The New York Herald was founded by James Gordon Bennett, Sr. in 1835. Under his leadership it was the dominant newspaper in the city for most of the century. Shortly after his death in 1866 James Gordon Bennet, Jr., who was raised in Paris, returned to New York to take the reins.
The junior Bennett brought with him the carefree lifestyle he had enjoyed in France, and his unorthodox behavior sometimes offended well-bred Victorian New Yorkers. Such was the case in 1877 when he attended the New Year’s Day party hosted by his fiancée’s parents. His engagement came to an abrupt end when he urinated in the fireplace.
In 1893 Bennett engaged the services of McKim, Mead & White to design a new printing plant and headquarters for The Herald far north of Printing House Square on the trapezoid-shaped plot of land facing West 35th Street, bounded by 6th Avenue and Broadway. Completed in 1895 it was nothing short of a masterwork.
Sanford White based the design on the 1476 Palazzo del Consiglio in Verona, Italy. But there was obvious influence from the publisher. James Gordon Bennett, Jr. was obsessed with owls, which he made the symbol of The Herald. Now 26 four-foot high bronze owls now perched along the cornice of the building. Those at the corners, with spread wings, had illuminated green glass eyes which glowed eerily on and off with the striking of the two clocks embedded into the facade–one symbolic of Wisdom, the other of Industry.
The massive grouping dominated the roof line. The two clock faces flank the central second story windows and bronze owls stand guard all along the cornice. from the collection of the New York Public Library
The striking of that clock seemed to be accomplished by two massive figures in printers’ aprons under the watchful eye of Minerva, goddess of wisdom, whose traditional attendant was an owl. The massive bronze grouping was executed by French sculptor Antonin Jean Carlès, personally chosen by Bennett. On the hour and the half-hour, the mechanized typesetters were set into action, swinging mallets against a large bronze bell atop which perched yet another owl.
At noon on March 21, 1895 the clock was first set into action. The Editor & Publisher wrote that “thousands of persons cluttered up the neighborhood and gazed at the two figures.”
The mechanical typesetters–given the names Guff and Stuff by New Yorkers–clanged out the hours for nearly nearly three decades–during rain, snow and summer heat–as busy pedestrians scurried by below. The colorful James Gordon Bennett, Jr. died in 1918 and three years later, on May 12, 1921 the New-York Tribune ran the headline: Old Herald Building Soon to Come Down. It added “The heroic bronze smiths, known as Guff and Stuff, who had been striking out the hours night and day on the big bell on top of the southern façade of the building for the last twenty-eight years, and the goggling owls that had watched from their lofty perch on top of the building during those years were removed last month, for they were the property of the late Mr. Bennett.”
One calculation put the total number of mallet thumps by Guff and Stuff at 3,188,680.
Thankfully for posterity, Bennett’s unnatural love for owls had prompted him to retain personal ownership of the bronzes as well as the sculptural clock grouping. All of the statuary was carefully crated and stored.
Nearly two decades later a committee of businessmen in the Herald Square area was formed to erect a memorial to Bennett. The men raised $10,000 (just under $180,000 today) and the well-known architect Aymar Embury II received the commission to design the structure.
As ground was broken on July 3, 1940 The New York Times reported “The proposed new forty-foot granite monument of modified Italian Renaissance design, with its double-faced clock and the two bronze owls, will serve as a background and base for the bronze group…The statue and bell will face south in front of a niche flanked by Corinthian pilasters, the upper part of which contains the clock and two of the owls of which the younger Bennett was so fond.”
photo by the author
Although the monument included a lengthy inscription about Bennett and his contributions, The Times essentially ignored him when it reported on the unveiling on November 19 that year. The newspaper referred to it as “Minerva and the Bell-ringers.” The article ended saying “The ceremonies will end at 6 P. M. with the striking of the clock, the ringing of the bells by ‘Stuff’ and ‘Guff,’ and the eyes of the owls blinking again for the first time in twenty years.”
The spread-winged owls with their blinking green eyes were salvaged from the Herald Building’s corners. Both clock faces from the Herald facade survived, now back-to-back atop the monument. photo by the author
The clock and its figures got a make-over in 1989 when Stuff began moving forward and actually making contact with the bell with his mallet, causing damage. The clock, the granite and the figures were cleaned and conserved and, $200,000 later, emerged looking as they did in 1940. Others of the reclaimed bronze owls perch on posts around the triangular park.
photo by the author
SAVE THE DATE
TUESDAY, JANUARY 9TH, 6:30 P.M. NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY
Affordable Housing and the Future of New York’s Open Space
Learn the history of affordable housing in New York City and how Roosevelt Island, created in 1975, is an integral part of that history. Hear about ideas of open space that were supported by this approach to housing and how they are being reconsidered today.
Matthias Altwicker, AIA LEED AP, is an architect and an associate professor of architecture at New York Institute of Technology. Both his practice and research focus on housing and open space, including collaborations with the New York City Housing Authority (NYCHA) and municipal administrations in New York City and Long Island. SPONSORED BY THE NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY & R.I. HISTORICAL SOCIETY
THURSDAYPHOTO OF THE DAY
In the lobby of 75 Rockefeller Plaza is a commemorative wall saluting employees who have served in our armed forces, a great show of support
WEDNESDAY PHOTO OF THE DAY
COOK AND FAMILY CHILDREN ON BACK PORCH OF BLACKWELL HOUSE 1915 (?) GLORIA HERMAN GOT IT
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DAYTONIAN IN MANHATTAN
MAYA LEVANON-PHOTOS TIK TOK & INSTAGRAM
All image are copyrighted (c) Roosevelt Island Historical Society unless otherwise indicated
THE LOBBY OF 787 SEVENTH AVENUE HAS THE #3 LARGEST TREE IN MANHATTAN.
