Little Bytes Recommends...Inside the Apple: A Streetwise History of New York City

I posted this in December but am reposting now in celebration of the book's first year in print.

People on my tours often ask me to recommend a good book with a general overview of many of the places they've seen.  (It's one of the main reasons I launched this website.)  Sadly, until this year, there was not one perfect book that would satisfy someone on the hunt.

My #1 recommendation is now Inside the Apple:  A Streetwise History of New York City by Michelle and James Nevius, one of the best books published on New York in the last decade.  It is full of information that out-of-towners, New Yorkers and guides themselves will find fascinating. 

Its ingenious structure is the first thing I need to rave about.  The 294-page book (not including the credits, the index and the additional fifty pages of walking tours) is divided into seven parts and 182 chapters.  The chapters are usually just one or two pages (in column form) and are laid out chronologically, beginning with the region before the Europeans and ending with the newest skyscrapers in our skyline.

Michelle and James Nevius also employ a brilliant cross-referencing system--when Horace Greeley's Tribune is mentioned in the chapter about the Civil War Draft Riots, a parenthesis sets off the chapter number where Horace Greeley's Tribune is discussed in greater detail.  These function like hyperlinks--click through if you wish.

Another significant achievement of their book is its accuracy.  Their history is well-researched and lucidly expressed.  They make it a point to identify the myths and tall tales that guides and tour books frequently pass off as fact.  They often go further and explain why the story is impossible before conjecturing, like trained historians, what the reality probably is.  There are numbers I might dispute--numbers and stats vary from source to source--but the Neviuses do such a great job proving their attention to detail throughout their publication, I'm inclined to trust them.  Besides the numbers, I spotted only two or three errors, but for each of their mistakes, I had to correct two or three of my own.

If you're still looking to stuff a stocking for a lover of NYC, or if you are a lover of NYC with a gift certificate, I suggest you pick this up--it's chock full of knowledge, it's portable, it's user friendly, it's brilliant.  Buy it!

Here Are the Taxis--Block by Block, Hour by Hour

Check out this interactive map tracking millions of cab rides taken during the first three months of 2009. 

The data provided by the NYC Taxi and Limousine Commission and processed by Sense Networks shows us exactly where the taxis are picking up their fares.

Of course, this has led to an app:  Cabsense. 

Dyin' Before the Good Stuff--Part Six...An Ellis Island Experience

Last week we featured ten people who "died before the good stuff."  They were all famous.  Christina Jansen is less well-known unless you've been on one of my tours of Ellis Island.  I've been torturing my tourists with this tale of grief for YEARS.

I first read about Christina in Tales of Gaslight New York, a compilation of news features from a century ago.  This excerpt comes from Romances of New Americans written by Eleanor Hoyt.  It first appeared in Everybody's Magazine in May, 1903.  I love the story, sad though it is, and the old-fashioned journalism and phrasing (e.g., "proved it by oracular demonstration").

When the lover does not meet the penniless sweetheart who has come across the seas to him, when he cannot be found, or, being found, desclaims all resonsibility, what can the S.I. (Special Inquiry) Board do?

If the gril has other friends who will provide for her, or if she be strong, able to work, willing to stay in a strange land alone and earn her living, she may be admitted.  If not, she must go back, shamed, heartsick, wretched.

There was one lovers' tangle which some of the employees on the Island still remember with a twinge in the region of the heart.

A Swedish girl came over to be married to a sweetheart who had come on before to prepare a home for her.  She had waited, but now the home was ready.  Olaf had sent for her, would meet her in New York, and they would go home together--to the farm.  Yes, he had a farm--in three years--all his own.  It was wonderful--but then, Olaf was so remarkable--and in America one has the chance.

All the steerage heard the story, and listened patiently.  She was so pretty, so happy.  Even the immigrant women whose views on domesticity had lost their rose color hadn't the heart to air those views before Christina.  They compared matrimonial notes and shook their heads behind her back, but they accepted Olaf's halo without question. 

And when the Island was reached, every one kept an eye out for Olaf.  He would be the handsomest man one had ever seen.  There couldn't be the slightest difficulty about recognizing him.  Christina had assured them of that.

Dyin' Before the Good Stuff, Part Five

THE WORKERS BENEATH AND BESIDE THE HUDSON

9--Clifford Holland was a pioneer in the construction of underwater tunnels.  In 1919, he became Chief Engineer for the first vehicular tunnel beneath the Hudson River, connecting New Jersey and Manhattan.  Holland was responsible for the two-tube design and oversaw the construction from 1920-1927, but died ONE DAY before the New Jersey and New York teams met in the middle.  In his honor, the tunnel (at one point called Hudson River Vehicular Tunnel Project) was given his name.

(Bonus Trivia:  Ole Singstad who designed the revolutionary ventilation system and eventually took over as Chief Engineer for the Holland Tunnel would go on to design the rest of Manhattan's underwater tunnels--the Lincoln, the Queens-Midtown and the Brooklyn-Battery.)

10--Herman Melville also worked on the Hudson--at the Gansevoort Docks, as a customs inspector.  After the publication of Bartleby the Scrivener and Moby Dick and after the possible suicide of one of his sons, he took this bureaucratic post and worked there for almost twenty years.  He retired in 1886 and died in 1891.  Unlike, say, Fitz Greene Halleck who died, convinced his poetry would last through the ages (he has a statue on the Mall in Central Park along with major figures like Shakespeare, Columbus, Robert Burns and Sir Walter Scott), Melville died thinking his contributions to literature would fade with him.  (Only one newspaper carried an obituary--and a brief one at that--for one of America's most significant authors.)  There was some attention paid to his work upon his death, but there would be no major revival until a generation later, in the 1920's, when many of his works were revisited and reissued and one of his novellas, Billy Budd, was published for the first time.  It would prove extraordinarily successful, adapted into an opera and a film, and Moby Dick, of course, has come to be considered one of novels in American literature.

Dyin' Before the Good Stuff, Part Four

THE THEATER

6--Jonathan Larson wrote for the theater for fourteen years with nods of encouragement here and there but with no breakthrough until a forty thousand dollar grant that helped fund a workshop of his musical, Rent.  On the eve of the show's first preview, after much encouragement from friends and an off-the-record compliment from a reporter at the New York Times, he died at home of an aortic aneurism at the age of 35.  The show would go on to win every major award that year including several Tony Awards and the Pulitzer Prize for Drama.  It would transfer to Broadway in April, 1996 and play until September, 2008, becoming the seventh longest-running show in Broadway history.  It would be performed in theaters around the world and influence countless other composers including this year's Tony winner, Lin Manuel Miranda.  It would also retain its power to provoke--just this February, the decision to ban the musical by a principal of a high school in Orange County sparked outrage.  The production was reinstated.

7--Gower Champion, the director of Bye, Bye Birdie and Hello, Dolly, died hours before his final show, 42nd Street, officially opened.  The shrewd and frequently outrageous producer, David Merrick, the "Abominable Showman," waited until the end of several curtain calls before shocking the cast and audience with the news.  That stunt ensured the musical landed on the front page of The New York Times multiple times that week.  42nd Street would go on to play 3486 performances.