 Every era has its squatters, with people living on land or in buildings they do not own. After World War I, veterans camped along the Hudson River. In the Depression in the 1930s, squatters lived in “Hoovervilles” in Central Park and along the river. In the 1970s, people seized abandoned property and became owners through “sweat equity.” Today, people may find squatters in their unoccupied apartments. In nineteenth-century Manhattan, squatters settled in many areas where land was owned but undeveloped, becoming a part of city life.
News accounts about squatters began in the 1850s, as New York experienced a surge in immigration, with many impoverished newcomers arriving from Germany and Ireland. The Irish people came from a country in a famine crisis, and were in the worst shape. Charles Loring Brace wrote for The New York Times about the hardworking squatters who built their “cabins” on vacant lots, making a living by picking through the streets and collecting anything of value. But Brace also sounded an alarm that “from these hordes come our thieves, vagabonds, and prostitutes.” He appealed for help in establishing a Hudson River Industrial School on West 28th Street, where the young people would learn English and job skills. Brace founded the Children’s Aid Society, where one of the solutions to handling orphaned immigrant children was to place them on Orphan Trains bound for the West. In 1867, a newspaper describes the squatter father as a laborer for a “street-opening contractor,” while the mother takes in washing and ironing from a private house, raises poultry, and “supplies a small shop with the milk from a sickly cow.” Some squatters pay a nominal rent to a landlord who is trying to make some money while they wait for the price of the land to increase. Others go to City Hall to study the property maps and choose land owned by old New York families, rather than real estate speculators who would be more likely to evict them. Other news reports describe their shanties, built of scrap wood with pieces of tin nailed to the roof. Other news articles take a more sensational tone, describing the places where squatters gather as “dens of wretchedness, murder, theft, and riot,” blaming the squatters for the 1863 Draft Riots, and bemoaning the number of Democratic voters who live there who are known to vote multiple times in any election. Real estate owners began to organize in the 1870s to promote their interests as they recognized the increasing value of uptown real estate. Although the 1873 economic recession was a setback, the building of the Ninth Avenue elevated railroad in 1879 spurred development. The west side had more rocky outcrops, so street-opening was more difficult as the grid of mapped streets was created. Streets had to be built, block by block, by blasting and cutting through the rocks, filling in the hollows, grading, establishing water and sewer lines, and finally paving. Landlords often delayed leveling their property until real estate values rose, thus leaving the unoccupied space available for squatting. Today, you can see a rocky outcrop that was never demolished on West 114th Street between Broadway and Riverside Drive. This photo of the old Brennan farmhouse, rented by Edgar Allen Poe in the summer of 1884, shows how the first buildings perched on the uneven landscape.
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The Nineteenth Century Squatters of the West Side
Madam Polly: “The Best Goddamn Madam in America” Park West Village; History of a Diverse Community The World War I Fortune Tellers on the Upper West Side The Votes for Women Grocery Store and Other Tales of Upper West Side Suffragists The Bicycle Craze Comes to Bloomingdale The Solar Eclipse of 1925 Comes to Bloomingdale Bloomingdale Before the Road Neighborhood Charities: House of Mercy Bloomingdale in 1855 One Hundred Years Ago: Bloomingdale Traffic Orphan Houses of the Upper West Side Bloomingdale Neighbor Augusta Stetson and the Church at 96th Street and Central Park West Post #1: Bloomingdale: Colonial Times and after the Revolutionary War Post #2: 18th Century Bloomingdale residents before the American Revolution Post #3: The Revolutionary War in Bloomingdale Post #4 Enslaved African Americans in Bloomingdale Post#5 Bloomingdale Grows and Prospers 1790-1820 Post #6 Along the Bloomingdale Road After the Revolution: Taverns and Tavern Keepers Post #7 Bloomingdale Goes to School 1790s and early 1800s Prohibition in Bloomingdale Spanish Flu in Bloomingdale: A Search for How Our Neighborhood Coped in 1918 Growing Old in Bloomingdale: Nineteenth Century Homes for the Aged, Part 1 Growing Old in Bloomingdale, Part II Growing Old in Bloomingdale Part III Our Bloomingdale Wall Provisioning Bloomingdale: