Manny's Music Closes...Music Row to Follow

I guess it's appropriate.  Just as Times Square suffers a kind of stroke that paralyzes half of its traffic, Manny's Music, one of the most legendary stores in the city, shuts its doors.

NYC Decade by Decade--1690-1691...Burning Bowels and a Pirate Populace

The decade opened with Jacob Leisler and his supporters in control of the city, but in 1691, William and Mary (whose sovereignty Leisler was defending) ordered his arrest.  Leisler barricaded himself inside the fort with troops, but surrendered after six weeks of intermittent gunfire.  Eight were sentenced to die in the following manner: "hanged by the Neck and being Alive their bodys be Cutt Downe to the Earth that their Bowells be taken out and they being Alive burnt before their faces that their heads shall be struck off and their Bodys Cutt in four parts and which shall be Desposed of as their Majesties shall Assigne."  This execution divided the populace for decades.  Leisler's head was sewn back on and he was buried with fanfare twice.  Relics survived and were venerated as pieces of a Protestant martyr.

Leisler's anti-Catholicism was pervasive and papal supporters remained unwelcome in the city during this decade.  By 1700 there were less than twelve Catholics living here and residents were fined two hundred pounds for harboring a priest.  Pirates, on the other hand, had carte blanche.  In the 1690's, the town was crawling with them.  Both Britain and France, now at war, hired privateers to support their navies by attacking their enemy's.  This was so lucrative that many captains simply turned pirate and attacked ships indiscriminately. 

Many of New York's leading figures financed these excursions and the governor allowed pirates to enter the harbor without fear of arrest.  The city profited with an annual income of 100,000 pounds.  The city's most famous pirate, William Kidd, who provided block and tackle to hoist the stones for Trinity Church, was deserted by his supporters and hanged in London ten years after Leisler's grisly death.

ALSO DURING THIS DECADE:

1693:  William Bradford, a thirty-year-old from Philadelphia becomes the official printer for New York.  His shop is set up on Dock Street where he prints the city's first book--a testimonial of the governor's wartime adventures. 

1693:  Frederick Philipse builds the first bridge connecting Manhattan to the mainland.  Kings Bridge operates as a toll bridge crossing the Spuyten Duyvill Creek at the top of Manhattan. 

1693-1696:  Wall Street becomes a significant center of commercial activity--it becomes the first to be permanently paved; a wharf is built at its eastern end; and the new City Hall is built at its intersection with Broad.

1696:  The first coffeehouse opens in New York and by 1699 hosts the city's first amateur theatricals.

1697:  The city requires all houses to hang a light on a pole from an upper window.  (It's no Times Square, but it's a start.)

1698:  The first Trinity Church opens at Broadway and Wall.  William Vesey is the first rector.  (Today Vesey and Rector Streets run alongside St. Paul's and Trinity respectively.)

1699:  The last of the Wall is torn down.

Sources:  Gotham by Edwin G. Burrows and Mike Wallace; Manhattan in Maps by Robert T. Augustyn and Paul E. Cohen; The Historical Atlas of New York City by Eric Homberger; New York:  An Illustrated History by Ric Burns and James Sanders, with Lisa Ades; The Island at the Center of the World by Russell Shorto; and the Blue Guide New York by Carol von Pressentin Wright, Stuart Miller, and Sharon Seitz.

The Times Square Experiment...The Crossroad of the World?

All of the talk about banning traffic in one of the busiest parts of the city, is finally being tried.  (Or half tried:  Seventh Avenue is still open.)  Broadway between 47th and 42nd is now a pedestrian zone.  

Read the New York Magazine article about the closures in Times and Herald Squares and about Janette Sadik-Kahn, the city's transportation commissioner.

The new furniture for the street has obviously not arrived yet.  I think the temporary arrangement is a rather low class affair--Times Square shouldn't resemble a tail gate party or a backyard barbecue. 

I also found it rather difficult to weave through all of the people sitting in the middle of the street.  Part of this whole idea was to ease sidewalk congestion, but it now looks like we're going to be forced to navigate between pods of people resting between their fried shrimp at Bubba Gump's and their Planet Hollywood shopping sprees. 

