A History Lover's Guide to New York City

Even as New Yorkers amused themselves, they took the business of eprogress very seriously. They were eager to discover, to create, to advance. To do this required genius. New Yorkers recognized genius.

Thomas Alva Edison was a genius. As a young man, he had worked as a telegrapher, tapping and receiving messages in a small office. Edison appreciated the significance of the invention of the telegraph to America but recognized that it needed improvement. He saw that telegraph lines could transmit multiple messages simultaneously and transmit them faster.

Edison solved these problems, attracting the attention of the New York Vanderbilts. supported by their financial backing, he established an industrial research laboratory in Menlo Park, new Jersey, a convenient railway commute from New York City. In December 1879, at Menlo Park, Edison demonstrated his latest invention: the electric light bulb. Awe over Edison’s remarkable creation quickly inspired investment schemes among his financial backers—J.P. Morgan, the Vanderbilts and Henry Villard. They made plans to electrify New York City.

Within three years, Edison had implemented these plans. In an enormous undertaking, Edison supervised the installation of power lines below the streets of lower Manhattan to carry electricity to New York’s financial and manufacturing center. On september 4, 1882, thomas Alva Edison, standing with J.P. Morgan in the Drexel Morgan Building, at the corner of Wall and Broad streets, illuminated eight hundred lights to make New York City the first electrified city in the world. soon, electricity was no longer a novelty; it was a necessity. The New York stock Exchange was electrified in 1883. New York office buildings installed their own power generators. Not surprisingly, J.P. Morgan was the first individual in New York City—and the world—to electrify his home. Other millionaires followed his example.

Lights transformed the city. stores, hotels, restaurants and theaters all lit up, drawing people out in the evening hours. New York became a night city, a city ablaze. soon, advertising signs lit up. To attract further attention, they blinked. The Great White Way—Broadway between 23^rd and 34^th—earned its name from its serious concentration of lights. Even after the introduction of colored lights, the Great White Way retained its nickname.

The Edison General Electric Company, formed by J.P. Morgan and presided over by Henry Villard, made thomas A. Edison a wealthy man. He rented a home in fashionable Gramercy Park. Edison was not a great businessman, however. The company financiers soon eased Edison out of the company. Edison General became the General Electric Company.

New York quickly embraced other Edison inventions. Edison worked with Alexander Graham Bell, who came to New York City in 1877 to demonstrate his new invention: the telephone. Early in 1879, after a year of creative cooperation with thomas Edison, Bell put the telephone to commercial use. In 1879, this country’s first telephone exchange opened in New York City with several hundred customers. Within a few years, hundreds of customers became thousands as businesses and private individuals clamored for the new device, which quickly became an indispensable part of everyday life. The next step was to connect New York City to other cities. The first line was from New York to Boston in 1884. New York to Philadelphia went through in 1885. The more distant Chicago was hooked up to New York in 1892.

Edison also invented the phonograph, demonstrating this new marvel in New York City in 1877. Moving pictures, aided by Edison inventions, caught on rapidly. The first commercial motion picture house in the United states opened in New York City on April 14, 1894. The Holland Brothers Kinetoscope Parlor, at 1155 Broadway, used the Edison-developed technology to display a series of moving pictures. This was, however, little more than a peep show viewed by one person at a time looking into a little box.

The excitement of an audience sharing the experience of watching a flickering image on a screen in a theater first occurred in New York City in April 1896 at Koster and Bial’s Music Hall, at Broadway and 34^th. This location is where Macy’s department store now stands. From the 1890s until World War I, New York was the capital of the young United states film industry until it left the East Coast for Hollywood, California.

However, many movies and television shows today are filmed on location in New York City.

Advances in technology were beneficial to transportation. As New York grew, so did the congestion. Getting around the city was never convenient. It often took hours to go from 42^nd street to Wall street. The horses that pulled the transport carriages left behind a filth that was difficult to contain. In the 1870s, New York City constructed elevated railroads along 2^nd, 3^rd, 6^th and 9^th Avenues. These Els—often three stories above the city streets—were a great advance in transportation within the city, though their drawbacks were significant. The trains that ran along these tracks were noisy and extremely dirty, spewing smoke and soot.

