Name: Horse Racing at Sheepshead Bay, Brooklyn 1897 @TigerRocket
Uploaded: 2026-09-21T08:17:00-05:00
Duration: 8 min 17 s
Description: Horse Racing at Sheepshead Bay, Brooklyn 1897

Horse Racing at Sheepshead Bay, Brooklyn 1897

TigerRocket 2026-09-21 | Horse Racing at Sheepshead Bay, Brooklyn 1897

Chinatown

TigerRocket 2018-05-10 | ...

A moment of Broadway

TigerRocket 2018-05-10 | ...

Cortlandt Alley

TigerRocket 2018-04-07 | Walk between Canal & Walker

exposure

TigerRocket 2013-12-06 | ...

ambient urbanism

TigerRocket 2013-12-05 | above E.57th street

The Dewey Arch, 5th Avenue, Manhattan 1899

TigerRocket 2012-01-16 | American Mutoscope & Biograph Co.
Filmed October 1, 1899

A view of the arch from Fifth Avenue, the day after the Dewey Parade, showing the crowd of sight-seers, traffic, etc.

Charles R. Lamb (1860-1942) designed the initial model for the arch using the Roman Arch of Titus as a prototype. John Quincy Adams Ward, who was president of the National Sculpture Society at the time, designed part of the sculptural detail of the arch. The Dewey Arch never achieved permanent form. -Smithsonian Archive

The Dewey Arch was a triumphal arch that stood from 1899 to 1901 at Madison Square in Manhattan, New York (5th Avenue & 24th Street). The parade it was constructed for was in honor of Dewey's victory in the Spanish-American War the year before. On April 27, 1898, Admiral George Dewey sailed out from China with orders to attack the Spanish at Manila Bay. He stopped at the mouth of the bay late the night of April 30, and the following morning he gave the order to attack at first light, by saying the now infamous words "You may fire when you are ready, Gridley." Within 6 hours, on May 1, he had sunk or captured the entire Spanish Pacific fleet under Admiral Patricio Montojo y Pasarón and silenced the shore batteries at Manila, with the loss of only one life on the American side. -condensed from wiki

Here's a brief actuality of the Dewey Parade: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ezVueCKVOQ

a contemporary article from the New York Times, Sept. 9, 1899, 'Fuss Over Dewey Parade': http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive-free/pdf?res=9B07E0DF133DE633A2575AC0A96F9C94689ED7CF

A good photo of the arch and columns: http://lcweb2.loc.gov/service/pnp/det/4a00000/4a07000/4a07200/4a07206v.jpg

01/15/12

Brooklyn Bridge, BRT, New York City 1896

TigerRocket 2012-01-16 | a.k.a. 'Pont De Brooklyn' and 'Brooklyn Bridge in the U.S.A.'
Lumière No. 321 - Produced by Auguste & Louis Lumière
Camera: Alexandre Promio (Jean Alexandre Louis Promio)

Brooklyn Rapid Transit (BRT) crossing Brooklyn Bridge. Converting the city's steam and cable powered rapid transit to electricity began in 1893 and would be completed throughout the system by 1900. Since the opening of the bridge in 1883, trains crossing over were powered by cable until 1896. This actuality shows new electric trains and a couple of steam locomotives with one of the bridges distinctive towers in the background. Elevated trains began riding across the bridge from its opening in 1883 until 1944. Street cars rode until 1950.

A front car view of the ride across the bridge in 'Brooklyn to New York via Brooklyn Bridge' 1899: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0WA47Y6em8M

'Early Rapid Transit in Brooklyn' 1878 to 1913 by Mark S. Feinman: http://www.nycsubway.org/articles/earlyrapidtransitinbrooklyn.html

A contemporary article about the new electric system from Engineering News, Oct. 17, 1895, 'Changes on the Brooklyn Bridge Railway': http://catskillarchive.com/rrextra/BBCHANGE.Html

01/15/12

First Aerial Film of New York City 1912

TigerRocket 2012-01-14 | Frank Coffyn's Hydro-Aeroplane Flights
Vitagraph Film Co. / 16 February-March 20, 1912
Producer: J. Stuart Blackton

Frank Trenholm Coffyn (October 24, 1878 -- December 10, 1960) was a member of the Wright Brothers Exhibition Team and a pioneer aviator. This film was part of his first independent work after going out on his own. This is the first hydro-aeroplane with pontoons to successfully use New York waters for take off and return. Coffyn is also the first pilot to take a press photographer along, Adrian C. Duff of the American Press Association, who took the first aerial photos of the city by plane.*

The New York Herald, 1912
FRANK T. COFFYN WATER FLYING UNDER NEW YORK BRIDGES
Frank T. Coffyn flying his hydro-aeroplane, took his craft off from the Battery yesterday afternoon for a sixteen minute flight that covered a course toward the Jersey shore, half a mile up the Hudson River, then back and across the Navy Yard and over the Brooklyn and Manhattan bridges at a height of 1,500 feet, then back beneath each bridge and home to the landing raft. Thousands of spectators stood at the Battery for hours to see the new machine. The wind was so strong that he was almost blown out of his seat. At the Brooklyn Bridge, he was only fifteen feet below the roadway and was caught in the warm blast of a tug's smokestack.
The aeroplane was able to land and take off from the ice floes because of two hickory runners which protected the aluminum floats. These were built and designed by Coffyn and Russell A. Alger, governor of the Aero Club of America.

New York Times, Feb. 17, 1912, 'Coffyn Finds Hole In Air Over Bay': http://query.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=F00612F63C5813738DDDAE0994DA405B828DF1D3

Metropolitan Magazine, May 1912 (excerpt)
WATER-FLYING / A NEW SPORT by Henry Woodhouse
A Convincing Demonstration
THIS last was a convincing demonstration. It convinced the man in the street, as nothing ever before had, that the day when he can take to the air without first making his will is drawing nearer. To the hundreds of New Yorkers, who deserted their offices to crowd to the water-front to watch Coffyn, it was a matter of wonder that this craft did not seem to have any limitations. Again and again hundreds would hold their breath watching the winged thing skim the water heading straight for the ice, expecting to see a smash. But they were pleasingly disappointed; for each time the machine slid on the ice, speeding on its runner swift and light, and ere long it was in the air, circling like a strange, big bird. Then the spectators looked at one another and the comments ran something like this: Did you ever! . . . Can you beat that! . . . and some remarked that they had seen Wilbur Wright fly over that same spot during the Hudson-Fulton celebration, or Curtiss at the finish of the Albany-New York flight, or Atwood or Ovington in their over-the-city flights, but had never felt over impressed. But this was different, they could see it at close range, it did what they would have liked to do, and seemed as easy as anything.

Helicopter Magazine / May 1946 -- Pg. 34 (excerpt)
'CONTRAPTIONS AND 'COPTERS' by Frank Coffyn
Toward the end of my two year contract with the Company, I was loaned to Russell Alger, of Detroit, to teach him and his brother Fred, to fly. Their homes were located on the edge of Lake St. Clair, so it was decided to attach pontoons under each of the two skids of the Model B Wright plane. John W. Hacker, a well known motor boat builder, was requisitioned to construct them. They were of mahogany, covered with varnished cloth, and on September 30, 1911, I made my first flight with them, but they were too lightly constructed and did not survive the test. Hacker then built aluminum pontoons, with a wood ash frame work, and these were the first of their kind ever constructed for a plane.
My contract with the Wright Company having expired, I shipped the plane, equipped with the aluminum pontoons, to New York with high aspirations of setting myself up in my own business. So I finally approached J. Stuart Blackstone [sic], president of the Vitagraph Company of America, in the prospects of obtaining good aerial moving pictures for his motion picture company. After a lengthy discussion I persuaded him to let me try this, and armed with a sizable contract in my pocket plus a newspaper photographer who had never been in a plane, I took off my seaplane to take moving pictures of New York City and the Bay on one of the coldest days in February 1912. Through John McKenzie, who was later in charge of Laguardia Airport, I was granted permission by the Dock Department to use Pier A at the Battery, making it the first seaplane base operated by the City of New York.

Here's a document with several of Adrian C. Duff aerial photographs of New York taken during the flight: facebook.com/notes/nyc-i-see/frank-t-coffyn-and-the-first-aerial-film-of-new-york-city-1912/357767747584536

01/13/12

NYC Police, Central Park 1896

TigerRocket 2012-01-11 | Filmed late October 1896 in Central Park
Edison Manufacturing Co.
Producer: James H. White
Camera: William Heise

Maguire & Baucus* catalogue: A troop of mounted police, in full dress uniform, are seen approaching the audience at full gallop; when within but a few yards of the camera they suddenly halt and each horse and rider appears full life size. One of the officers in this troop of several dozen is Sergeant Eagan. (No information to be found on Eagan)

*Maguire & Baucus were American's based in Europe who promoted and distributed Edison's Kinetoscopes to European markets.

"In 1844, New York City was the first American city to model its police department after the principals in Peel's law that included offering service to all members of the public and maintaining a good relationship with the public. Riots in many major U.S. cities from the 1830s through 1850s led to the formation of police departments in virtually every major U.S. city by the mid-1860s." -Trojanowicz et. al., 1998
(This excerpt from: 'The Rise, Fall and Rebirth of Bicycle Police' by Ross D. Petty)

New York City in 1896:
New York became the first city to outlaw spitting in public http://tinyurl.com/7nbdcyy / Apr. 14, John Phillip Sousa premiers 'El Capitan' in New York / Apr. 23, Premier of moving pictures at Koster and Bial's Music Hall where Edison's Vitascope system of movie projection is first demonstrated / During the summer, a 10-day heat wave devastates, killing nearly 1500 people. From NPR 'The Heat Wave Of 1896 And The Rise Of Roosevelt': http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=129127924 / May 30, The first recorded automobile accident in New York occurs when Henry Wells driving a new electric Duryea hits bicyclist Evelyn Thomas who suffered a broken leg. Wells was the city's first traffic arrest

01/15/12

Fifth Avenue, New York City (ca. 1900)

TigerRocket 2012-01-11 | Fifth Avenue in Manhattan ca. 1900

Pedestrians along fifth Avenue, the 'spine' of Manhattan which divides east from west. Not a head without a Bowler, Top hat, or art project. Some women suffering the needless Victorian strains of swan-bill corsets, others wear hats as big as wedding cakes. A youth sporting a Fedora gives the camera face time. Crosstown trolleys traverse busy horse and buggy traffic.

New York Times, Apr. 30, 1900 - 'Cab Upset On Fifth Avenue': http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive-free/pdf?res=F50D1EFE345811738DDDA90B94DC405B808CF1D3

01/17/21

Little Egypt 1896

TigerRocket 2012-01-08 | 'Fatima's Couchee-Couchee Dance' also known as 'Muscle Dance'
Thomas A. Edison / Black Maria Studio 1896 (Kinetographic Theater)
Director: James H. White
Camera: William Heise

Not the original "Little Egypt," but one of the later women to go by the name. This is an original Edison film (censored at 0:32) featuring scandalous hips of the 19th century. The censor tag was a concession to earning those pennies and avoiding refusal of distribution on the part of Kinetoscope house proprietors fearful of raids by the moral enforcement thugs of the day. Film historians consider this the first film to suffer so.

From the Midway of Chicago's Columbian Exposition to the Midway of Brooklyn's own Coney Island.

