NYC Decade by Decade: 2000-2009

Way back in March, forty-one Thursdays ago, we started this series with the arrival of Henry Hudson, pre-New York, pre-New Amsterdam.  Today we reach the end of the first four hundred years; with the dropping of the ball tonight, let the next four hundred begin! 

2000--The Yankees win their fourth World Series in five years.

2000--The population exceeds 8 million for the first time.

2000--The new Rose Center Planetarium opens at the American Museum of Natural History.

2001--The World Trade Center is attacked by terrorists using hijacked airplanes.

2002--The removal of 1.7 million tons of debris from the World Trade Center is completed.

2002--The Austrian Cultural Forum, one of my favorite new buildings, opens.

2003--Subway tokens, which replaced nickels in 1948, are sold for the last time in April. 

2004--The newly expanded MoMA opens.

2004--The new Time Warner Center opens and begins the decade's transformation of Columbus Circle.

2006--Suspension is published!

2006--The Hearst Tower, my other favorite newcomer, opens.

2006--7 World Trade Center opens, the first (and only) building to be rebuilt at Ground Zero by the end of decade.

2008--Bear Stearns fails but is purchased by JP Morgan Chase.  In September, Lehman Brothers collapses and the world economy teeters on the brink.

2009--Having won the World Series in 2000, the Yankees will not win a single World Series during the Bush years.  The year Bush leaves the White House, the Yankees win.  (It's pointed out by Ari Fleischer, Bush's first press secretary, that the Yankees won during the administrations of Kennedy, Carter and Clinton, but not Nixon, Ford, Reagan or the Bushes.  The last Republican president who saw a Yankees championship was Eisenhower.)

Sources:  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 Encyclopedia of New York City, edited by Kenneth T. Jackson;  Blue Guide New York by Carol von Pressentin Wright, Stuart Miller, and Sharon Seitz; Inside the Apple by Michelle and James Nevius; New York 2000: Architecture and Urbanism from the Bicentennial to the Milennium, by Robert A.M. Stern, David Fishman, and Jacob Tilove.

Tavern on the Green Goes the Way of 2009

The name might remain affixed to the structure when it reopens in March, but the company that has been running one of the highest grossing restaurants in the United States is bankrupt and will shut the doors after dinner tomorrow.  Most of its lavish decor including the Baccarat and Waterford chandeliers will be auctioned off to help pay its debts.  (Imho, it was the only way to get rid of the world's nastiest doorman.)

2009, huh?  It opened with the loss of the Rainbow Room and ended with the demise of Tavern on the Green...not to mention much finer restaurants like Chanterelle.

Read the Associated Press article.

Whatever Happened to Annie Moore?

If you've been to Ellis Island, you have probably seen the statue of Annie Moore, the first immigrant to step onto Ellis Island when it opened in 1892.  She was given a gold coin and disappeared into history.  For years, it was believed she ended up in Texas.

In actuality, she never left New York.  She married, became Annie Schayer, had eleven children and died on the Lower East Side in 1924...coincidentally, the year that most immigration ceased at Ellis Island.   

For more, read the article in The NY Times.

Enjoy the Holidays!!

Preferably with a baby and a dog.

NYC Decade by Decade--1900-1999...the Fourth of Four Recaps

MERRY CHRISTMAS!  Our gift to you:  an abbreviated recap, highly compressed and distilled, of the fourth century of NYC history.

1900-1909--In the decade after consolidation, the city builds on a much larger scale, and its most significant undertaking--the subway--opens to the public.

1910-1919--The city reforms--improving work conditions and giving birth to its first zoning laws.

1920-1929--Much like our current decade, this opens with a terrorist attack downtown and closes with a financial crash on Wall Street.

1930-1939--The Depression brings suffering but it also brings major construction projects that will dramatically change the cityscape.

1940-1949--New York enjoys one of the greatest post-war booms in history and, with the arrival of the United Nations, becomes the capital of the world.

1950-1959--New York hemorrhages:  losing its middle class to the suburbs, its manufacturing jobs to other parts of the country, and two of its baseball teams to California.