WHILE WALKING THRU THE BUILDING I COULD NOT BELIEVE THE SIZE OF THIS TREE!
Mural with Blue Brushstroke is a 1986 mural painting by Roy Lichtenstein that is located in the atrium of the Equitable Tower (now known as the AXA Center) in New York City. The mural was the subject of the book Roy Lichtenstein: Mural With Blue Brushstroke. The mural includes highlights of Lichtenstein’s earlier works.
Gillie and Marc’s Paparazzi Dogs are the world’s most notorious photographers. The four bronze Dogmen have sniffed out the rich and famous in Melbourne’s Federation Square, the Jing’an Sculpture Park in Shanghai, and New York’s Greenwich Village and the Rockefeller Center. The sculptures have gone from being an art experiment about photographing celebrities to sought-after celebrities in their own right. When Gillie and Marc first launched the series, within days the life-sized dogs went viral with millions of visitors coming to see them. People from all over the world, along with celebrities such as Snoop Dog, were eager to pose with the Pap Dogs, quickly giving them a celebrity status. Trey Ratcliff, considered to be one of the world’s best contemporary photographers, also came and was followed by 500 professional photographers to take a photo of him. Gillie and Marc had intentionally created the interactive piece to expose the pack mentality of the media and how we hunt celebrities to get their photo.
I visited the park today on a beautiful sunny morning. Many visitors stopped The dogs are facing the elevators and waiting to snap a celebrity!
How appropriate that the dogs are in Rockefeller Center, ready to snap a VIP arriving to SNL.
Just one more photo please!
SAVE THE DATE
TUESDAY, JANUARY 9TH, 6:30 P.M. NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY
Affordable Housing and the Future of New York’s Open Space
Learn the history of affordable housing in New York City and how Roosevelt Island, created in 1975, is an integral part of that history. Hear about ideas of open space that were supported by this approach to housing and how they are being reconsidered today.
Matthias Altwicker, AIA LEED AP, is an architect and an associate professor of architecture at New York Institute of Technology. Both his practice and research focus on housing and open space, including collaborations with the New York City Housing Authority (NYCHA) and municipal administrations in New York City and Long Island. SPONSORED BY THE NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY & R.I. HISTORICAL SOCIETY
Back in September, RIOC announced that the “Girl Puzzle” would be closed for concrete repairs for a month. To make a long story short concrete “repairs” were done and immediately discovered that the work was not up to standards.
The area has been cordoned off since September yellow railings and red safety nettting.
I visited the park today on a beautiful sunny morning. Many visitors stopped by, ignoring the downed netting and useless railings.
According to Amanda Matthews, the artist, the situation is in discussions and no work can be done in winter……Let’s have RIOC remove the barriers and clean up the area so visitors can enjoy the park.
The other day I reported on the trespassers that were in the Smallpox Hospital recording their adventures in the middle of the night.
Today, our contemporary landmark is being blocked by contemporary barriers.
One Southpoint Park needs protection from intruders.
Our Lighthouse Park needs to be barrier free when no work is being performed.
Judith Berdy
SHAME One of our Island bloggers posted videos of trespassers in the Smallpox Hospital after climbing the fences into Southpoint Park and the Smallpox Hospital. The management of the FDR Four Freedoms State Park. FFP Conservancy, Cat Sanctuary and RIHS are infuriated that this criminal act is being publicized. Shame on our “press” that exploits these activities.
SAVE THE DATE
TUESDAY, JANUARY 9TH, 6:30 P.M. NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY
Affordable Housing and the Future of New York’s Open Space
Learn the history of affordable housing in New York City and how Roosevelt Island, created in 1975, is an integral part of that history. Hear about ideas of open space that were supported by this approach to housing and how they are being reconsidered today.
Matthias Altwicker, AIA LEED AP, is an architect and an associate professor of architecture at New York Institute of Technology. Both his practice and research focus on housing and open space, including collaborations with the New York City Housing Authority (NYCHA) and municipal administrations in New York City and Long Island. SPONSORED BY THE NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY & R.I. HISTORICAL SOCIETY
New York has been a hotbed of innovation since its founding. Made in New York: 25 Innovators Who Shaped Our World (SUNY Press, 2023) by Frank Vizard tells the stories behind the innovators and their inventions.
Like many New Yorkers, some came from elsewhere to find success in their new homes. Others were homegrown. Some became famous; others struggled for recognition. All were visionaries and risk-takers who were willing to put their lives on the line if necessary.
From the first brassiere to the first modern submarine, and from Batman to the first mass-produced cameras, New York has been a seabed of life-changing innovations that have altered how we live.
Made in New York celebrates the compelling stories of these innovative men and women. Find out why invention of the teddy bear in Brooklyn is a civil rights story as is dry cleaning. The invention of voting machines in New York is still relevant to elections today. And baseball wouldn’t be what it is now without New York rules.
Luminaries like Nikola Tesla, Raymond Loewy and DJ Kool Herc shine alongside lesser known figures like George Speck, Katherine Blodgett, and Marie Van Britten Brown. What they did in New York impacted the world.