"Step right up! See Little Egypt and Pharaoh's harem of harlots bare it all live on the inside."
The legend and lore of Belly Dance in America most likely begins at the World's Columbian Exposition held in Chicago in 1893, the first World's Fair in the United States. The main attraction for fair visitors seems to have been the Midway Plaisance, a crowded boisterous main street with rides and a carnival atmosphere that led to the pristine 'White City' of beau-arts architecture and major attractions of serious exhibits.
This was also the fair at which Captain Paul Boyton of Coney Island's 'Sea Lion Park' fame had his start, bringing the idea for Coney Island's first major attraction 'Shoot-the-Chutes' back to New York with him http://tinyurl.com/7j9uhc6. George C. Tilyou, creator of the future Steeplechase Park also came away inspired, having seen a new ride designed and built by England's G.W.G. Ferris. Tilyou built his own scaled down version of the wheel on Coney the next year.
The Midway itself was filled with representations of cultures and countries from around the world. Among those small self contained 'cities' were a number of Middle Eastern representations including Egypt, Morocco, Syria, Tunisian, Algeria, Turkey and others. But one had an entertainment that became the 'talk of the town', a show called "the Streets of Cairo" produced by Gaston Akoun which featured snake charmers, camel rides, and the unfamiliar but attractive strains of exotic instruments.
It was upon the Midway stage before the entrance that performers did their thing in hopes of attracting customers to the foreign magic and exotic treasures within. One such performer was Farida Mahzar-Spyropoulos, a member of "The Algerian Dancers of Morocco." As men in turbans accompanied on instruments she and other girls danced a dance formally called Raks Sharki, a traditional dance not so traditional to a culture used to staid formal waltzes and prim propriety. While a number of dancers were usually present to entertain and entice it was Farida .a.k.a. Fatima who apparently shook it best. Here was a specimen of feminine pulchritude showing her bare arms, gyrating in a provocative fashion and probably smiling about it. Women were shocked into gasps of Victorian dismay and men were shocked into undivided attention, and probably smiling too.
Sol Bloom, entertainment director for the expo (and later a Tammany Congressman for New York) had the biggest smile of them all as lots of spectators parted with lots of coin to see more inside. Bloom was quite the impresario, barking ballyhoo and drawing crowds with introductions to watch them "shimmy and shake!" Known to some as "the Music Man" he claimed to have "improvised the melody on the piano at a press briefing in 1893 to introduce Little Egypt." This became the song most associated with danse du ventre (literally 'dance of the belly'), so named by Napoleon's men after seeing this strange entertainment in Egypt after invasion earlier in the century. Bloom never bothered to copyright his composition which he may have swiped from North African or European Orientalist musicians, inspiring later variations and rip-offs with as many different titles: From the Vaudeville inspired Hoochy Koochy to Hoolah! Hoolah!, Kutchi Kutchi, Dance of the Midway, Coochi-Coochi Polka, On the Streets of Cairo: youtube.com/watch?v=6A5yJ5Z2Ezw&spfreload=10, Kutchy Kutchy and probably the most famous of them, the Snake Charmer [a brief sample: http://tinyurl.com/3s4ev7m] He also claimed to have coined the term "belly dance," but this may have been the self promoting hyperbole of a carny. The word "coochi" was derived from the French "couche," past part of "coucher" which means "to lay down." (not sure what laying down has to do with this dance, though I suppose one could easily imagine)

01/08/12 - 50 ระบำหน้าท้อง

The Gravesend (Brooklyn) Handicap 1904

TigerRocket 2012-01-07 | The Gravesend Handicap, Brooklyn, May 26, 1904
American Biograph & Mutoscope Co.
Camera: G.W. "Billy" Bitzer

Gravesend Race Track opened in 1887 and remained in operation until 1910. The first 'Handicap' was a 1 1/4 miles left-handed race on dirt and became part of the 'Handicap Triple' which today is preceded by the Metropolitan Handicap and followed by the Suburban Handicap.

The Brooklyn Handicap is an American Thoroughbred horse race run annually in early June at Belmont Park in Elmont, New York, on Long Island. It currently is a Grade II event open to three-year-olds and up willing to race one and one-half miles on dirt. The film shows the pre-race parade, the start, finish, and weighing out. The Picket was ridden by Jockey Oscar Helgesen who took the prize in 2:06.60. The Picket was trained by Carroll B. Reid and owned by Waldeck Stable. Four horses have won the Handicap Triple: Whisk Broom II (1913), Tom Fool (1953), Kelso (1961), Fit to Fight (1984).

Sheepshead Bay
Neighborhood in southeastern Brooklyn, overlooking an ocean inlet of the same name to its south and bordered to the north by Marine Park, to the east by Shellbank Creek, to the south by Manhattan Beach, and to the west by Gravesend. The area was the site of a large Canarsee Indian village and remained undeveloped for more than a century and a half after the English settled Gravesend in 1645 only a short distance to the northwest.
During the 1870s John Y. McKane, the notorious political ''boss'' of Gravesend, facilitated the extension of several railroads and boulevards to Coney Island, making the whole southern shore more accessible than it had been before. Meanwhile, the Coney Island Jockey Club opened the Sheepshead Bay Race track on a site of 2200 acres (one thousand hectares). This was replaced in 1915 by the Sheepshead Speedway, which was demolished in 1923; the site was then subdivided into small building lots and developed.
- (excerpts) Ellen Fletcher / Encyclopedia of New York City - Edited by Kenneth T. Jackson

A brief clip of a race at the track in 1897: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SgOYowImXPk&feature=g-upl&context=G2c0e0fbAUAAAAAAAsAA

John Phillip Sousa's 'Manhattan Beach March' / 'El Capitan' from an 1895 Edison cylinder: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-QtRRzyZ3Rg

Recommended Reading:
The Sport of Kings and the Kings of Crime
Horse Racing, Politics, and Organized Crime in New York, 1865-1913
Steven A. Riess

01/05/12 - 3

Rectors to Claremont (ca. 1903-1904)

TigerRocket 2012-01-03 | Rector's Lobster Palace, Broadway to Claremont Inn on Riverside Drive (Ca. 1903-04)
Edison Manufacturing Co.
Directed by Edwin S. Porter
Since this film was never copyrighted or released there are scant details available.

The opening was filmed in front of Rector's Lobster Palace (Broadway between 43rd & 44th Sts. in Manhattan) This party is on their way to the Claremont Inn on Riverside Drive. A Manhattan 'travelogue' of sorts as we get to see the scenic majesty that is Manhattan's posh and rural West-Side along Riverside Park including Grant's Tomb [2:25]. It's not until they arrive at their destination that the straggler finally catches up. Pretty impressive! Good thing they didn't decide on Brooklyn.

From the New York Times archive for 1913 an article on Charles Rector's bankruptcy including a history of his business ventures in the restaurant and hotel trades from Chicago to New York: http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive-free/pdf?res=F30F11FA3F5B13738DDDA90B94DD405B838DF1D3

Here's another 'chase' film (1904) which also uses Riverside Drive for a backdrop. This time in three parts: http://tinyurl.com/7ucneld

The Burning of Durlands Riding Academy, Columbus Circle, Manhattan 1902

TigerRocket 2011-12-29 | February 24, 1902 Edison Manufacturing Co.
Direction: Edwin S. Porter
Camera: James Blair Smith

An Edison actuality featuring New York City's bravest taming the smoldering remains of George Durland's Riding Academy on Manhattan's west side. This film was later re-titled and marketed as 'Firemen Fighting the Flames at Paterson', a much bigger fire in New Jersey with a greater notoriety but no cameraman. Some early films used actors and stage sets to tell stories inter-cut with actualities of fire fighters and others in action. Dobson's 1906 film 'Skyscrapers of New York' is one such work with building construction as the backdrop.

Durland's Riding Academy, home to the New York Riding Club, was located on the north side of Grand Circle (renamed 'Columbus' in 1905) at Central Park South in Manhattan (W.60th St. & 8th Ave.) The academy was built in 1887 but was abandoned after subway tunnel construction beneath the building apparently weakened the foundation. After this fire of undetermined cause, plans were proposed by the American & London Hippodrome Company to build a hippodrome theater on the property but this never happened. Trump International stands on the site today.
In 1901, Durland had a new stable designed and built by Henry Kilburn at 7 W.66th St. Today the original orange Roman brick facade of this second Durland academy is visible after having been exposed and restored in the 1990s. Along with other competing stables and academies in the vicinity, Durland did brisk business in what was still an essential part of transportation though it was beginning to change. By 1905 the city's horse drawn omnibuses and cable cars were entirely replaced with electric trolleys. Horses remained the major mode of transportation for fire, sanitation, livery and trade delivery until 1917. -TR

From Columbus Circle "[a] typical horseback or carriage excursion in those days went up through Central Park to West 72d Street, west to Riverside Park, north through that park, east to the Harlem River and then north through the Bronx or back down Seventh Avenue into Central Park."
-source NYT March 28, 1999: http://tinyurl.com/ck4ucvb

A piece written in 1893 about the 'Fire Laddies' of New York: http://nycisee.blogspot.com/2010/01/fire-laddies-of-new-york.html

01/01/12 - 57

Coney Island, Luna Park at Night 1905

TigerRocket 2011-12-28 | Luna Park, Coney Island, Brooklyn
Released June 29, 1905 - Edison Manufacturing Co.
Directed by Edwin S. Porter
Music: Eric Beheim

Hully Gee! Ain't that just Grand?

The film starts with a sweeping panoramic view of Fred Thompson's Luna Park. The lit sign for Feltman's Restaurant can be seen scrolling across the bottom 0:27. Here is where German immigrant Charles Feltman began selling the original Coney Island Caviar a.k.a. the 'hot dog' on a bun in 1870.
At 0:35 George C. Tilyou's Steeplechase Park, the Great Grand Daddy of amusement parks, followed by close-up shots of Luna Park commencing at 0:48 with the wings to the entrance of 'Dragon's Gorge' and the Kaleidoscope Tower at 1:20. At 2:07 the film ends with a vertical pan of the elegant 375 foot tall Dreamland Tower belonging to Thompson's competitor William H. Reynolds.
The impact of Coney at night in 1905 must have been absolutely stunning and astounding. Even Longacre Square, recently renamed 'Times Square' the year before, had a way to go before becoming the "Great White Way" ablaze with lights. There was also the new electric subway system between City Hall and Harlem which opened the previous October: http://tinyurl.com/d7f8cxh Broadway had been lit electrically since 1900. All of that electricity and rapid transportation was giving birth to the 'night life' and quickly transforming New York into "the city that never sleeps". -TR

☛ "Strange and colorful shapes were now taking form as the hope for Coney's improvement were realized.
Nearly a quarter of a million electric lights were turned on the first evening. Over forty thousand persons visited the twenty-two acre park within two hours after its opening. Admission was ten cents. The initial cost for Luna was about $700,000, but expenses grew as the park was improved with new additions.
Luna's lights and multi-colored buildings were so impressive that Maxim Gorki, a Russian novelist who had visited the park stated:
'With the advent of night a fantastic city all of fire suddenly rises from the ocean into the sky. Thousands of ruddy sparks glimmer in the darkness, limning in fire, sensitive outline on the black background of the sky shapely towers of miraculous castles, palaces and temples. Golden gossamer threads tremble in the air. They intertwine in transparent flaming patterns, which flutter and melt away, in love with their own beauty mirrored in the waters. Fabulous beyond conceiving, ineffably beautiful, is this fiery scintillation.' "
- Gravesend / The Home of Coney Island - Eric J. Ierardi

☛ ''Beside the million incandescent lamps which make the enclosure at nighttime the brightest spot on the whole terrestrial sphere, there is the Kaleidoscope Tower where 80,000 electric lights go through as many changes every second. These lights take the form of fifty different geometrical effects, which in turn go through 1,100 changes before they repeat. The tower is the only thing of its kind in existence, and is in many ways the most extraordinary electrical display ever made.''
- Luna Park souvenir program (Library of Congress)

☛ ''I have built Luna Park on a definite architectural plan, I have eliminated all classic, conventional forms in its structure, and taken a sort of free Renaissance and Oriental type for my model, using spires and minarets whenever I could. . . . . It is marvelous what you could do in the way of arousing human emotions by the use that you make, architecturally, of simple lines! Luna Park is built on that theory, and the result has proved the theory's truth.''
- Fred Thompson

☛ "Do you know," he said, "I am deeply fascinated by all these toys. For, of course, you perceive that they are really enlarged toys. They reinforce me in my old opinion that humanity only needs to be provided for ten minutes with a few whirligigs and things of the sort, and it can forget at least four centuries of misery. I rejoice in these whirligigs," continued the stranger, eloquently, "and as I watch here and there a person going around and around or up and down, or over and over, I say to myself that whirligigs must be made in heaven."
-excerpt from 'Coney Island's Failing Days' by Stephen Crane / New York Press 14 October 1894

"If Paris is France, then Coney Island, between June and September, is the world" -George C. Tilyou

...and later that summer, Miss Knapp's Boarding School Girls take a day trip to Brooklyn's 'Electric Eden': http://tinyurl.com/c8dmvnr

"Heaven: The Coney Island of the Christian imagination" -Elbert Hubbard

01/01/12 - 54

Herald Sq. to Union Sq. via Broadway (Ca. 1900s)

TigerRocket 2011-12-04 | Herald Sq. to Union Sq. via Broadway Trolley (Ca. 1900s)

The trolley heads south down Broadway crossing under the 6th Avenue 'El'. The building on the right at 0:17 is that of the Herald newspaper from which Herald Square (34th St.) derives its name. Next to the idyllic scenes of a bustling city turning modern, one can spot the ubiquitous reminder of 19th century New York as work horses leave their contribution along the roadway. This film is probably after 1905 when New York City ran its last cable car. Horse cars remained in common use until 1917. -TR

The New York Railways Co. Broadway Line was opened by the Broadway and Seventh Avenue Railroad in 1864; leased by the Houston, West Street and Pavonia Ferry Railroad in 1893; leased by the Metropolitan Street Railway in 1893; leased by New York Railways in 1911; replaced by New York City Omnibus Corporation buses on February 12, 1936 (now the M6 bus) -source from wiki: http://tinyurl.com/7p76vwc

Two related actualities from 1896. A view of Herald Sq. from an Edison reel: http://tinyurl.com/75wyqhg and a film of Union Sq. at 14th Street by the Lumière Brothers: http://tinyurl.com/7wq95k5

01/05/12 - 90

City Hall to Harlem via the Subway 1904

TigerRocket 2011-12-03 | City Hall to Harlem in 15 Seconds via the Subway Route
American Mutoscope and Biograph Co. 1904
Camera: Edwin S. Porter

In 1903 Edwin Porter produced 'The Great Train Robbery', the first American narrative story on film. Clocking in at over 9 minutes this film qualifies as the first epic movie of the 'Gilded Age' and the beginning of an American film language. He was also an American pioneer of the "trick film", the special effects films of their day. This short uses a technique that Porter and others used along with an early repertoire of other editing tricks.

