“New motor propelled fire engine” reads the caption of this 1910 postcard, which shows off what appears to be the Fire Department’s newest piece of equipment.
I’m not sure where we are in this image, but it looks like a handsome residential neighborhood with a bishop’s crook lamppost in the back. And as always when fire engines hit the street, a small boy stands nearby, perhaps checking out the machinery.
Postcard: MCNY/54.212.107
Raising pigeons on tenement roofs doesn’t seem to be a popular thing in contemporary New York. But years ago it was a not-uncommon hobby, and John Sloan makes it the subject of this painting—done from his West 23rd Street studio in 1910.
Sloan loved watching what transpired on rooftops. His roof paintings “convey a sense of the freedom and escape the roofs provided from the suffocating confines of New York tenement living,” states Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts, which has “Pigeons” in its collection.
“Here Sloan depicts the then popular pastime of raising pigeons, which were let loose daily to fly for exercise. Witnessed by their trainer and a young boy perched on the tenement wall, the birds circling above seem to give visual expression to the men’s dreams of a flight of fancy high above the city,” states the MFA.
Bowler hats, thin shoes, and shabby coats that need a good washing—what the men on this Bowery breadline in 1910 are wearing tells us everything we need to know about them.
The bars they’ve lined up next to are advertising Ehret’s and Schaefer beer, both once manufactured in Manhattan (Schaefer eventually relocated to Brooklyn.)
[George Bain Collection/LOC]
Thanks to the labor movement and the push for women’s suffrage, New York in the first two decades of the 20th century was a hotbed of strikes and rallies—with thousands of women doing the organizing and walking picket lines.
Most of these activists were working-class women, often young immigrants, who toiled for low wages in dangerous sweatshops.
Marching alongside them and helping to finance their efforts were a group of extraordinary wealthy ladies who took their lumps from the press, later dubbed the “mink brigade.”
These were the wives and daughters of the city’s richest men, women who used their bank accounts to stir up social change rather than entertain at society balls.
Two well-known members of the so-called mink brigade were Anne Morgan (left), daughter of financier J.P. Morgan, and former society queen bee Alva Belmont, ex-wife of W.K. Vanderbilt and widow of banker Oliver Hazard Perry Belmont.
Through an organization called the Women’s Trade Union League, Morgan and Belmont helped mobilize and support a strike by workers from the Triangle Waist Company (yep, that Triangle company).
That walkout eventually led to a citywide garment workers’ strike in November 1909 known as the “Uprising of the 20,000” (top photo).
“The socialites’ presence generated both money and praise for the strikers,” states Women’s America: Refocusing the Past.
“The move proved politically wise for the suffrage cause as well, because the constant proselytizing of suffrage zealot Alva Belmont, who often bailed strikers out of jail, got young workers talking about the vote.”
By all accounts, Morgan and Belmont (in the photo at right, she’s in the mink) were serious about the causes they espoused and sincere in their efforts.
They paid fines for strikers and used their prominence to raise money. Their presence on the actual picket lines kept police brutality at bay.
Called off in 1910, the Uprising of the 20,000 was a partial success, with most sweatshop owners meeting the workers’ demands.
And suffrage, of course, was soon to be a nationwide win. Derided as monied meddlers during their day, the mink brigade turned out to be on the right side of history.
[Third image: New York Times headline December 9, 1909]
It’s New York’s oldest bridge—a Roman-inspired graceful span completed in 1848 as a crucial link of the Croton Aqueduct, the engineering marvel that brought fresh upstate water to city spigots.
At 140 feet above the breezy Harlem River, it was (and is—it’s now open to the public) a favorite place for strollers as well as artists.
Ernest Lawson was one of those artists. “High Bridge—Early Moon” (above) from 910 “dates from Lawson’s early period . . . when he lived for a time in Washington Heights, at the northern tip of Manhattan,” states the website for the Phillips Collection, which owns the painting.
“Having left the area in 1906 when he moved to Greenwich Village, the artist often returned to paint his favorite sites until about 1916.”
“High Bridge—Early Moon” looks toward the Bronx side of the bridge. In the more somber “High Bridge, Harlem River,” Lawson looks toward Upper Manhattan, the site of the circa-1872 High Bridge Water Tower.
“The motif of the bridge . . . takes on added significance in American art as a symbol of movement and change. As cities grew, bridges were often among the first structures built, their spare designs helping to transform the face of the American landscape from rural to urban.” continues the Phillips Collection caption.
“Lawson’s carefully observed paintings documenting this change conveyed his delight in commonplace views and objects—an old boat, a frail tree, grasses growing along the river’s edge.”
Read more about the High Bridge and how the bridge and the riverfront below it became a favorite recreation area in the late 19th century in The Gilded Age in New York, 1870-1910.