Stores that fed the residents of Bloomingdale: Part 1 Bloomingdale Neighborhood Stores, Part Two New York’s Colored Orphan Asylum Bloomingdale’s Finest Mansion: From Elmwood to Elm Park, 1764-1891 Bloomingdale’s West 96th Street Was the Focus of the 1925 Solar Eclipse Dining Out in Bloomingdale ¡Unidad Latina! — Political Activism on the UWS in the 1960s and 70s Little Coney Island on West 110th Street Making Music in Bloomingdale The Home for the Relief of the Destitute Blind The Bloomingdale Insane Asylum The New York Pasteur Institute on Central Park West at 97th Street John Clendening, Esquire, and his Bloomingdale Estate The Lion Brewery, the Lion Park, and the Lion Palace Battle of Harlem HeightsBloomingdale History Map History Detectives: Researching Your Building Bloomingdale History Map Bloomingdale/Manhattan Valley Chronology THE RISE AND TRAGIC FALL OF A MODEL WHO BROKE THE RULES The Old Community on West 98th and 99th Streets The Story of 891 Amsterdam Avenue and how it became a New York City Landmark The Ninth Avenue El Measure of Manhattan Neighborhood Nomenclature Written by Marjorie Cohen, member of the Bloomingdale Neighborhood History Group Planning Committee NB: In researching this post about one of the most important and often-forgotten figures of Jazz Age New York, I consulted several sources, but the one that was the most informative and by far the most fun to read was Debby Applegates’ 2021 biography of Polly Adler: Madam: The Biography of Polly Adler, Icon of the Jazz Age The book, published by Doubleday, is an impressive piece of research and the very model of a page-turner. The best goddamn madam in America In 1913 when she was 13 years old, Pearl Adler landed on Ellis Island from her home in Yanow, a shtetl in what is now Belarus. Pearl was traveling alone and when she stepped off the boat, wearing a torn shawl and carrying a potato sack filled with all her worldly possessions, there was nothing much to distinguish her from the rest of the boys and girls on the dock. No one would have guessed then that this teenager would soon be featured in newspaper headlines as Polly Adler, “The Jewish Jezebel”, “Queen of Tarts”, “First Lady of the Underworld” and the “Pushiest Procurer of the Jazz Age”.  Polly when she was retired and living in California Pam Tice is a member of the Bloomingdale Neighborhood History Group
In the spring of 1918, a year after the United States entered World War I, the Manhattan District Attorney initiated a special effort to arrest fortune tellers who charged their clients a fee to contact their soldier sons to check on their well-being or guarantee a safe return. Government officials considered this fraudulent behavior and, as such, it affected public morale during wartime. The war had brought a wide interest in spiritualism, a recently recognized religion, along with numerous other beliefs in psychic phenomena. The Victorians introduced an era of seances, palmistry, fortune-telling, and faith-healing that started before the Civil War but significantly grew during that war as people sought comfort from the trauma of the time. The uncertainty and brutality of World War I caused a new outpouring in Britain that soon spread to the United States. The laws against fortune-telling in the U.S. were based on British Law that declared fortune-tellers and many others “vagrants.” In New York State, they were labeled “disorderly persons,” along with prostitutes, gamblers, and numerous others. Under the New York Code of Criminal Procedure, they were labeled “persons pretending to tell fortunes,” as the law assumed that a future could not be foretold. Pam Tice is a member of the Bloomingdale Neighborhood History Group
In the early morning hours of April 14, 1918, the New York Assistant District Attorney led a group of police officers and military policemen in a series of raids of chop suey restaurants, beginning in the Tenderloin area of the city and culminating at Lee Suey’s restaurant at 210 Manhattan Avenue between West 109th and West 110th Streets. Place after place was visited and closed up while the police interrogated the people found there. Women were asked if they were married to the man they were sitting with, and to provide a wedding ring to prove it. “Slackers,” as single young men were called, were ordered to show their military registration cards. Men in military uniforms were let go, but their names and addresses were taken. According to a description in the New York Tribune women who were not married to their escorts were taken to the local police station house unaccompanied, held until 6 am, and their names and addresses were taken with a warning not to frequent a chop suey restaurant again. They were warned they could be served with a