In 'City Hall to Harlem' the new subway is the real star. Opened in October of 1904 and running from City Hall to 145th Street in Manhattan, it was a major life changer for New Yorkers. Urban growth increased rapidly as a result with residential and business expansion. Times Square as the new destination for theaters was one of the first results of this expansion north of 14th Street. The subway was also a perfect backdrop for a young film industry still looking at the world in celluloid amazement. After actualities of the city, vaudeville was a close second in providing content for film. It's the medium that ends this film. The woman, actually a male actor in drag, enters consuming a growler of beer before husband drops in with a big slapstick finish. -TR

At 2:35 on the afternoon of October 27, 1904, New York City Mayor George McClellan takes the controls on the inaugural run of the city's innovative new rapid transit system. This showcase beginning also started out quite a bit later than scheduled, unwittingly setting a precedent that would become an integral part of the systems sometimes lamentable service.

Here are two more vaudeville comedy shorts based on the "low life" or New York in the "shadows"
Tenderloin at Night (1899): http://tinyurl.com/77uc4cw
A Wake in Hell's Kitchen (1903): http://tinyurl.com/7qtp5nl

Recommended reading:
Low Life / Lures and Snares of Old New York - Luc Sante
Sante separates the facts from fiction showing just how tough and unglamorous New York City's ethos is at its 19th-early 20th century core. An essential read. It's basically Herbert Asbury's "Gangs of New York" without the 'larger than life' sensationalism.

East Side Urchins Bathing in a Fountain 1903

TigerRocket 2011-03-02 | East Side Urchins Bathing in a Fountain
October 30, 1903. Edison Manufacturing Co.
Directed by Edwin S. Porter

"It's da Cops! Cheese it!!"
This is one in a series of films done by Edwin S. Porter for Edison Studios in which he documented the city's ghetto life. While many of the films produced were 'actualities' of spontaneous scenes, there are some like this one which were staged specifically for the camera. When not hamming it up for a moving picture, chances are pretty good some of these same kids were braving summer swims in the East River. -TR

Original Edison catalog description:
Shows a number of boys bathing in a fountain on the East Side (Jacob H. Schiff Fountain in Seward Park). While they are at the height of their amusement, which consists of splashing the bystanders and swimming around, a policeman suddenly appears. There is immediately a wild scramble from the fountain, the boys seizing their clothing and dashing away, buck nekid, through the streets.

Film from the Library of Congress / Reality from 'How the Other Half Lives'

01/01/12 - 222

New York City in a Blizzard 1902

TigerRocket 2011-03-02 | Madison Square Park, Manhattan
February 17, 1902 - Edison Manufacturing Co.
Directed by Edwin S. Porter

The film opens with a steam pump fire engine racing past the camera followed by two more fire wagons when one of the horses almost takes a spill at 0:20. Note the fellow with the shovel at 1:00 near the dogs. He notices the camera and seems to follow it for the rest of the filming. Possibly the first "Hi Mom" moment in media. At 1:10 a maintenance trolley makes its way.

Edison catalog description:
A realistic panoramic view taken at Madison Square, New York City, on February 17, 1902. A portion of the New York Fire Department is seen trying to make their way to a fire through the immense snow drifts. A few pedestrians are bravely plodding through the immense piles of snow, and a snow plow is hard at work on the Broadway, underground trolley line, endeavoring to clear the tracks. Madison Square, Madison Square Garden, Broadway, the Fifth Avenue Hotel, and 23rd Street are all shown in succession.

Also in 1902:
July 16 John McGraw named manager of the Giants / July 30 Anti-Jewish rioters attack funeral procession of Rabbi Joseph / The year 1902 holds the record for the most snow on Christmas day in New York City with 6.5 inches. Also on this day, Clyde Fitch' "Girl with Green Eyes," premieres / December 28 The first indoor pro football game is held at Madison Square Garden where Syracuse beats Philadelphia 6-0 / The New York subway is under construction. Here is an original article covering the project from 'Munsey's Magazine': http://www.nycsubway.org/articles/tunnelthruny.html

Film from the Library of Congress / New York City ambiance by nature

01/01/12 - 579

Claremont Theater, Manhattanville, New York City 1915

TigerRocket 2009-05-07 | 1915 Edison Manufacturing Co.
The Claremont Theatre
3320-3338 Broadway (a.k.a. 536-540 West 135th Street) in Manhattanville.

The village of Manhattnville was established in 1806 in a valley at the crossroads of Bloomingdale Road and Manhattan Street (Broadway and 125th Street).

The community was the site of churches, a grade school, and Manhattan College (1853). A ferry terminus on the Hudson River, a mill, and a brewery contributed to a thriving enclave that had about five hundred residents at mid century.
- (excerpt) Karen E. Markoe / Encyclopedia of New York City - Edited by Kenneth T. Jackson

''The Claremont Theater is one of the oldest structures in New York City planned specifically to exhibit motion pictures, originally called ''photoplays.'' Located in north Manhattanville, at the southeast corner of Broadway and 135th Street, the theater opened in November 1914. Commissioned by Arlington C. Hall and Harvey M. Hall of the Wayside Realty Company, it was designed in the neo-Renaissance style by Gaetano Ajello, an architect best known for apartment buildings on Manhattan's Upper West Side. The building has three distinct fronts, including a clipped corner façade where the auditorium's entrance was originally located. This distinctive arrangement enhanced the theater's visibility and increased the amount of retail space. The corner, consequently, received the most elaborate decorative treatment and is embellished with an elegant low relief depicting an early motion picture camera set on a tripod. In 1915 Thomas Edison produced a short film (seen here) in which the theater's entrance is prominently featured. Filmed from across Broadway, it depicts groups of men, women, and children exiting the building. The second floor accommodated a large restaurant and ballroom, known under such names as the Broadway-Claremont or Clarendon Restaurant, and later, the Royal Palms Ballroom and Roof Garden. Until the early years of the Depression, area residents gathered here to eat, drink, and dance. Beginning in the late 1920s, the storefronts were leased to automobile-related businesses and by 1933 the theater closed and the interior was converted to an automobile showroom. Despite such changes, the exterior is well-preserved and remains a symbol of the growing popularity of the motion picture in the early twentieth century.''
- Designation List 375, Landmarks Preservation Commission / June 6, 2006

Edison's Brass Orchestra plays Black & White Rag 1913:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5iJYBAkSlZ8

'Take Your Girlie to the Movies if You Can't Make Love at Home' - Irving Kaufman 1919: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D0J1d1QUhNU&feature=related

New York City in 1915:
On January 11, Colonel Jacob Ruppert and Colonel Tillinghast L'Hommedieu Huston purchased the Yankees for $460,000. The team wore their legendary pinstripes for the first time on April 22 / The elevated line to Metropolitan Avenue in Ridgewood opened on February 22 / The Brooklyn Botanic Garden's Japanese Garden opened, designed by Takeo Shiota / On June 22 the first subway ran through the Queensboro tunnel (originally the Steinway, then the Belmont Tunnel) between Grand Central and Queens. Service reached Queensboro Plaza on November 5, 1916 / The city's official flag and seal, designed by Paul Manship, were unveiled before Mayor Mitchel and Governor Whitman on June 24 / The Coast Guard took over the Arverne Lifesaving Station in the Rockaways (established in the 1840s). The station closed in 1929; a firehouse rose on the site.

Film from the Library of Congress / facebook.com/NYCISEE

01/01/12 - 4,883

How a French Nobleman Got a Wife through the New York Herald Personal Columns 1904 (Part 3)

TigerRocket 2009-05-07 | August 26, 1904
Thomas A. Edison Manufacturing Co.
General Grant National Monument (Grant's Tomb),
Riverside Drive, Manhattanville, New York

Whoa! They're gaining on 'em! This is the first shot that has him and them in the same frame. Better get some wind in your sails b'hoy, those dames look like they mean business and you're the business!
[1:05] Oh no, the edge of the island, trapped! There's only one thing to do now. You're gonna have to take the plunge if you don't wanna take the plunge. Hey, you should consider yourself plenty lucky mister. That must be some handshake this guy has! It doesn't seem as if they'll be going away just because he's got wet feet.
[2:10] A winner! Some people and scripts will stop at nothing to get what they want. You just found yourself a lady. Any woman willing to cross the water for you without a boat or a second thought is definitely a keeper. Well! That must be the most lucrative 50¢ any guy has spent on advertising himself in Manhattan. What a letter to home this is going to make! France ain't got nothin' on New York women. Cie et la vie.....Au revior.....later buddy.

How a French Nobleman Got a Wife through the New York Herald Personal Columns 1904 (Part 2)

TigerRocket 2009-05-07 | August 26, 1904
Thomas A. Edison Manufacturing Co.

Here in part 2 we get to see just what this guy's made of. The French Nobleman takes a dive down the bluffs along the edge of the park, they won't follow you there, right? Not likely, this is a chase film and right now the standard is being set. Hey fella, you should be watching how these women handle the terrain. You can tell a lot from the athletic prowess someone will muster up when they're after something. In this case you!
[1:20] So what makes you think running through the thicket will stop them? Just look at those women smiling at the challenge. I hope they all know what poison oak looks like. [2:35] I don't think hopping that fence is going to put much space between you and them either. It's safe to assume that the director has a vision here.
Whew! Let's take a breather while the crew sets up and reloads for the next location. Meanwhile we can dig through our pockets for another 'Indian head.' We can't just move on to another moving picture without seeing the windup of this one. Well...maybe some people can but this is 1904, entertainment on film is still pretty new yet, and we still have a few years to go before actual ''photo plays'' or moving picture theatres become standard. Along with live stage this is very entertaining stuff at the moment.

How a French Nobleman Got a Wife through the New York Herald Personal Columns 1904 (Part 1)

TigerRocket 2009-05-06 | August 26, 1904
Thomas A. Edison Manufacturing Co.

Personal ''Young French Nobleman, recently arrived, desires to meet wealthy American girl, object, matrimony; will be at Grant's Tomb at 10 this morning, wearing boutonniere of violets.''

