if she ever came home.
“…to remove himself from his place of residence. That request came from his wife.” Though it’s a day past the anniversary of when neatnik Felix Unger moved into his slobby friend Oscar Madison’s apartment, it’s not too late to commemorate the occasion.
Of all the TV shows set in New York City over the years, The Odd Couple is one of the most iconic. Why else would Channel 11 always run an episode or two whenever there’s a Yankee game rain delay? Just watch the opening credits, which features great scenes of Manhattan circa 1970:
The apartment house in the opening scenes is 1049 Park Avenue, in the upper 80s—swanky digs (it’s a two-bedroom!) for a sportswriter and a photographer. The building doesn’t look much different today, but I’m betting that it’s no longer a rental.
