Weekend, August 7-8, 2021 – THESE BUILDINGS ARE MADE OF STEEL AND LAST WELL OVER THE DECADES

By admin

AUGUST  7-8,  2021

OUR 436th EDITION

YORKVILLE

STEPHEN BLANK

They were not entirely popular. Ben Franklin, for one, felt that German immigrants threatened “American” culture: “they will soon so out number us, that all the advantages we have will not in My Opinion be able to preserve our language, and even our Government will become precarious.” Franklin didn’t want to bar them, just ensure they assimilated. “Yet I am not for refusing entirely to admit them into our Colonies: all that seems to be necessary is, to distribute them more equally, mix them with the English, establish English Schools where they are now too thick settled…”

Germans first came to North America in 1683 – a small group of Mennonites seeking religious freedom in William Penn’s colony. They founded “Deitschesteddel”, the first German settlement in the US. A century later, a third of Pennsylvania’s people had German roots – the “Pennsylvania Dutch”—referring to Deutsch (or German) or the dialect they used, Deitsch.

So, a little context. First, a word about “Germans”. Remember, there were no German nationals until 1870 when Prussia amalgamated many smaller German speaking states into the German Empire. (German speaking Austria and several other German speaking regions remained outside of the Empire, in the Austro-Hungarian Empire.) The “German” community here was made up of groups from many German states. Even after 1870, Germans continued to see themselves as Prussians, Bavarians, Hanoverians and such. Here, immigrants still tended to settle in these groups. Most Germans in New York City were Catholic, but many were Lutherans and German Jewish immigrants were central in establishing the Reform movement here.

When I arrived, the area still had a German-Hungarian feel. For much of the 19th and 20th centuries, it had been a middle-working class neighborhood, inhabited by many people of German and Hungarian descent. Wonderful German and Hungarian restaurants and shops still remained. But Yorkville was not the first “Little Germany” in New York. The first was what became the Lower East Side, around Tomkins Square.

By the early 1800s, the Upper East Side was full of farms and market gardens. It was connected to New York City by the Boston Post Road and from 1833 to 1837 by the New York and Harlem Railroad, one of the earliest railway systems in the United States. A village near the 86th Street station became the Yorkville neighborhood. UES was also the site of several gracious country residences far from the center of the city, one of the most famous which, Gracie Mansion, remains. The mansion was built in 1799 by a well-to-do stock trader named Archibald Gracie.

Where? Roughly from East 79th Street to East 96th Street, between Third Avenue and the East River. What became Yorkville was undeveloped in colonial times. In August 1776, George Washington placed many of his troops here, in defensive positions along the East River to protect a possible retreat from Long Island. Following their August 27 defeat in the Battle of Long Island, the Continentals organized a well-managed retreat which led to the successful Battle of Harlem Heights in September 1776.

The Upper East Side is just across the East River from our island. I lived there, in Yorkville, in the mid-1970s, on 2nd Ave at 82nd Street, just as the last vestiges of its past were fading. So let’s take a trip back in time to when Yorkville was in flower.

The greatest influx of Germans occurred between 1820 and 1914, when a total of 6 million arrived, their numbers increasing as the cost and hardship of trans-Atlantic travel declined. In 1860, over 120,000 German-born people lived in New York City, making it the world’s third-largest German-speaking city, after Berlin and Vienna. Unlike some other immigrants, Germans were usually educated and had marketable skills. More than half of the era’s bakers and cabinet makers were of German origin, and many worked in the construction business. Educated Germans were important players in the creation and growth of trade unions, and many Germans and their Vereine (German-American clubs) were also often politically active. William Steinway, whom I wrote about earlier, is a perfect example of a skilled, aggressive and successful German immigrant who was deeply involved in building the German community in New York City.

The famous Germania Bank building in Bowery has German roots. Wikimedia/Jim Henderson

Little Germany (or “Kleindeutschland”) centered on Tompkins Square in the 1850s, which the Germans called der Weisse Garten (‘the White Garden’). Eventually, Little Germany would include 400 city blocks on Manhattan’s Lower East Side. It reached its peak in the 1870s and disappeared by the 1920s. Little Germany was the first major non-Anglophone ethnic enclave in New York. But it was a complex community: Prussians (about a third of the city’s German-born population), Hessians, Wurttembergers, Bavarians and others all concentrated in different neighborhoods.

Avenue B, the “German Broadway”, was the commercial artery. Each basement was a workshop, every first floor a store, and the partially roofed sidewalks were markets. Avenue A was the street for beer halls, oyster saloons and groceries. The Bowery was the western border (anything further west was totally foreign), but it was also the amusement district. There, all the artistic treats, from classical drama to puppet comedies, were available.