Our lead actor, his heart already on his sleeve, pins the identifying violets to his lapel, takes one last look in the mirror, checks the time and off he goes. [1:00] At the Grant Monument our dapper hero saunters about in anticipation of meeting a refined young lady in answer to his ad when lo and behold a buxom filly happens along and spots the violets next to his heart. Well! What a quick success he's had. Before long another woman appears upping the ante on our gentleman's good fortune! A third woman appears with her interest probably prompting the French Nobleman to think, ''Wow, this certainly is neat. What man could ask for more?'' Apparently not him. This man is about to find out just how large a single female readership the New York Journal has. Either this guy underestimated the size of New York's female population or he knows exactly what he's doing. Before long Mr. Nobleman is getting tired just greeting the 'bustling' responses! Oh oh! These modern women can get mighty feisty when there's only one item on the sales rack. [2:20] Maybe this is not such good fortune. On second thought maybe this getting a woman thing isn't so smooth like he thought. Single women in New York sure can be competitive. I don't think running away is going to solve your problem dude. Neither is doing a running pratfall [3:10]. Wow, just look at 'em go! These women are looking for a man and a man they're going to get. There's enough energy here to wear this guy down for two more reels at least! I hope your spats hold out. You still have to make it through another penny's worth of film viewing.

[2:35] GENERAL GRANT NATIONAL MONUMENT (Grant's Tomb) Monument near the intersection of Riverside Drive and West 122nd Street in Manhattan, the final resting place of Ulysses S. Grant (1822-1885) and his wife, Julia Dent Grant (1826-1902). The monument is a neoclassical granite structure 150 feet (forty-five meters) tall. Among its elaborate features are Doric columns, a domed rotunda, and allegorical relief sculptures symbolizing aspects of Grants life. On the exterior of the structure two figures representing victory and peace support Grants epitaph, ''Let Us Have Peace.'' The interior of the tomb is made of Lee and Carrara marble from Italy; within its center crypt are twin sarcophagi containing the remains of Grant and his wife. Grant is the only president buried in New York City, and his tomb is the second-largest mausoleum in the western hemisphere. - (excerpts) Frank Scaturro / Encyclopedia of New York City Edited by Kenneth T. Jackson

Reviewing the Texas at Grants Tomb 1898

TigerRocket 2009-05-05 | Sept. 3, 1898 Thomas A. Edison, Inc.
Paper Print Collection (Library of Congress)
Producer: James H. White
Camera: James Stuart Blackton (1875-1941) and / or Albert E. Smith

New York City welcome to Sampson's Fleet after the Battle of Santiago Bay, Cuba. The Battle of Santiago de Cuba, fought between Spain and the United States on July 3, 1898, was the largest naval engagement of the Spanish-American War and resulted in the destruction of the Spanish Caribbean Squadron (also known as the Flota de Ultramar).
The Texas (authorized by the U.S. Congress on 3 August 1886) had several unlucky incidents including but not limited to flooding of her gun deck and settling to the bottom at dock in New York and also receiving significant damage to her hull in dry-docking. During the period between her commissioning and the Spanish American War in 1898 she obtained a reputation as being a jinxed or unlucky ship and earned the nickname ''Old Hoodoo.''
- excerpt from wikipedia

U.S.S. TEXAS (1895-1911) later renamed San Marcos
The first Texas was laid down on 1 June 1889 at Portsmouth, Va., by the Norfolk Navy Yard; launched on 28 June 1892; sponsored by Miss Madge Houston Williams; and commissioned on 15 August 1895, Capt. Henry Glass in command.

Assigned to the North Atlantic Squadron, the warship cruised the eastern seaboard of the United States. In February 1897, she left the Atlantic for a brief cruise to the Gulf coast ports of Galveston and New Orleans. She resumed Atlantic coast duty in March of 1897 and remained so employed until the beginning of 1898. At that time, she visited Key West and the Dry Tortugas en route to Galveston for a return visit which she made in mid-February. Returning to the Atlantic via the Dry Tortugas in March, the warship arrived in Hampton Roads on the 24th and resumed normal duty with the North Atlantic Squadron.

Early in the spring, war between the United States and Spain erupted over conditions in Cuba and the supposed Spanish destruction of the battleship Maine in Havana harbor in February 1898. By 18 May, Texas was at Key West, Fla., readying to prosecute that war.

On the 21st, she arrived off Cienfuegos, Cuba, with the Flying Squadron to blockade the Cuban coast. After a return to Key West for coal, Texas arrived off Santiago de Cuba on the 27th. She patrolled off that port until 11 June on which day she made a reconnaissance mission to Guantanamo Bay. For the next five weeks, she patrolled between Santiago de Cuba and Guantanamo Bay. On 16 June, the warship joined Marblehead for a bombardment of the fort on Cayo del Tore in Guantanamo Bay. The two ships opened fire just after 1400 and ceased fire about an hour and 15 minutes later, having reduced the fort to impotency.

On 3 July, she was steaming off Santiago de Cuba when the Spanish Fleet under Admiral Cervera made a desperation attempt to escape past the American Fleet. Texas immediately took four of the enemy ships under fire. While the battleship's main battery pounded Vizcaya and Colon, her secondary battery joined Iowa and Gloucester in battering two torpedo-boat destroyers. The two Spanish destroyers fell out of the action quickly and beached themselves, heavily damaged. One by one, the larger enemy warships also succumbed to the combined fire of the American Fleet. Each, in turn, sheered off toward shore and beached herself. Thus, Texas and the other ships of the Flying Squadron annihilated the Spanish Fleet.

Source:
Naval History and Heritage Command
http://www.history.navy.mil/index.html

GENERAL GRANT NATIONAL MONUMENT (Grant's Tomb)
Monument near the intersection of Riverside Drive and West 122nd Street in Manhattan, the final resting place of Ulysses S. Grant (1822-1885) and his wife, Julia Dent Grant (1826-1902).
The monument is a neoclassical granite structure 150 feet (forty-five meters) tall. Among its elaborate features are Doric columns, a domed rotunda, and allegorical relief sculptures symbolizing aspects of Grants life. On the exterior of the structure two figures representing victory and peace support Grants epitaph, ''Let Us Have Peace.'' The interior of the tomb is made of Lee and Carrara marble from Italy; within its center crypt are twin sarcophagi containing the remains of Grant and his wife. Grant is the only president buried in New York City, and his tomb is the second-largest mausoleum in the western hemisphere.
- (excerpts) Frank Scaturro / Encyclopedia of New York City Edited by Kenneth T. Jackson

Here is a view of either the U.S.S. 'Iowa,' 'Indiana,' 'Massachusetts,' or 'Oregon,' also part of this same parade:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-DkORiUQgY8

Film from the Library of Congress

01/01/12 - 4,520

Coney Island, Luna Park by Night (excerpt) 1905

TigerRocket 2009-04-13 | Released June 29, 1905
Edison Manufacturing Co.
Directed by Edwin S. Porter

An excerpt from the four minute short ''Coney Island by Night.''

''Beside the million incandescent lamps which make the enclosure at nighttime the brightest spot on the whole terrestrial sphere, there is the Kaleidoscope Tower where 80,000 electric lights go through as many changes every second. These lights take the form of fifty different geometrical effects, which in turn go through 1,100 changes before they repeat. The tower is the only thing of its kind in existence, and is in many ways the most extraordinary electrical display ever made.''
- Luna Park souvenir program (Library of Congress)

''I have built Luna Park on a definite architectural plan, I have eliminated all classic, conventional forms in its structure, and taken a sort of free Renaissance and Oriental type for my model, using spires and minarets whenever I could. . . . . It is marvelous what you could do in the way of arousing human emotions by the use that you make, architecturally, of simple lines! Luna Park is built on that theory, and the result has proved the theory's truth.''
- Fred Thompson

"Do you know," he said, "I am deeply fascinated by all these toys. For, of course, you perceive that they are really enlarged toys. They reinforce me in my old opinion that humanity only needs to be provided for ten minutes with a few whirligigs and things of the sort, and it can forget at least four centuries of misery. I rejoice in these whirligigs," continued the stranger, eloquently, "and as I watch here and there a person going around and around or up and down, or over and over, I say to myself that whirligigs must be made in heaven.
-excerpt from 'Coney Island's Failing Days' by Stephen Crane

To visit Luna Park in broad daylight take a trip with Rube and Mandy: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3q7TI9ud6ro

Recommended reading:
The Kid of Coney Island / Fred Thompson and the Rise of American Amusements
- Woody Register
Coney Island / The People's Playground
- Michael Immerso

01/01/12 - 7,518

Skyscrapers of New York 1906 (Part 3)

TigerRocket 2009-03-26 | Photographed November 8, 14, and 15, 1906.
Location: 12th Street and Broadway & Studio
American Mutoscope and Biograph Company.
Producer: Fred A. Dobson

PART 3
ATOP THE SKYSCRAPER
THRILLING HAND-TO-HAND ENCOUNTER ON ONE OF THE HIGHEST BUILDINGS ERECTED IN NEW YORK
The wrongly accused foreman confronts the duped contractor and after a subdued but heated exchange a dangerously located fight ensues. Don't mess with a construction foreman Mr. Contractor, he works around steel beams all day. The foreman throws him a weak but cinematically effective beating dropping the guy over the side. ''Oh no..what have I done!?'' He seems to exclaim.....

RESCUE OF THE CONTRACTOR
As the contractor hangs on for dear life a couple of workmen save him from certain death.

THE CULPRIT EXPOSED
In court, the contractor presses his case against the wrong man. Is there no justice? ''Your Honor, he stole my plot devices and beat the daylights out of me! Left me hanging stories above certain death!''
Dago Pete bares false witness but in a sudden twist, the foreman's council presents the foreman's young precocious daughter who melodramatically points an accusing finger at Dago Pete. ''It was HIM yer honor!''
Foiled! The jig is up! The court officer grabs Pete and hauls him off to the clink, stage left.
The contractor seeks forgiveness as the foreman's wife talks sense into the guy, and as is true of all the wonders of early cinema, good always wins.

Recommended reading:
Celluloid Skyline / New York and the Movies - James Sanders

01/01/12 - 6,837

Skyscrapers of New York 1906 (Part 2)

TigerRocket 2009-03-26 | Photographed November 8, 14, and 15, 1906.
American Mutoscope and Biograph Company.
Location: 12th Street and Broadway & Studio
Producer: Fred A. Dobson

PART 2
DAGO PETE STARTS A FIGHT AND IS DISCHARGED
Here comes the protagonist administering an unprovoked attack, in front of witnesses no less. The foreman shows up and immediately sends Pete packing.

TO GET EVEN HE ROBS THE CONTRACTOR
No one is around. Dago Pete sneaks back onto the job site, now's his chance. He rifles through the contractors vest and jacket pockets taking the contractors watch and papers. What a rat!

HE RETURNS TO THE BUILDING AND ACCUSES THE FOREMAN OF THE THEFT
The day is done. The management crew gets ready to leave when Mr. Contractor discovers his papers have walked and his watch has flown! Dago Pete shows up just in time and sews the seed of discord. Ain't that guy not supposed to be here? What's his beef anyway? Besides getting canned for fighting I mean. What a liar! Just goes to show you can't trust a character named Dago. The gullible contractor tries to duke it out with the foreman, but others rightly intervene.

DAGO PETE SECRETES THE STOLEN PROPERTY IN THE HOME OF THE FOREMAN
Under some undefined pretext, Dago Pete shows up at the foreman's home. Mrs. Foreman and little daughter Foreman seem used to crew workers showing up. As Pete weaves his tale of deceit Mrs. Foreman takes the bait. She goes off to allow the plot complication to move along smoothly. Unnoticed by Pete, the foreman's daughter runs off only to hide behind a dividing screen.
Pete thinks he's alone, so he stashes the stolen goods behind a clock on the wall mantle. How slick. But Mr. Foreman's daughter is slicker. Her natural curiosity has her witness Pete's devious actions when she pops her head above the screen. Didn't her mother warn her about standing on that stool? S'pose there wouldn't be a story if she were a perfect little girl. Mrs. Foreman returns, handing Pete a package. He bids an incongruous adieu and leaves. As Mrs. F sees him off, daughter tells mother about the earlier part of the scene.

Part 3:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DDlnymPJRy8

Recommended reading:
Celluloid Skyline / New York and the Movies - James Sanders

01/01/12 - 6,821

Skyscrapers of New York 1906 (Part 1)

TigerRocket 2009-03-26 | Photographed November 8, 14, and 15, 1906.
American Mutoscope and Biograph Company.
Location: 12th Street and Broadway & Studio
Producer: Fred A. Dobson

ON THE HIGHEST ROOF IN NEW YORK WITH THE BIOGRAPH
Following ''The Tunnel Workers'' we offer a new sensational production in which the action takes place largely on the dizzy heights of the uppermost girder of a twenty-story skyscraper in the heart of New York. The building is said to be the highest in the city, and overlooks Union Square. In the distance are to be seen the Flatiron Building, the Times building and other modern marvels.
- Excerpt from the Biograph Bulletin No. 88, December 8, 1906.

