Inside the Apple

The Manhattan Company vs. the Chrysler Building

2009-11-12T10:29:00.008-05:00

The Bank of the Manhattan Company by CR on flickr.

A couple of weeks ago, there were a number of commemorations of the 80th anniversary of the Great Crash of 1929 which led to the Great Depression. As the stock market was plummeting, however, buildings in the Financial District were still soaring to new heights, including the Bank of the Manhattan Company at 40 Wall Street, which was racing against the Chrysler Building on 42nd Street to be the tallest building in the world.

Eighty years ago today--on November 12, 1929--the Manhattan Company finally topped out at 925 feet. As far as anyone knew at the time, that meant it was the tallest building in the world. (The New York World, reporting the day's events, noted that it had bested the rival Chrysler Building which only stood at 808 feet.)

But the news of the Manhattan Company topping out was overshadowed by a construction accident an hour before the ceremony. In front of a large crowd of spectators, a half-ton block of limestone that was being hauled up the building broke free from its harness at the 35th floor. The huge stone tore through the 8th-floor setback and through three more stories of steel and concrete before stopping at the fifth floor. Debris rained down onto Wall Street; one piece struck Helen Pratt, who was waiting in a car parked across the street. She was only slightly injured and insisted on being taken home and not to the hospital. One of the building's construction workers, James Bellis, was injured by a piece of falling scaffolding and taken to the hospital but was ultimately fine.

The accident so overshadowed the reason people were there -- to see the building's last piece of structural steel hoisted into place -- that the New York Times didn't event bother reporting on the building's completion. Indeed, those news outlets that did proclaim 40 Wall Street to be the "world's tallest tower" were in for a rude shock. Just four days later, it was revealed that the Chrysler Building was not 808 feet tall as previously reported, but that's its spire--hoisted into place on October 23--was its crowning architectural element, bringing its full height to 1,046 feet. That not only made the Chrysler Building significantly taller than the Manhattan Company, it also made it taller than the Eiffel Tower and thus the tallest structure in the world.

After the Bank of the Manhattan Company merged with Chase in 1955 to become Chase Manhattan, the skyscraper at 40 Wall went through a succession of owners, including at one time Ferdinand and Imelda Marcos. Donald Trump purchased the dilapidated tower in 1995 for $1 million and emblazoned his name in large, shiny letters across the front, thus causing all sorts of tourists to think it is Trump Tower and might be full of wanna-be apprentices. Trump has tried to sell the building at least once but has yet to find suitable buyers.

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Read more about this skyscraper race, the Great Crash of 1929, and New York during the Depression in Inside the Apple: A Streetwise History of New York City.

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The History of Yankee Ticker Tape Parades

2009-11-05T06:14:00.004-05:00

photo of the 1996 ticker tape parade for the Yankees by Ruby Washington / New York Times

Anyone who’s read our book or this blog knows we have a thing for ticker tape parades. So, of course we are excited for tomorrow’s parade honoring the New York Yankees 27th world championship. It will be a record-setting ninth parade for the Bronx Bombers. However, while many people associate ticker tape parades with winning sports franchises, honoring the local teams is a relatively modern development; the Yankees didn’t get their first parade until 1961.

The first ticker tape parade was held in 1886 in honor of the opening of the Statue of Liberty, but the parades did not become a regular occurrence until the beginning of the 20th century. The first sports-related parade was August 6, 1924, honoring the U.S. Olympic team (featuring three-time gold medal winner Johnny Weismuller) returning from the Paris games. Two years later, golfer Bobby Jones got a parade (the first of two) as did the first woman (Gertrude Ederle) and the first mother (Amelia Gade Corson) to swim the English Channel.

Baseball did not get its first parade until Connie Mack was honored in 1949 for his remarkable 50-year career as the manager of the Philadelphia A’s.* When the Giants won the National League Pennant in 1954, they were the first local team to be given a parade; but why the Dodgers or Yankees did not get one the next year (or the year after that) when they faced off in the World Series remains a mystery. Indeed, the Yankees were in the World Series every year from 1955 to 1958 with no recognition. In 1960, the Yankees won the pennant -- but lost the series to the Pirates, but at the beginning of the next season they were honored with a parade up Broadway. (Perhaps the only time a team has been thrown a parade for not winning the World Series.) That parade was perhaps as good omen, as the 1961 season featured the Roger Maris-Mickey Mantle home run contest and a victorious trip to the World Series. The team was honored again at the start of the 1962 season for having won the World Series. (There is some question as to whether this was a true parade; the Yankees were certainly honored at City Hall. Did they also ride up Broadway in a motorcade as they'd done the year before? We're still searching....)

The Yankees weren’t honored again until 1977, when they won the first of two back-to-back World Series. Parades were held in 1978, 1996, 1998, 1999, and 2000 to celebrate those victories – and now, of course, we’ll add one more tomorrow.

If you go to the parade, which begins at 11:00 a.m. check out the plaques embedded in the sidewalk. They list everyone who has ever been honored with a parade and stretch from Bowling Green Park to the foot of City Hall Park.

* Correction: An astute reader points out 1949 would have been Mack's 49th anniversary as the A's manager. The official sidewalk plaque states that the parade was to honor Mack's 50th anniversary, but looking back now at the press coverage, that was not the intent at the time. In truth, the parade honored Mack's lifetime contributions to baseball (he'd been a player and manager for 65 years). The next day, August 20, 1949, was "Connie Mack Day" at Yankee Stadium and Mack was honored again at the stadium.

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Read more about ticker tape parades in Inside the Apple: A Streetwise History of New York City.

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William Jay Gaynor: The Assassinated Mayor

2009-11-03T12:39:00.004-05:00

As we wait for the results of today's mayoral election (or Mike Bloomberg's next tweet), we thought we'd take a look back at what was happening in New York a hundred years ago today, when William Jay Gaynor was elected mayor.

Gaynor, a native of the village of Oriskany in Oneida County, was best known as a jurist, having been appointed to State's Supreme Court in 1893 and the Appellate Division in 1905. Tammany Hall Democrats, disappointed by their two-term standard bearer, George B. "Max" McClellan, picked Gaynor to run in 1909. Gaynor handily defeated the Republic/Fusion candidate, Otto T. Bannard, in part because Republican votes were siphoned off by newspaper magnate William Randolph Hearst who ran as an independent.

Instead of appointing Tammany Hall cronies to fill vacancies at City Hall, however, Gaynor instituted broad-reaching civil service reforms and was a champion of extending the new IRT subway. But what Gaynor is best remembered for is the attempt on his life on August 9, 1910.