The Queensboro bridge was only one year old when Impressionist painter Julian Alden Weir depicted it and the surrounding cityscape in muted blue, green, and gold tones in “The Bridge: Nocturne.”
It’s not clear what street is lit so bright here, but it hardly matters.
The bridge is like a mountain poking out of the fog, looking down on the rest of the city, which appears miniaturized. Few pedestrians go about their way on the rain-slicked pavement, and random lights from store signs and office windows glow in the nighttime sky.
The NYPD has fielded lots of bad-apple police officers, especially in the notoriously crooked late 19th century.
But Lieutenant Charles Becker (left) went down in history as one of the most rotten.
Born in upstate Sullivan County, Becker worked as a bouncer at popular beer garden the Atlantic Garden on the Bowery.
After meeting corrupt state senator and Bowery fixture Big Tim Sullivan, he was able to buy an appointment on the force in 1893 for $250.
Like so many others, Becker became a cop on the make. Appointed to the vice squad, he patrolled the infamous sin district the Tenderloin, centered roughly between 23rd and 42nd Streets from Broadway to Eighth Avenue.
He took thousands in kickbacks from gambling houses and brothels in exchange for agreeing to keep police off their backs.
Then, in 1912, a minor gangster and casino owner named Herman “Beansy” Rosenthal blew the whistle on Becker.
Rosenthal and Becker had agreed that for a price, Becker would steer clear of Rosenthal’s Hesper Club casino on West 45th Street.
But Becker decided to have the private club raided to get on the good side of new police chief Rhinelander Waldo, a progressive reformer.
Two days after Rosenthal’s story hit the press, he was gunned down by four mobsters inside the Hotel Metropole on 43rd Street in Times Square (above, photo from the MCNY).
District Attorney Charles Whitman was sure Becker was behind Rosenthal’s murder. He had Becker transferred to desk duty in the Bronx, then placed under arrest.
After two first-degree murder convictions—the first verdict was overturned on appeal—Becker was brought to Sing Sing (left, heading from New York to prison).
In 1915, two years after the gangsters he hired met their fate in the electric chair, Becker was electrocuted as well. Charles Whitman, now governor of New York, signed his death warrant.
He execution lasted several minutes and surely caused Becker agony in his final moments. He maintained his innocence until the end.
Born in St. Louis in 1864 and trained in France, Paul Cornoyer made a name for himself in the late 19th century, painting landscapes and urban scenes in an impressionist style.
“In 1899, with encouragement from William Merritt Chase, he moved to New York City,” states oxfordgallery.com.
Here he opened a studio, became associated with the Ash Can school, and for many years was a beloved art teacher at the Mechanics Institute.
“Celebrated for his lyrical cityscapes and atmospheric landscapes, Paul Cornoyer crafted an indelible impression of fin-de-siècle New York,” explains this fine arts site.
[Above: “Winter Twilight Central Park”; below, “Flatiron Building”]
Well-known in his day, his typically rainy, muted depictions of New York City sold well and earned him fame, particularly “The Plaza After Rain” (below) and “Madison Square in the Afternoon” (top).
He’s not a household name, but his vision of a New York with soft edges and blurred borders still resonates—reflecting a moody city filled with mystery and enchantment.
I wonder who mailed this sweet yet message-less card to Miss Elsie Mangels, who apparently resided at 447 East 121st Street in February 1910?
Her residence looks like it no longer exists; a housing development and some empty lots occupy that address today.
The card comes from the New York Public Library’s digital collection—a treasure of old ephemera, including vintage Valentine cards.
Not long after the Brooklyn Bridge opened in 1883, people began jumping off it.
Some were daredevils, some were suicidal. And some simply wanted publicity and to make a little cash, which seems to be the case with 17-year-old Otto Eppers.
In June 1910, Eppers lived at 535 Dean Street in Brooklyn. He was a budding cartoonist, later described by The New York Times as “ferret faced” (that’s him at right, in 1917).
Eppers apparently convinced storekeepers in Brooklyn to give him more than a thousand bucks (plus two new suits!) if he leaped off the Manhattan Bridge.
The notoriety and money would kick-start his career, he reportedly believed.
The morning of the jump, on June 29, his plan was briefly thwarted by patrolmen stationed along the bridge.
So he went to the Brooklyn Bridge instead, climbing the tower on the Brooklyn side before letting go and dropping 14 stories into the river.
A tugboat waiting for him picked up Eppers, whose clothes had ripped but was unhurt. As soon as the boat reached Manhattan’s Fulton Street, he was arrested on charges of attempted suicide—then let go with a warning.
It’s unclear whether he got his money. But he scored a brush with fame.
Eppers is credited with the first witnessed successful jump from the Brooklyn Bridge—and he did make a name for himself as a professional cartoonist.
Ephemeral New York 