PART 1
The first of three parts, this portion of film is almost entirely an actuality as it opens with a breathtaking panoramic shot of lower Manhattan overlooking Union Square Park. Park Avenue South comes into view just at the top in the distance [0:46]. The scene cuts to bricklayers busily plying their trade, a riveting team sew the buildings frame together, (the city's low skyline in this shot allows for an amazing view of the East River in the distance), iron workers pull a beam into place. The three minute work day is over and four crew members ride a crane hook for the camera and their union pride.

Part 2: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Qj3WWt2OIA

Recommended reading:
Celluloid Skyline / New York and the Movies - James Sanders

01/01/12 - 32,792

Cakewalk, Comedy, and Coney Island 1903

TigerRocket 2009-03-21 | 1903 American Mutoscope & Biograph Co.

This is an edit of three short films with the first two based on this popular dance of the Gilded Age. The third film starts with beach going couples performing the Cakewalk but quickly turns into a fun free-for-all in front of the camera.

[0:05] Cakewalk
[0:20] A Comedy Cakewalk
[0:43] Cakewalks and other antics on the beach at Coney Island

The dance was originally known as the Chalk Line Walk in 1850 in the southern plantations. It later became very popular from 1895-1905 as the Cakewalk with a resurgence around 1915. It originated in Florida danced by the African-American slaves who got the basic idea from the Seminole Indians (couples walking solemnly). Many of the special movements of the cake-walk, the bending back of the body, and the dropping of the hands at the wrists, amongst others, were a distinct feature in certain tribes of the African Kaffir dances. The African Ring Shout has a certain tie to this dance as well.
- streetswing.com

Here is a 1915 recording of 'Brooklyn Cakewalk' by Royal Military Band:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LYFuS8swIuI

01/01/12 - 3,274

Fireboat New Yorker answering an Alarm 1903

TigerRocket 2009-03-19 | May 20, 1903 Edison Manufacturing Co.
Camera: James Blair Smith

Put in service on February 1, 1891 as Engine Company 57, the ''New Yorker'' was stationed at the Battery near Castle Garden, where her crew lived aboard. She was 125 feet long, 25 feet abeam, with a tonnage of 243. The 800 horsepower triple expansion engine turned a single screw. With a total capacity of 13,000 gallons per minute from its Clapp & Jones and La France fire pumps, the "New Yorker" was the most powerful fireboat in the world.

The dock at which Company 57 was housed is seen at the end of the film 'Skyscrapers of New York City': http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZVXlQI00uyM

Greetings from New York City

TigerRocket 2009-03-19 | Saludos
Szia
Cumprimentos
Shalom
Grüße
Fáilte
Saluti
Kaixo
Yasou
Приветствия
Guten tag
Jambo
Mbote
Bonjour
Labdien
Groeten
Góðan daginn
Përshëndetje
Χαιρετισμοί
Hälsningar
تحيات
Hej
Oi
Howdy!
How ya doin'?
♥

'A Perilous Proceeding' - A moving picture by James Congdon for American Mutoscope and Biograph Company. Greetings from the corner of Broadway and 13th Street in New Yawk City, October 21, 1901

Wish You Were Here facebook.com/NYCISEE

Bronx Brooklyn Manhattan Staten Island Queens

مانهاتن
ברוקלין
แมนฮัตตัน
मेनहट्टन
העיר ניו-יורק
Бруклин
بروكلين

The Dandy Fifth, New York Dewey Parade 1899

TigerRocket 2009-03-18 | Filmed Sept. 30, 1899.
American Mutoscope and Biograph Company
Dewey Fifth Regiment of Baltimore homecoming land parade in New York City
Camera: Frederick S. Armitage

The admiral was still somewhat breathless as he summed up the event years later in his autobiography, ''Dewey arches, Dewey flags, and ''Welcome Dewey'' in electric lights on the span of the Brooklyn Bridge! The great city of New York made holiday,'' he wrote. ''Its crowds banked the piers, the roofs, and Riverside Drive when the Olympia, leading the North Atlantic Squadron, which was Santiago, proceeded up the North River, and they packed the streets for the land parade in token of public emotion. . . . In the presence of the spectacle, which was without equal, my emotion was indiscernible.''

5th Maryland, nicknamed ''The Dandy Fifth'' was formed in 1867. This 5th Maryland (there are several) traces its lineage back to the American Revolution.

From the Biograph picture catalogue:
Taken during the land parade in honor of Admiral Dewey, just before the turn into 72nd Street, with Grant's tomb and decorated residences in the background. This entire series of pictures [of the Dewey land parade] has a very high photographic quality, and the various organizations appear at their best.

New York Times, Wednesday, September 15, 1899
THE DEWEY PARADE ROUTE;
Protest of Citizens May Kill the Broadway Plan.
SOUSA'S OFFER OF HIS BAND
Frank Damrosch Wants Space for a Chorus of 2,500 Children -- More Military Commands Coming.
The Committee on Plan and Scope of the Dewey Executive Committee will meet today and decide, once for all, what shall be the route of the land parade on Sept. 30.

New York Times, Wednesday, September 16, 1899
NEW DEWEY PARADE ROUTE;
Procession to Follow Undeviating Course Down Fifth Avenue.
THE NUMBER IN LINE 34,000
Arrangements for the Pageants on the Water Complete -- Gen. Carroll Explains President's Attitude.
The Committee on Plan and Scope of the Dewey Executive Committee again changed the route of the land parade to be held on Sept. 30, so that now the column, instead of branching off from Fifth Avenue at Twenty-third Street and making its way to the point of dismissal will continue on in a straight line to the Washington Arch.
As finally decided upon the route is as follows: Down Riverside Drive from One Hundred and Twenty-second Street to Seventy-second Street, to Eighth Avenue, to Fifty-ninth Street, to Fifth Avenue, to the south side of Washington Square.

New York City in 1902:
January 8 Collision in the tunnel of the Grand Central, in Manhattan, in the morning, results in death of 40 persons, and injuries to 40 / January 24 Denmark sells Virgin Islands to U.S. / January 27 Dynamite in the Rapid Transit tunnel at Park Ave. and 41st. Manhattan, exploded, killing five men and damaging houses for blocks / February 6 Young Women's Hebrew Association organizes in New York City / March 18 Enrico Caruso becomes first well-known performer to make a record / May 2nd George Méliés releases 'A Trip To The Moon,' the first science fiction movie (available online) / The Flatiron Building, or Fuller Building is completed / May 5 Buffalo Bill is in town with his 'Wild West' show:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FuQjO6xLnOQ

01/01/12 - 1,376

Boarding School Girls Trip to Coney Island 1905

TigerRocket 2009-03-17 | Boarding School Girls Coney Island Outing
July-August 1905
Thomas Edison Manufacturing co.
Camera: Edwin S. Porter

BOARDING SCHOOL GIRLS
☛ [0:15] Miss Knapp's young ladies from the Select School are taking a trip to Coney Island. Here they come out of their Posh Brooklyn Brownstone dorm. Miss Knapp looks like she runs a tight ship. She's hired a charabang to get them there. Who ever would have thought that people getting into a vehicle could be entertaining? Look at the size of that thing, not to mention those dresses! Its like the ever classic 'Clown Car' in reverse. I'll bet all of those open parasols put some serious drag on that automobile.

☛ [1:40] Ahh! Here we are.....the main strip, Surf Avenue...Coney Island! The girls depart the tank like embroidered paratroopers.

DREAMLAND
☛ [2:35] OH! The sun and the salty air.....rented bathing suits, lots of sand, a sneaky prank, poor Miss Knapp. We should all go and get wet.....Hotcha.....''Sodom by the Sea''! And another edit takes us to.....

STEEPLECHASE PARK ''The Funny Place''
☛ [4:05] Some girls go for an exotic ride on a genuine Arabian camel. There goes Miss Knapp, performing her dour duty. Suddenly we're in William Reynolds's Dreamland. There's Henry Roltair's magnificent thirty foot tall bare breasted statue ''Creation'' which fronts the entrance to the show of the same name. The show consisted of life-sized moving multimedia dioramas presenting an edifying elocution of pertinent truth. ''Morally instructive and uplifting'' unlike the tawdry and far more popular thrill ride ''Trip to the Moon'' that Luna Park offers. After probably fidgeting and giggling through Miss Knapp's choice of fig leaf covered entertainment, the girls make a mad dash for some tawdry thrills as some of them brave a ''roll the barrel'' ride, one of Steeplechase Park's surefire lunch eliminators. Miss Knapp just can't keep up, and neither did the editor on this thing. A quick ham fisted splice of the bamboo Helter-Skelter and we're smack back in Steeplechase watching the race track. Here come the girls, two on a horse. There's Miss Knapp way behind. She certainly is consistent. Ghasp! Apparently ''side saddle'' was not permitted. Wow! Coney Island seems to have recognized woman's suffrage before everyone else! Bet that same move would've gotten any woman arrested in Central Park.

☛ [7:10] Meanwhile out of sequence and back on the sand the fair sex promenade on the beach without need of sun screen or leg shaving. Two fellas ever the Victorian Gentlemen, bring up the rear. These guys are waiting for the 1920s when women's bare legs will become an industry and permissible on the beach. The girls will have to wait till the 1930s before men can bare their chests!
In the meantime the only way to keep cool besides a swim was to ride something breezy like swing boats. Guaranteed to keep any chaperon at a frantic but safe distance. Those staid Victorian sensibilities ain't nothin' but trouble for a pack of teens. Not to worry though, because the 'Gilded Age' is drawing to a close and the Jazz Age will soon be here. The devil himself is gonna spin that "noise", raise those hems and help some of these young ladies skirt prohibition. Thank goodness.

Meet Me Tonight in Dreamland by Henry Burr 1910: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NAeMqGibd9g

01/01/12 - 5,606

Two A.M. in the Subway 1905

TigerRocket 2009-03-17 | 2 A.M. in the Subway
Filmed June 5, 1905
American Mutoscope and Biograph Company.
Camera: G.W. ''Billy'' Bitzer

Two A.M. in the Subway
As we peer into the Kinetoscope the stage is set to look like that new modern marvel the subway, as a cop and a conductor wait for their cues. A train door pulls in and a small party of inebriated friends step onto the platform. They must be painting the town red, but the cop is having none of it. They'll have to cut it out! As another train pulls in, a man they seem to know runs into them. He continues on to board the ride. Lucky for us voyeurs one of the girls in the party needs her shoelace done. Leg show time! Young 'Diamond Jim' to the rescue, anything for a glimpse of candy striped leg! She must be a Bowery G'hal to expose her shapely self like that. You guessed it...Mr. Officer maintains the Victorian Quality of Life! He sees to it that they get off of his stage and on to the train, but matters just get worse when suddenly a pair of risqué legs flop out of the cars windows! Oh precious sensibilities! Its a hoax!! Yuk-yuk-yuk...It was the guy with the package. Boy is the burlesque humor flying now!

Recommended reading:
Subway City / Riding the Trains, Reading New York
- Michael W. Brooks

01/01/12 - 3,542

A Wake in Hells Kitchen 1903

TigerRocket 2009-03-17 | Filmed July 26, 1900/1903?, on the roof of the Bronx Biograph studio.
American Mutoscope and Biograph Co.
Camera: Arthur W. Marvin

Another ethnic vaudeville routine as with the film ''A Gesture Fight in Hester Street,'' only this time it's the Irish slum in Hell's Kitchen. The neighborhood was home to Irish immigrants starting in the mid-nineteenth century. Like all other immigrant ethnicity, Irish stereotypes were a staple of the vaudeville stage, with the symbol of choice being a voracious appetite for drinking. Even the stiff in the box didn't get enough over a lifetime. Note the fellow playing the 'wife.' Guffaws of laughter! Of course anarchy ensues!

MAN: She thinks ''lettuce'' is a proposition!''

WOMAN: Someone is fooling with my knee.
MAN: It's me, and I'm not fooling!