The new traffic patterns are hard to photograph.  Seventh Avenue now cuts a giant swath through the square.  Previous concrete islands have been chopped up and replaced with peculiar turn-only lanes.

 

It is a radically altered public space.

 

Only one avenue of traffic driving through Times Square?

 

Can't really call it the Crossroads of the World any more, can you?

 

As usual, Einstein says it best:

Hudson Heights, Part Five: Mr. Robert's Neighborhood

Every other Monday we'll be posting the newest byte in our walk through Hudson Heights, my neighborhood in Upstate Manhattan, the stretch on the western ridge between the GW Bridge and the Cloisters.  This is the fifth installment, a more personal byte, which deals with my dry cleaner and the baristas in my apartment.  Enjoy!

This byte was directed by Marc Wolf (who has appeared in several of the Little Byte videos).  Berda Gilmore played the barista, Susan Burns played the pub crawler, and Jessica, my dry cleaner, appeared as herself.

Susan Burns is a comic and a founding member of the Seaside Shakespeare Festival in Nantucket. 

Berda Gilmore recently moved to Los Angeles from New York City where she worked and studied as an actress. Berda is having such a good time on the West Coast that she has been chronicling her adventures on her hugely popular website www.berdagilmore.com.

Marc Wolf recently performed the world premiere of his new solo-show The Road Home: Re-Membering America at Huntington Theatre and Geva Theatre, directed by David Schweizer.  He received an OBIE and was nominated for the Drama Desk and Outer Critics Circle Awards for his brilliant Off-Broadway performance of Another American: Asking and Telling at The New Group, directed by Joe Mantello.  www.marcwolf.com

HUDSON HEIGHTS CALENDAR

The Bridge (now playing)

The People (now playing)

The Revolution (now playing)

The Apartments (now playing)

The Barista (now playing)

6/8--The Saint

6/22--The Soldier

7/6--The Park

7/20--The Cloisters

8/3--The Sculptor

New York City Decade by Decade--1680-1689...The Big Orange (?) and Jacob Leisler

Remember:  New Amsterdam was New Amsterdam until the 1660's when it was renamed New York after the brother of the king of England.  There was a hiccup  in the 1670's when the city was briefly recaptured by the Dutch and renamed New Orange (after Prince William of Orange) before being restored to the English and renamed New York yet again.

Now, in the 1680's, the hiccup took place overseas when the Duke of York, who had become king, was forced to abdicate during the Glorious Revolution to...(Drumroll, please)... WILLIAM OF ORANGE!!  In 1688, William and Mary rode triumphantly into London, meaning that the man whose name was given to the city took the crown from the other man whose name was given to the city.  This time, however, New York remained New York (which allowed future residents to brand it the Big Apple, which probably would not have happened if the city was called New Orange).

What did this mean politically?  Let's backtrack.  In 1685, Charles II died and James II ascended to the throne.  It was reasonable to think that this was good news for the city--it meant that New York was no longer a proprietary territory run by a duke but now a king's colony.  James, however, was interested in amalgamating all of the colonies east of the Delaware River, from New Jersey to Massachusetts while residents of New York were interested in remaining separate from their neighbors.

Furthermore, there wasn't much trust in this Catholic king.  From The Island at the Center of the World:  "...the rule of James II began to fall apart almost at once.  Thanks to his conversion to Roman Catholicism years before, English leaders and much of the population suspected him of being a Popish puppet; real resistance mounted when he installed Catholics in important offices.  When it got out that the queen was pregnant--meaning that a Catholic line was in the making--James's rule teetered."

James II fled in 1689 and William and Mary became king and queen whose new alliances created instability on this side of the Atlantic.  Catholic France was once again an enemy of Protestant England.  There were rumors of an attack on New York by Quebec.  Militias began to fortify the city in preparation for war.  From Gotham:  "...more rumors began to fly around town--that Nicholson, Irish Roman Catholics (including former governor Dongan), renegade Jacobites (supporters of the deposed king), the French, and Iroquois befriended by Andros were planning to seize the city for James II."

In 1689, in the midst of all this confusion, with the English governor refusing to acknowledge William and Mary, Jacob Leisler, one of the militia leaders and one of the richest men in New York, took over Fort James for the new king of England, William of Orange.  From Gotham:  "Leisler's goal in the summer of 1689 was to hold New York for his new sovereigns against the 'Popish Doggs & Divells,' foreign and domestic, who threatened it."