1960-1969--This is the decade of instability and flux, of the battle between the camps of Robert Moses and Jane Jacobs for the future soul of the city.

1970-1979--The city's economy collapses, Ford tells it to drop dead, and the end of America's largest city is foretold by countless pundits.

1980-1989--The city begins to reinvent itself, paying back its loans and recovering from the Seventies, but the Eighties bring more crime, homelessness, AIDS, crack and Wall Street hubris.

1990-1999--I move to New York and the city becomes too complicated, too multi-faceted, for me to compress a decade into a sentence.

FOR GREATER DETAIL, SEE THE PROPER ENTRY...POSTED EVERY THURSDAY

NYC Decade by Decade: 1990-1999

1990--The Census reports for the first time that the white demographic in New York, while still the largest, is no longer the majority.

1990--Ellis Island reopens as a museum.

1990--The homicide rate peaks in New York City this year with 2,262 murders (i.e., six per day).

1990--I (who am white and who will one day give hundreds of tours of Ellis Island) move to New York City in August to attend college at Columbia.  I am blissfully indifferent to the record-breaking homicide rate and spend most of my college life amazed at the frequency with which vehicles in Morningside Heights backfire.  The lead news story on the day of my arrival is the collapse of a sidewalk grate in midtown that injures several commuters.  I will avoid sidewalk grates until 1992.

1991--The last automat closes in the city.

1991--Crown Heights riots.

1991--An African-American burial ground is discovered north of City Hall during excavations for a skyscraper.

1992--The restored Bryant Park reopens.

1993--The World Trade Center is bombed, killing six and injuring over one thousand.  (This takes place on February 26th.  This attack barely enters my consciousness--it was my twenty-first birthday, which was also a Friday.  This attack also barely enters the national consciousness--eight years later, September 11th will be repeatedly identified as the first foreign attack on U.S. soil.)

1993--Staten Island turns out to vote on a referendum to secede from New York City. (65% vote for secession.) The high turnout from this heavily Republican district is instrumental in the narrow election (50.7%) of Rudolph Giuliani as mayor.

1994--The courts and state legislature prevent the secession of Staten Island.

1994--Silicon Alley is carved out in the West Twenties.

1995--The Victory Theater opens and becomes the city's first full-time performing arts center for children.  (The New Times Square is born.)

1995--Chelsea Piers reopens as a sports facility and the transformation of that neighborhood and the restoration of many of its abandoned buildings begins.  (The changes will grow up the west side towards the Javitts Center and down into the Meatpacking District...or along the eventually restored High Line.)

1997--The New Amsterdam reopens.

1997--The New York Times stops printing in Manhattan after almost a century and a half.

1997--A Palestinian rifleman kills one and injures five before killing himself on top of the Empire State Building. 

1997--I start giving tours of New York City.

1997--Haitian immigrant, Abner Louima, is savagely beaten and sexually assaulted in the bathroom of a police precinct. 

1999--West African, Amadou Diallo, unarmed, is shot at 41 times by the police and hit 19 times.

1999--The last Checker cab is retired and auctioned off for $135,000.

Sources:  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 Encyclopedia of New York City, edited by Kenneth T. Jackson;  Blue Guide New York by Carol von Pressentin Wright, Stuart Miller, and Sharon Seitz; Inside the Apple by Michelle and James Nevius; New York 2000: Architecture and Urbanism from the Bicentennial to the Milennium, by Robert A.M. Stern, David Fishman, and Jacob Tilove.

From My Local Greek Diner

Eating my bagel this morning, I had a hunch that these two had some history, but I'll let you decide:

Male Customer:  Kalimera.  (Silence.)  Kalimera!  (Silence.)  I said kalimera!

Female Owner:  Nice jacket.

Customer:  I know.

Owner:  Hm.

Customer:  Five dollars.  It cost five dollars.

Owner:  I don't care how much you pay for it.  I didn't ask that.

Customer:  I tell you.

Owner:  I don't care.  I just said it was nice.  I don't ask people how much their clothes cost.  Last time I say something!