Frank Vizard is a former editor with Popular Science magazine and has written for a wide variety of publications ranging from Luxury Magazine to USA Today. Vizard’s other books include Why A Curveball Curves: The Incredible Science of Sports (2009) and the novel Screamer (2018). He lives in Westchester County, NY.
Radicals and Rogues: The Women Who Made New York Modern
This is the story of a group of women whose experiments in art and life set the tone for the rise of New York as the twentieth-century capital of modern culture.
Across the 1910s and 1920s, through provocative creative acts, shocking fashion, political activism, and dynamic social networks, these women re-imagined modern life and fought for the chance to realize their visions.
Taking the reader on a journey through the city’s salons and bohemian hangouts, Radicals and Rogues celebrates the tastemakers, collectors, curators, artists, and poets at the forefront of the early avant-garde scene.
Focusing on these trailblazers at the center of artistic innovation — including Beatrice Wood, Mina Loy, the Stettheimer sisters, Clara Tice, the Baroness Elsa von Freytag Loringhoven, Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney, Marguerite Zorach, and Louise Arensberg — Lottie Whalen offers a lively new history of remarkable women in early twentieth-century New York City.
Lottie Whalen is a writer, researcher, and curator working in the fields of feminist history, avant-garde art, and textiles. She is the co-founder of Decorating Dissidence, an interdisciplinary arts project that considers radical histories of craft and its potential as a force for change in the modern day. She lives in Glasgow.
The Trials of Madame Restell: A Female Physician and the Campaign to Make Abortion a Crime
“Madame Restell,” the nom de guerre of the most successful female physician in America, sold birth control, delivered children, and performed abortions for decades in a series of clinics run out of her home in New York City. “Restellism” becoming a term detractors used to indict her.
Abortion was then largely unregulated in most of the United States, including New York. But during the Industrial Revolution a sense of disquiet arose about single women flocking to the city for work and greater sexual freedom, amid changing views of motherhood, with fewer children born to white, married, middle-class women.
Restell came to stand for everything threatening the status quo. From 1829 onward, restrictions on abortion began to put her in legal jeopardy. For much of this period she prevailed — until she didn’t.
The Life of Madame Restell
Ann Trow was born in the wool processing community of Painswick, in in Gloucestershire, England, on May 6, 1812. Her parents were poorly paid mill workers, and it’s unlikely Ann received much education. When 15 years old, she became a live-in maid and the next year she married a tailor seven years her elder, Henry Summers.
Ann and Henry were struggling financially when she gave birth to a daughter in 1830. The following year they migrated as a family to the city of New York, settling a few block from the infamous Five Points. A few months after their arrival, Henry died, leaving Anna widow with a young child.
Ann worked as a seamstress and in 1836 met and married Charles Lohman, was a Russian immigrant working as a printer at the New York Herald. The family moved to Chatham Street, where Ann met Dr. William Evans.
Evans had no formal medical training, but made pills, tonics, and powders based on old herbal remedies which he sold as cures for everything from baldness to consumption.With Evans’ help Ann made and sold her own pills to cure liver, lung, and stomach ailments, establishing a small business until a customer asked for a medicine to end an unwanted pregnancy.
In the first half of the 1800s, family planning was considered the private business of women. Before “quickening,” or the moment when a woman first felt a fetus move, a woman could fairly easily obtain abortifacients, and if that didn’t work, midwives and doctors performed surgical abortions.
In New York State, doctors hoping to take control of the work of midwifes and female medical practitioners succeeded in lobbying for a law in 1827 that made providing an abortion a crime punishable by a year in jail and a $100 fine. Since most people cared little about what was considered a private matter, few abortions were reported to authorities, and the law was seldom used.
Historians believe Ann’s first abortion medication was simply a copy of an old recipe, part of a long tradition of female-led family planning. Ann’s abortifacient was popular however, and see gave up working as a seamstress to practice her brand of medicine.
After visiting her family in England in 1838 she returned and rented a respectable-looking office on a fashionable street. Ann spread the story that she had learned effective and safe medical abortions from a famous abortionist in Paris and adopted the name Madame Restell.
Her first advertisement ran in the New York Sun in March 1839 and she soon launched a mail-order business, establishing offices in Philadelphia and Boston.
Madame Restell’s medicines were not very effective however. Her birth control powder was ineffective and women who found themselves pregnant, spent more money for her abortion medicine. If that failed, Madame Restell offered a secret surgical abortion which cost $100 for wealthy women, and $20 for those who were poor (still an extraordinarily high price for the time).
After Madame Restell performed these surgical abortions in the back room of her office, the women could go to a doctor and claim they had suffered a miscarriage.
Ann’s popularity drew the attention. of a loose alliance of doctors, religious leaders, and social reformers who hoped to end her practice. Her first arrest occurred only five months after her first advertisement was published, but the charges were dropped.
This was only the beginning of decades of legal troubles. Called “the wickedest woman in New York,” and accused of hurting and killing her patients, in 1846 there was a riot outside her office.
The following year Ann’s detractors succeeded in securing a conviction for performing an illegal abortion. She served a year in prison and then stopped offering surgical abortions, focusing on her pills instead.
She made a fortune and her stature was great enough that Mayor Jacob Westervelt officiated her daughter’s wedding in 1854. In 1862, Ann and Charles built a mansion in an exclusive neighborhood where she opened an office in 1867.
At the end of the Civil War, the anti-abortion movement grew however, under the leadership of Anthony Comstock, U.S. Postal Inspector and head of the Society for the Suppression of Vice.
