More tidbytes from Cayce:
OK, OK, so we all missed George Washington's Inauguration on April 30, 1789, in, yes, that's right, NEW YORK CITY.
To see the recent inauguration, look at this:
Zoom into it, you will not believe the detail.
Check out 41's hat.
Cheney does resemble Potter from "It's A Wonderful Life" ...
Mr. Kern died at the young age of 60 collapsing in front of 450 Park Avenue, in his birthplace of New York City. His best known theater success is the musical "Showboat". Some of his great songs are: "Ol' Man River", "Can't Help Lovin' Dat Man", "A Fine Romance", "Smoke Gets in Your Eyes", "All the Things You Are", "The Way You Look Tonight", and one song particularly suited for today's economic times, "Pick Yourself Up."
Our other birthday boy is
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Download Marriage of Figaro, K. 492, Overture
Mozart dies at the incredibly young age of 35. There isn't room to go into all of his fabulous music, however his NYC connection is that a wonderful play depicting his life (more or less) was produced on Broadway. The play, entitled Amadeus, premiered on Broadway in 1980 with Ian McKellen as Salieri and Tim Curry as Mozart. It ran for 1,181 performances and was nominated for seven Tony Awards (best actor for both McKellen and Curry, best director for Peter Hall, best play, best costume design, lighting, and set design for John Bury), of which it won five (including a best actor Tony for McKellen).
The lights on Broadway burn a little brighter thanks to these talented gentlemen.
Another tidbyte from Cayce (Robert deserves a break occasionally):
Hard as it is to believe, there are interesting buildings outside of New York City. Although Manhattan boasts the Empire State Building, Chrysler Building and the Flatiron Building or, more recently, the IAC Headquarters, Hearst Building and the Austrian Cultural Foundation, here's a spot where you can view some beautiful, quirky, interesting, and, yes, STRANGE structures:
Would you like to live here?
Where would you like to live? Let us know...
This afternoon, to celebrate the swearing-in of Barack Obama as the nation's forty-fourth president, twelve men and women in the belfry of Trinity Church will strike a full peal for over three hours.
From Newsday:
"The exact sound cannot be heard anywhere else in the country: Trinity has the only change-ringing tower - in which each bell is rung individually - with 12 bells, two more than the National Cathedral in Washington.
"A full peal of Trinity's bells consists of 5,000 changes. A "change" occurs when each bell is rung individually in a sequence, without duplication. The ringers, who are about 20 feet below, yank ropes to swing the bells and cause the bells' clappers to strike."
For a video demonstration and more specific details, visit the Newsday feature.
A few interesting bytes of significance:
Washington took the oath of office down the street from the second Trinity Church. The first had been burned in 1776; the second was under construction when Washington took his oath. In the scene above, painted for the centennial of the first inauguration, the third and present Trinity Church is depicted mistakenly.
Trinity Church will be giving the full peal at the end of Wall Street, whose troubles this fall very much contributed to the outcome of the 2008 election.
Columbia College began in the basement of Trinity Church (the first structure) in 1754. The college has since graduated many illustrious public figures, but it has never been able to boast a president until today. Another nice Trinity/Columbia twist is that buried in the church's cemetery is arguably its most important graduate--Alexander Hamilton, the first Secretary of the Treasury, who helped create the financial system now teetering and which Columbia's more recent graduate inherits this afternoon.
A little "Tid-byte" from Cayce:
On January 1st, we love to celebrate the new year. So, while we revel in the optimism of a fresh start, let's remember some great people who love or loved New York and who happened to celebrate their birthday on this date.
Alfred Stieglitz
Frank Langella
Betsy Ross
J.D. Salinger
Finally, we celebrate his birthday January 25th, but we think of him more now because he wrote the lyrics to "Auld Lang Syne"--the lovely Robert Burns. To learn a little more about him, watch this:
Besides all of the technology of this year's brand new ball, what makes this ball so historic? At some point on January 1st, after this bright and colorful orb makes its descent, it will be raised again to remain atop One Times Square throughout the entire year. You will be able to see the New Year's Eve ball in March, July, and October.
A brief history:
The first New Year's Eve celebration was the 1904-1905 bash which marked a rebirth of what had been known as Longacre Square, a place of horse-related business during the day and a notorious red-light district at night. Change to the square had begun in 1895 with Oscar Hammerstein's Olympia, the first of many theaters built in what would become the theater district, but the year 1904 saw the opening of the neighborhood's first luxury hotel (the Hotel Astor) as well as the opening of the brand new subway and the headquarters of the New York Times. 1904 was also the year Longacre Square was rechristened Times Square--through some kind of deal quietly worked out between the director of the new subway and Adolph Ochs, the publisher of the paper.
The first ball drop took place in the 1907-1908 festivities, which still included fireworks as well as local waiters who wore battery-powered top hats with 1908 spelled out in miniature bulbs. With the wartime exception of 1942 and 1943, the ball has dropped every New Year's Eve since then. The ball drop comes out of an old time-keeping tradition first performed in Greenwich, England above the English Royal Observatory in 1833. Chronometers could be set on passing ships every afternoon at 1 pm. Other time-balls would begin to drop from tall buildings throughout the world.
