Something’s drawn a crowd downtown at the edge of City Hall Park, according to this penny postcard, stamped 1912. A tangle of wagons on the right, and adults and kids swarming the curb in front.
Just another spring or summer day in a park featured in many vintage postcards? Without a caption, we’ll never know.
There’s the kiosk for a City Hall subway stop, and the statue of Nathan Hale, relocated many times in its 120-year history.
Tags: City Hall Park postcard, City Hall subway stop photos, Nathan Hale statue City Hall, New York City Hall, New York in 1912, Nice day in New York City, Park Row New York buildings, vintage New York postcards
Ephemeral New York 
April 24, 2014 at 3:59 pm |
The red, terracotta building on the far right side of the postcard was once known as the “Potter Building” and so named after its owner, Orlando Potter, a real estate developer and NYC Congressman. He was so taken with the material of the facade that he opened up his own terracotta business in Queens. He also owned a 600 acre estate in the Village of Sing Sing, NY now called Ossining and it is my adopted home town. Among his crops he grew grapes and today, on part of the land that is now a condo development there are several half-buried, brick Quonset-Hut-like structures where he stored his wine. The Potter Building was later owned by Pace College when I attended it in the mid-1960s. It’s now a cooperative apartment building and I on the National Register of Historic Buildings
April 25, 2014 at 1:30 am |
On Sunday, August 25, 1912, thousands of people marched to City Hall Park to cheer on the returning Olympic athletes. “So spontaneous a display of national pride and enthusiasm hadn’t been seen here since the welcome given in 1898 to Admiral Dewey”– The New York Press
Just a thought…
April 25, 2014 at 2:10 am |
Reblogged this on She Blogs Daily and commented:
I love collecting old Bronx NYC postcards from this era, its amazing how much the city has changed and how much it has remained the same too.
May 2, 2022 at 1:47 am |
[…] City Hall Park was also decorated to the hilt. “They are the finest seen in years,” wrote the Evening World the day before Tunnel Day. “The park has become an aerial maze of bright colors. Flags flutter from the treetops and branches.” […]