WOMAN: I'm not married.
MAN: Any children?
WOMAN: I told you, I'm not married.
MAN: Answer my question!

WOMAN: He's the father of a baby boy but his wife doesn't know it yet.

From Biograph picture catalogue, Nov. 1902 [MI], p. 39:
This scene is laid in the parlor of a New York tenement. Two watchers at the wake are smoking and drinking, while the widow is weeping over the coffin. The attention of the three is distracted for an instant, and the supposed corpse rises up, drinks all the beer in the pitcher which is standing on a table nearby, and lies down in the coffin again. The mourners return, and seeing that the beer is gone, engage in a controversy over it. During the scrap the corpse jumps out of the coffin and takes part in the melee.

Hell's Kitchen, also known as Clinton and Midtown West, is a neighborhood of Manhattan in New York City that includes roughly the area between 34th Street and 59th Street, from 8th Avenue to the Hudson River. The southern part of Hell's Kitchen overlaps with the northern part of the 'Tenderloin' District (Chelsea). And speaking of Chelsea in the West Village, here's the "Tenderloin" at Night 1899: http://tinyurl.com/77uc4cw

Film from the Library of Congress

01/01/12 - 3,389

Tenderloin at Night 1899

TigerRocket 2009-03-17 | Filmed ca. June to September 1899, probably in West Orange, New Jersey.
Edison Manufacturing Co.
Production: James H. White

Let us take a trip from the 'Lights' to the 'Shadows,' and go 'slumming.' This bawdy crime vignette has all of the seedy charm of the 'Tenderloin' at night as a stranger enters a drinking house, let's call him ''Mark.'' He's heartily greeted by the other patrons, so he pulls out a gloating wad of cash and buys the house an impressive round. He quickly finds himself and his presidential pals the center of flirtatious attention. By way of diversion the flirty gal's man / beau / pimp, slips the guy a 'Mickey.' He drinks himself into a convenient stupor with each woman cleaning his pockets. One woman gives the audience a blue moment when she slips the cash in her shapely silk safe. The mark wakes up to find his gains gotten. Out numbered by the crooked locals, he finds himself ejected by the knowing proprietor and a conveniently available cop, leaving the house full of 'low lives' to celebrate their ill gotten gains. The babes burst into a brief can-can. More leg show! The victim returns with the law but the film ends as abruptly as the marks good time. -TR

The 'Tenderloin' is a district of Manhattan stretching from 23rd Street to 42nd Street between Fifth and Seventh Avenues. The area was a red light district, home to many of the city's Bordello's, gambling dens and drinking houses during the Gilded Age. Along with the rough and tumble Bowery, this is where one went if they were curious (and brave) enough to experience '''how the other half lives.'' The area, now known as Chelsea and the ''Garment District,'' was given the nickname ''Tenderloin'' by police inspector Alexander S. Williams (July 9, 1839-March 25, 1917). After years of working in districts with little action he received a transfer to the West 13th Street Station on September 30, 1876. When he was asked how he liked it he reportedly responded ''I like it fine. I have had chuck for a long time, and now I'm going to eat tenderloin.'' A tough no-nonsense cop with a liking for delivering a good beat down and accepting graft, he was infamously known as ''Clubber Williams.'' An investigation into corruption in 1894 by the Lexow Committee found that Williams was on the take, accepting money from many of the local dens of crime in exchange for looking the other way. He retired early with full pension. -TR

When the clock strikes two in the Tenderloin,
The wine and the wit are flowing high;
And every pretty girl that clinks a glass with you
Has a naughty little twinkle in her eye.

Your heart is as light as a butterfly,
Tho' your wife may be waiting up for you;
But you never borrow trouble in the tenderloin
In the morning when the clock strikes two.

(Chorus):
Lobsters! Rarebits! Plenty of Pilsener beer!
Plenty of girls to help you drink the best of cheer;
Dark girls, blonde girls, and never a one that's true;
You get them all in the Tenderloin when the clock strikes two.

"The main thoroughfare of the Tenderloin was Sixth Avenue. The flashiest of the dance halls, theaters and cafés prospered in the flare of gaslight along this sooty Rialto, shaken and begrimed as they were by the steam trains rumbling on the El overhead. The parlor houses, houses of assignation and hotels where no questions were asked and no luggage was required were shunted to the side streets bisecting Sixth Avenue. Sheltered mostly in brownstone houses, the bagnios were thickest on Twenty-fourth, Twenty-fifth, Thirty-first, Thirty-second, Thirty-fifth streets between Seventh and Fifth Avenues, thinning out as they approached the general respectability of Fifth."
-excerpts from 'Hell's Kitchen' / The Riotous Days of New York's West Side by Richard O'Connor

Recommended reading:
Low Life / Lures and Snares of Old New York - Luc Sante
All Around the Town / Murder, Scandal, Riot and Mayhem in Old New York - Herbert Asbury

Film from the Library of Congress

01/01/12 - 1,209

A Gesture Fight in Hester Street 1903

TigerRocket 2009-03-16 | Filmed June 8, 1900-1903? at the Biograph Studio in New York City.
American Mutoscope and Biograph Co.
Camera: Arthur W. Marvin

As seen on vaudeville stages all over America. Two Lower East Side Jewish characters duke it out over nothing. A hot babe walks by giving the suspender peddler the brush off. As he continues soliciting the woman, a pushcart peddler smacks into him and a fight naturally ensues. The local cop on the beat shows up stage left giving them both what for! The live version must have had lots of witty repartee and bad puns between the two protagonists I'm sure, and possibly a song or two.

SANDERSON: My friend has been elected mayor.
BOWMAN: Honestly?
SANDERSON: What does that matter?

DUMMY: My father killed a hundred men in the war.
VENTRILOQUIST: What was he...a Gunner?
DUMMY: Nope, a cook.

YOUNG MAN: I want to ask for the hand of your daughter in marriage.
OLD MAN: You're an idiot!
YOUNG MAN: I know it. But I didn't suppose you'd object to another one in the family.

From Biograph picture catalogue, Nov. 1902 [MI], p. 36:
A comical fight between two Hebrews: one a pushcart man, and the other a suspender peddler.
Opens on a street scene with a sidewalk and backdrop of storefronts, including a liquor store and pharmacy, apparently meant to represent Hester Street in New York City. A bearded, dark-haired street peddler in a long dark coat and hat hawks suspenders and perhaps neckties. A young woman in a long skirt and long-sleeved white blouse with a flowered hat walks quickly past, and the peddler turns to gesture angrily after her. Behind him enters another bearded peddler, also identified through his clothing as Jewish, and his pushcart. The cart bumps the first peddler, who turns and argues with the interloper. The argument escalates into a pushing match and then a brawl, with the men's hats knocked off and the pushcart turned over by their wrestling. A policeman enters and tries to break up the fight with his nightstick.

From the streets of the Lower East Side to the tenements of Hell's Kitchen on the West Side, stories of passion, booze and mayhem abound. Even the dead don't rest: http://tinyurl.com/7qtp5nl

Film from the Library of Congress

01/01/12 - 3,474

A Tough Dance (Apache Dance) 1902

TigerRocket 2009-03-14 | June 19, 1902.
American Mutoscope & Biograph Studios, Bronx, New York
Starring: Kid Foley and Sailor Lil
Camera: Robert K. Bonine

Kid Foley and Sailor Lil were the self professed ''tough dance'' champs of the Bowery in the early part of the twentieth century. This dance was also a popular vaudeville routine.
Seen here is the 'Bowery Waltz' or 'Apache Turn,' also known as the ''Apache Dance,'' ''Tough Dance,'' and ''Tough Dance at McGurk's.'' The dance reportedly has its origins in a street fight between two men and a woman. It took place in the ''Montmart section' of Paris outside of a night club indirectly responsible for the name ''Apache,'' pronounced 'ah-posh' or 'ah-po-shay.' A local Parisian gazette journalist wrote about the incident reporting that: ''The fury of a riotous incident (a fight) between two men and a women rose to the ferocity of savage Apache Indians in battle.''
The story of this fight was the seed of French underworld lore as the underworld clubs (''Caveau des innocents''), of nineteenth century Paris picked up on it.
The dance is very physical and rather passionate as the partners pantomime an escalating domestic fight. The spin in the dance is known as the 'Apache spin,' (a.k.a. the 'Texas Tommy' in Lindy Hop), and is an integral part as is the 'slow drag.' The pace starts slow working its way up to a violent frenzy, all the while alternating between a slow drunk dance and a wild domestic blowout, usually culminating with the woman feigning unconsciousness and being carried out. The interpretation is commonly based on one of two motifs: a low class drunken couple or a pimp and his whore.

''The dance is very brutal to the woman, and sometimes said to reenact a ''discussion'' between pimp and prostitute. It includes mock slaps and punches, the man picking up and throwing the woman to the ground, or lifting and carrying her while she struggles or feigns unconsciousness. In some examples, the woman may fight back.''
- excerpt from wikipedia

''Valse Chaloupee'' (or ''Apache Dance'') was first created in 1909 by Mistinguett with partner Max Dearly. Here is an example of the complete dance. A British Pathé film from 1934 featuring ''Alexis and Dorrano the celebrated Adagio Dancers in their famous 'Danse Apache,''' no doubt this kind of dancing leaves room for lots of interpretations:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s48wDOalMLw

(Thanks to Wallygreeninker for some of the information)

Bowery Waltz (Apache Dance) 1897

TigerRocket 2009-03-14 | September 24, 1897. Edison Manufacturing Co.
Performers: James T. Kelley, Dorothy Kent
Director: William Heise

James T. Kelly and Dorothy Kent of Waite's Comedy Company, perform the famous "Bowery Dance", actually a waltz. This waltz was often used as the start of the "Apache Dance" This dance was a popular vaudeville routine for many years. The dancers portray a couple of drunk low lives often found among the dives that used to be all over Hell's Kitchen, the Bowery and the Lower East Side of Manhattan. The origins of this particular dance has interesting roots back in nineteenth century Paris. See the information that accompanies the posted film ''A 'Tough' Dance 1902'' for a full description: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pnYXbn6h6pE&feature=channel_video_title
Apparently, Kelly and Kent were regular performers for the Chase Vaudeville Theater in New York, part of B.F. Keith's chain of American vaudeville theaters. Too bad this film isn't longer.

BOWERY WALTZ
(Lyrics: Charles H. Hoyt, Music: Percy Gaunt)
From the 1891 musical ''A Trip to Chinatown''

Oh! The night that I struck New York
I went out for a quiet walk
Folks who are ''on to'' the city say
Better by far that I took Broadway
But I was out to enjoy the sights
There was the Bow'ry ablaze with lights
I had one of the devil's own nights
I'll never go there any more.

Chorus:
The Bow'ry, the Bow'ry
They say such things and they do strange things,
On the Bow'ry! The Bow'ry!
I'll never go there any more.

I had walked but a block or two,
When up came a fellow and me he knew
Then a policeman came walking by
Chased him away and I asked him, ''Why?''
''Wasn't he pulling your leg?'' said he,
Said I, ''He never laid hands on me!''
''Get off the Bow'ry, you fool,'' said he
I'll never go there any more.

Struck a place that they called a ''dive''
I was in luck to get out alive
When the policeman heard my woes,
Saw my black eyes and my battered nose.
''You've been held up!'' said the ''copper'' fly,
''No, sir! But I've been knocked down!'' said I
Then he laughed, tho' I couldn't see why
I'll never go there any more.

Here's a 1916 Victor Record featuring a brief rendition as part of a medley: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n6d39adewVw

01/01/12 - 11,384

New York City Under Construction 1906

TigerRocket 2009-03-14 | ''It'll be a great place if they ever finish it.'' - O. Henry

This is a short excerpt taken from the 1906 crime melodrama ''The Skyscrapers of New York,'' also known as ''Skyscrapers'' by Fred A. Dobson. This was filmed on location at Broadway & 12th Street on November 8, 1906, with the 'indoor' scenes being filmed at the American Mutoscope & Biograph studio in the Bronx.