Cable cars and trolley cars ran on city streets late in the nineteenth century and on into the 1930s and ’40s. However, when a March 1888 snowstorm brought New York City to a complete halt, demands grew for an underground transportation system that would be impervious to the weather. It took a few more years of wrangling before city leaders reached the decision to go forward and work could begin. Between 1900 and 1904, over seven thousand workers—more than forty of whom would die in the process—excavated below city streets and laid the underground track for the Interborough rapid transit, the Irt. August Belmont Jr. founded the Irt.

The track began at City Hall. The opening day ceremonies in 1904 generated great excitement and some real trepidation. To descend underground, enter a subway car and emerge moments later at a different location was a novel experience and just a little frightening to some. The subway, however, quickly became an absolutely essential element of New York life and expanded throughout the city. There were several privately operated lines, including the Irt and the InD. In the 1940s, the city assumed control and ownership of the lines of transportation.

Today, the New York City subway system—operated by the MtA, or Metropolitan transit Authority—is the largest in the world. It runs twenty-four hours a day to accommodate two billion passengers annually. The subway has run everyday in New York City since its inception except for one. On January 27, 2015, the subway was shut down in anticipation of a major snowstorm that did not occur.

YOUR GUIDE TO HISTORY

Images

Grand Central terminal. Courtesy of James Maher.

This website provides a full range of information on the New York subway and bus system with maps, fare and schedule updates.

This was the original subway station at the southern end of the first line of the Irt. City Hall station, no longer in use, dates to 1904. Heins & laFarge were the architects for this beautiful romanesque-style station that has brass chandeliers and colored-glass tile. To get a peek at the station, stay on at the last stop on the southbound local 6 to Brooklyn Bridge as the train loops around and continues northbound. The New York transit Museum also offers tours of the station.

This is the original 1904 station restored. There is a bronze tablet to commemorate the Interborough rapid transit, the first subway in the United states. The subway cast-iron kiosk is a replica of the original. There are images of beavers on the walls inside the station in reference to the beaver trade that first made John Jacob Astor wealthy after he came to the United states in 1784. This is a working station on the MtA lexington line.

Gansevoort Street to 34^th Street between 10^th and 12^th Avenues • Manhattan/Meatpacking District to Chelsea
www.thehighline.org • Free

Visit the website for the exact location of stairs and elevators that provide access to the High line. On former elevated rail tracks, the High line is a diverse pathway offering lounge chairs, water features, covered passages and wonderful views of New York City north and south, including broad vistas through the Meatpacking District. The Chelsea thicket is a two-block walk through an ornamental tree forest. In warmer months, there are public programs and a variety of tours, including a general tour, a tour of the artwork on the High line and a tour of the plants and flowers found there. There are also public activities for children. The High line was created by a design team of James Corner Field operations, landscape architectural firm Diller scofidio + renfro and planting designer Piet oudolf.

Beginning in the 1870s, elevated tracks allowed trains to traverse safely a busy part of the city without endangering pedestrians, cars and street activity. In 1980, the trains stopped running. Many in New York hoped the tracks would go away as well. Others enthusiastically supported neighborhood activists Joshua David and robert Hammond, who had the vision to turn the abandoned Els into a park. Their vision became a reality when the first segment of the High line opened in 2009. The last part of the revitalized trail, now 1.45 miles long, opened in september 2014. The High line has quickly become a favorite destination for New Yorkers and tourists.

655 West 34^th Street • Manhattan/Garment District
800-282-3336 • www.autoshowny.com • Admission Fee

The New York International Auto show occurs one week each spring at the Jacob Javits Convention Center on West 34^th street. New York City, in 1900, hosted the first automobile exposition in the United states. The show has occurred every year since, becoming the largest in the world. On August 31, 1903, a Packard car left san Francisco to make the first cross-country car trip to New York City.

89 East 42^nd Street at Park Avenue • Manhattan/Midtown
917-566-0008 for private tours • www.grandcentralterminal.com • www.MAS.org to purchase tour tickets • Admission Fee

Visit Grand Central to marvel in its glory, even if your means of transportation do not require it. Note that it is Grand Central terminal, not “station” like Penn station. That is because trains terminate here and do not pass through en route to another destination. Once at the terminal, there are circular tracks to redirect the trains out of the terminal. In 1854, New York banned trains from running south of 42^nd street, keeping their sooty steam from the most populated areas of the city. As the city grew, the railroad tracks went underground in 1875, allowing Park Avenue to become a fashionable residential address.