Customer:  I said kalimera thirteen times.

Owner:  I only counted three.

NYC Decade by Decade: 1980-1989

Keywords of the 1980's--(polled from fellow guides)--homelessness, deinstitutionalization, crime, poverty, Ed Koch, David Dinkins, graffiti as eyesore, graffiti as art (e.g., Keith Haring, Basquiat), Ronald Reagan, the me decade, investment bankers, Bright Lights, Big City, Black Monday, Bonfire of the Vanities, AIDS, Gay Men's Health Crisis, Donald Trump, racial tension, Central Park Jogger, Cameron MacIntosh (Cats, Les Miserables, Phantom of the Opera), Fame, Central Park Conservancy, and the Statue of Liberty restoration. 

1980--John Lennon is fatally shot in front of the Dakota by Mark David Chapman.

1981--Construction begins on Battery Park City.

1981--A virus infecting gay men in the city is identified as AIDS.

1982--The Morosco and Helen Hayes are among the theaters demolished despite protests to make room for the Marriott Marquis.

1983--The "antisliver" law is passed, limiting the height of buildings less than forty feet wide.

1985--Columbia University sells the land under Rockefeller Center to the Rockefeller group for $400 million.

1986--The newly restored Statue of Liberty celebrates its centennial.

1987--The stock market crashes; the Dow loses over five hundred points.

1987--The World Financial Center opens.

1989--David Dinkins is elected the first African-American mayor of New York.

Sources:  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 Encyclopedia of New York City, edited by Kenneth T. Jackson;  Blue Guide New York by Carol von Pressentin Wright, Stuart Miller, and Sharon Seitz; Inside the Apple by Michelle and James Nevius; New York 2000: Architecture and Urbanism from the Bicentennial to the Milennium, by Robert A.M. Stern, David Fishman, and Jacob Tilove.

There's a Reason Christmas Is Commercial

One thing that irritates me every year around this time is having to listen to people complaining about how "Christmas has become all about shopping" when shopping and gift-giving is what made Christmas the major holiday that it's become.  There was a reason that many religious people, including our own Puritans in New England, outlawed any kind of observation--it was a sham holiday (according to the Bible, Jesus couldn't have been born in December) laid clumsily over an ancient Roman one.  Consumerism and the modern traditions of Christmas were invented at the same time in the early nineteenth century and owe their existence to one another.  If there's a time of year when consumerism should come to the fore, it's Christmas.

(Much of the following information comes from Stephen Nissenbaum's The Battle for Christmas, which is a profound cultural history of the holiday and not related to the silly and shallow War on Christmas books.)

Have you ever wondered why images of “Old Christmas” are almost exclusively Victorian?  Before the 1820’s, Christmas was a completely different holiday. The roots go back to the ancient Roman celebration of Saturnalia, a harvest holiday when Saturn was released, chaos reigned, the streets were full of bacchanalian revelry, and masters and servants would switch places for the duration. This served as a social gauge and was understandably popular with the servants.

Hundreds of years later, a monk placed the birth of Christ atop this pagan tradition in an attempt to smother it. Religious leaders were riled, asking what shepherds would be tending their flock by night in Syria in late December? When the Puritans came to New England, the holiday was outlawed in the Massachusetts Bay Colony. The way the holiday was celebrated for centuries was with marauding members of the lower class knocking on the doors of the wealthy, caroling or wassailing until invited inside to partake of the best wine and food the house had to offer. (Think trick-or-treating.) In the rapidly growing city of New York, there was a move to alter this tradition.

Little Bytes Recommends...A Bicycle Tour

Maybe not this week with the frigid temperatures... but spring is right around the corner.  In November, my friend, Sarah, and I went on a bike tour into Brooklyn with a client who is bringing a large group of potential bike riders to the city next August. 

Our tour was operated by Bike the Big Apple and led by Jesse McDonough, an experienced cyclist and guide whose commentary on the city was interesting, articulate, and, above all, accurate. 