Gaynor was posing for photographs aboard the SS Kaiser Wilhelm der Grosse, the steamship that was about to leave Hoboken to take the mayor on his summer vacation to Europe. As he stood on deck, he was approached by J.J. Gallagher, a former municipal dock worker who had been fired about a month earlier. Gallagher shot the mayor at close range--just as New York World photographer William Warnecke snapped a picture (above)--and was immediately subdued. When asked why he'd done it, Gallagher said simply: "He took away my bread and meat. I had to do it."

Though the bullet lodged in Mayor Gaynor's throat, he made a relatively speedy recovery. (Gallagher, meanwhile, was tried, found insane, and sent to an asylum in Trenton, New Jersey.)

In 1913, Gaynor received the backing of a reform coalition to run for a second term as mayor. (Tammany Hall wanted nothing more to do with him.) On September 3, he left for Europe on the SS Baltic and six days later, he died in a deck chair of a heart attack; it is unclear whether or not Gallagher's assassination attempt had weakened the mayor and contributed to his death. Gallagher was never tried with murder--he had died at the Trenton asylum a few months earlier.

Very few New York City mayors are honored in our parks, but if you happen to be in Brooklyn Heights, head to Cadman Plaza where you'll find the handsome Gaynor Memorial by Adolph Weinman. (Weinman is best known in New York for his statue Civic Fame which stands atop the Municipal Building on Centre Street.)

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Read more about New York's famous (and not-so-famous) mayors in Inside the Apple: A Streetwise History of New York City.

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Washington Square Tombstone Unearthed -- Part 2

2009-10-28T13:05:00.004-04:00

photo courtesy of the New York City Parks Department.

Following up on our post yesterday, the Parks Department has revealed the tombstone that was recently uncovered in Washington Square Park. It reads:

"Here lies the body of James Jackson, who departed this life the 22nd day of September 1799 aged 28 years native of the county of Kildare Ireland."

You can read more about the discovery in Gothamist and the New York Times.

(And, of course, you can read more about Washington Square Park its role as a city cemetery in Inside the Apple.)

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Washington Square Tombstone Unearthed

2009-10-27T14:20:00.005-04:00

image courtesy of the LIFE Magazine archive on Google.

As has been reported in Gothamist, Curbed, and elsewhere, the WSP blog broke the news yesterday that a tombstone has been unearthed during the ongoing renovations of Washington Square Park.

It is well-known that the park was once a potter's field and by some estimates up to 20,000 people were buried there. (We write about the park's early history in depth in Inside the Apple.) However, what has people scratching their heads is the fact that you don't normally find a tombstone in a potter's field.

The tombstone isn't so mysterious, however. Only a portion of today's park was the potter's field. As Luther Harris writes in his wonderful book, Around Washington Square:

The land area [of the original square]...was about 6-1/4 acres, a respectable public space, but not a grand one. Much narrower than today's square, the potter's field was limited on the east by a strip of church cemeteries, and on the west by Minetta Creek, which ran southwest from the foot of Fifth Avenue to the corner of MacDougal and West Fourth Street. (italics added)

Thus, it seems likely considering where the current excavations are happening that what's been unearthed is a tombstone from one of these church graveyards. The Scotch Presbyterian Church owned the largest cemetery and vehemently opposed the park's usurpation of their land. Perhaps this is one of their brethren? We await a full report.

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New York City "Bucket List"

2009-10-22T13:30:00.008-04:00

We've mentioned in the past that we've written and narrated a few tours for our friends over at CityListen Audio Tours, which produces wonderful (if we do say so ourselves) walks of New York, Paris, Chicago, and San Francisco.

We are guest blogging for CityListen today; they asked us to come up with a "Bucket List" of places in New York that everyone should see before they die. That list, of course, could have hundreds of entries, but we limited ourselves to ten. What would be on your list? Head on over to the blog and let us know!

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Continue to Celebrate New York’s 400th at the New York Public Library, South Street Seaport, and the Bard Graduate Center

2009-10-21T06:01:00.005-04:00

In the last week, we were able to visit three exhibitions currently on view that are tied to the ongoing celebrations of Henry Hudson’s arrival in New York in 1609: New Amsterdam: Island at the Center of the World at the South Street Seaport Museum; Mapping New York’s Shoreline, 1609-1909 at the New York Public Library; and Dutch New York Between East and West: The World of Margrieta van Varick at the Bard Graduate Center. Each show has something to recommend it and together they make a great way to explore the importance of Dutch New Amsterdam and the influence of the Dutch on future generations.

Mapping New York’s Shoreline, 1609-1909
This exhibition has the broadest mission of the three. However, it lacks focus, presenting everything from early views of New Amsterdam to aerial maps of Hoboken, New Jersey. And while the exhibit bills itself as four hundred years of maps, the Dutch period is only slightly represented (and in maps and images that are better seen at the South Street Seaport show; see below).

On the other hand, the show’s overly broad scope is also its strong point: the (late) Lionel Pincus and Princess Firyal of Jordan Map Division is one America’s finest cartographic collections and with such a rich variety of New York maps to choose from, the curators do a good job of illustrating the growth and change of the island over the last four centuries. Particularly interesting is the section on Henry Rutgers’s farm, which occupied what is now the Lower East Side south of Division Street, and the maps that depict how the area was turned into the wealthy suburban enclave in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. (The Lower East Side was gentrified even then!)

New Amsterdam: The Island at the Center of the World
The New Amsterdam exhibition at the South Street Seaport Museum also features a number of maps, many of them borrowed from the Dutch National Archives, and they are stunning. The best piece in the show is the Castello Plan, the 1660 map of New Amsterdam drawn by surveyor Jacques Cortelyou, which was the first accurate depiction of the city. Many of the images in the collection are by cartographer Johannes Vingboons. Though Vingboons never left the Netherlands, he worked from charts, maps, and other sketches to create incredible watercolor views of Dutch territories from New Amsterdam to Indonesia.

What has been touted most about this show is the inclusion of “Manhattan’s birth certificate” – a letter from Pieter Schagen that mentions the 60 guilder deal struck by Peter Minuit in 1626 to purchase the island of the Manhattan. As we mention in Inside the Apple, there was once an actual deed for this transaction, but it was thrown away or auctioned off over 200 years ago. So what we have today isn’t the original birth certificate, but more of a birth announcement. (Alert the birthers!)