Synopsis:
A construction foreman fires a crew worker for fighting. The disgruntled worker steals from the contractor and frames the foreman in revenge.
Here's the whole sordid story in three parts:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M-QFGC0wi7c

Arrival of Immigrants - Ellis Island 1906

TigerRocket 2009-03-13 | Photographed April 27, 1906.
American Mutoscope and Biograph Company
Camera: G.W. ''Billy'' Bitzer

A view of hundreds of immigrants with their possessions. After processing the new citizens would board boats and ferries that would take them on the last leg of their long journeys to the Battery on Lower Manhattan. One third of all immigrant arrivals settled in or near New York. The rest made their ways to the rest of the country.
Ellis Island is in Upper New York Bay, near the coast of New Jersey. Named for Samuel Ellis, who acquired the island in 1785, it was purchased from his heirs in 1808 by the State of New York and turned over to the federal government.
-TR

"From 1892 to 1954, over twelve million immigrants entered the United States through the portal of Ellis Island, a small island in New York Harbor. While the new immigration station on Ellis Island was under construction, the Barge Office at the Battery was used for the processing of immigrants. The new structure on Ellis Island, built of 'Georgia pine' opened on January 1, 1892; Annie Moore, a 15 year-old Irish girl, accompanied by her two brothers entered history and a new country as she was the very first immigrant to be processed at Ellis Island on January 2." -Ellis Island Foundation "Ellis Island - History," www.ellisisland.org

Ellis Island Foundation "Ellis Island - History," www.ellisisland.org (accessed July 15, 2009)
New York City in 1906:
Joseph W. Stern published the first song by Irving Berlin (born Israel Baline), ''Sunny Marie from Sunny Italy.'' Berlin received 37¢ for the song. At the time he was a singing waiter at Mike Salter's Pelham Café (''Nigger Mike's'') on Pell Street / On June 25 a jealous Harry K. Thaw shot and killed Stanford White in the rooftop garden of Madison Square Garden. In 1901, White had been involved with Thaws wife, Evelyn Nesbitt, when she was a 16-year-old showgirl, years before she married Thaw / On June 30, Happyland amusement park opened at South Beach on Staten Island / For a few weeks in September, Ota Benga, a 23-year-old Pygmy from the Belgian Congo, was displayed in a cage at the Bronx Zoo. (Benga had been enslaved by villagers in the Congo; they sold him to a man who brought him to the 1904 St. Louis World's Fair for an anthropological exhibit. Outraged black clergy compelled William Hornaday, director of the zoo, to permit Benga to wander the grounds, though he continued to sleep in the primate house. Mercilessly harassed by the public, Benga was sent to an orphan asylum in Brooklyn and then to a seminary in Virginia, where he committed suicide in 1916 / The 69th Regiment Armory at 68 Lexington Avenue opened on October 13 / The 556-room Knickerbocker Hotel at Broadway and 42nd Street opened in October / The Rockaway Journal began publishing

01/01/12 - 6,866

Funeral of Hiram Cronk 1905

TigerRocket 2009-03-13 | Photographed May 17-18, 1905.
American Mutoscope and Biograph Company
Location: Brooklyn, New York, N.Y.
Camera: G.W. ''Billy'' Bitzer

Crowds of people line a thoroughfare in Brooklyn and watch a military procession. The march is lead by a full dress military band with only the drummer marking the pace [0:10]. Two uniformed riders lead a brigade of Rough Riders followed by Civil War dressed troops which accompany the horse drawn hearse baring the body of Hiram Cronk [1:40], and a long line of open carriages probably occupied by family, friends, and dignitaries [1:50]. This portion may be on the way to City Hall followed by film of the procession to the burial in Brooklyn. The segment takes up with soldiers baring shouldered arms [2:00]. The line of mounted riders driving the hearse comes to a rest as the marching procession continues with soldiers representing the War of 1812 coming into view before the film ends.
-TR

Hiram Cronk (April 29, 1800 - May 13, 1905) was thought to be the last surviving veteran of the War of 1812 at the time of his death. He died at his home in Ava, New York on May 13, 1905, and under the direction of the Board of Aldermen of the City of New York the body was taken to the city, where a military funeral was held before interment in Brooklyn's Greenwood Cemetery.
Born in Frankport, New York, Cronk enlisted with his father and two brothers on August 4, 1814. He served with the New York Volunteers in the defense of Sackett's Harbor, and was discharged November 16, 1814. For his service, he received a pension of $12 per month. In 1903, Congress increased it to $25 per month. He also received a special pension of $72 per month from the State of New York.
Cronk spent most of his life working as a shoemaker. He married Mary Thornton in 1825, with whom he had seven children. At the time of his death he had fourteen grandchildren and eight great-grandchildren.
When he died, his body was displayed in the main lobby of New York City Hall. An estimated 25,000 people paid their respects.
- excerpt from Wikipedia

http://www.newsday.com/community/guide/lihistory/ny-history-hs505b1v,0,1705477.story
This link which is from The Sunday Utica Journal, April 26, 1903, p. 6, is a fascinating account celebrating Hiram Cronk's 103rd birthday.

A collection of contemporary news clips: http://blog.genealogybank.com/last-veteran-of-the-war-of-1812-hiram-cronk-died-in-1905.html

New York City in 1905:
The first Carnegie Library in the Bronx, the Mott Haven branch, opened at 140th Street and Alexander Avenue. The Tremont and Kingsbridge branches also opened. In Queens another Carnegie, the Richmond Hill branch opened and the Port Richmond branch opened on Staten Island / August Belmont purchased the unfinished Steinway Tunnel (completed 1907) for $80,000. On December 22, Belmont acquired the Metropolitan Street Railway Company, eliminating another rival to his Interboro Rapid Transit Company. The Tribunes headline cried: ''Belmont Is Traction King; Belmont Now in Position to Sandbag City.'' / The first issue of Variety appeared on December 16 / ''Will You Love Me in December as You Do in May?'' lyrics by future mayor Jimmy Walker, was one of the year's hit songs

01/04/12 - 3,108

Departure of Robert Peary and the Roosevelt from New York 1905

TigerRocket 2009-03-12 | Photographed July 16, 1905.
American Mutoscope and Biograph Company
Location: Dock on Hudson River, New York, N.Y.
Camera: G.W. ''Billy'' Bitzer

The camera pans to show the schooner ''Roosevelt'' docked at a covered pier on the Hudson River on Manhattan's west side. Then, from a camera position on board, men in straw hats and fashionably dressed ladies are seen boarding the ship [1:20]. Next, the famous polar explorer Rear Admiral Robert Peary appears on the gangway in a dark jacket, mustache and straw hat [2:29]. He tips his hat, consults his watch, then, just before the film ends, motions to order the departure. On this expedition he achieved the ''farthest north'' record, but failed to reach the North Pole. Completed only four months prior to this film, the ''Roosevelt'' was specially designed to withstand Arctic ice. She was 184 feet long, 35 and a half feet wide, with a hull over two and a half feet thick. Fully loaded the ship weighed 1,500 tons while drawing only 16.2 feet. In addition to sail power, the ship was driven by a 1000 horsepower steam engine, which could produce short bursts of even greater power to get the ship through thick ice. The ''Roosevelt'' served Peary on this expedition as well as the following one in 1908-1909. Sold numerous times to a variety of commercial concerns, the ''Roosevelt'' was abandoned to the elements on a mud flat in Cristobal, Panama in 1937, where she eventually rotted away.

Robert Edwin Peary (May 6, 1856 February 20, 1920) was an American explorer who claimed to have been the first person, on April 6, 1909, to reach the geographic North Pole. Peary's claim was widely credited for most of the 20th century, though it was criticized even in its own day and is today widely doubted.

THE 1905-06 EXPEDITION
Peary's next expedition was supported by a $50,000 gift by George Crocker. Peary then used the money for a new ship. Peary's new ship Roosevelt battled its way through the ice between Greenland and Ellesmere Island to an American hemisphere farthest north by ship. The 1906 ''Peary System'' dogsled drive for the pole across the rough sea ice of the Arctic Ocean started from the north tip of Ellesmere at 83° north latitude. The parties made well under 10 miles (16 km) a day until they became separated by a storm, so Peary was inadvertently without a companion sufficiently trained in navigation to verify his account from that point northward. With insufficient food and with the negotiability of the ice between himself and land an uncertain factor, he made the best dash he could and barely escaped with his life off the melting ice. On April 20th, he was no further north than 86°30' latitude yet he claimed to have the next day achieved a Farthest North world record at 87°06' and returned to 86°30' without camping, an implied trip of at least 72 nautical miles (83 statute miles) between sleeps, even assuming undetoured travel.
After returning to the Roosevelt in May, Peary in June began weeks of further agonizing travel by heading west along the shore of Ellesmere, discovering Cape Colgate, from the summit of which he claimed in his 1907 publications he had seen a previously undiscovered far-north ''Crocker Land'' to the northwest on June 24th of 1906. Yet his diary for this time and place says ''No land visible'' and Crocker Land was in 1914 found to be non-existent by Donald MacMillan and Fitzhugh Green. On December 15, 1906 the National Geographic Society, which was primarily known for publishing a popular magazine, certified Peary's 1905-6 expedition and Farthest with its highest honor, the Hubbard Gold Medal; no major professional geographical society followed suit.
- excerpt from wikipedia

''The Roosevelt embodies all that a most careful study of previous polar ships and my own years of personal experience could suggest. With the sturdiness of a battleship and the shapely lines of a Maine-built schooner, I regard her the fittest icefighter afloat. As I write these lines, I see her slowly but surely forcing a way through the crowding ice. I see the black hull hove out bodily onto the surface of the ice by a cataclysm of the great floes. I see her squeezed as by a giant's hand against a rocky shore till every rib and timber is vocal with the strain. And I see her out in the North Atlantic lying to for days through a wild autumn northeaster, rudderless, with damaged propeller, and shattered stern post, a scrap of double reefed foresail keeping her up to the wind, riding the huge waves like a seagull till they are tired out.''
- Robert Peary, Secrets of Polar Travel
(New York: The Century Co. 1917) p.28-31.

Recommended reading:
The Rise of New York Port 1815-1860
- Robert Greenhalgh Albion
(This book is unsurpassed for a study of New York's history as a port city in the first half of the nineteenth century)

Film from the Library of Congress

01/04/12 - 3,622

New York City Fire Department, Annual Parade 1904

TigerRocket 2009-03-11 | Filmed May 14, 1904. Thomas A. Edison, Inc.
Camera: Edwin S. Porter

The opening begins with some dignitaries arriving in a horse drawn brougham to view the parade. This brief clip displays all of the elements of a complete fire house unit in the early twentieth century. A dignified line of mounted firemen lead a portion of the march [0:20] followed by a marching band of uniformed fire officers, carrying the Fireman's Trumpet sometimes know as a "speaking trumpet." These were given to fire chiefs, foremen, and assistant foremen [0:50]. The line of march is interspersed with firefighters carrying various pieces of equipment, the marchers baring hoses, a rescue trampoline, a horse drawn pump, a hose wagon. At 2:30 there's a hook-and-ladder, fully equipped, as the combination of horse drawn vehicles repeat with an ambulance at 3:50. As the line continues past, there's a brass band with drummers leading flag bearers holding an American flag and the fire department insignia together [4:18]. A good view of a contemporary hook-and-ladder as the film finishes with gas powered vehicles. The last is possibly a fire chief's car. Although gas powered vehicles were now a part of daily life, horses would still remain a part of the urban scene in other working capacities for at least another 30 years.
In 1898 all of the city's volunteer fire departments were replaced by the paid FDNY. Consolidation also replaced the Board of Fire Commissioners with a single commissioner, John J. Scannell, head of the Board since 1894, who was appointed by Mayor R.A. Van Wyck. All together New York, Brooklyn, and Long Island had 121 engines, 46 trucks, one horse wagon, and a water tower; in all, there were 309 square miles of firefighting territory. New York was the second largest city after London with 3.4 million people and a growing number of tall buildings. -TR