Comstock sponsored the 1873 Comstock Acts that made it illegal to send obscene material by mail. In 1878, the year after her beloved husband had died, Comstock pretended to be a man seeking abortion services for a woman out of state, and had Ann arrested when she responded to the need.
Rather than face another trial and certain conviction, Ann Loham died by suicide on April 1, 1878, the day her trial was set to begin.
Syrett’s The Trials of Madame Restell paints an unforgettable picture of the mid-nineteenth-century New York and brings Restell to the attention of a whole new generation of women in the current fight over reproductive choices.
The Eight: The Lemmon Slave Case and the Fight for Freedom (SUNY Press Excelsior Editions, 2023) tells the story of Lemmon v. New York — or, as it’s more popularly known, the Lemmon Slave Case. All but forgotten today, it was one of the most momentous civil rights cases in American history.There had been cases in which the enslaved had won their freedom after having resided in free states, but the Lemmon case was unique, posing the question of whether an enslaved person can win freedom by merely setting foot on New York soil — when brought there in the keep of an “owner.”
The case concerned the fates of eight enslaved people from Virginia, brought through New York in 1852 by their owners, Juliet and Jonathan Lemmon. The eight were in court seeking, legally, to become people — to change their status under law from objects into human beings.
The Eight encountered Louis Napoleon, the son of a slave, an abolitionist activist, and a “conductor” of the Underground Railroad, who took enormous risks to help others. He was part of an anti-slavery movement in which African-Americans played an integral role in the fight for freedom.
The court ruled that the eight were free upon arriving on New York’s free soil, and the case became a battle cry for secession when appeals defied the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling in Dred Scott v. Sandford.
The case was part of the broader judicial landscape at the time: If a law was morally repugnant but enshrined in the Constitution, what was the duty of the judge?
Should there be, as some people advocated, a “higher law” that transcends the written law?
These questions were at the heart of the Lemmon case. They were difficult and important ones in the 1850s — and, more than a century and a half later, we must still grapple with them today.Albert M. Rosenblatt teaches at the New York University School of Law and is a retired Judge of New York State Court of Appeals. His previous books include Opening Statements: Law, Jurisprudence, and the Legacy of Dutch New York (co-edited with Julia C. Rosenblatt) and Judith S. Kaye in Her Own Words: Reflections on Life and the Law, with Selected Judicial Opinions and Articles (co-edited with Judith S. Kaye and Henry M. Greenberg), both published by SUNY Press.
Affordable Housing and the Future of New York’s Open Space
Learn the history of affordable housing in New York City and how Roosevelt Island, created in 1975, is an integral part of that history. Hear about ideas of open space that were supported by this approach to housing and how they are being reconsidered today.
Matthias Altwicker, AIA LEED AP, is an architect and an associate professor of architecture at New York Institute of Technology. Both his practice and research focus on housing and open space, including collaborations with the New York City Housing Authority (NYCHA) and municipal administrations in New York City and Long Island. SPONSORED BY THE NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY & R.I. HISTORICAL SOCIETY
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NEW YORK ALMANACK JUDITH BERDY
MAYA LEVANON-PHOTOS TIK TOK & INSTAGRAM
All image are copyrighted (c) Roosevelt Island Historical Society unless otherwise indicated
SHOP THE KIOSK FOR YOUR HOLIDAY GIFTS THIS WEEKEND!!!
KIOSK OPEN 12 NOON TO 5 PM DAILY EXCEPT TUESDAY
WE WILL HAVE OUR MERCHANDISE AVAILABLE AT THIS SALE ON DECEMBER 2 AT THE SEIOR CENTER, 546 MAIN STREET.
Recently I have heard a tirade of complaints about tourists, mostly unfounded. There have been some challenging times at the tram but the wonderful, interesting and curious people whom I meet make our island better. Our guests support our businesses and restaurants. The island’s magic, which probably attracted you to live here probably started with a tram ride to the Island.
Today I decided to work in the kiosk. Having no plans until dinner, I decided to work while everyone else was enjoying the day off.
Just as I opened, neighbors from Rivercross stopped by to purchase a tapestry throw. A rush of business always occurs before I am set-up, but it was a good omen.
A couple from Amsterdam and I conversed on favorite TV shows. They love our American detective and action ones while we had laughs over old episodes of Benny Hill and Faulty Towers. (They never watch Van der Valk)
Today was a great day for South American visitors: Brazil, Colombia, Peru and Ecuador. My Spanish made everyone sigh with relief that they would be able to converse (not that well ) with me.
Many of our visitors had been to the parade and the usual response was that this was a one-time experience and it is better on TV, as per two sisters age 6and 9.
A woman from Serbia enjoying a week on her own in the city, just wandering thru neighborhoods to discover our city. After trying to get into the Museum of Natural History she decided it was not the day to be near Central Park. I assured her that tomorrow we will be back to our normal chaos.
A Mexican family and I had a great time discussing sloths and interpreting our conversation while they shopped and “adopted” a sloth to take home. Seems sloths are not well known outside Costa Rica and Panama.
So many of our visitors are living in New York temporarily for their jobs and are thrilled to be here. They take every opportunity to explore the sites.
One gentleman had a great job, testing all the high tech on European sports cars. Showed us a photo of the salesroom with a $250,000 one ready for purchase.