The exhibition is well worth savoring, but don’t expect it to be easy to follow. The rooms are poorly arranged the explanatory text panels are sometimes confusing (or just plain wrong). But that shouldn't stop you from visiting this wonderful show.

Dutch New York Between East and West: The World of Margrieta van Varick
To round out your exploration of Dutch America, head up to the Bard Graduate Center to get a peek into the sort of life a wealthy New Amsterdammer would have lived.

The show revolves around the inventory of Margrieta van Varick (of the Varick Street van Varicks), which enumerates Margrieta’s extensive holdings when she died in Flatbush in 1695. Having lived in the Netherlands, Dutch-controlled Malaysia, and Brooklyn, Margrieta had acquired a tremendous array of objects. On top of that, she owned a textile shop and would have had goods in the inventory that were her stock in trade. Finding the actual objects listed was impossible; instead, the curators found contemporary examples of the types of things she owned, from a Japanese silk robe to incredible detailed silver children’s toys. If you are interested in New York’s early history or just simply like looking at wonderful decorative art, this show is a must-see.

Mapping New York’s Shoreline, 1609-1909. On view at the New York Public Library’s Stephen A. Schwarzman Building (that’s the main branch) at Fifth Avenue and 42nd Street. Through June 26, 2010. http://www.nypl.org/research/calendar/exhibdesc.cfm?id=508

New Amsterdam: The Island at the Center of the World. On view at the South Street Seaport Museum at 12 Fulton Street. Through January 3, 2010. http://www.southstreetseaportmuseum.org/index1.aspx?BD=9622
Dutch New York Between East and West: The World of Margrieta van Varick. On view at the Bard Graduate Center, 18 West 86th Street. Through January 3, 2010. http://www.bgc.bard.edu/gallery/galleries-at-bgc/main-gallery/main-gallery-exhibition.html

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Cooper Mania: Free access into the Great Hall at Cooper Union and the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum

2009-10-14T06:30:00.001-04:00

Two great architectural spaces in New York are having free events this week and next that will grant you access to some of the city’s great interior spaces. (If you are not already worn out from last weekend’s openhousenewyork events.*)

On Thursday, October 15, the Cooper Union is continuing their year-long celebration of their 150th birthday with “Great Evenings in The Great Hall: Science and Technology,” a multimedia lecture featuring such notables as Adam Gopnik, Nobel Prize winner Harold Varmus, and a slew of writers and actors. The Cooper Union was founded by industrialist and inventor Peter Cooper, to whom we devote a chapter in Inside the Apple. Among Cooper’s many notable accomplishments, he patented edible gelatin (a by-product of his glue factory), thus giving the world Jell-O. When Cooper Union opened, its Great Hall (where the lecture will be held) was the largest auditorium space in the city and in 1860 it was the site of Abraham Lincoln’s famous “Right Makes Might” speech, which was instrumental in garnering him the Republican nomination and the presidency.

Then, starting on Monday, October 19, the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum is opening doors free of charge for a week to celebrate National Design Week.

The Cooper-Hewitt was founded by Amy, Eleanor, and Sarah Hewitt who were daughters of Mayor Abram Hewitt (more on him in a later post) and granddaughters of Peter Cooper. It is housed in the former home steel magnate Andrew Carnegie and the house is the subject of another chapter in Inside the Apple.

So, grab your copy of the book and head out to enjoy these two wonderful spaces!

* Many thanks to those who were able to join us for our exploration
of Gramercy Park with openhousenewyork;
we look forward to doing similar tours in the future.

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The Contrast by Royall Tyler at the Metropolitan Playhouse

2009-10-07T06:00:00.000-04:00

The Metropolitan Playhouse, one of the best small theaters dedicated to perpetuating America’s theatrical heritage, is back with a great new production of Royall Tyler’s The Contrast. Written in 1787, it was the first play performed in the new republic by a professional acting troupe. Set in post-Revolutionary War New York, it provides a fascinating (if exaggerated) glimpse into the city’s residents and their love/hate relationship with Great Britain’s fashions and mores.

Born in Boston, Tyler had served in the Continental Army and after the war was part of the Massachusetts troops that put down Shays Rebellion. On a visit to New York, Tyler saw Sheridan’s School for Scandal and was inspired to write an American version. The play premiered on April 16, 1787, at the John Street Theater (New York’s only theater) and was enough of a success that it was repeated multiple times.

Like many comedies of manners, the story revolves around a love triangle: three women (Charlotte, Letitia, and Maria) are all in love with Mister Dimple, the local fop, who spends his time reading Chesterfield* and practicing bowing in a mirror. Dimple, the audience finds out early on, is from an old New York Dutch family named Van Dumpling; his name change is an affectation following a grand tour of Europe.

The play contains many other New York references, from walks on the “Mall” (perhaps the fashionable end of Lower Broadway) to excursions to the Battery. More importantly, it illustrates that in the decade after America’s victory in the Revolution, New York was caught between forging a distinct American identity and taking its cultural cues from Europe.

At the Metropolitan Playhouse, director Alex Roe makes the very smart decision to eschew the costumes in this costume drama. Instead, the talented company dressed in tank tops, pants, and skirts pantomimes when necessary but mostly just allows the audience to concentrate on the words – which are often hysterical. Particularly funny is the relationship between two servants: Jessamy, who works for (and apes) Billy Dimple, and Jonathan, a clownish Yankee, who serves a former Continental army colonel.

The play opens on Friday, October 9 and runs through November 1. The run time is a little more than 2-1/2 hours with one intermission. Tickets are $20 (with discounts for students and seniors); for more information, please visit http://www.metropolitanplayhouse.org.

* In the 1740s and 50s, the Earl of Chesterfield wrote a series of letters to his son instructing him on manners, decorum, and how to go about finding a rich patron.

Guest blogging at the Lower East Side Tenement Museum

2009-10-05T09:02:00.000-04:00

In conjunction with our talk tonight at the Lower East Side Tenement Museum, they have graciously asked us to blog for them today. Those of you familiar with the neighborhood may know tiny Petrosino Square, which has been undergoing renovation and is slated to reopen soon. In our blog entry (HERE), we look at the square's namesake, along with that of its former appellation, Kenmare Square.

Hope to you see you tonight at the museum.

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Manhattan Gets Its Name

2009-10-02T00:32:00.003-04:00

The celebration of New York's 400th anniversary is winding down, but today -- October 2 -- marks a significant moment in the city's history: the 400th anniversary of Robert Juet (Henry Hudson's first mate) writing down the name Manna-hata for the first time.

