​​Blogs

​Marjorie Cohen of the BNHG planning committee wrote this article which appeared originally in the website brickunderground.com

New York City has a history so rich and complex that it's probably impossible for one person to absorb it all. There are multitudes of books on the subject, and untold additional documents and artifacts relating to forgotten events and communities that have yet to be uncovered, that are sitting dusty under someone's floorboards, or that have been altogether lost to time and the elements. That's not to say it's not an enriching thing to try to wrap your head around.

For the New York history curious, we rounded up recommendations from local historians and authors of resources to begin exploring the big city's vast past. So far we have heard their picks for the best books about the city as a whole, and books about specific neighborhoods and communities. Now, we've got their picks for the best blogs, websites, podcasts, and social media feeds for understanding what came before.

If you finish the list and find yourself still wanting more, historian Justin Ferate has over 800 web resource recommendations on his website, organized by category.

Daytonian in Manhattan
​“Tom Miller has exhaustively researched more than 200 buildings, most on the Upper West Side. If a building looks interesting, he’s probably jumped on it. His commentary is always fun to read, and Christopher Gray of the New York Times, who passed away recently, was the only other person who did what Miller does on a regular basis.”—Jim Mackin, historian andwalking tour guide
“Excellent and engaging research about notable Manhattan buildings that often includes the back story of their development and construction. The blog’s historical images and items of social and cultural interest give a well-rounded assessment of both the subject building and its cultural milieu.”—Ferate

In a previous blog,  Marjorie Cohen asked  11 authors and historians to choose The 25 best books about New York City history. So many good books came up in the process that she decided to save some of the haul for further lists. Having highlighted books that deal with the entire city in some way or another, in this blog she  rounded up the best neighborhood-specific New York history books, again as selected by an array of experts. Here are their picks, organized roughly by the part of the city they cover.  

Lower Manhattan

South Street: A Photographic Guide to New York City’s Historic Seaport, by Ellen Fletcher Rosebrock
"Rosebrock’s book was published in 1974 by the still relatively new South Street Seaport Museum. It remains an excellent guide to the neighborhood, but is particularly interesting for its historic images, both those illustrating the 19th-century Seaport, and those showing the neighborhood in all its 1970s shabbiness—a period in the Seaport’s history that now seems equally remote.”—Anthony Robins, architectural historian and author or New York Art Deco

​The Lower East Side Remembered and Revisited: A History and Guide to a Legendary New York Neighborhood, by Joyce Mendelsohn
“Were I limited to one recommendation for a book about the Lower East Side, this book would definitely be it. Briefly and succinctly, Mendelsohn chronicles sites and the historic transformation of this immensely culturally rich neighborhood. Five self-guided walking tours let the reader view more than 150 sites, aged tenements nestled next to luxury apartment towers which in turn abut historic churches and synagogues. This book is a treasure!”—Justin Ferate, historian

Dr. William Seraile's summary of his BNHG presentation on February 27, 2018.
William Seraile is Professor Emeritus of History at Lehman College of the City University of New York.  He is the author of five books, including  “Angels of Mercy:  White Women and the History of New York’s Colored Orphan Asylum.” 
The Colored Orphan Asylum (COA) was founded in 1836 by three Quaker women.   It was sorely needed, since youth of color were excluded from orphanages for white children. The orphanage faced many obstacles throughout its existence including financial panics, fires, diseases and chronic money shortage. Racism led to its complete destruction in the Draft Riots of July 1863, when its building at 43rd and Fifth Avenue was looted and burned by the mob.  The frightened children and staff escaped to the protection of a nearby police precinct and then to Blackwell’s Island (Roosevelt Island).

Winifred Armstrong and Barbara Ernest composed this pamphlet for the Park West History Group (predecessor of the BNHG) in 2007

Whether you were born in New York, moved here decades ago, or just arrived, you might be curious to know something about what was here before you. Kenneth Jackson, editor of The Encyclopedia of New York City, says that over ten thousand books have been written about the city, including about a hundred a year from 1990 on, so sorting the wheat from the chaff is a daunting task indeed.
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To get a sense of what's essential reading for the New York history neophyte, we asked 11 historians and authors to tell us their favorite books of New York history, along with an explanation of why each title made the cut. 

This post is the seventh in a series that covers Bloomingdale’s lost structures. It was written by Pam Tice, a member of the Bloomingdale Neighborhood History Group’s Planning Committee.

When you walk from West 96th to 91st Streets on Columbus Avenue, or walk east from Broadway to Columbus on those streets, you’ll notice you are on a hill.  The crest of the hill on 91st Street, about 100 feet west of Columbus, is the location where, starting in 1764, a colonial mansion stood for 130 years.  Originally, it was surrounded by a 300-acre estate. Over the years, though, the land was whittled back through legacy gifts and real estate sales, as the development of the West Side played out until finally, just the mansion stood, surrounded by a small park. This structure and the land encapsulates the history of our Bloomingdale neighborhood, and is presented here.