A young woman from the Middle East was soon to leave the island where she has been for a few years with a job in finance. She is single and regrets having to return to a different culture. Tears were flowing when she thought of leaving New York. We do not realize what opportunities we offer to all who come from restrictive cultures. I invited her to visit as often as she liked before leaving our island.
Just as I was locking up, a women came into the kiosk asking about the Smallpox Hospital. Being almost 5 p.m. and too late to see the building, I asked of her interest in the hospital. She is a research microbiologist who studies epidemics and medical history. She purchased one of our books and I told her to contact use for more information on the island history.
Time to close up and off to dinner at Granny Annies.
A fun afternoon and as always, you do not know who walks in the door.
WEEKENDPHOTO
MAY THE HOSTAGES AND PRISONERS BE RETURNED TO THEIR FAMILIES DURING THIS WEEK
THURSDAY PHOTO OF THE DAY
The Saks Fifth Avenue holiday display opposite Rockefeller Center. Hara Reiser and Nina Lublin got it right.
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All image are copyrighted (c) Roosevelt Island Historical Society unless otherwise indicated
The fabled 1621 “First Thanksgiving” celebrated in elementary school plays across the country was reported on by Edward Winslow in Mourt’s Relation (A Relation or Journal of the Beginning and Proceedings of the English Plantation Settled at Plimoth in New England, 1622) and William Bradford in Of Plymouth Plantation.
Winslow participated in the feast along with his wife Susanna and her two sons. He wrote “our harvest being gotten in, our governor sent four men on fowling, that so we might after a special manner rejoice together,… many of the Indians coming amongst us, and amongst the rest their greatest king Massasoit, with some ninety men, whom for three days we entertained and feasted.”
Bradford’s account included the celebration of the harvest and mentioned serving wild turkey, but not attendance by Massasoit, sachem of the Pokanokets, and his people.
In September 1789, Congressman Elias Boudinot of New Jersey introduced a bill in the House of Representatives requesting that President George Washington establish a day of public thanksgiving and prayer “to acknowledge the favors bestowed on them by Almighty God, especially by affording them an opportunity to peaceably establish a form of government calculated to promote their prosperity and happiness.”
On October 7, 1789, George Washington issued a proclamation declaring Thursday, November 26th “a Day of public Thanksgiving and Prayer.” The Boudinot proposal and the Washington proclamation were both announced in the Gazette of the United States published in the city of New York.
Thanksgiving harvest festivals were celebrated in a number of states in the first half of the 19th century. In November 1837, New York City’s Morning Herald reported that the city and state governments had issued calls for a day of Thanksgiving on November 30th.
On October 31, 1851, The New York Times reported that New York, New Jersey, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Connecticut, Maine, Pennsylvania, Maryland, Indiana, and Ohio would celebrate Thanksgiving Day on Thursday, November 27.
On October 3, 1863, President Abraham Lincoln issued a proclamation that “In the midst of a civil war of unequaled magnitude and severity, which has sometimes seemed to foreign states to invite and provoke their aggressions, peace has been preserved with all nations, order has been maintained, the laws have been respected and obeyed, and harmony has prevailed everywhere, except in the theater of military conflict; while that theater has been greatly contracted by the advancing armies and navies of the Union . . . It has seemed to me fit and proper that they should be solemnly, reverently, and gratefully acknowledged as with one heart and one voice by the whole American people. I do, therefore, invite my fellow-citizens in every part of the United States, and also those who are at sea and those who are sojourning in foreign lands, to set apart and observe the last Thursday of November next as a Day of Thanksgiving and Praise to our beneficent Father who dwelleth in the heavens.”
This Thanksgiving followed the United States victory at Gettysburg during the summer of 1863 and the dedication of the Gettysburg National Cemetery on November 19.
On November 10th, Governor Horatio Seymour declared that Thanksgiving would be celebrated in New York State on November 26th as a “day of thanksgiving and prayer . . . In the midst of calamity brought upon our country by the wickedness, folly, and crimes of men… Let us offer fervent prayers that rebellion may be put down, our Union saved, our liberty preserved, and our Constitution and Government upheld.”
New York City Mayor George Opdyke followed with a proclamation that “having been designated by the President of the United States, and by the Governor of this State, as a day of Thanksgiving and Prayer, it becomes the duty of every good citizen to refrain from all secular employments on that day, and to devote it to appropriate religious exercises.”
On November 27, The New York Times reported “It is doubtful whether any day of Thanksgiving has been so generally, so purposely observed as yesterday. It broke upon us bright, clear and beautiful, and it really did seem as though Heaven designed participation with the prevailing happiness. At an unusually early hour all business was suspended, and long before the appointed time the several churches were filled to overflowing by those anxious to hear the words of religion and of loyalty… All the charitable and benevolent institutions were supplied from kindly quarters with enough wherewith to feed those under their charge, and many with enough to clothe… Much good was done yesterday – much more than past years have record of.”
The Times also published transcripts of Thanksgiving sermons at a number of churches in New York City and Brooklyn. Henry Ward Beecher, minister of Brooklyn’s Plymouth Church told congregants, “Let us pause on the threshold of our thanksgiving to give a word to the martyrs that have fallen. The noblest courage, patience and endurance have been manifested. The young men of the country have fallen by thousands on the field. Would that the young men of the South who have died were not so utterly dead. Would that they had died fighting so bravely for a better cause. They die, indeed, who die for Slavery, and the lapse of years will only make their oblivion more certain. No future historian will feel an enthusiasm in recovering their names to write in the records of a great nation. No future millions will rejoice over their graves, and the only words that charity can write over their burial places will be, ‘Let their names and faults be forgotten.’ But how bright a record is there for those who have died in the defence of their country. Those that die for a good cause are redeemed from death.”