The 1609 voyage was Juet's second with Hudson and there was no love lost between the two men. On their previous voyage together, Juet had organized the crew against Hudson, but it had stopped short of mutiny. Why exactly Hudson re-hired Juet in 1609 is unclear, but Hudson clearly recognized the mate's talents, including that of a diarist. Juet kept a clear and concise record of their trip -- still grumbling in places about Hudson's leadership -- and his chronicle of their trip up and down the Hudson River is the first European account of the area.

As they voyaged back from the Albany area, the Half Moon anchored on October 2, 1609, near the palisades. In his log, Juet wrote:

[W]e saw a very good piece of ground; and hard by it there was a cliff that looked of the colour of white green, as though it were either a copper or silver mine; and I think it to be one of them by the trees that grow upon it; for they be all burned, and the other places are green as grass; it is on that side of the river that is called Manna-hata.

Thus, on October 2, 1609, Manna-hata had its name written down by Europeans for the first time and Manhattan was born.

(Hudson sailed one more time, in 1610, looking -- as always -- for a northwest passage to the Pacific. On this voyage, Juet finally led the crew in an uprising and Hudson was cast out of the ship in a small boat, never to be seen again.)

Presentation at the Lower East Side Tenement Museum

2009-09-29T22:32:00.004-04:00

On Monday, October 5, we will be giving a "Tenement Talk" at the Lower East Side Tenement Museum at 6:30 p.m.

The talk, illustrated with archival photos, prints, and paintings, will look at New York during the period between 1863 and the mid-1930s -- the years that the Tenement Museum's property, 97 Orchard Street, was an active apartment building. Instead of focusing on the immigrant history of the Lower East Side, we'll instead take a step back to look at the bigger picture, focusing on stories from Inside the Apple from that same era that show how the city was growing and changing during the Gilded Age, the City Beautiful era, and the Great Depression.

To RSVP for the talk, visit the Tenement Museum's website at http://www.tenement.org/vizcenter_events.php. The talk will take place at the museum's visitors center at 108 Orchard Street, just south of Delancey Street; complete directions are on the museum's site.

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The Wizards of Waverly Place (or, is that Bleecker Street?)

2009-09-22T06:00:00.005-04:00

Being in the completely wrong demographic, the Disney tween phenomenon Wizards of Waverly Place somehow escaped our attention until recently. But this summer while touring through Greenwich Village, one of our younger clients was very excited to be on the same street as the fictional Russo family. Then we saw the huge ratings numbers the Wizards movie pulled in the first week in September--at 11.4 million viewers, its premiere was the most-watched cable broadcast of 2009--making us even more curious. So we watched a few episodes from the first two seasons (season three premieres October 9) to see how Disney's fictional Greenwich Village stacked up against the real thing.

For those not in the know, Wizards revolves around star Selena Gomez, who plays Alex Russo, the middle child in a wizarding family. Her father, an ex-wizard, now runs a sandwich shop called the Waverly Sub Station, which--as the name suggests--is supposed to be reminiscent of a subway car/station. How appetizing! (It actually looks to us more like a PATH train station, if that helps.) The father is teaching the three kids magic and ultimately they will have to battle it out in some sort of wizarding comepetition: the winner keeps his or her powers; the losers become mortal.

Like so many half-hour comedies set in New York, the show is filmed entirely on a sound stage in Hollywood. Only exterior establishing shots are done in the city, and seem to consist mostly of stock footage. (Sometimes the cast is seen on Waverly Place, but that, too, is a set, which the producers have also turned into a pedestrian-only alleyway. At least the fake corner of Bedford and Grove on Friends had vehicular traffic.)

Bayard-Condict Building by B. Tse on flickr.

The most notable building seen in these establishing shots is in the opening credits; at the very end, the camera pulls back from the Waverly Sub Station to reveal.... that's its in the ground floor of the Bayard-Condict Building. Bayard-Condict is one of the city's greatest skyscrapers, not only for its elegant styling, but also because it was designed by Louis Sullivan, one of America's finest architects. Finish in 1899, it is the only Sullivan building in New York and is well worth a visit. However, you won't find in on Waverly Place: it's located at 65 Bleecker Street, where Crosby Street dead ends.

The other major location where an actual New York facade is used is the school the young wizards attend, the fictional Tribeca Prep. It took us awhile to figure out what school they were using for the establishing shots,* but it turns out to be P.S. 40, an elementary school at 320 East 20th Street, which is right on the outskirts of Stuyvesant Town and nowhere near Tribeca. Ah, Hollywood. Fun fact about P.S. 40: it's named after Augustus Saint-Gaudens, the acclaimed artist, who went to its predecessor, Grammar School 40, which stood on the same spot.

Other random New York City streetscapes are shown throughout the program and many of these appear to be in the Village: the fountain in Father Demo Square, MacDougal Street, and a random block-front that may actually be Waverly Place. (The movie, mostly set in the Caribbean, changed the sets slightly, making the Waverly Place facade of the Sub Station more generically like a diner.)

* Thanks, L!

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Waverly Place itself is a fascinating street, which we discuss in detail in Inside the Apple. The book also has a fun tour of the West Village. And while it doesn't include any tween TV show stops, you do get to visit the haunts of such celebrities as Edgar Allan Poe, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Edna St. Vincent Millay, and many, many more.

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The Bombing of Wall Street

2009-09-16T12:07:00.004-04:00

Today marks another tragic anniversary in New York City: on September 16, 1920, a bomb exploded on Wall Street, killing 30 people and injuring over 200 more. It was the deadliest terrorist attack on American soil before the Oklahoma City bombing and still one of the greatest unsolved crimes of the 20th century.

As we write in Inside the Apple:

At 12:01 pm on Thursday, September 16, 1920, the church bells of Trinity Church, Wall Street, finished pealing and were suddenly replaced with another noise—the horrible sound of 500 pounds of lead sash weights exploding from a horse-drawn wagon on Wall Street....
As the smoke cleared and people began to pick themselves up from the street (including Joseph P. Kennedy, JFK’s father who was then a stockbroker), they were faced with a scene of carnage and devastation. Approximately 100 pounds of dynamite had expelled the sash weights into the air, shattering windows and tearing through nearby pedestrians. The most gruesome sight was the north wall of Morgan’s Bank. Amid the gouges in the marble from the shrapnel there was also a woman’s head—severed from its body but still wearing a proper hat.