But Leisler's move and subsequent leadership soon polarized the city along class lines.  Pro and anti-Leislerians would be divided for the next several decades--was his action patriotic duty or the inciting of a People's Revolution?  Was Leisler a democratic martyr or a dangerous anti-Catholic rabble rouser?  A saint or a traitor?  William and Mary would be persuaded to remove Leisler two years later.  Check in next week for details on one of the grisliest executions in the city's history.

ALSO DURING THIS DECADE:

1682:  Philadelphia, William Penn's City of Brotherly Love, is founded in nearby Pennsylvania.  By the end of the decade, Philadelphia's population (4000) will equal New York's.  (Game on.)

1682:  A Jewish cemetery is established north of the city.  A corner of this cemetery is one of the only remnants from seventeenth-century Manhattan that can still be visited.  (You can peek at it through a fence behind a tenement off Chatham Square in Chinatown.)

1683:  At the beginning of Colonel Thomas Dongan's governorship, elections are held for the city's first representative assembly.  Dongan also divides the area into twelve counties which can still be seen today, among them:  New York County (Manhattan); Kings County (Brooklyn, the Dutch villages of western Long Island); Richmond County (Staten Island); and Queens County (Queens, the English villages of western Long Island).

1683:  Dongan (a Catholic) appointed by James II (a Catholic) introduces Catholicism to the city.  The first mass is held in New York on October 30th.

1684:  The first transportation strike takes place when cartmen refuse to volunteer their services for mandatory deliveries to the fort.  The strike is broken and the cartmen (who are mainly Dutch) are fined by the English governor.

1688:  A street is laid out along the wall erected in 1653.  The wall will be torn down in the next decade but the street will be known as Wall Street for centuries.

Also:  Park Row is created, driven through the Town Common during one of Governor Dongan's land grabs; Manhattan Indians are now referred to in the past tense since those remaining have moved to the Bronx.

Sources:  Gotham by Edwin G. Burrows and Mike Wallace; Manhattan in Maps by Robert T. Augustyn and Paul E. Cohen; The Historical Atlas of New York City by Eric Homberger; New York:  An Illustrated History by Ric Burns and James Sanders, with Lisa Ades; The Island at the Center of the World by Russell Shorto; and the Blue Guide New York by Carol von Pressentin Wright, Stuart Miller, and Sharon Seitz..

Ground Zero...Less Than 8 Years After 9/11

ROBERT begins gathering his group on steps across from Ground Zero. 

EIGHTH GRADE GIRL:  Mister Robert, what happened on 9/11?

ROBERT:  What do you mean?

EIGHTH GRADE GIRL:  I mean, like someone bombed it or what?

ROBERT:  No.  September eleventh!  Remember?  The planes flying into the towers?

EIGHTH GRADE GIRL:  They flew planes into the towers?  They must have been suicide bombers or something.

"September 11th.  Never forget."

Too late.

Please Don't Tip the Hasid

While walking another group through Central Park, I overheard two of the chaperones notice a Hasidic couple walking in front of us.

CHAPERONE 1:  What are they?

CHAPERONE 2:  Well, he has to be some kind of street performer.  Look at his hat.

"Tell Us How You Really Feel"...or "Let Me Buy You a Thesaurus"

In April, on one of the first beautiful days of spring, I brought a group from California to Central Park.  The trees were in bloom, the crowds were out, and a variety of entertainers were performing for those of us enjoying a leisurely Sunday afternoon.  There was even a wedding at Bethesda Terrace.  Could the day be any more pleasant?

I sat beneath my favorite tulip tree and waited for my group who had disappeared among the hundreds on the western steps to watch a well-known tumbling/comedy act.  It seemed to me that everyone was having the time of their lives.  No one could possibly be experiencing any emotion other than euphoria in this perfect spot on this perfect day. 

Around this time, a young man in his twenties, walking his parents through the park, stopped by my tree.  His father and mother who were from out of town were drawn to the crowds on the steps and asked him if they could watch the entertainment.

His eloquent reply:

"No, that's stupid.  Those are stupid people doing stupid things and it's stupid."

