The Tombs: New York’s notoriously named prison

Can you imagine if the city of today sold postcards of Rikers Island?

At the turn of the last century, however, it apparently was no big deal to put an image of New York’s house of detention on penny postcards and sell them to tourists.

This city jail was built in 1902, taking its nickname from the infamous penitentiary that had occupied the same site since 1838.

That first Tombs had been modeled on an Egyptian mausoleum. The ungainly building, where accused men and women lived while awaiting trial, occupied an entire block on Centre Street. Unfortunately constructed on swampy, stinky land over the polluted Collect Pond, it immediately began to sink into the ground.

“What is this dismal fronted pile of bastard Egyptian, like an enchanter’s palace in a melodrama?”, Charles Dickens reportedly wrote in his 1842 book chronicling his trip to the U.S., American Notes.

That’s the Bridge of Sighs connecting the jail to the courts building—named after the original Bridge of Sighs in Venice.

When the city dined at the Times Square Automat

“You should have seen this Automat,” reminisced the elderly man who sold me this postcard. “You could sit for hours with a cup of coffee and look out onto Times Square through those huge picture windows.”

It must have been something. At their peak of popularity, New York had at least 50 Automats, filled with little slots containing sandwiches, mac and cheese, pie, and other foods, each to be had for just a coin or two. The one below was at Broadway between 46th and 47th Streets.

William Grimes sums up the appeal of the Automat in his entertaining 2009 book Appetite City: A Culinary History of New York.

“As the Automat worked itself into the fabric of the city, it came to represent a particular kind of American experience,” writes Grimes. “It was ostentatiously democratic, for one thing. Lacking the gatekeepers associated with traditional restaurants, it attracted diners from every social level.”

“A bit of verse in the Sun, printed in the Depression year of 1933, caught the spirit precisely:

‘Said the technocrat
To the Plutocrat
To the autocrat
And the Democrat—
Let’s all go eat at the Automat!’”

Here’s a similar postcard, and a memory from Patti Smith, about getting hit on by Allen Ginsberg at a downtown Automat in the 1970s.

Bellevue Hospital’s Victorian beauty and glory

It’s the oldest public hospital in the country, opening in 1736 first as a six-bed infirmary in the almshouse in today’s City Hall Park.

Soon after, thanks to a yellow fever epidemic, it moved to what was then considered way uptown, to the former Belle Vue Farm overlooking the East River near Kips Bay in 1794.

This wonderful postcard view of one of Bellevue’s buildings at First Avenue and 26th Street is undated, unfortunately.

I’d place it at about 1900, after the hospital had already racked up an impressive number of firsts: the first maternity ward, the first emergency pavilion and ambulance service, the first appendectomy, the first hospital with a building devoted to the insane and a unit specifically for alcoholics.

Three little elephants at the Bronx Zoo

Cute, no? Pachyderms were a big hit when the Bronx Zoo (full former name: New York Zoological Park) built their original dome-capped elephant house in 1908.

More than 100 years later, zoo officials decided to follow the Central Park Zoo and Prospect Park Zoo and phase out their elephant exhibit.

The elephants currently lounging around the central Bronx will be the last ones to live in New York City.

Where “discriminating” New Yorkers used to dine

Would today’s New York foodies approve of the Skipper restaurants, a mid-century mini-chain of dining establishments centered in midtown?

Well, the food is “well-cooked” and “balanced” (nutritious and no trans fats?), and they do their own baking, which might count as local fare.

The menu items probably wouldn’t go over well. A review in the 1949 restaurant guide Knife and Fork in New York notes the “deviled crab, southern fried chicken,” and “roast beef with Yorkshire pudding.”

And the decor wouldn’t attract a trendy crowd. It’s described in the book as “tearoomy” in the “colonial mood, with colorful wallpapers.” The Skipper sounds like an inexpensive place to grab a bite if you’re hungry and not especially picky.

Interestingly, the chain has a “Men’s Grill” on 44th Street. I know the city had male-only bars well into the 1960s (McSorley’s wasn’t open to women until 1970!). But single-sex public restaurants in the 1940s?

A cider vender sets up beside the Brooklyn Bridge

In contemporary New York City, all kinds of food trucks line up along Union Square, the Meatpacking District, and other crowded areas—hoping to sell their treats to a lunch or late-night crowd.

More than a hundred years ago, the proprietors behind this cider wagon, on the left parked beside the lamppost, had the same idea. They set up shop on the Manhattan side of the Brooklyn Bridge entrance, across from a busy elevated railroad terminal.

Food vendors at the time were busy selling buttermilk, pretzels, potatoes, and lemonade. It looks like cider was a popular street beverage too.

The flags in the windows on the left give the impression that a national holiday just happened or is about to occur. The presence of the cider wagon makes me think it’s autumn.

Here’s a slightly different view of the same scene from 1905.

Trolleys and wagons crowding Herald Square

“Herald Square, showing the ‘Great White Way’ and Herald Building,” states the back of this late 19th century postcard, which depicts what was then the city’s theater district as well as a thriving shopping area.

Even without Macy’s, which was still headquartered at 14th Street at this point, Herald Square appears to be as bustling, crowded, and messy as it is today.

A mysterious and exotic view of Chinatown

Alluring and unorthodox, Chinatown was already a big tourist attraction for out-of-towners as well as slumming-it city residents in the early 1900s.

This postcard, dated 1911, really plays it up. The front shows Mott Street; that’s the Port Arthur restaurant, opened in 1897. The back of the card reads:

“Here are located the joss houses, the civil offices of the colony and lodging houses and restaurants, the gambling rooms and opium-smoking dens.”

Joss house: I had to look it up. It’s another term for a house of worship.

The Central Park Mall in color in 1914

That’s what the postmark says, but the photograph the card is based on probably dates to several years earlier.

The caption on the back of the card notes that “here are the residences of some of New York’s wealthiest families.”

The Port Authority as you’ve never seen it before

Is this really the way the 42nd Street Port Authority Bus Terminal once looked? The postcard doesn’t lie.

When it opened in 1950, replacing several smaller bus stations that dotted Manhattan, the bus terminal—then spanning 40th to 41st Streets—featured a spiffy Art Deco exterior.

In the late 1970s, it was expanded to 42nd Street and fitted with the X-shaped steel trusses it still sports today—a design that put the terminal on a 2008 list of the 10 ugliest buildings.

“Those who pass by this iron monstrosity might be tempted to ask about a completion date, but alas, this is the finished product,” wrote Virtualtourist.com, which put out the list.

“Hated by New Yorkers and tourists alike, this aptly named station is enough to make you take the train.”