The attack took place soon after the arrest of Sacco and Vanzetti and strong evidence pointed to anarchists. While books and articles have been written over the years laying out a case that anarchist Mario Buda was the bomber, he was never charged at the time and the case against him is mostly circumstantial.

Today, if you go down to the corner of Wall Street and Broad Street, you can see the old Morgan Bank building on the southeast corner (now part of "Downtown by Starck," a luxury residential building). Walk along the Wall Street side of the bank and you’ll soon come to a heavily pock-marked section of wall. These are still the original shrapnel marks from the 1920 bombing, preserved as a memorial to those who died.

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You can read much more about the 1920 bombing, J.P. Morgan, and New York in the 1920s in Inside the Apple: A Streetwise History of New York City. It’s available online and at all major bookstores.

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The Takeover of New Amsterdam

2009-09-08T06:00:00.006-04:00

Amidst all the hoopla surrounding this week's celebration of New York's 400th birthday --the quadricentennial of Henry Hudson's arrival in our harbor in September 1609 -- another anniversary is being quietly forgotten: today marks the 345th anniversary of the English takeover of New Amsterdam and, thus, the creation of New York.

The English had been eyeing Manhattan since the establishment of the first colony in Jamestown, Virginia, in 1607.* When Charles II was restored to the throne in 1660, he began earnestly contemplating how to unite his colonial empire that ranged from Maine to the Carolinas. He was especially urged on by his younger brother, James, Duke of York, who had recently invested heavily in a slave trading venture in Africa and wanted to drive a wedge in the Dutch overseas mercantile economy. While Dutch ports in Africa, the Caribbean, and the East Indies were more important, New Amsterdam was easiest to conquer.

Early in 1664, Charles II granted his brother a "Duke's Charter," essentially putting James in control of the North American colonies. In turn, James dispatched one of his loyal soldiers, Colonel Richard Nicolls, to take New Amsterdam in the name of the king.

After a brief stop in Boston, Nicolls and his small flotilla--a total of four ships and perhaps as many as 600 soldiers--arrived in Brooklyn in August 1664. Nicolls sent word to the Dutch governor, Peter Stuyvesant, that the English were offering extremely favorable terms of surrender: if the Dutch gave up peaceably, they would be allowed to keep their property and their rights. They would simply need to swear an oath of allegiance to Charles II.

Stuyvesant put on a brief show of refusing to capitulate, but realizing he was outgunned, didn't have much food, and had even less water, the governor agreed to surrender without either side having fired a shot. At Stuyvesant's farm (or bowery, which is today honored in the street of the same name), the Dutch and the English signed 23 Articles of Capitulation, which guaranteed certain rights, including "liberty of their consciences in Divine Worship and church discipline" and that the Dutch people "shall still continue free denizens and enjoy their lands, houses, goods, ships, wheresoever they are within this country, and dispose of them as they please."

Once the Articles of Capitulation had been signed, all that remained was for Stuyvesant and the Dutch garrison to quit Fort Amsterdam, which happened on September 8, 1664. With great pomp, Stuyvesant led the garrison out of the fort and down to the East River, where a ship awaited to take them away. (They didn't get far; Stuyvesant was just heading to his uptown farm; where the soldiers went that day is unclear, though they did eventually make it back to the Netherlands.)

* Indeed, as we discuss in Inside the Apple, the English initially considered Manhattan to be in the northernmost part of the Virginia colony. When the Pilgrims first left on theMayflower for the New World, it was Manhattan they were aiming for, not Massachusetts, since they were required to settle in English territory. We'll talk more about that in a future blog post.

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The celebration surrounding New York's birthday are culminating this Sunday with Harbor Day, which marks the 400th anniversary of Hudson's arrival. One way you can celebrate is to join us for a special Knickerbocker's Walking Tour of New Amsterdam. James is a "Knickerbocker" (a descendant of many of the original Dutch settlers) and he will be leading a historical walk through all of New Amsterdam's history, from Hudson's arrival in 1609 to the surrender in 1664. All the details can be found at http://www.insidetheapple.net/tours.htm.

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A Knickerbocker's Walking Tour of New Amsterdam - Sunday, September 13

2009-09-02T06:00:00.000-04:00

On Sunday, September 13, James will be leading a special public walking tour of the Financial District in honor of New York's 400th birthday.

James is a 10th-generation New Yorker (also known as a “Knickerbocker”), whose ancestors include the last city secretary of New Amsterdam, Johannes Nevius, and the first Dutch pastor of Brooklyn, Johannes Polhemus. A historian and guide, James will lead participants through the streets that once made up the capital of this strategic Dutch outpost and trading town.

Stops will include the archaeological remains of old New Amsterdam, including the stadt huis block, the site of Peter Stuyvesant's grand home and garden, the place where (perhaps) Peter Minuit bought the island of Manhattan from local natives (but not for $24 worth of beads), the former home of the Wall Street wall, and other important reminders of Manhattan's early history. And since we are celebrating the arrival of Henry Hudson in September 1609, we will also stop by the Hudson River.

September 13th will be a great day to be in Lower Manhattan. The city is celebrating “Harbor Day” in honor of Henry Hudson and the city’s 400th anniversary, the Dutch will have set up special exhibits out on Governors Island, and the new exhibit of New Amsterdam history opens that day at the South Street Seaport museum. We look forward to being a part of your celebration of Dutch heritage.

Copies of Inside the Apple will be available for sale & signing after the tour.

The tour costs $20 per person and James is offering it at three different times: 10:00 a.m., 1:00 p.m., and 4:00 p.m.

Advance reservations required. Click here to sign up for this tour – you can register and pay with our e-commerce partner, Wufoo.com.

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In other news, James will also be appearing today at 4:00 p.m (on the East Coast; others adjust accordingly) on "The Bite," Eric Gordon's internet radio show about New York City travel and tourism. You can get all the details about the show -- and tune in -- at http://www.blogtalkradio.com/BTSQ/2009/09/02/The-Bite-with-Eric-Gordon.

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Tavern on the Green to Get New Management

2009-08-28T14:18:00.005-04:00

New York's Department of Parks has announced that next year Dean J. Poll, who currently holds the license to operate the Boathouse in Central Park, will also take over the management of Tavern on the Green.

Among the changes Poll will implement is a thinning of the landscaping at the rear of the building to open up the vistas toward Sheep Meadow. What many people don't realize is that throughout most of the park's life, Sheep Meadow's official name was "the Green." Thus, when the restaurant first opened in 1934, it made sense that it was Tavern on the Green. (Perhaps techinally in should have been Tavern near the Green, since it is cut off from its namesake by the wide swath of the ring road.)