If any of you, like me, have resisted riding bicycles in New York--because of the taxis, the New Jersey drivers, the buses, the trucks, the odd door swinging open, the Rhode Island drivers, the ipod-budded pedestrian who steps out between parked cars, the horse-drawn carriages, the wheeled hot dog carts, and the Connecticut drivers--a bike tour is the perfect opportunity to ride and feel safe.  On a tour, you travel in a pack--the larger, the better. Six bikes riding in a group are treated like a car.  Twenty in a group are treated like a truck.  For big groups, one guide leads, one guide brings up the rear, and they usher their riders through streets that no longer seem as frightening.

And what an amazing way to relate to the city!  Fifteen minutes before the end of our tour, we were still on the Brooklyn Bridge, but we were soon coasting into the court district, riding on a plaza between courthouses, zipping through Columbus Park, turning up Mulberry, crossing on Jersey Street (a two-block street just south of Houston that, according to Jesse, tests the knowledge and patience of every bike messenger), and heading up Lafayette and Third to Union Square where we hung a right and arrived back at the bike store right on time. 

Riding down the east side towards the Manhattan Bridge.  Spending most of the first ride away from traffic gives you the chance to familiarize yourself with your bike and the skill of your fellow riders.

View north from the Manhattan Bridge.

The Manhattan Bridge, which partially opened for traffic one hundred years ago this month.

Empire-Fulton Ferry State Park between the bridges in DUMBO.

(I just read on their website that this state park forbids pets, alcohol, and bicycle riding.  Oops.)

Robert and Sarah with that amazing Brooklyn Bridge. 

 

Robert and Sarah ON that amazing Brooklyn Bridge.  Minutes later we would be shouting at tourists who were walking in the bike lane.  (Actually I wouldn't have to shout.  I deliberately rode in the back and let the riders in the front risk their lives to clear the path for me.  Sorry, Sarah.)

NYC Decade by Decade: 1970-1979

1970--The first New York City marathon is organized.  A far cry from thousands running through all five boroughs, the first marathon is run entirely in Central Park with only one hundred twenty-seven runners.

1970--McSorley's, one of the city's oldest taverns, with the motto "good ale, raw onions, and no women" is forced by the courts to amend that last part.

1971--The New York Giants move to New Jersey.

1973--The Twin Towers are completed.

1973--Welfare Island is renamed Roosevelt Island.

1975--The city's economy officially tanks.  After years of taking out loans to pay off debt, New York finds itself with major cash flow problems and on the brink of insolvency.  The federal response is to deny any bail-out.  Later that year, the federal government does offer loans and New York is put into a receivership and its debt restructured.  In the words of Philip Lopate:  "For a time, New York became more like Atlanta or Houston, a city run quite openly by a corporate elite."

1976--The Empire State Building begins illuminating its top thirty stories with colored lighting (red, white, and blue for the Bicentennial).  The following year, a system with a wider variety of colors will be introduced to announce holidays and events of interest to New Yorkers.  (The Yankees winning the World Series that October will be the first of such events.) 

1976--The festivities surrounding the Bicentennial inject life, money, and optimism into the city. 

1977--Pessimism returns when the city endures the Son of Sam, a looter-filled blackout, and a series of bomb attacks from a Puerto Rican terrorist organization.

1977--A thirty-passenger helicopter atop the Pan Am Building tips over, killing four on the roof and a pedestrian on Madison and Forty-third who is killed by a piece of a rotor.  Five others are injured and helicopter service, which had just been restored, is cancelled permanently.

1977--A Chorus Line begins its historic run and Studio 54 opens.

1978--Both Radio City Music Hall and Grand Central Terminal are saved from demolition.

1978--The city starts cleaning up its shit with the enactment of the Pooper Scooper Law.

Sources:  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 Encyclopedia of New York City, edited by Kenneth T. Jackson;  Blue Guide New York by Carol von Pressentin Wright, Stuart Miller, and Sharon Seitz; Inside the Apple by Michelle and James Nevius; New York 2000: Architecture and Urbanism from the Bicentennial to the Milennium, by Robert A.M. Stern, David Fishman, and Jacob Tilove.