New York in 1904:
On June 15, the steamboat 'General Slocum' caught fire in the East River; 1,021 passengers perished, most of them women and children attending the annual Sunday school picnic of St. Marks German Lutheran Church (6th Street east of Second Avenue). Due to lack of inspection the cork life jackets broke apart, and the crew could not lower the lifeboats because the pulleys were rusted through. Captain William Van Schaick finally beached the vessel on North Brother Island. Van Schaick was sentenced to 10 years in Sing Sing; President William Howard Taft pardoned the captain after he had served three and a half years. The Knickerbocker Steamship Company escaped punishment. On the first anniversary of the tragedy, 10,000 witnessed the dedication of a monument for the 61 unidentified victims buried in Lutheran Cemetery. In September 1906 a monument was dedicated in Tompkins Square Park on the Lower East Side. The inscription read: ''They were the earths purest children, young and fair.'' / William H. Reynolds opened Dreamland across from Luna Park on Surf Avenue. The most lavish of Coney Island's amusement parks. It featured a million lights; 100,000 bulbs illuminated a 375-foot tower / New York City's first subway, the IRT opened on October 27. Mayor McClellan took the controls for the inaugural run, racing from City Hall to Harlem in 15 minutes. The first section in The Bronx opened to 180th Street, over the old Third Avenue El, on November 26 / The Hotel Astor opened in Times Square / In October, William K. Vanderbilt and the Long Island Automobile Club initiated the Vanderbilt Cup Race in Nassau County / George M. Cohan's 'Little Johnny Jones' opened at the Liberty Theater, introducing the song ''Give My Regards to Broadway''

Here's a related film of an FDNY parade from 1903:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q5T0whZxSvM

From the New York Times, June 1904, 'The Great Fires of Record': http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive-free/pdf?res=9804EFDE113DE633A25755C1A9609C946597D6CF

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Auto Boat Race On the Hudson 1904

TigerRocket 2009-03-10 | June 23-25, 1904. Thomas A. Edison, Inc.
Columbia Yacht Club on the Hudson River, West 86th Street, New York City
Cameraman: G.W. Bitzer

1904 APBA Gold Cup [first running]
The cameras point of view is likely from the judge's stand, possibly from a yacht club basin or yacht mooring on or near West 86th Street. The race is between small, motor-driven speed boats, which were approximately twenty feet long with the inboard engine decked over. Participants in the race were W. K. Vanderbilt, Jr.'s Hard Boiled Egg; The Standard, which won the championship and had never been beaten; the Vingt et Un; the F.I.A.T.; the Shooting Star; the Japansky, the Kotic, and the Nada.

''A new record for power boat racing in America was established yesterday, when in a thirty-two-mile race on the Hudson River the 100 horse-power auto boat Standard, fifty-nine feet in length, covered the course at an average of 19.67 nautical miles an hour, or 22.57 statute miles. The Standard covered the entire distance in 1:37:48. Her time is barely one-third of a mile less than was done by H. H. Rogers's fast steam yacht Kanawha last Saturday when she won the Lysistrata Cup.''
- Excerpt transcribed from the New York Times - June 24, 1904, p. 7

''The old Columbia Yacht Club staged a race on the Hudson River in June of 1904 which they called the Gold Cup. Three boats entered the race: Water Lily, Fiat l and Standard, which was driven by her co-owner Carl C. Riotte. Standard outdistanced her two opponents and averaged 23.613 m.p.h. in the best 32-mile heat then captured the race with an average speed of 23.160 m.p.h.!''
- Taken from Roostertails Unlimited: [1973] Chapter 2 - A Little History

An additional sports actuality of wrestling in turn-of-the-century NYC: http://tinyurl.com/6obl2og

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Madison Square Garden Automobile Parade 1899

TigerRocket 2009-03-09 | Feb. 6, 1900. Thomas A. Edison, Inc.
Madison Avenue & 26th Street

The New York Auto Show (now the New York International Auto Show) began in Madison Square Garden in the 19th century as ''The Bicycle and Automobile Show.'' It remains one of New York's longest running shows.

New York Times / January 22, 1899
THE BICYCLE AND AUTOMOBILE SHOW.
CONTRARY to the prediction of many prominent people in the bicycle trade, Madison Square Garden was, last evening, again thrown open to the public with a most cordial invitation to come and witness the grandest show, both of bicycles and automobiles, that has ever been held in this and perhaps in any other country.

A carriage without a horse? I Just Don't Know.....
On October 30, 1900 the first modern automotive show opens at Madison Square Garden in New York City. This was neither the first auto show in the United States nor the first at Madison Square Garden, but it was the beginning of car shows as we know them today. It was a week long event sponsored by the newly formed Automobile Club of America. The price of admission to the show was 50¢. Thirty-one vehicles were exhibited by sixty-six exhibitors. Among them were Ford, King, Winton, Olds, Daimler, McKay, Chrysler, Riker, and the long forgotten Werton. Included in the exhibition space were accessories and working displays which showed acceleration and braking, as well as a ramp to show hill climbing abilities. Many of the cars at the show were electric or steam powered. Gas fueled vehicles would have to wait until 1901 when new oil fields in Texas would make liquid fuel affordable.
Ransom Eli Olds was the first to operate assembly line production of an automobile called the ''Runabout.'' Between 1897 and 1901 the Olds Motor Company of Lansing, Michigan produced 425 automobiles. Between 1901 and 1907 the Runabout, also known as the ''Curved Dash'' sold for $650. Oldsmobile was sold to General Motors in 1908.

"in 1899 ninety percent of New York City's taxi cabs were electric vehicles": http://www.todayifoundout.com/index.php/2011/04/in-1899-ninety-percent-of-new-york-citys-taxi-cabs-were-electric-vehicles

New York Times, Sept. 14, 1899, 'Fatally Hurt By Automobile': http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive-free/pdf?res=9C05E0DC173DE433A25757C1A96F9C94689ED7CF

In 1901 New York becomes the first state requiring auto license plates. The fee is $1.

Arthur Collins and Byron Harlan sing 'Out In An Automobile' 1906: http://youtu.be/u-xhjWG0-ec?t=1m10s

Billy Murray sings The Little Ford Rambled Right Along 1915
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oPwqJ8DutsM

Jack Dalton and The 7 Blue Babies - I'm wild About Horns On An Automobile 1928:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=endscreen&NR=1&v=Y8VuAg66pXk

Véhicules électriques et hybrides : infos et actus d'experts de l'Avere-France - association professionnelle pour le développement du transport et de la mobilité électriques.

01/01/12 - 7,720

Shooting the Chutes, Sea Lion Park, Coney Island 1896

TigerRocket 2009-03-09 | Filmed June 18-23, 1896. Edison Manufacturing Co.
Filmmakers: William Heise and James White (for Raff & Gammon)*

A lively scene on the famous water chutes on Bergen Beach at Coney Island. This is the original Shoot-the-Chutes designed and built by Captain Boyton. He was inspired, by the Midway attractions at Chicago's Columbian Exposition of 1893. Boyton surrounded his ''King of All Amusements'' with other rides on Coney Island and in 1895 opened Sea Lion Park, the worlds first enclosed outdoor amusement park, followed by George C. Tilyou and Steeplechase Park in 1897. Steeplechase has become the template for amusements parks since. Boyton would eventually lease his park to Fred Thompson and Elmer Dundy who would replace everything except for the Shoot-the-Chutes. They opened Luna Park on May 16, 1903 and quickly became one of the most successful amusement playgrounds that Coney Island would have. -TR

There's the Bow'ry boys with Nellie,
and the East Side girls in style.
the girls from up in Harlem, too,
and Johnny with his smile,
the merry-go-rounds and coasters
are crowded all the while,
With future wives and husbands,
down in Coney Isle.
- 'Down in Coney Isle' by Charley Fremont 1895

Captain Paul Boyton was the man who pulled Steve Brody out of the East River after Brody allegedly leaped from the Brooklyn Bridge on a dare in 1886. A fascinating character and an important story in the lore of 19th century New York. Here's the story as reported in the New York Times July 24, 1886: http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive-free/pdf?res=F30B13FB3B5410738DDDAD0A94DF405B8684F0D3

See the 3 part film 'Rube and Mandy Visit Coney Island' for some great views of Steeplechase and Luna during its first few months of operation in 1903.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3q7TI9ud6ro

* Frank R. Gammon and Norman C. Raff were promoters and distributors for Thomas Edison's Vitascope.

01/04/12 - 3,367

Children in the Surf, Coney Island 1904

TigerRocket 2009-03-09 | Also known as 'Orphans in the Surf'
Filmed August 3, 1904 at Coney Island's Sea Gate in Brooklyn, N.Y.
American Mutoscope & Biograph Company
Cameraman: Alfred C. Abadie

Ring-around-the-rosie
Young children wade and play in the surf at Sea Gate in Coney Island as some women swim in the distance. A jump cut [2:40] shows a toddler as he moves for the camera holding a cricket paddle. A moment later a man fetches the paddle out of the water, leaving the boy with a toy boat with which to play. He seems more interested in the real schooner sailing far out in the distance, but only momentarily. He'd rather be back on the beach with everyone else. After a few more attempts at making him a star the boy picks up the toy and leaves.

By the sea, by the sea, by the beautiful sea!
You and I, you and I, oh how happy we'll be!
When each wave comes a-rolling in
We will duck or swim,
And we'll float and fool around the water.
Over and under, and then up for air,
Pa is rich, Ma is rich, so now what do we care?
I love to be beside your side, beside the sea,
Beside the seaside, by the beautiful sea!
- By the Beautiful Sea (Harold Atteridge / Harry Carroll) (1914)

By The Beautiful Sea / Billy Murray and the Heidelberg Quintet 1914: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PflIYLA9Fe8

Blitz & Blatz at the Seashore - Duprez and Roberts (1909)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d_KeBsMpTbw&feature=related

01/01/12 - 3,061

Rube and Mandy Visit Coney Island (Part 3)

TigerRocket 2009-03-07 | August 13 1903. Edison Manufacturing Co.
Filmed at Coney Island and Edison's 21st Street studio in New York, New York
Direction & cinematography by Edwin S. Porter

August in New York is always hot, making the water rides like 'Shoot the Chutes' one of the more popular rides at Coney.
For those who like their water rides a bit more subdued there's always the canal [1:00]. And for folks who like a good pile-up, a swift slide down the bamboo 'Helter Skelter' is a good way to meet others.
Then there's the Honky-Tonk of the Bowery! [1:35] The Barkers on the Midway like it when people get together too! The ballyhoo never stops. ''Step right this way and see 'Little Egypt' do an exotic belly dance! She learned her gyrations well from years of handing snakes...Gentlemen step right this way! Only 10¢, Step right this way!'' Rube thinks the invite enticing but Mandy doesn't think so. Feats of strength, that's the deal [2:10]. ''Knock it hard and bang the gong. Show 'em what ya got! Win a Cee-Garrr!'' Mandy has more than Rube in the muscle department. If she didn't then he'd be watching an edifying belly dance right now. She also has better coordination too! BANG! 400! Not enough for a cigar though. Rube can barely lift the mallet, so he gives it a reluctant but valiant try anyway. SWISH KLUNK! Must have been the beer we didn't see him consume. They both seem a little inebriated. All of the excitement has these two hungry for something to eat and nothing's better than a couple of frankfurters...Hot Dogs...Red Hots...Coney Island Caviar! What a Gal! What a Rube! What a day!

Let's stick around for sundown. Maybe set on the sand for a while. If you haven't seen many electric lights before, you're in for a treat! http://tinyurl.com/c2v5t5k

Recommended reading:
Coney Island / The Peoples Playground - Michael Immerso

01/04/12 - 1,236

Rube and Mandy Visit Coney Island (Part 2)

TigerRocket 2009-03-06 | August 13 1903. Edison Manufacturing Co.
Filmed at Coney Island and Edison's 21st Street studio in New York, New York
Direction & cinematography by Edwin S. Porter

The scene opens with a nice panoramic sweep of Luna Park next door to Steeplechase where at 0:24 we see the 'Electric Tower' before the 'Shoot-the-Chutes': http://tinyurl.com/7y49mch followed by a view of the miniature train coming out of the tunnel loaded with passengers.
Our hero and heroine appear on the grounds as they decide what to do next. A really short ride on an Arabian camel and another royal dismount! [1:29] Along the Court of Honor they stop at Professor Wormwood's Monkey Theatre, where we see the man himself engaged in attracting prospective patrons with his trained dogs. Rube misbehaves; he just cant seem to keep from agitating Professor Wormwood. ''Hey, don't touch the dog!'' Smack! ''Let's get out of here!''

A recording of 'Cumming's Indian Congress at Coney Island, ca. 1903:
http://tinyurl.com/825hn98

Rube and Mandy Visit Coney Island (Part 3)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P0MYfUfhi6s

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