In 1764, wealthy merchant Charles Ward Apthorp built what was widely recognized as one of the finest mansions in all of New York City. Like many of his contemporaries, Apthorp purchased land on the west side of Manhattan, no doubt picturing himself as one of the landed gentry of the American colony. He had moved to New York from Boston where his father, Charles Apthorp, was one of New England’s wealthiest merchants, and served as the paymaster and agent for the Royal Army and Navy, furnishing supplies and money to the British forces in Boston and Nova Scotia.  He also imported and sold many kinds of goods, including slaves.  His eighteen children married into many of the other prominent families of the Massachusetts Bay Colony.

Now in New York, Charles Ward Apthorp married Mary McEvers at Trinity Church in 1755. She was the daughter of John McEvers of Dublin, another successful New York merchant. They had ten children: Charles, James, George, Grizzel (named for her Boston grandmother), Eliza, Susan, Rebecca, Ann, Mary/Maria, and Charlotte; six of them lived to adulthood.

In 1762 and 1763, Charles Ward Apthorp purchased nearly 300 acres in Bloomingdale from two owners, Dennis Hicks and Oliver de Lancey, whose ownership can be traced back to Dutch landowners, starting with Bedlow.  I. N. Phelps Stokes, in his book The Iconography of Manhattan, details the purchases of the Apthorp Farm which was also known as Elmwood, recognizing the beautiful trees surrounding the mansion. The house was finished in the early summer of 1764, located on a hill overlooking the Hudson River.

A short drive from the home led to the Bloomingdale Road, then the westside’s main thoroughfare.  The estate also included two lanes that served as shortcuts to neighboring estates, including Apthorp Lane that stretched all the way east through the land we know as Central Park to the Boston Post Road near today’s Fifth Avenue.
The estate was described in a later advertisement:
300 acres of choice rich land, chiefly meadow, …on which there are two very fine orchards of the best fruit …an exceeding good house, elegantly furnished, commanding beautiful prospects of the East and North-Rivers, on the latter of which the estate is bounded. Also, a two-story brick house for an overseer and servants, a wash house, cyder (sic) house and mill, corn crib, a pidgeon (sic) house, well stocked, a very large barn, and hovels for cattle, large stables and coach houses, and every other convenience. About the dwelling house is a very handsome pleasure garden, in the English taste, with good kitchen gardens well furnished with excellent fruit trees of most kinds.
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Here is a sketch view of Elmwood:

By Pam Tice, BNHG Program Committee
 
Central Park stretches out from Eighth to Fifth Avenue to the east of the Bloomingdale neighborhood. On November 28, 2017, Sara Cedar Miller, Central Park’s Historian, came to speak to our group with a wonderful collection of images ---- photographs, old maps and pastel paintings ----- that pictured the land before the Park, and its rich New York history.
 
First we learned about the topography, a key factor in how land is used. Old maps show the many rock outcroppings, looking out over low, flat, marshes and Harlem Creek, now covered over but making the basements wet in East Harlem.  The little stream we call the Loch today was part of a farm owned by the Montagne family on land acquired in 1637 where tobacco was one of the crops. The stream’s original name was Montagne’s Rivulet ---- and provided a refreshing stop for many on their way “uptown” --- even a metal dipper for a drink of water.  An old dipper was found in a space between two rocks when Central Park Conservancy crews were working on the Loch.
 
The east side of the Park also served as the route for traffic headed north on the Kingsbridge Road, as it moved west and north to get over the Creek, and through a pass in the rocky terrain.  Taverns were soon located, with McGowan’s Tavern located near the pass. This site later became the Convent of Mount Saint Vincent which took the tavern building and added others.
 
The rocky promontories served a military purpose during the Revolutionary War. Indeed, as the Park was under construction, Olmsted’s work crew found evidence of the remnants of the Hessian and British troops that were billeted there.  The War of 1812 brought new military uses: as news of an impending British attack on Manhattan grew, citizens scrambled to build a string of fortifications across the high rocky land: Fort Fish, Nutter’s Battery and Fort Clinton, and the Blockhouse, sited on an older base left from the Revolutionary era.  Today, these fort sites and their landscapes have been restored by the Central Park Conservancy.
 
For the avid historians in the audience, Sara related the tale of discovering, verifying, restoring and repositioning a cannon, now on display at Fort Clinton. The cannon was discovered to be from the wreck of the HMS Hussar, a British frigate that sank in the treacherous waters of Hell Gate in 1780. Further excitement ensued in 2013 when the restoration crew discovered black gunpowder stored in the cannon. The NYPD came to the rescue, stating later, “We silenced British cannon fire in 1776, and we don’t want to hear it again in Central Park.”
 
This wonderful landscape on our Bloomingdale doorstep is rich in American history and just a walk away.

In this summer of 2017 as we prepare for the solar eclipse on August 21, a recent reference to the 1925 eclipse in The New York Times and the importance of our Bloomingdale neighborhood inspired further research.  This event, known as the Upper Manhattan Eclipse, did not occur in the heat of summer, but on a freezing, cold day: January 24, 1925.
Predictions of the path of a solar eclipse were pretty accurate by 1925, but not perfect.  Ancient societies—including the Babylonians, the Chinese, and the Maya—had developed the ability to predict solar eclipse patterns, but it wasn’t until 1715 that astronomer Sir Edmond Halley made his critical breakthrough, using Isaac Newton’s law of gravity. This achievement enabled predictions of exactly where the eclipse would occur and how long it would last at that point.