Thanksgiving is possibly the most American of holidays, the first celebrated by new immigrants to the country. As Americans prepare for Thanksgiving in 2023, we need to remember the words spoken in the midst of the Civil War. Thanksgiving is a day to recognize the importance that “peace has been preserved with all nations, order has been maintained, the laws have been respected and obeyed, and harmony has prevailed.”
It is a day to hope and pray that our Union be saved, “our liberty preserved, and our Constitution and Government upheld.” It is a day to celebrate those who fought and died for justice and to allow those who fought and continue to fight on the side of injustice to disappear into the dustbin of history.
Illustrations, from above: Norman Rockwell’s “Freedom From Want”
LINDA BIRD, LUCY BAINES, LYNDON AND LADY BIRD JOHNSON
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Illustrations, from above: Norman Rockwell’s “Freedom From Want” from his 1943 Four Freedoms series (detail); Alexander Gardner photo of Abraham Lincoln with his son Tad (Thomas) in 1865 (courtesy Library of Congress, cropped); and “Uncle Sam’s Thanksgiving Dinner,” 1869, by Thomas Nast.
MAYA LEVANON-PHOTOS TIK TOK & INSTAGRAM
All image are copyrighted (c) Roosevelt Island Historical Society unless otherwise indicated
It is a plain box, probably held a pair of boots. I was 15 years old and a sophomore in high school. My classmates were part of the Camelot generation who idolized a youthful president.
I started collecting items from the coverage of President Kennedy’s death.
The box has traveled with me from Forest Hills, to Manhattan, to 580, 575 and now in 531.
Many of the newspapers are disintegrating. The photos are sharp and the memories are forever.
The White House sent out photos of the First Family upon request.
The next morning the news came in the Times.
I kept a diary of the events for the week.
History was in black and white, no color needed
The next year we visited DC and included a visit to JFK’s gravesite.
The Post caught the secrets
It took a few days and everyone published commemorative issues.
William Davis and family at their farm near Crothersville, Ind.
Thanksgiving Maskers: 1911
November 1911. Before Halloween came into its own as a holiday in this country, there was “Thanksgiving masking,” where kids would dress up and go door to door for apples, or maybe “scramble for pennies.”
Thanksgiving Dinner: 1924
Washington, D.C., circa 1924. “Park View Citizens Association store.” LOOK CLOSELY, FEATHERS WERE INCLUDED!
Thanksgiving Turkey: 1919
A child holding the Thanksgiving turkey. From the National Photo Company collection, 1919.
Basting the Bird: 1940
November 28, 1940. “Mrs. T.L. Crouch, of Ledyard, Connecticut, pouring some water over her twenty-pound turkey on Thanksgiving Day.”
Stuff It: 1937
December 4, 1937. Washington, D.C. “Note to housewives: your turkey-baking troubles will be over and the bird you serve for dinner this yuletide will be tender, juicy and flavorsome if you follow the method used by the expert cooks at the Bureau of Economics, U.S. Department of Agriculture. Continual testing and experimenting with various recipes has taught Uncle Sam’s cooks that many a prize bird has become a ‘ham’ when improperly prepared. The best recipe so far discovered by the Bureau of Economics is demonstrated in the following set of pictures, made under the supervision of Miss Lucy Alexander, Chief Cooking Specialist. Miss Alexander, a graduate of Vassar and the University of Illinois, has been on her present job for 11 years. Mrs. Jessie Lamb, Assistant Cook, is stuffing the turkey under her watchful eye. The turkeys on the table will go into the ovens at regular intervals, and be tasted and judged by a group of experts who are determining which diet and feeding program will produce the best flavored meat.” Harris & Ewing Collection glass negative
Pies in Repose: 1940
November 28, 1940. “Pumpkin pies and Thanksgiving dinner at the home of Mr. Timothy Levy Crouch, a Rogerene Quaker living in Ledyard, Connecticut.
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Wheeler Hazard Peckham, born in 1833, was the eldest of three sons of New York Court of Appeals Judge Rufus Wheeler Peckham. He was born in Albany, attended Albany Academy, and later a French boarding school in Utica and a year at Union College.
He left Union due to health problems and spent a year in Europe. Returning in 1853, he became one of Albany Law School’s first students. Completing the program at Albany Law, he joined his father’s firm of Peckham & Tremain. He was admitted to the bar in 1854.
In 1855, Wheeler Peckham married Anne A. Keasbey, whom he had met while traveling in Europe. In 1856, he suffered what was called a hemorrhage of the lungs (tuberculosis) that caused him such alarm that he returned to Europe for another 14 months for medical help.
After returning to the U.S., he took up residence first in Dubuque, Iowa and then St. Paul, Minnesota, where he remained until 1864. That year he joined a law partnership with George M. Miller and John A. Stautenburg practicing in the city of New York.
Defender of the Greenback Dollar
His New York law firm flourished and Wheeler carried a large portion of the work. His first notable case came in 1868, when he came to the defense of the “greenback dollar.”
Prior to the Civil War, most money had inherent value meaning that a $20 gold coin contained about $20 worth of gold; a silver dollar contained about $1 worth of silver.
There was little question about the value of the denomination and counterfeiting was difficult, why would you make a counterfeit silver dollar if you had to make it from $1 worth of silver? Paper money could be counterfeit and therefore was scorned by many Americans.