When it was built, by the way, One Times Square was the second tallest building in the world after the Park Row Building across from City Hall. Today captains on ships along the Hudson or East River wouldn't be able to see the ball, blocked as it is by the much taller buildings that run river to river in midtown.
Visit the Times Square Alliance for more history, details about the technology and construction of this year's ball, and wonderful photographs of all that it can do.
The Rockefeller Center Christmas Tree will be lit tonight shortly before 9:00. The ceremony, broadcast on NBC, begins at 7pm. This year's tree is an 8-ton, 72' tall Norway Spruce planted 80 years ago in Hamilton, New Jersey by the Varanyak family.
7 BYTES OF TREE TRIVIA
--The first tree at Rockefeller Center was put up by the construction workers in 1931. The first official tree lighting took place 75 years ago in 1933, the same year that the RCA building opened to the public. (The ice skating rink was still three years away.) The idea of the "official" New York City Christmas tree was the idea of Merle Crowell, the publicist of the brand new (not even completed) Rockefeller Center. The annual lighting of the tree was one of his most brilliant publicity stunts, usurping the status of New York's first community Christmas tree, illuminated in Madison Square 21 years earlier. (It's what should be expected from a publicist who consistently reported that the 66-story RCA Building was 70 floors.)
--The first parade took place in 1924. It began at 145th and Convent Avenue and marched over 5 miles south to Herald Square. The participants were immigrant employees of Macy's who wanted to recreate the parades they had in Europe. The first parade included animals that they borrowed from the Central Park Zoo--elephants, camels, and goats.
--The second parade, in 1925, featured lions, tigers and bears. (Oh, my!) Because children were a bit frightened by these parades, balloons were introduced in 1927. That was also the year that the parade was renamed the Thanksgiving Day Parade (instead of the Christmas Parade which you see in the original advertisement).
--The balloons in 1928 were filled with helium and released at the end of the parade. They almost immediately exploded.
--Safety valves were introduced the following year and subsequent balloon releases were accompanied by a contest--whoever returned a balloon would win a reward from Macy's. 1933 was the last year they held that contest--a pilot's engine stalled while going after one of these balloons and two tugboats in the East River crashed racing each other for the dachshund balloon.
----The second-largest Thanksgiving parade in the United States takes place in Stamford, Connecticut on the Sunday before Thanksgiving and features retired balloons from the Macy's parade in New York.
--After the U.S. government, Macy's is the second biggest helium consumer in the country.
--The balloons and floats are designed at the Stevens Institute of Technology in Hoboken, New Jersey.
--The most dangerous parade was in 1997 when winds almost reached 40mph. The Cat in the Hat crashed into a lamppost, which fell into the crowd, leaving one of the four injured with permanent brain damaged. To prevent further calamities, both the Pink Panther and Barney (who were threatening the crowds) were slashed and stomped to death in front of crying children and cheering New Yorkers.
I was giving a tour this morning to the Brewers from California when we ran right into the Continental Army! We took some pictures, admired the different coats and picked out the guy we thought was playing Washington. At one point, I gestured to two of the ladies and told the Brewers that they were "camp followers." Without breaking her stride, one of the women immediately corrected me, "We are NOT camp followers. We're women of the army! That's very different." (I think I might have called them prostitutes.)
This week's New York Magazine has interviews with four reenactors--a camp follower, a privateer, George Washington and a "very cranky Dutch refugee." I love these people. Seriously! A camp of five hundred tents and people dressed up singing eighteenth-century songs around the campfires? It's only a matter of time before I'm carrying a musket, I'll tell you that!
Each year, at eleven in the morning on the eleventh day of the eleventh month, the Veteran's Day parade begins at Madison Square and heads up Fifth Avenue. Today the parade is led by Edith Shain, a 90-year-old woman who claims that she was the nurse kissed by the sailor in the famous photograph taken in Times Square at the end of World War II.
Why 11:00 on 11/11?
Ninety years ago, at the eleventh hour on the eleventh day of the eleventh month, the armistice, the official cessation of hostilities signed six hours earlier, went into effect, ending World War I, the war to end all wars and the war remembered by more memorials in New York than any other war before or since.
A year later, President Woodrow Wilson created Armistice Day, which was actually celebrated on the 12th. It was later moved to the 11th. In 1938, the day became a legal holiday, but was still known as Armistice Day until 1954 when it became Veteran's Day under Eisenhower.
Follow the links for a survey of World War I memorials in New York and for a history of the armistice as well as the primary document of the actual terms. The armistice and the Treaty of Versailles, which was signed the following year, became such symbols of national disgrace in Germany that when Hitler captured France in 1940, he forced the French to sign an armistice in the same railway carriage where the Germans had conceded defeat twenty-two years earlier.
...The Bowery Boys, which hosts an informative, entertaining blog and series of podcasts which you can hear on their site or download from most podcasting services.
In the last week alone, the Bowery Boys have posted four fantastic and timely features/podcasts:
PODCAST: New York City Marathon;
Polling New York City's voting history;
Know Your Mayors: Philip Hone, the party mayor;
Barack Obama's New York City...a tour of the President-Elect's life in New York (1981-1985).
A photo of a young Barack Obama with his grandparents on a visit to Central Park.