A Brooklyn factory girl kills her lecherous boss

Born poor in England, Fanny Hyde (right) came to New York at age 10.

In 1872, the pretty 15-year-old found work at a hairnet factory on First and South Eleventh Streets in Williamsburg.

That’s when her new boss, married factory owner George Watson, 45, “looked upon her with libidinous heart and lustful desire,” her lawyer told a packed courtroom during her murder trial, which riveted Brooklyn.

Four months later, “he locked her in his office and ‘seduced’ her,” wrote Ann Jones in Women Who Kill.

“As long as she worked there, he wouldn’t leave her alone; but when she tried to leave, he threatened to blackball her.”

He soon got Fanny pregnant, then forced her to take medicine to induce an abortion.

The abuse continued until Fanny was 18, when she was engaged to be married. Watson swore on a bible that he would leave her alone. But he did not.

“So on January 26, 1872, when George Watson left his third-floor office, he found Fanny Hyde waiting on the landing with a gun,” wrote Jones.

“She shot him once in the head, killing him instantly, and a few hours later surrendered herself to the police.”

How did Fanny escape a lengthy jail sentence? The idea of an innocent, comely teenager being “ruined” by a creep like Watson was so disturbing to Victorian-era Brooklynites, 10 of the 12 men on the jury refused to find her guilty.

Her lawyers also argued that she had been made temporarily insane. They called it “transitoria mania” and said that it started when Watson raped her . . . and was intensified by her menstrual cycle.

After the trial, Fanny was released on bail. A new trial was planned, but she skipped out and was never heard from again.

A ghost restaurant sign reappears on 14th Street

Old signs revealing an earlier layer of New York keep popping up these days, and the latest is on 14th Street just east of Eighth Avenue.

When the liquor store that occupied number 254 for at least a few decades closed its doors recently, they took their shop sign with them—uncovering the signage for a long-shuttered Greek restaurant.

Pappas got its start perhaps as early as the 1910s, as this thread from a genealogy site seems to indicate:

“In 1914, Christos Papagianakos’ Ellis Island manifest says he was going to his Aunt Athanasia (and Uncle Jimmy’s) at 254 W. 14th Street, New York City.”

Pappas operated at least until 1973 (the chef was shot one night—this was 1970s New York).

And it was enough of a dining destination that management printed postcards. Old phone exchange: WAtkins!

The Gilded Age past of a Central Park gate

Central Park’s Conservatory Garden is a magical place. Divided into three separate gardens designed in Italian, French, and English styles, it’s a quiet zone with lovely walkways and fountains.

The main entrance to the garden on Fifth Avenue between 104th and 105th Streets, is through Vanderbilt Gate.

Impressive, right? Made in France, it’s “considered one of the finest examples of wrought iron work in New York City,” states centralparknyc.com.

It’s original home, however, wasn’t the Conservatory Garden. The gate was created to serve as the imposing front entrance to Cornelius Vanderbilt II’s magnificent mansion. (Not to be confused with another Vanderbilt house palace several blocks south.)

That mansion, the largest private residence ever built in New York City, stood at Fifth Avenue and 58th Street from 1883 to 1927, after which it was bulldozed to make way for Bergdorf Goodman.

Luckily the gate was repurposed and installed at the garden, a fitting entrance for an enchanting spot.

[Top photo: Central Park Conservatory]

Manhattan Island: best real estate steal ever?

There’s a rock just outside Inwood Hill Park that marks the location where Peter Minuit (right), director general of New Netherland, supposedly bought Manhattan from Native Americans for the equivalent of $24 in 1626.

Best real estate steal ever—or enduring myth?

For starters, consider that the first account of the deal comes from a snippet of gossip.

“In a 1626 letter, a Dutch merchant reported he had just heard, from ship passengers newly disembarked from New Netherland, that representatives of the West India Company ‘had purchased the Island Manhattes from the Indians for a value of 60 guilders,’” wrote Edwin G. Burrows and Mike Wallace in their book Gotham: A History of New York to 1898.

In 1848, a New York historian translated that figure into $24. And in 1877, a second historian claimed with no evidence that the amount was paid in “beads, buttons, and other trinkets” (detailed in the 1909 illustration above).

Besides the fact that no deed of sale exists, it’s important to consider what “purchase” meant back in 1626. The way the Dutch defined it may have been quite different from how Native Americans saw things.

Natives may have considered the 60 guilders a rental fee, not a sales exchange, giving the Dutch hunting and other use rights while also retaining them for themselves, according to an insightful piece in Mental Floss.

Also, “it appears from a later repurchase agreement that the people who made the original arrangement didn’t live in Manhattan and so were in no position to offer up even use-rights of visiting privileges,” wrote Burrows and Wallace.

Meanwhile the plaque marking the location of sale, on Shorakkopach Rock (above) in Inwood, remains.

King Kong’s return to the Empire State Building

It must have sounded like a great publicity stunt at the time.

In April 1983, to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the release of King Kong, the owners of the Empire State Building decided to hoist an 84-foot inflatable replica of the lovestruck mega-gorilla to the top of the building, anchoring it to the mooring mast for a week.

A little tawdry, perhaps. But the Empire State Building was losing ground to newer, more fashionable skyscrapers. The owners, Harry and Leona Helmsley, thought the inflatable King Kong would keep the building in the public eye, wrote Mitchell Pacelle in his book Empire.