Whenever I Get Tired of My Job, I Think of This Guy...

 

NYC Decade by Decade--1670-1679...The Dutch Hiccup

If you read last week's entry (1660-1669), you'll remember that the English took over New Netherland without firing a shot in 1664.  New Amsterdam became New York and all was well with the time line until the 1670's when the place became Dutch again.  WHAT?!

After two Anglo-Dutch Wars (in the 1650's and 1660's) England was drawn into a third conflict as an ally of France in 1672.  In July of the following year, the Dutch landed 600 men at Sandy Hook and were encouraged to seize New York by a number of Dutch merchants living in the city.  The invaders took them up on the invitation and renamed the city New Orange (after Prince William of Orange).

Before their tulips could bloom, however, the Treaty of Westminster was signed in Europe, ending the third Anglo-Dutch War and returning New Orange to the English in exchange for Surinam.  The New Orangeites didn't hear about this transaction until June.  That October, 1674, the Dutch formally surrendered the city for the last time. 

The former English governor was recalled (partly for being out of town when the Dutch invaded) and the new governor, Edmund Andros, took charge.  He spent the rest of the decade cleaning up New York City and making it more profitable.  He had the wall repaired and filled in the canal on Broad.  ("This ain't Amsterdam!")  He also published orders that required ALL imports and exports of the colony to pass through the city, much to the chagrin of those up in Albany and elsewhere. 

ALSO DURING THIS DECADE:

When King Philip's War breaks out (proportionately the bloodiest and costliest of all the Indian Wars in our history), Andros creates an alliance with the Iroquois, ancient enemies of the Algonquins.  This helps keep New York safe while New England is ravaged.  From Gotham:  "What was more, New York City had become one pole of an Anglo-Iroquoian axis around which the affairs of North America south of Canada and east of the Mississippi would turn for another century.  A grateful Charles II rewarded Andros with a knighthood." 

All of Long Island (and not just the western half) comes under the jurisdiction of New York in the 1670's.

Sources:  Gotham by Edwin G. Burrows and Mike Wallace; Manhattan in Maps by Robert T. Augustyn and Paul E. Cohen; The Historical Atlas of New York City by Eric Homberger.

A Little Behind on the Blogs

I just returned from a long weekend in Palm Springs (away from the cold and endless rain of New York) where I spent the whole weekend lounging in the pool with my six-month-old niece and chasing after my cousin's daughter who just started walking... like a drunk sailor.

I will, however, have the next installment in NYC--Decade by Decade (1670-1679) ready for Thursday.

Hudson Heights, Part Four: From a Castle to a Pumpkin

Every other Monday we'll be posting the newest byte in our walk through Hudson Heights, my neighborhood in Upstate Manhattan, the stretch on the western ridge between the GW Bridge and the Cloisters.  This is the fourth installment, which deals with the area's transformation into a neighborhood in the 1920's and 30's.  Enjoy!



This byte was directed by Marc Wolf (who has appeared in several of the Little Byte videos). 

Marc Wolf recently performed the world premiere of his new solo-show The Road Home: Re-Membering America at Huntington Theatre and Geva Theatre, directed by David Schweizer.  He received an OBIE and was nominated for the Drama Desk and Outer Critics Circle Awards for his brilliant Off-Broadway performance of Another American: Asking and Telling at The New Group, directed by Joe Mantello.  www.marcwolf.com

HUDSON HEIGHTS CALENDAR

The Bridge (now playing)

The People (now playing)

The Revolution (now playing)

The Apartments (now playing)

5/25--The Barista

6/8--The Saint

6/22--The Soldier

7/6--The Park

7/20--The Cloisters

8/3--The Sculptor

NYC Decade by Decade: 1660-1669...New Amsterdam Becomes New York

In 1660, after a decade of Puritan rule in England, the Stuart monarchy was restored and Charles II ascended to the throne.  His brother, James, the Duke of York, became a key planner in the country's commercial policy.  James (pictured) was also preparing to make public his switch to Catholicism and saw the large Dutch colony as an ideal refuge for his co-religionists (and himself) if worse came to worse.  He persuaded the king to grant him the territory between the Delaware and Connecticut rivers.

