Our list of New York facts and oddities continues. (Part I appears on page 81.)
Q. Who ensured public safety on the city’s Death Avenue before 1934?
A. “Cowboys.” Until the 1930s, the thoroughfare known as Death Avenue (Tenth Avenue) on Manhattan’s West Side was home to numerous factories serviced by railroads. The tracks posed a deadly hazard to cars, carriages, and pedestrians, who often strayed into the path of oncoming trains. In fact, the avenue was so hazardous that railroads employed men on horseback—who came to be called the Westside Cowboys—to ride ahead of the trains, waving flags and warning the public that they were coming. By the 1930s, the tracks had been replaced by an elevated line that remained in use until 1980.
Q. Of the five boroughs that make up New York City, which is the only one with a freshwater river running through it?
A. The Bronx. In fact, it has two: the Bronx River, which bisects it, and the smaller Hutchinson River, which passes through the northeast section of the borough and empties into Eastchester Bay.
Q. Why are the entrances to Central Park named for generic groups of people?
A. Central Park’s 843 acres are accessed by 20 entranceways, or “gates,” cryptically named the Inventors’ Gate, Artists’ Gate, Engineers’ Gate, Hunters’ Gate, Explorers’ Gate, Warriors’ Gate, Women’s Gate, and so on. When the park was built in the 1860s, the landscape architects who designed it—Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux—wanted to ensure that the greenbelt was welcoming to visitors and accessible to everyone. So, even though many people wanted the city to install ornate, iron gates—some even wanted the park to be locked at night—Olmsted and Vaux protested, insisting that the “gates” consist only of open pathways and low walls. They also named the entrances after types of people who might use the park. There was never a formal naming process, though, so for more than 100 years, most New Yorkers just referred to the entrances by their cross streets. It wasn’t until 1999 that the names were etched in sandstone at each entrance.
William Randolph Hearst and Norman Mailer both ran for mayor of NYC. (And lost.)
Q. Why do the avenues get closer together near the rivers?
A. In 1811, surveyors working for the State of New York unveiled the Commissioners Plan, which laid out the street/avenue grid pattern that Manhattan is now famous for. The surveyors theorized that real estate close to the rivers would be more valuable than that in the center of the island because the waterfronts were the city’s import/export hubs. So surveyors crimped the acreage into smaller parcels along the rivers to make more money. East Side avenues are spaced at 680 feet, while West Side avenues are separated by 800 feet. The avenues in the middle of Manhattan have the widest spacing: 920 feet.
Q. What solved New York’s Great Horse Manure Crisis?
A. You’ve never heard of the Great Horse Manure Crisis? Here’s what happened: Like many large cities in the 19th century, New York depended on horses for city services, and those animals generated a lot of waste. By the start of the 20th century, more than 100,000 horses lived in New York, and they produced about 2.5 million pounds of manure every day. In 1898, a group of urban planners convened, with the goal of finding a solution to New York’s waste-clogged streets. After three days, the planners gave up, convinced that there was nothing that could be done—horses were a necessity, and as the city grew, even more horses would move in. Residents would just have to learn to live with the mess. A few years later, a businessman in Michigan came up with an invention that inadvertently solved New York’s crisis. Henry Ford introduced the Model T in 1908, and within 10 years, automobiles had replaced horses for most city services. Pollution problem solved! (Well, one of them.)
Q. Why is Broadway the only diagonal street in Manhattan?
A. Because it follows the route of a Native American footpath across Manhattan Island. Broadway is New York City’s oldest avenue—the Indians called it Wickquasgeck and used it to cross the thick forests, fields of wild strawberries, and fishing inlets that existed before the Dutch built their settlement. The rest of New York City grew up around Broadway and was laid out in the grid pattern favored by Europeans. But Broadway remained a diagonal arrow across the Big Apple.
Brooklyn is home to the worldwide headquarters for Jehovah’s Witnesses.
Q. Where, or what, is the “Boogie Down”?
A. It’s a reference to the Bronx, the birthplace of hip-hop music. On August 11, 1973, Clive “DJ Kool Herc” Campbell hosted a “back-to-school” party in a rec room at 1520 Sedgewick Avenue in the west Bronx. His sister Cindy came up with the idea—she wanted to raise enough money to buy some new school clothes. The teenagers charged admission (25¢ for “ladies,” and 50¢ for “fellas”) and invited as many people in their neighborhood as they could find. Hundreds of kids showed up. Campbell put together the music by taking two copies of the same song and playing them side-by-side on separate turntables, repeating different beats that he thought sounded good. That party led to others, and eventually to huge events in a nearby park. (Campbell hot-wired street lamps to power his collection of massive speakers.) He used a microphone to “rap” over the music and encouraged break dancers (whom he nicknamed “b boys,” for “break boys”) to perform as well. Campbell went on to become a well-respected DJ, and the Bronx earned the nickname “the Boogie Down” for all the music that came out of the borough.
Q. What’s the oldest bridge in the five boroughs?
A. The High Bridge, built between 1837 and 1848. Connecting Manhattan and the Bronx, the bridge was a way to move water from the Croton Aqueduct to other parts of New York. It was just a pedestrian walkway (no road), but that closed in 1970 after someone tossed a brick onto a boat in the Harlem River. Rumor has it that the High Bridge will reopen to foot traffic sometime in 2013.
“People say that money is not the key to happiness, but I always figured, if you have enough money, you can get a key made.”
—Joan Rivers
First commissioned work of public art in NYC by a female artist “The Angel of the Waters” (in Central Park’s Bethesda Fountain) by Emma Stebbins.