However, there was never enough money in circulation. Pounds of flour, barrels of rum, pounds of salt, beaver pelts, nails and all sorts of other products were being used as money.
The economy was being hurt because a merchant might sell a plow blade to a farmer, but the farmer could only pay in flour or chickens and the merchant couldn’t easily buy tools from a supplier in Sheffield, England for flour or chickens.
Banks were particularly affected. They couldn’t take deposits of flour or chickens and they couldn’t make loans in flour or chickens; they needed money. The result was that most banks and some businesses issued their own paper money backed by deposits and loans.
During the Civil War things got much worse. People started hoarding gold and silver. The money supply almost dried up in the middle of a booming economy. Even the city of Albany began issuing its own money.
Several Albany companies couldn’t make change so they stamped their own coins. Albany merchant D. L. Wing stamped a penny, good for a one-pound bag of flour. Fruit dealers Benjamin & Herrick and a grocers P. V. Fort followed suit.
Soon other merchants were accepting and using these “pennies” for change. In Troy, pre-Civil War token coins from Boutwell Mills turned up as pennies in change drawers into the 1940s.
All of these different designs of money made counterfeiting easier. Most people outside Albany wouldn’t know what a $20 bill issued by the National Commercial Bank of Albany was supposed to look like.
Following the Civil War, the need for a new banking system and system of issuing money was obvious. Legislation was passed allowing the Federal Government and only the Federal Government to issue paper currency backed by gold and silver deposits in the Federal Treasury. However, there were still the stalwart opponents to the paper money that people nicknamed “greenbacks.”
Legal cases were brought challenging the Federal Government’s authority to issue paper money; New York State tried to tax all greenbacks issued in the state. The Federal Government hired the Albany firm of Peckham and Tremain and Wheeler Hazard Peckham’s New York firm to defend the greenback dollar.
Lyman Tremain, a former New York State Attorney General, argued the constitutionality of the government’s authority to issue the greenback through the New York Court of Appeals and the U.S. Supreme Court, winning at each step.
Tremain and Wheeler Hazard Peckham argued the case contesting New York’s right to tax the printing of federal money in the New York Court of Appeals and lost but then successfully reversed the decision before the U.S. Supreme Court.
Tremain and Wheeler Hazard Peckham were later frequently referred to as the “defenders of the greenback dollar.”
Peckham represented many influential companies and argued several cases before the U.S. Supreme Court. He represented the Bell Telephone Company in several important patent cases.
He also argued a case before the U.S. Supreme Court on behalf of the State of South Dakota bringing an action against the State of North Carolina and a North Carolina railroad. He represented New Hampshire in a suit against the State of Louisiana.
Peckham served as chief counsel of the Union Trust Company of New York representing them in many varied cases. When federal taxing authorities tried to force the Union Trust Company to pay income tax on the appreciated value of the company caused by the increase in the value of their stock, Peckham successfully argued that only their profit as determined by income minus expenses should be subject to income tax.
In 1869, Wheeler Hazard Peckham was one of the founders of the city of New York’s Bar Association.
In 1873, Charles O’Conor who had been Peckham’s opponent in the greenback dollar case, asked him to take on a case for the New York City District Attorney’s office, the prosecution of the “Tweed Ring.”
Prosecution of the Tweed Ring
Peckham’s father, Judge Rufus Wheeler Peckham, had long been a member of the Democratic Party in Albany serving as County District Attorney for two years and elected to Congress twice in the 1850s with support from Albany’s Democrats.
In the mid-19th century, a dominant political power in the city of New York was Tammany Hall under the leadership of William Marcy “Boss” Tweed. At one time Tweed was also the city’s Superintendent of Public Works, a State Senator, Chairman of the Democrat General Committee, Superintendent of the County Court House and President of the Board of Supervisors. Due to political services provided to Jay Gould and Jim Fisk, Tweed was also appointed a director of the Erie Railroad.
In 1855 the city of New York had a population of around 630,000, half of whom were foreign born. There were 175,000 recent arrivals from Ireland and 95,000 from Germany. Like today, the higher standard of living in the United States (largely a result of the reliance on slave labor and the seizure of natural resources from indigenous people) encouraged emigration to America.
Many Protestant anti-immigrant Americans recoiled, claiming immigrants – especially Catholics – were anti-American, and responsible for the low wages and poverty associated with the burgeoning industrial revolution. They also blamed immigrants for crime and immoral behavior and tried to restrict immigration and limit citizenship (and therefore the political power) of immigrants.
Tammany Hall, which increasingly included Catholic Irish-Americans and German-Americans after the Civil War, looked on these new immigrants as simply voters, and an important base of their power in northern urban areas.
Immigrants who lived in extreme poverty and received little government assistance from the Protestant ruling class were welcomed by Tammany Hall, and were provided basic assistance, including food, charcoal, loans, and a job. In this way, Tammany served as an intermediary with a government foreign and often hostile to them.
Historians now view Tammany Hall, which began as a benevolent association for American Revolutionaries, as an early public welfare system and a champion of social reforms. Tammany nurtured important Progressive politicians such as Al Smith and Franklin D. Roosevelt, lending support for the New Deal.
Tammany’s support for the rights of immigrants and other working people was repaid with their loyalty to the Democratic Party. One of the important ways the Party supported new Americans was by expanding public improvement projects in order to provide jobs.
