Monday, August 2, 2021 – LET’S NOT EMULATE THIS AUGUST TRADITION
STOP THE PRESSES…
EVEN MORE BIZARRE RIVERSIDE FURNITURE IN THE NEW SOUTHPOINT PARK!
THESE MONSTROSITIES ARE BEING PLACED ON THE EAST SIDE OF THE NEW SOUTHPOINT PARK.
WHAT WAS RIOC THINKING? OR NOT THINKING.
MOST OF THE BENCHES FACE THE PARK, NOT THE RIVER VIEW!
WE CANNOT EVEN IMAGINE WHAT THIS OBJECT IS SUPPOSED TO BE.
AFTER WORKING SO HARD (WITH LOTS OF COMMUNITY INPUT) A WONDERFUL FDR HOPE MEMORIAL MATERIALIZED.
RIOC WAS LEFT ON THEIR OWN TO MESS UP SOUTHPOINT PARK. THIS IS WHAT HAPPENS WHEN EVERYONE WAS SUPPOSEDLY “WORKING FROM HOME.” AN PANDEMIC OF BAD DESIGN.
FROM THE ARCHIVES
MONDAY, AUGUST 2, 2021
THE 431st EDITION
A Bizarre
August Tradition
Along Old
New York City’s
Waterfronts
FROM EPHEMERAL NEW YORK
The lazy dog days of summer along the waterfronts of late 19th century New York could could also be dangerous, thanks in part to a strange old tradition called “launching day.”
In 1908 On either August 1 or the first Friday in August (sources differ on exactly when it was held and how long it lasted), boys (and some men) along the city’s rivers would pick up another boy or man and launch them into the water. “Yesterday was what the boys along the water front call ‘Launching Day,'” wrote the New York World on August 3, 1897. “They throw each other into the river, clothes and all, saying, ‘Now swim and give yourself a bath.'”
The origins of launching day aren’t clear, but one Brooklyn newspaper stated in 1902 that it “has been a summer event ever since Robert Fulton launched the first steamboat into the Hudson in 1807.”
Launching Day was apparently held in Brooklyn as well. “Tomorrow will also be a fine day for the little boys along the river front who will observe ‘Launching Day,'” reported the Brooklyn Daily Eagle on July 31, 1897, a Saturday. “This juvenile holiday will, in all probability, last for three days, as some little boys do not like to be thrown overboard in their Sunday togs.”
“August 1 has been known about the waterfront for many years as ‘Launching Day,'” wrote the New-York Herald on August 2, 1900. “Anybody who ventures on a pier is in danger of being thrown into the water….John Kriete, 21 years old, an iceman of 312 East 84th Street, pushed a workman, George Krause, of the same address, overboard at East 100th Street yesterday and fell in afterward himself. Kriete was drowned.”
“In Brooklyn the drowned body of Thomas McGullen, the 10-year-old son of John McGullen of No. 70 Hicks Street, was taken from the water at Henry Street,” wrote the New-York Tribune on August 2, 1903. “He was pushed off the pier by his playmates, who were celebrating ‘launching.’ They thought he could swim.”
Exactly when launching day died out I’m not sure. But by the 1930s, newspapers interviewed people who recalled the tradition.
In the Daily News in 1934, a police reporter wrote: “I’ve known how to swim for 30 years because I was one of the West Side kids who used the Hudson River. We don’t have it now but then we had an annual ‘Launching Day’….Everybody near the water got thrown in, clothes and all. You had to swim or else.”
[Top photo: George Bain Collection/LOC; second image: George Bellows; Third photo: New-York Historical Society; Fourth image: New York Evening World; Fifth image: NYPL]
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FROM WIKIPEDIA:
The Elephantine Colossus (also known as the Colossal Elephant or the Elephant Colossus, or by its function as the Elephant Hotel) was a tourist attraction located on Coney Island in Brooklyn, New York City. It was built in the shape of an elephant, an example of novelty architecture. The seven story structure designed by James V. Lafferty stood above Surf Avenue and West 12th Street from 1885 until 1896, when it burnt down in a fire. During its lifespan, the thirty-one room building acted as a concert hall and amusement bazaar. It was the second of three elephant buildings built by Lafferty, preceded by the extant Lucy the Elephant near Atlantic City and followed by The Light of Asia in Cape May.
Text by Judith Berdy
Thanks to Bobbie Slonevsky for her dedication to Blackwell’s Almanac and the RIHS
Thanks to Deborah Dorff for maintaining our website
Edited by Deborah Dorff
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EPHEMERAL NEW YORK
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