The Green came to be nicknamed Sheep Meadow because from 1864 to 1934 it housed a flock of pedigree Southdown and Dorset sheep. The removal of the sheep in 1934 is a story we tell in Inside the Apple. There are many plausible reasons why the sheep may have left, but certainly the main one is that the Parks Department (in the person of Robert Moses) had its eye on their sheepfold, an elaborate 1870 structure designed by Jacob Wrey Mould. As soon as the sheep were out, their barn was tranformed into Tavern on the Green.

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For Sale: The Narrowest House in New York

2009-08-27T06:30:00.002-04:00

The press has been having a field day this week with the news that New York's narrowest house -- No. 75-1/2 Bedford Street -- is on the market for $2.75 million.

This is one of the most popular stops on our tours of Greenwich Village and appears in every guidebook. Unfortunately, most of those guidebooks also perpetuate the stories that Cary Grant and John and/or Lionel Barrymore stayed at the house, despite the fact that there's not a shred of evidence to connect either one to the home.

The entire property in that area was once owned by a coppersmith named Harmon Hendricks. His house, No. 77 Bedford, stands at the corner of Bedford and Commerce; built in 1799 it is the oldest home in the Village. Though No. 75-1/2 is often dated to 1873 (when it appears on tax rolls), it is stylistically older and may have been built as early as the 1850s.

The entire Henricks property was bought by the Cherry Lane Theatre in 1923, who converted a former brewery and factory space at 38 Commerce into the theater and planned to rent the rest of the property for profit. The Cherry Lane was founded by a group of refugees from the Provincetown Playhouse (which has been in the news a lot recently, too) including Edna St. Vincent Millay, who moved into the narrow house at 75-1/2 Bedford in 1924. It was Millay and her husband who remodeled the home, adding a skylight and the Dutch gabling on the front and back.

The other famous tenant to live in the house is anthrpologist Margaret Mead. What most press coverage leaves out is that Mead was living there with her sister and brother-in-law, the cartoonist William Steig (best known today, perhaps, as the creator of Shrek).

The New York Post has a feature on the house, including a photo essay in the post that doesn't necessarily reveal a lot about the interior, but does give a great view of the unique four-in-a-row burner stove. Over at Curbed, you can download the floorplan as you mull over whether or not $2.75 million is a good price for owning a conversation piece.

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We have three different tours that you can take to see the city's narrowest house.

You can book your own private walking tour with us at http://www.walknyc.com
You can take a self-guided tour of the neighborhood using our book, Inside the Apple: A Streetwise History of New York City
Or you can download an audio tour of the area that we created for our partners at CityListen.com.

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And speaking of CityListen -- they are having a great contest right now to give away a free pair of Kuru walking shoes. All the details are at http://blog.citylisten.com/2009/08/favorite-walks-contest/. But hurry -- the deadline for entries is September 6th.

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E. Ridley & Sons and the Murder of Edward Ridley

2009-08-20T06:30:00.003-04:00

The Ridley building as it appeared in 1874; it was expanded in 1886, badly damaged in a fire in 1905 after the store had been sold, and truncated in 1931-32.

As guest blogger Bowery Boogie noted on Curbed yesterday, the pink Jodamo building on the Lower East Side at the corner of Orchard and Grand streets is for sale for a cool $25 million.

In the nineteenth century, the building was home to E. Ridley and Sons, one of the biggest department stores on the Lower East Side. Though Broadway in the area we today call SoHo was home to most of the city’s high-end shops, including A.T. Stewart’s “Marble Palace,” the stretch of Grand Street east of Broadway was an important retail district in its own right. Many of the shoppers came from Brooklyn or New Jersey on the Grand Street ferry and were then transported by horse-drawn street car.

Ridley’s was founded in 1849 by Edward Ridley Sr., an immigrant from Nottinghamshire, England, in a small building at 311-1/2 Grand Street. As the shop grew over the next two decades, Ridley began acquiring nearby lots and by 1883, he had built a store that encompassed the entire street-front on Grand from Orchard to Allen. According to some sources, it was the country’s largest retail store. (Today’s building is actually slightly truncated; when Allen Street was widened in 1931-32, a portion of the building was shorn off to accommodate the expanded road.)

For the Jewish immigrants who began to flood in the neighborhood in the 1880s, Ridley’s became a destination for young Jewish women to window shop – and from which to occasionally purchase, a sure sign of upward-mobility. Understanding the need to appeal to the area’s new clientele, Ridley’s began to promote itself more to local residents, including a big push in December equating Hanukkah with the gift-giving of Christmas. The shop was also one of the first to send out a catalogue so that buyers could peruse and purchase their goods from the comfort of home. (In 1964, a request was delivered to 311 Grand Street demanding to know why the Ridley's catalgoue had not been sent out "for some time." The writer clearly didn't know the store had gone out of business--in 1901!)

Edward Ridley died in 1883 and the store was taken over by his sons, Edward A. and Arthur Ridley. They continued in business until 1901, by which time they could no longer attract a enough clientele to fill the store. The building was sold and subdivided and both brothers went into real estate.

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Now, here’s where the story gets weird.

Edward A. Ridley was a bit of an eccentric, to say the least. He operated out of the subbasement of the old department store’s stables, a dungeon-like space 40 feet below street level. (The address is variously reported as 59, 61, and 63 Allen Street.)

As the New York Times wrote in 1931:

Ridley needed to wear rubber overshoes in his dank, cellar office and ultimately took to wearing them at all times. He allowed his beard to grow out, making him look like a wild-eyed Biblical prophet (“Whitmanesque” the Times called it), and he was rarely seen outside the office except going to and from his boarding house in New Jersey, always carrying an umbrella, rain or shine.

Then, in 1931, Ridley showed up for work one day to find his assistant, Herman Moench, dead. Actually, Ridley read his mail for about an hour, then bothered to go to the other side of the 8x15 foot office and found Moench lying next to his desk. At first the police assumed that Moench, who had worked for Ridley for an astonishing 51 years (he’d started at the store when he was 9 years old) had died of natural causes. Only when the body was examined by the coroner were two bullet wounds discovered. No one who worked at the garage that surrounded the office, including its managers, Harry and Lee Weinstein (who leased the space from Ridley) had seen or heard anything and with no leads, the case soon went cold.