The Municipal Art society of New York offers a daily tour of the architecture and history of the beautiful Grand Central terminal, including Vanderbilt Hall, with anecdotes that bring the terminal alive. Go to the GCt tours window on the main concourse. There are also self-guided audio tours for a fee.

Cornelius Vanderbilt constructed a terminus for his newly merged New York Central railroad in 1871. The growth of the railroad soon made this facility obsolete. A new rail depot was necessary. This was Grand Central terminal, a 1913 Warren & Wetmore Beaux-Arts building that is a beautiful tribute to the days when the railroad was king. Grand Central today is dedicated to commuter lines. longer routes to Boston, Philadelphia and Washington, D.C., go in and out of Penn station.

Grand Central terminal is testimony to the power and grandeur of the railroad, one of America’s great nineteenth-century achievements. There is a statue of Cornelius Vanderbilt on the southward-facing exterior of Grand Central—the boy from long Island who built a railroad empire from his first business venture in the staten Island Ferry and Hudson river shipping. Cornelius Vanderbilt forever remained “the Commodore,” even as he branched into railroads, merging one railroad line after another to make the New York Central railroad one of the great lines of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Vanderbilt Hall next to the main concourse inside the terminal is named for the Commodore.

Note the impressive, grand stairways of marble patterned after the stairway in the old Paris opera House, the 125-foot-high vaulted ceiling of the main concourse, with its lighted zodiac design of 2,500 stars (although astronomers note that the constellation is actually backward), the arched windows with catwalks and the elegant seth thomas clock with its four faces of precious opal that sits atop the information booth. The large American flag has hung in the main concourse since a few days after september 11, 2001. Atop the 42^nd street exterior entrance is a large tiffany clock depicting roman gods, including Mercury, who represents speed.

After the 1963 demolition of Penn station to build the fourth rendition of Madison square Garden, Jackie Kennedy and the Municipal Art society of New York worked to save Grand Central terminal. The 1903 Beaux-Arts Penn station, by architects McKim, Mead & White, was the single most beautiful building in New York. New York’s loss and shame over the demolition of Penn station turned to anger and action, spurring the population to fight to save many landmarks, such as Grand Central terminal, from disfiguration and destruction. Grand Central is the largest train station in the world by the number of tracks and platforms. It is a national Historic landmark.

Grand Central Terminal, 89 East 42^nd Street • Manhattan/Midtown
www.transitmuseum.org

This small annex of the New York transit Museum has changing exhibits on the history of transportation in New York City. It is a teaser and will certainly convince you to visit the home museum on Boerum Place in Brooklyn.

Boerum Place at Schermerhorn Street • Brooklyn
718-694-1600 • www.transitmuseum.org • Admission Fee

Housed in a 1936 InD, or former Independent subway, station in Brooklyn, this museum focuses on the history of public transportation in New York City and on the subway in particular. In the winter months, the transit museum offers rides on “nostalgia trains,” which provide visitors with the opportunity to experience subway cars in use from the early 1930s to the mid-1970s. The New York transit Museum periodically offers the chance to see the original City Hall station that dates to 1904. This very special station was the design of architects George lewis Heins and Christopher Grant laFarge.

212-245-0072 • www.intrepidmuseum.org • Admission Fee the Uss Intrepid, an aircraft carrier that saw service in World War II, is berthed on the Hudson river at Pier 86. Entrance to the museum includes tours of the Intrepid and a guided-missile submarine. The space shuttle Pavilion houses the space shuttle Enterprise. The Uss Intrepid is a national Historic landmark.

At the turn of the twentieth century, the possibilities of air flight generated great excitement. In a landmark event, Wilbur Wright flew an airplane over New York City in 1909. Charles lindbergh took off in his single-engine airplane the Spirit of St. Louis from roosevelt Field on long Island to fly to Paris in his famous 1927 transatlantic voyage. lindbergh returned to the United states as an American hero, revered around the globe. There was a ticker tape parade in New York City in his honor. The statue of Charles lindbergh by Paul Fjedle celebrates his achievements.

250 Bowery • Manhattan/The Bowery
212-857-0000 • www.icp.org • Admission Fee

The museum is moving to its new location at 250 Bowery in 2016. This museum, founded in 1974 by robert Capa and Cornell Capa, focuses on photography that documents the human condition.

This New York City website provides a helpful calendar of the many film festivals occurring each year. The New York Film Festival, now over fifty years old, shows the work of prominent and up-and-coming filmmakers for two weeks each fall. It is sponsored by the Film society lincoln Center. Another popular film festival is the tribeca Film Festival. Its website is www.Tribecafilm.com.