subpoena that would bring them to the District Attorney’s office for further questioning. This must have been scary for a young woman who might be a stenographer, a bookkeeper, or in the entertainment industry as a chorus girl or an actress. Perhaps she had just had a date for a movie and stopped for something to eat afterward. by Pam Tice Pam Tice is a member of the Bloomingdale Neighborhood History Group The opening of the Votes for Women Grocery Store at 2540 Broadway at West 95th Street in February 1913 made news across the country. The store was a project of Sophia Kremer of 233 West 83rd Street, a Hungarian immigrant and the wife of Dr. Geza Kremer. The profits from the store were to be used for suffrage work in the “upper part” of the city. Sophia Kremer was just one of several suffragists who lived on the Upper West Side. Their determination to pursue the right to vote resonates today as women struggle to gain and regain rights. The campaign for women’s suffrage re-ignited during the Progressive Era. Women in neighborhoods all over the city took up the cause, launching a new movement after the deaths of both Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony in 1902. Stanton is commemorated today in the renaming of the building at 250 West 94th Street where she lived with her daughter, Harriet Stanton Blasch, who herself was an important suffragist. After failing in 1915, the New York suffragists reached success in 1917 in passing an amendment to the New York State Constitution granting women full suffrage. This was a first for an eastern state and helped lead the way to the passage of the 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution in 1919.  By Pam Tice, Bloomingdale Neighborhood History Group Planning Committee In the 1890s, a bicycling craze swept America as men and women purchased bicycles and took to the roads. The safety bicycle, a machine much like the one we have today with equal-size wheels and inflated tires, fueled the craze as the model became widely available by the mid-1880s. Bicycles cost from $45 to $75, making the craze very much a middle-class phenomenon. In our Bloomingdale neighborhood, with its paved roadways and two parks, the bicycle craze became part of street life. Central Park West and Eighth Avenue was paved up to 135th Street by 1898, although riders found the darkened street under the El (above 110th Street) hard to maneuver. Central Park became popular for bicycling by the mid-1880s after Park rules allowed cyclists to ride on the drives, already busy with carriages and horses. The Boulevard, later named Broadway, was a popular bicycling route, from Columbus Circle up to Grant’s Tomb and the Claremont Inn. Certain parts of the new Riverside Drive also attracted wheelmen and wheelwomen, as the bicyclists were called. In the spring of 1896, traffic counters noted more than 14,000 bicyclists over a sixteen-hour period.  by Pam Tice, Bloomingdale History Group Planning Committee “The Sun may be in eclipse, but New York, never!” -Mayor John F. Hylan, quoted during the January 24, 1925, total solar eclipse over New York City As we look forward to the solar eclipse on the afternoon of April 8, 2024, it’s a good time to remember the eclipse on the cold morning of January 1925 when the Bloomingdale neighborhood was at the center of attention. This year New Yorkers will see the sun 90% obscured by the moon. In 1970, many Upper West Siders gathered in Riverside Park to experience the 96% eclipse. But in 1925, it was a total eclipse. The last total eclipse had been 450 years before, and the next two were predicted for 2079 and 2144. The path of totality was a bit undefined in the days leading up to the 1925 event. Initially, the line of totality was predicted to be between West 72nd Street and West 110th Street. A few days later, the line was set north of West 83rd Street. Following the event, the line was firmly established: between West 96th and 97th Streets, or between 230 and 240 Riverside Drive. Pundits dubbed it “The West 96th Eclipse.” The Daily News published this map before the event.  written by Pam Tice, member of the BNHG planning committee The story of the House of Mercy, located at the far end of West 86th Street on the Hudson River, is a tale of women’s work. The House was founded in 1855 by a devoted Episcopal woman, Mrs. William Richmond, who used her religious convictions and social skills to establish the charitable home. In 1863, the House of Mercy was put under the management of Episcopal nuns whose establishment was a historical moment for the church. It is also the story of young women of New York City in the mid-nineteenth century and their struggles that reflect the social mores of the patriarchal culture of that era.  |