Of course, things didn’t go as planned. ”The 3,000 pound balloon arrived deflated and folded into a crate,” explains Pacelle. “But the measurements had been bungled, and the crate wouldn’t fit into the elevator.”

Kong was unpacked, squeezed into the elevator to the 86th floor, then brought manually to the mooring mast to be inflated in front of a pack of media reporters.

“The balloon, alas, was hopelessly tangled. From the sidewalk, it looked like an oversize garbage bag blown up off the street.”

Kong’s shoulder popped during the inflation, and that, along with 100 mile an hour winds, postponed the unveiling, though two hired biplanes continued to fly around, mimicking the action in the movie (right).

“The next morning, with the winds subsided, Kong was hastily inflated,” said Pacelle. But he sprang another leak, the winds whipped up, and he was brought down forever.

A Hudson River yacht club gets the boot

The clubhouse for the Columbia Yacht Club, on the Hudson River at 86th Street since the 1870s, looks like a breezy little summertime spot for boating and dining by the water in this penny postcard from about 1910.

I especially like the old-timey bridge that goes over the railroad tracks to the clubhouse.

The club’s days were numbered though. In 1934, park commissioner Robert Moses abruptly notified members that they were getting the boot because the premises were in the way of “West Side improvement.”

They left after a legal battle, relocating first to Riverdale and then to a site off Long Island Sound.

The Russian dictator waving to Houston Street

This hand-sketched ad for Red Square, the artsy, “luxury rental” apartment building on Houston Street between Avenues A and B, comes from a 1990 issue of Interview.

Anyone who has seen the building, which towers 13 stories over a low-rise stretch of Houston, will recognize the big block “Askew” clock on top, with its out-of-sequence numbers.

The other unusual feature on the building’s roof—the statue of Russian dictator Vladimir Lenin, his hand raised in victory—wasn’t added until 1994.

So why is a statue of the leader of the Russian Revolution on a Manhattan apartment building?

It’s a nod to the fall of Communism in the Soviet Union back in 1989, the year the building—appropriately named Red Square—was built, reports this New York Times article.

“The 18-foot Lenin statue was originally a state-commissioned work by Yuri Gerasimov, but the Soviet Union’s implosion prevented the statue from going on public display. It was found by an associate of [a building co-owner] in the backyard of a dacha outside Moscow.”

And it’s no accident that the statue of Lenin is positioned so it’s facing the Financial District.

“Mr. Shaoul noted that Lenin faces Wall Street, capitalism’s emblem, and the Lower East Side, ‘the home of the socialist movement,”’ added the Times.

The Victorian sisters who haunt Central Park

New York is a city haunted by many ghosts—including those of two 19th-century sisters who lived on Central Park South and reportedly died within months of each other in 1880.

Their names were Janet and Rosetta Van Der Voort. Their wealthy father was the original helicopter parent—supposedly so overprotective of his girls, he wouldn’t let them leave their home unaccompanied.

One of the few places they were allowed to visit alone, however, was the Central Park Pond at the southeast corner of the park, near 59th Street. There, they went ice skating in the winter. (Above sketch: Central Park skaters in 1875)

“The sisters grew so close as they grew older that they spurned all potential suitors, dying as spinsters,” reported a 1997 New York Times article.

“But, as legend has it, the Van Der Voort sisters, decked out in the same red and purple outfits they wore more than 100 years ago, sometimes return to the pond to figure-skate, in the summer as well as the winter, haunting parents on Central Park South who continue to keep their daughters prisoner.”

[Above: Agnes Tait's Skating in Central Park, 1934]

Another version of the story has them skating in a different part of the park. “Their ghosts were first spotted during World War I skating side by side on the frozen lake in Central Park,” wrote Dennis William Huack in his book Haunted Places.

“They were both dressed in huge bustles: one in a red dress, the other in a purple dress. The skating ghosts have been seen many times since, their silver skates gliding just above the ice in a never-ending series of figure eights.”

A 19th century hotel sign comes back into view

A few days ago, workers renovating the exterior of a corner building at Eighth Avenue and 25th Street uncovered a relic of old New York.

It’s the faint letters spelling out an old sign for Utah House, a hotel that existed as early as the 1850s and served as a meeting place for political conventions and trade groups.

But Utah House’s most dramatic moment came during the Orange Riots of 1871.

On July 12, crowds of Irish Catholics clashed with a group of Irish Protestants (“Orangemen”), who were marching down Eighth Avenue on the anniversary of the Battle of the Boyne, which established Protestant rule in Ireland in 1690.

More than 60 people died. Spectators watched the carnage from the hotel’s front steps.

“The Utah House, on the north-east corner of Eighth-Avenue and Twenty-fifth-street, is among the buildings which bear conspicuous evidence of having been chipped by the musket balls,” wrote The New York Times on July 13 in a chronicle of the violence.

[Thanks to the Ephemeral readers who tipped me off about the sign and Joe R. for the link to the illustration]

The Vietnam vets outside a Bronx subway station

When I first saw it, I thought it was honoring fallen soldiers who had fought in Iraq and Afghanistan.

But this mural, at the end of the line on the 4 train at the Bronx’s Woodlawn station, memorializes Vietnam War veterans.

It’s been there since 1985, enduring graffiti tags ever since.