Arturo di Modica's Charging Bull

Just a refresher for those who liked Monday's photo:

 

The Rat and the Bull and the Future Business Leaders of America

I gave a tour of Wall Street last week to a Pennsylvanian high school chapter of the Future Business Leaders of America.  As we passed through Bowling Green and approached the famous bull by Arturo di Modica, I noticed one of the rats available to rent for labor demonstrations throughout the city.  From all appearances, the rat was positioned incorrectly--instead of facing 26 Broadway, the object of the strike, it stood glaring at the bull. 

Which did make a funny (and foreboding) picture when the Future Business Leaders posed for a group shot:

Steinbeck on the City

"New York is an ugly city, a dirty city.  Its climate is a scandal, its politics are used to frighten children, its traffic is madness, its competition murderous.  But there is one thing about it--once you have lived in New York and it has become your home, no place else is good enough."

 

--John Steinbeck, 1953

NYC Decade by Decade: 1960-1969

This was a decade of instability and flux.  As the city went through one of its most accelerated transformations (compare a New York movie from 1960 with one from 1970), there were strikes, demonstrations, riots, protests and even a campus seizure.  As neighborhoods were threatened by developers, as buildings were razed and replaced with monstrosities--leading to the creation of the Landmarks Preservation Commission--it seemed that the soul of the city was at stake.  This was played out most dramatically in the battle between the Power Broker, Robert Moses, and the urban writer and activist, Jane Jacobs, who in this decade published her groundbreaking work, The Death and Life of Great American Cities, and led the campaign against the Master Builder's crosstown expressways, preventing Manhattan from suffering the same fate as the Bronx and helping to topple Moses from power after more than forty years.

ALSO DURING THIS DECADE:

1960--The new headquarters for Chase Manhattan Bank, with its open plazas facing both Pine and Nassau Streets, is completed, kicking off the building boom in Lower Manhattan.  (The World Trade Center is proposed this same year.)

1960--Ebbets Field in Brooklyn is demolished.

1961--Inspired by the Seagram and Chase Manhattan Bank Buildings, new zoning laws are passed enouraging public amenities such as plazas and arcades in exchange for taller buildings without setbacks.

1962--Philharmonic Hall, now Avery Fisher Music Hall, becomes the first completed building at Lincoln Center.

1963--A bad year for our train stations.  Pennsylvania Station, one of the grandest in the world, is demolished.  (Its famous eagles are unceremonially dumped in the Meadowlands.)  Meanwhile, the Pan Am Building, one of the city's ugliest skyscrapers (i.e., the architecture of Brutalism) opens above Grand Central Terminal.

1964--The 1964 World's Fair opens in Flushing Meadows.

1964--The Verrazano-Narrows Bridge, the longest suspension bridge in the United States, connects Staten Island and Brooklyn. 

1965--The Landmarks Preservation Commission is established.

1965--New immigration laws open up the city for immigrants from Asia, Greece, Haiti, and the Dominican Republic.

1963--Malcolm X is assassinated while speaking at the Audubon Ballroom in Upper Manhattan.

1966--Ground is broken for the World Trade Center.

1966--Subway and bus fare is increased from ten to twenty cents.

1968--Protesting a number of issues--ranging from the university's construction of a private gym in a public park to the university's ties to the war effort in Vietnam--Columbia students take over their campus and occupy several buildings for a week.

1969--The Stonewall Rebellion, three nights of confrontation with the police in Greenwich Village, gives birth to the modern movement for gay civil rights.

Sources:  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 Encyclopedia of New York City, edited by Kenneth T. Jackson;  Blue Guide New York by Carol von Pressentin Wright, Stuart Miller, and Sharon Seitz; Inside the Apple by Michelle and James Nevius.

Christmas Windows in New York

I do like the Twinkle Twinkle Little Snowflake story at Saks and the touchscreens at Macy's that allow you to write a letter to Santa.

But Bergdorf Goodman once again wins my personal Christmas Window Competition for 2009.

The photo on the left is by Rudy Pospisil who photographed this year's windows.  To see them all, visit About.com.