By the 1870s, Germans had begun to move to other parts of the city. They were replaced by first-generation immigrants from other backgrounds. So Kleindeutschland was already on the decline in 1904, when the local St. Mark’s Lutheran Church organized its 17^th annual summer picnic. Historians say the General Slocum disaster “broke the spirit” of the local community. The Slocum disaster accentuated the movement out of Little Germany. Kleindeutschland evaporated – and new immigrants moved in. The Lower East Side became a centre of Jewish life, then later of Portorican and Dominican immigration – and more recently of gentrification.
 
One destination was Yorkville which had attracted some German immigration and which soon became a new Little Germany. 86th Street, often called Sauerkraut Boulevard, the German Broadway, or the German Boulevard, was the heart of Yorkville Germantown, home to many social clubs and singing societies. Businesses that lined the street included Maxi’s Brauhaus, the Lorelei dance hall, Cafe Wienecke and Kleine Konditorei and Cafe Geiger which were still there when I lived nearby. One of the most popular spots on 86th Street was the Yorkville Casino, a social center for the German community. It was erected in 1904 at 210 East 86th Street by the Musician’s Mutual Protective Union (the precursor to the American Federation of Musicians). One of its two main ballrooms, the Tuxedo, had more than 15,000 square feet of floor space and was one of the most popular nightclubs in the city. The casino then welcomed the Deutsches Theatre, which was the only movie theater in the city to show German-language films. By 1938, the German-language New Yorker Staats Zeitung newspaper was selling 80,000 copies a day.

By the end of the nineteenth century, German industrialization and a growing job market made internal migration for German workers a preferable option to overseas emigration. The second wave of German immigration to the United States was over, but another would brew up in the 1930s and ‘40s, as refugees from Nazi Germany arrived in Yorkville. More refugees from communist regimes would arrive in the 1950s and 1960s. German Americans were caught up in the struggles of the time, and the neighborhood became the home base of Fritz Julius Kuhn’s German American Bund, the most notorious pro-Nazi group in 1930s United States as well as large numbers of anti-Nazi organizations.

Parade of German American Bund held on October 30, 1939, on 86th Street. Wikipedia

The F train makes it easy to get to Schallar & Weber and Old Heidelberg which are still favorite places, but there’s not much else left of Little Germany. Like the Lower East Side.
 
Thanks for joining me.
 
Stephen Blank
RIHS
August 2, 2021

WEEKEND PHOTO OF THE DAY
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FRIDAY PHOTO OF THE DAY

LOEW’S 179 STREET THEATRE
ONE OF THE GLORIOUS WONDER THEATRES
ANDY SPARBERG AND LAURA HUSSEY GOT IT RIGHT!
ED LITCHER ADDED THIS:

The United Palace is a theater located at 4140 Broadway between West 175th and 176th Streets in the Washington Heights neighborhood of Manhattan, New York City. It functions both as a spiritual center, and a non-profit cultural and performing arts center, A full-block building, it is bounded on the east by Wadsworth Avenue.

Built in 1930 as Loew’s 175th Street Theatre, the venue was originally a movie palace designed by architect Thomas W. Lamb, who designed over 300 theatres in his career, including many others in New York City.[2] The theatre’s lavishly eclectic interior decor was supervised by Harold Rambusch, who also designed the interior of the Roxy Theatre and the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel.[3]

The theatre, which was the first in Washington Heights built specifically to show films,[2] although it also presented live vaudeville, was one of five deluxe “Wonder Theatres” built by Loew’s in the New York City area.[4][5][6][7] The theater operated continuously until it was closed by Loew’s in 1969. That same year it was purchased by the United Christian Evangelistic Association, headed by the television evangelist Rev. Frederick J. Eikerenkoetter II, better known as Reverend Ike. The theater became the headquarters of his United Church Science of Living Institute and was renamed the United Palace.[8]

The building was designated a New York City landmark by the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission on December 13, 2016.[9] The church attempted to have the designation overturned,[10] but later withdrew their objections.[11]

As of 2018, the church is called the United Palace of Spiritual Arts, and offers performing arts events through the United Palace of Cultural Arts. Its Spiritual Leader and CEO is Rev. Heather Shea.[12] The facility is available for rental to outside event producers and promoters, and is open to all people, genres of music, and any programming that will inspire the Spiritual Artists of the world.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Palace

FROM A READER:
Andy Sparberg PS – I enjoyed the essay about the Paris Theatre. In 1969 I saw Romeo and Juliet there, with the girl I married in 1970. Brought back memories.

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 Melanie Colter and Deborah Dorff

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