Just a little over two years later, tragedy struck again. Ridley had hired Lee Weinstein from the garage to be his new assistant. On May 10, Lee’s brother Harry was unable to reach them in the office by telephone; he asked a garage employee to check on his brother and the man discovered that Lee Weinstein had been shot twice and Ridley beaten to death. The similarity of the two cases led the police to reopen the Herman Moench murder and ballistics tests immediately proved that the same gun had been used to kill both of Ridley’s assistants.

At first, the police assumed Ridley had been killed trying to protect Weinstein. However, when the old man’s will was found, it showed a $200,000 bequest to Weinstein, making the police wonder if Ridley had been the intended target and if Weinstein had been involved in both murders. The next day, the police discovered that Weinstein had been secretly married and living with his wife under an assumed name at a midtown hotel. As the investigation continued, the police found an unused bootlegging room in the Allen Street garage where Ridley kept his office, but decided that illegal alcohol had nothing to do with the murders. More promising was the discovery that Lee Weinstein had purchased a $2,050 car—while only making about $40 a week. It soon became clear that the will was a fake, signed by Ridley unwittingly and “witnessed” by two fellow conspirators—both of them accountants who helped keep Ridley’s books—who had hoped to split the $200,000. Further investigation revealed that Weinstein and his accomplices had already stolen over $200,000 from his employer.

But this discovery did little to shed the light on the killings and Weinstein's fellow thieves seemed to have nothing to do with the murders (and no connection to Herman Moench). The accountants were indicted for the theft and forgery but despite a $10,000 reward, no useful information came to the police. Ridley had owned many tenements on the Lower East Side and was said to be a miserly landlord, but none of his tenants was ever seriously looked at for the murders. To this day, the case remains one of the great unsolved crimes of the Lower East Side.

The building at 59-63 Allen Street still stands – and is still a parking garage. Does Ridley’s obscure basement office still exist, as well? If you park in the building, check it out and let us know!

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Our book, Inside the Apple: A Streetwise History of New York City, has a great walking tour of this neighborhood. And while it doesn’t stop at Ridley’s, it does take you to a number of famous places on the Lower East Side, ending just a couple of blocks from the Ridley’s intersection.

The book is available from retailers across the country or online.

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The Apollo 11 Ticker Tape Parade

2009-08-13T06:00:00.001-04:00

photo from the LIFE magazine archives on Google.com

Earlier this summer, the world celebrated the 40th anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing, which took place on July 20, 1969. Today marks another Apollo anniversary—the massive ticker tape parade for Buzz Aldrin, Neil Armstrong, and Michael Collins. At the time, many claimed it was the largest ticker tape parade New York had ever seen, but as we researching Inside the Apple, we found that claim was made for many parades and it’s almost impossible to verify. (Four million people were said to have attended the Apollo parade—an impressive number, even if it’s not the largest.)

Certainly, it was the longest parade. The city’s traditional parade route runs from Bowling Green Park at the foot of Broadway to City Hall. The Apollo astronauts, however, after receiving the key to the city, continued up Broadway to Herald Square and then on to Times Square. As the New York Times noted, the confetti in Midtown was “made up more of paper towels and pages from telephone directories than tickertape” and that it grew “so dense that the astronauts could hardly see.”

As we write in Inside the Apple:

It was also one of the fastest ticker tape parades. The astronauts started at Bowling Green at 10:17 a.m. (about half an hour ahead of schedule) and arrived on the steps of City Hall just fourteen minutes later! Many people who showed up for the parade were disappointed to discover that the astronauts had already passed them by…. By 1:15 p.m. the astronauts were back at Kennedy airport to go to Chicago. They ended the day with festivities in Los Angeles. Having just been to the moon and back, a quick one-day jaunt across North America must not have seemed like such a big deal.

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For more on the origin of the ticker tape parade and a walking tour of the “Canyon of Heroes,” check out Inside the Apple. Or join us this Sunday for our free tour of that neighborhood, during which we’ll focus on the American Revolution.

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One Broadway

2009-08-06T05:06:00.008-04:00

As we have written previously, we will be leading a free tour on Sunday, August 16, of Revolutionary War Lower Manhattan. (See http://www.insidetheapple.net/tours.htm for more details.)

One of the stops on the tour will be One Broadway, where the Washington Building -- later known as International Mercantile Marine -- now stands. But back in the 18th century, the base of Broadway was home to Archibald Kennedy, New York's receiver-general (i.e., the customs collector), and later the Earl of Cassilis.

Kennedy built his mansion ca. 1760; because Broadway was then much closer to the Hudson, Kennedy would have had a fine view out over the harbor and in the summer of 1776, he would have seen the massive British fleet assembling beyond Staten Island. Between June 29 and August 12, nearly 200 ships arrived, the largest naval fleet since antiquity. One observer, a soldier named Daniel McCurtin, wrote in his journal:

"[I] spied as I peeped out the Bay something resembling a wood of pine trees trimmed.... I declare I thought all of London was afloat."

During the war, Kennedy left the city and the house became George Washington's headquarters during the planning of the Battle of Brooklyn, which took place in late August 1776. When the British captured New York, the home -- which escaped the Great Fire of 1776 -- was used by the British army. After the Revolution, the house was rented by Isaac "King" Sears. A prominent member of the Sons of Liberty, Sears was was involved in the Stamp Act Protests in 1765 and the Battle of Golden Hill in 1770, a skirmish just north of Wall Street that some call the first bloodshed of the Revolution. Sears paid £500 a year, probably the highest rent in the city.

The house was later owned by John Watts, a successful merchant and founder of the Leake and Watts Orphan House in Morningside Heights.

In 1882, Kennedy's house (by then a boardinghouse) was demolished to make way for the Washington Building, which still occupies the site. When the Washington Building was erected, it had more office space than any building in New York.

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We will be talking more about One Broadway, George Washington, "King" Sears, John Watts, the Stamp Acts protests and more on our FREE walking tour on August 16.

Or you can pick up a copy of our book, Inside the Apple: A Streetwise History of New York City.

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RIP Tony Rosenthal

2009-08-03T19:31:00.007-04:00

EV Grieve just alerted us to the fact that sculptor Tony Rosenthal passed away last week at the age of 94.

Rosenthal is best known as the artist behind the rotating Astor Place Cube (officially, The Alamo -- so called because his wife thought it was a good name for an impenatrable object).

There are many other places in the city to view Rosenthal's public art, including:

5 in 1, a tribute to the five boroughs of New York City, in One Police Plaza behind the Municipal Building;
Rondo at the New York Public Library's branch at 127 East 58th Street;
Hammarskjold at FIT (27th Street and Seventh Avenue);
SteelPark at 401 East 80th Street.