In 1858, the New York State Legislature approved state funds “not to exceed $250,000 for the construction and furnishing” for a new New York County courthouse. By the time it was finished it cost $12 million, more than the cost to build the U.S. Capitol.
The courthouse at 52 Chambers Street, today known as Tweed Courthouse, or the Old New York County Courthouse, was the costliest public building in the United States. Its construction provided opportunity for one of America’s first large-scale graft operations, which involved people from both political parties, numerous businessmen and even newspaper publishers. (You can read about the details here).
In 1870 however, New York County auditor James Watson’s horse bolted and Watson was thrown from his sleigh and killed. The new county auditor was a friend of James O’Brien, who although had once been a friend, had become a political opponent of Tweed’s. O’Brien was a city alderman, then became Sheriff of New York County in 1867.
O’Brien’s friend Matthew O’Rourke gave O’Brien the financial records that would prove the courthouse graft. O’Brien forwarded them to The New York Times, then the only Republican newspaper in the city. Initially The Times did little, although Thomas Nast contributed political cartoons attacking the “Tweed Ring” that proved effective in turning political opinion against Tweed and his fellow schemers.
Meanwhile an ally of O’Brien, John Morrissey, was already organizing opposition to The Ring known as the “Young Democracy,” which included allies of Samuel Tilden. They were soundly defeated by supporters of Tweed in the Spring of 1870, but it provided space for Tilden, then the New York State Democrat Party Chairman, and August Belmont, then the National Democrat Party Chairman, to hold a meeting at New York’s Cooper Union September 4, 1871 to pressure for reform.
On October 26, Tilden signed an affidavit arguing that money from city contractors had been misappropriated into Tweed’s personal bank account. The next day Tweed was arrested and charged with 55 criminal offenses relating to embezzlement of public funds. Nonetheless, Tweed was reelected State Senator in November 1871.
Wheeler Hazard Peckham was named a special prosecutor for the State in what became known as The Ring Cases. In 1872, he unsuccessfully prosecuted Mayor A. Oakey Hall and successfully prosecuted Tweed in 1873. The trial began in 1873, with Peckham assisted by Lyman Tremain, O’Conor, Peter Olney and Henry Allen.
Tweed’s influence on the New York City Police Department was considered so strong that Peckham requested and received permission for each juror to be assigned a plainclothes detective 24 hours a day. Each plainclothes officer was followed by another plainclothes officer and a private detective to be sure that the first plainclothes officer did not carry a bribe or threat to the juror.
Peckham presented to the jury the volumes of obviously inflated and fake invoices. Peckham also introduced new charges that he thought he could make stick without question: approving invoices without audit, a misdemeanor. The city laws required all invoices to be audited and some invoices personally approved by Tweed had not been submitted for audit.
Tweed was convicted on 204 misdemeanor charges of approving fraudulent invoices without audit. The judge, knowing the true involvement of Tweed in the Ring’s graft, sentenced Tweed to 12 years in prison and a $12,750 fine. Tweed’s lawyers appealed the sentence and the Court of Appeals found that 12 years was inappropriate for misdemeanor charges and reduced his term to 1 year.
After Tweed was released from jail, Peckham brought a civil lawsuit against him to recover millions in funds Tweed had personally stolen. Unable to post the $3 million bond the former Boss fled, first to Cuba, but was captured en route to Spain and returned to the United States. Peckham won a $6 million verdict and was returned to the Ludlow Street Jail.
Tweed eventually agreed to testify against the other Ring members if he was released, but this promise was rejected by then Governor Samuel Tilden and Tweed died in jail on April 12, 1878, from pneumonia.
Peckham was appointed Special District Attorney and Special Deputy Attorney General and continued his prosecution of Tweed Ring members, including bringing impeachment charges against Ring-connected judges.
Return to Private Practice, and Politics
After the Ring Cases Peckham returned to private practice. He was appointed New York District Attorney by Governor Grover Cleveland in 1884, but served less than a year due to health problems.
In 1888, he entered the political fray by supporting Warner Miller in his campaign for Governor against incumbent David B. Hill (a Cleveland opponent who was responsible for establishing the New York State Forest Preserve) and served as president of the New York City Bar Association from 1892 to 1894 where he advocated law reform.
In January, 1894, Peckham (along with William B. Hornblower) was nominated by then President Cleveland to two vacancies on the United States Supreme Court. At that time, the U.S. Senate operated under an informal but powerful custom known as “senatorial courtesy,” which allowed that no appointment or law affecting a state could move forward unless one of its two Senators agreed.
Former Governor David B. Hill, who Peckham and Cleveland had opposed, was one of New York’s U.S. Senators. The other was Edward Murphy of Troy. Neither men, although both Democrats, would move the nominations. Peckham returned to private practice.
In 1900, Peckham represented the New York World, a Democratic newspaper, in an action against New York City Mayor Robert Anderson Van Wyck and Dock Commissioner Charles Murphy and in the subsequent impeachment proceedings against Van Wyck in the infamous “Ice Trust” price fixing scandal.
Peckham was also president of the People’s Municipal League and president of the City Club for many years.
Wheeler Hazard Peckham died suddenly in his office in New York City in September 1905 at the age of 72 and is interred at Albany Rural Cemetery together with his wife and other members of his family.
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It seems RIOC went cheap this year and the chintzy decorations from last year have returned. There are a few yards of green garland in front of the RIOC office at 524 Main Street. It seems that the rest of Main Street does not even deserve some garland. RIOC is being a true SCROOGE this year!! Judy Berdy