Technically, this was not for Charles to grant, since New Netherland belonged to the Dutch, but the English yearned for an uninterrupted thousand-mile long shoreline on the Atlantic, and colonists were aggressively expanding northward out of Virginia and southward out of Massachusetts.  (In the opening years of this decade, there were thirteen English towns on Long Island as opposed to only five Dutch.)

On August 26th, 1664, Colonel Richard Nicolls entered the harbor with four English frigates and 2000 men.  They occupied Staten Island and seized the ferry dock at Breuckelen before turning their guns on New Amsterdam and its shoddy fort, defended by only 150 ill-equipped soldiers.

The 1500 in New Amsterdam and the 10,000 in New Netherland saw no reason to sacrifice their lives or livelihood for the Dutch West India Company, who displayed little respect and viewed their home not as a colony but as a company town.

Stuyvesant tore up two letters from the English that promised complete mercy upon surrender, but when the residents got wind of these letters, they sent their governor a petition signed by 93 leading merchants and municipal officeholders, including Stuyvesant's seventeen-year-old son, pleading him not to let the English destroy what he himself had built these last eighteen years.  Stuyvesant, though more than willing to die in a war with the British, was persuaded to surrender.

On September 8, 1664, less than two weeks after the arrival of the English forces, the Dutch colors were struck and Stuyvesant led his soldiers out of Fort Amsterdam, which became Fort James, and through the streets of New Amsterdam, which was now to be known as New York.

Russell Shorto puts it beautifully in The Island at the Center of the World:  "The seed that Henry Hudson transported to a distant island rooted and grew, and, really, outgrew the mother plant.  It was the luckiest thing in the world for Manhattan--for America--that the English wanted it so badly, because, though no one could see it at the time, the Dutch empire was already on the wane, and the English one was only beginning its rise....the system that fueled the Dutch Golden Age wasn't built to last.  The English, meanwhile, especially those in America, would begin experimenting ornately and obsessively with ideas of liberty, unfettered reason, the rights of man.  Put elements of the two together--seventeenth-century Dutch tolerance and free-trade principles and eighteenth-century English ideas about self-government--and you have a recipe for a new kind of society.  You can almost see the baton passing from one seventeenth-century power to the other, and at the very center of that changeover is Manhattan."

ALSO DURING THIS DECADE:

--The first racetrack in North America is built at Hempstead Plain on Long Island.

--The city's first mercantile exchange is established near Pearl, Broad, and Bridge Streets.

--A drop-box is created for transatlantic mail.

--Lasting legal confusion is initiated when the west bank of the Hudson River is officially put under a separate governing entity--breaking up an economic whole into the political parts of New York and New Jersey.

Sources:  Gotham by Edwin G. Burrows and Mike Wallace; Manhattan in Maps by Robert T. Augustyn and Paul E. Cohen; The Historical Atlas of New York City by Eric Homberger; New York:  An Illustrated History by Ric Burns and James Sanders, with Lisa Ades; The Island at the Center of the World by Russell Shorto.

Times Square Preparing to Go Half Pedestrian

 

The winding fence in the middle of Times Square has been torn out (pictured), Seventh Avenue is being repaved, umbrellas are being ordered--the city is preparing to shut down Broadway to vehicles from 47th to 42nd (and from 35th to 33rd in Herald Square).  (See the NY Times article from back in February.)  Other traffic control experiments (from the creation of Columbus Circle to the introduction of the thru streets) have proven successful, but this is one might be too disruptive to remain permanent.

Then again, I've been saying something needs to be done about the overcrowded sidewalks for the last two years. Proof?  Watch the video:

The Tour Season's First Wave Has Crashed and Receded on the Shores of Manahatta

The first part of the Spring Tour Season ended for me yesterday after 52 days of work, including 15 boat trips to the Statue of Liberty, and 21 groups from Ireland, Arkansas, California, Texas, Minnesota, Alabama, Louisiana, Michigan, Ohio, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Nevada, Arizona, and Tennessee.

Thanks to all the gardeners who made the last few weeks so beautiful.  Thanks also to about 850 of my tourists for coming to New York and to about 100 of them for going home.

Thanks to all the amazing kids like Mary from Alabama (and her friend Kayla Kelly) who make working with the student groups so rewarding!