Also, according to the artist's website, a temporary exhibition is currently on view in the Ralph Lauren flagship store at 72nd Street and Madison.

Another interesting note: the Astor Place Alamo -- which was originally installed temporarily as part of a citywide "Sculpture in Environment" show -- is not one of a kind. Examples of Rosenthal's cube sculptures can be found in private and public collections, including Pyramid Hill Sculpture Park in Hamilton, Ohio, and at his alma mater, the University of Michigan, at Ann Arbor (where the piece is called Endover).

You can also read Tony Rosenthal's obituary in the New York Times.

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B-25 Bomber Crashes into the Empire State Building

2009-07-28T07:00:00.004-04:00

photo from the LIFE magazine archives on Google.com

When they thought the top of the Empire State Building would good be for landing airships, this wasn't what they had in mind:

photo by Ernest Sisto/New York Times

At 9:40 a.m. on Saturday, July 28, 1945, a B-25 bomber en route to Newark airport flew through a dense fog and into the 79th floor of the Empire State Building, tearing a hole in the 78th and 79th floors and killing ten people in the building. (All three men on the plane also died, one of whom was simply hitching a ride home to visit his family in Brooklyn.)

According the New York Times the next day, workers at the Empire State Building "alarmed by the roar of the engines, ran to the windows just in time to see the plane loom out of the gray mists that swathed the upper floors of the world's tallest office building."

The crash not only damaged the Empire State Building (estimates at the time ran from $500,000 to $1 million in damages): one of the plane's engines actually shot through the building, tore a hole in the south side, and plummeted down onto the penthouse of 10 West 33rd Street, the studio of sculptor Henry Hering. The subsequent fire destroyed the studio. The other engine went into the elevator shaft, snapping the cable and driving the car -- with two women in it -- down to the basement; both women survived, one with severe burns.

The plane was captained by decorated pilot Col. William F. Smith, Jr. Just a few minutes earlier, Smith had radioed La Guardia airport; what happened next is unclear. According to some published reports, air traffic control told Smith to land in Queens; but there is also evidence that Smith was cleared to land in Newark as long as he could maintain three miles visibility.

It is certain that Smith's visibility quickly worsened. With the fog growing thicker, Smith decided to fly lower to check his visibility; when he emerged from the clouds he found himself in Midtown Manhattan and somehow managed to fly about ten blocks, dodging skyscrapers, before ultimately hitting the Empire State.

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More about the Empire State Building -- and the aircraft originally designed to land on its towering spire -- can be found in Inside the Apple: A Streetwise History of New York City.

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Walking Tour of Revolutionary War Lower Manhattan

2009-07-23T08:03:00.005-04:00

On Sunday, August 16, at 5:00 p.m., we are returning to Lower Manhattan for another free walking tour of downtown sites.

The tour will focus on famous sites in the Financial District connected to the Revolution and the early Federal period, including Fraunces Tavern--George Washington's last headquarters--and Federal Hall. But we'll also talk about some lesser-known places, such as the sites of the second presidential mansion and the 1765 Stamp Acts protests when New York's governor was burned in effigy.

The tour will begin and end at Borders at 100 Broadway; after the tour we'll have a Q&A. And, of course, copies of Inside the Apple will be available for sale and signing.

No RSVP is necessary but please arrive a few minutes early so that we can start promptly at 5:00 p.m.

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The Civil War Draft Riots -- Day 4

2009-07-16T02:27:00.003-04:00

Thursday, July 16, 1863, marked the final day of the New York City draft riots. (You can follow these links to read about Day 1, Day 2, and Day 3.)

As the day began, many New Yorkers were surprised to hear the news from Mayor George Opdyke that not only had the draft been suspended but that the city council had voted the day before to authorize a fund to pay for a substitute for any New Yorker who was drafted and chose not to serve. The city had appropriated $2.5 million dollars for the cause--money it did not have and which surely would have bankrupted the city if spent. Opdyke promised that the riots were coming to an end and ordered people to go back to work and for the street car lines to resume running.

But to add to the confusion, that same day the papers also published a proclamation from Governor Horatio Seymour--actually issued on Tuesday, two days earlier--letting them know there was riot going on. (In case, somehow, no one had noticed.)

A third letter also appeared in the press: an appeal from Catholic Archbishop Hughes to his flock urging them to come to his home on Friday to hear him in person.

What only a few people knew was that the military had begun to arrive from Gettysburg. The Seventy-Fourth Regiment arrived soon after midnight on Wednesday and by the end of Thursday, the Seventh ("Silk Stocking") Regiment, the Sixty-Fith Regiment and others had been stationed at points around the city.

The arrival of more troops did not instantly quell the riots: there was a bloody clash between about twenty-five soldiers and a crowd that chased them into a foundry on First Avenue. But by the end of the day--as a rainstorm tore through the city, naturally discouraging the mob--it seemed as if the riots were on the verge of burning themselves out.

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The next day, Friday, over 5,000 people gathered to hear Archbishop Hughes's address, but as J.T. Headley noted in Great Riots of New York, 1712-1873:

They were on the whole a peaceable-looking crowd, and it was evidently composed chiefly, if not wholly, of those who had taken no part in the riot. None of the bloody heads and gashed faces, of which there were so many at that moment in the city, appeared. The address was well enough, but it came too late to be of any service. It might have saved many lives and much destruction, had it been delivered two days before, but now it was like the bombardment of a fortress after it had surrendered--a mere waste of ammunition. The fight was over, and to use his own not very refined illustration, he "spak' too late."

There were no further outbreaks of violence that day and none the next day, Saturday, despite the news from Washington that the draft would be enforced and would recommence as soon as the city was ready.

As we write in Inside the Apple: A Streetwise History of New York City:

No one is certain how many people died in the clash. At the time it was estimated to be 1,000 but the official death toll afterward was reduced to just 100 people. The true figure may never be known, but surely rests somewhere in between, making the Draft Riots the single worst civil disturbance in American history.
Democrats, led by rising Tammany Hall powerbroker William “Boss” Tweed, reached a compromise which allowed the draft to continue. Tweed would appoint a commission on behalf of the city to hear claims by those who felt they could neither serve nor pay the $300 and the city would decide to hire substitutes on a case-by-case basis. In the end, through a combination of city money, medical infirmity, and people simply not reporting for duty, only one person from Five Points served in the war because of the draft.

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Read more about New York in the Civil War in Inside the Apple: A Streetwise History of New York City.

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