36-01 35^th Avenue • Queens
718-777-6800 • www.movingimage.US • Admission Fee

Everything you would want or need to know to understand how movies are made is provided in the core exhibit Behind the screen. Film, television and digital media are featured and explained in the museum, which also shows hundreds of films each year. This area was home to film studios, including one long affiliated with Paramount Pictures. The first two Marx Brothers movies were filmed here. Episodes of the children’s television series Sesame Street were also filmed here. The campus is the only film back lot in New York City.

47-01 111^th Street, Corona • Queens
718-699-0005 • www.nysci.org • Admission Fee

The last of the three World’s Fairs held in New York City was in 1964–65. The New York Hall of science is one of the few buildings from that fair surviving to this day. since the fair closed, the hall has served as New York’s science and technology museum. This is a hands-on museum that encourages visitors to see, touch and listen to learn about science, technology and math in the more than 450 exhibits. This is an especially good museum for children. An outdoor exhibition space displays rockets provided by the national Air and space Agency (nAsA) to the World’s Fair.

The 1964 New York World’s Fair chose as its theme “Peace through Understanding.” It focused on technological achievements both past and anticipated. Displays of early computer components gave visitors a real peek into the future. The Ford Motor Company first displayed its new Mustang automobile at this fair. The fair was not a commercial success. After its conclusion, many of the buildings were demolished. A few elements have endured.

A large panorama of the City of New York from the original New York City Pavilion is now on display, updated, in the New York Hall of science. The fair’s large Unisphere, intended to represent Earth in the space age, still stands in Flushing Meadows–Corona Park. This park hosts the United states tennis Association Billie Jean King national tennis Center and the Arthur Ashe stadium where the United states open tennis tournament is played each september. Adjacent to the park is Citi Field, home to the New York Mets baseball team.

2 Hylen Boulevard • Rosebank, Staten Island
718-816-4506 • www.aliceaustin.org • Donation

Alice Austen (1866–1952) is recognized as a female pioneer of photography as documentary art. Her home, Clear Comfort, is today a museum of her work and her times. Originally built in 1690 as a one-room Dutch farmhouse, Alice’s grandfather significantly expanded the home after he purchased it in the mid-nineteenth century. Alice spent much of her life here until financial problems forced her to give up the home in 1945. In addition to its collection of Alice Austen photographs, the museum has rotating exhibits, musical and dance programs and self-guided tours. It is a national Historic landmark.

278 Spring Street between Varick and Hudson Streets • Manhattan/Soho
212-691-1303 • www.nycfiremuseum.org • Admission Fee

Vintage fire engines and the history of the Fire Department of New York (FDnY) are the focus of this museum, which is housed in a 1904 fire station once home to FDnY Engine Company number 30. There is a moving section that details the response of the New York Fire Department to 9/11, the heroism of the firefighters and the loss. Three hundred and forty-three firemen died on 9/11.

This museum is currently closed. It does plan to reopen in order to continue its mission to inform the public about the history of the New York City Police Department, including individual stories, historic uniforms and artifacts. One focus is how the police as first responders played a heroic role after the september 11, 2001 terrorist attack on the World trade Center. Information about its status is on the website.

The Cooper Union is an educational institution particularly for art and design. It hosts exhibitions and symposiums in its several galleries and auditoriums. Many are free, as noted on the website. Peter Cooper was a genius. He turned his genius to his great advantage, rising from his beginnings as the son of a poor storekeeper to make a fortune in iron. Cooper owned rolling mills in new Jersey that produced much of the wrought iron that went into nineteenth-century building construction in New York City. Cooper also designed the first American locomotive, the tom thumb, which made its trial run on the Baltimore to Ellicott City, Maryland track in 1830.

Peter Cooper’s practical and technical innovative approach to nineteenth-century advances inspired him to endow one of the earliest free institutions in this country dedicated to teaching students a trade. The school, built in 1859, was also remarkable in that it was racially integrated and coeducational. Abraham lincoln chose the auditorium of the Cooper Union in 1860 to make one of his great speeches—a campaign speech, “right Makes Might,” in opposition to the spread of slavery to new American territories—that helped propel him to the presidency.

Images

The soho Cast Iron Historic District. Courtesy of James Maher.