Some long-established New York City neighborhoods got their names from nearby natural landmarks; others took the moniker of an early landowner or the landowner’s hometown in England or Holland.
But the story behind the name Astoria, in Queens, is a little more about wheeling and dealing. It focuses on an ambitious 19th century developer who was hoping that New York’s richest man, John Jacob Astor, would invest thousands of dollars to help build the neighborhood if it carried Astor’s name.
First, a brief history of the East River enclave that would become Astoria. Colonized by the Dutch in the early 17th century, the area was occupied by William Hallett’s vast farm. Hallett lent his name to what was then called Hallett’s (also spelled Hallet’s or Halletts) Cove, which is marked on the 1873 map below.
“Over the next 100 years, Hallett and his descendants developed the area into a thriving farming community,” wrote Ilana Teitel in a piece on the website of the Old Astoria Neighborhood Association. “Early settlers transported grains, livestock, timber, and firewood across the river from Hallets Cove to the growing city of New Amsterdam.”
By the early 19th century, the Hallett family sold off much of their farmland. Wealthy Manhattanites replaced the farm fields with summer villas, turning Hallet’s Cove into a placid resort area for boating and breezy river strolls.
The slow pace of the area began to change with the arrival of Stephen Halsey in 1835. A fur trader, Halsey had big plans for Hallett’s Cove. His idea was to develop it into a modern town with houses, businesses, churches, and factories. But he needed money to get things going.
That’s where Astor (above) came in. “Halsey had connections to the biggest fur trader of the time, John Jacob Astor,” explained Teitel. “He proposed that Astor donate $2,000 towards the construction of a new Episcopal female seminary in exchange for naming the village after him.”
An 1896 article in the New York Times recalls a slightly different story, with Halsey proposing to Astor that he contribute $10,000 to $15,000. In return, Hallett’s Cove would bear his name.
What was Astor’s response to this idea, which he may have pondered across the East River in his Manhattan country estate house (appropriately named Hellgate, above) off today’s East 87th Street? Teitel wrote that Astor ponied up just $500.
Most sources point out that Astor never visited the enclave that would take his name. But the Times has it that Halsey brought Astor to Hallett’s Cove and showed him around.
“Shrewd old Astor looked about and found that the first church in Astoria was just struggling into existence—St. George’s Episcopal—so he contributed just $50 toward its erection,” stated the Times. “He got the honor of having the village named after him, the church got the $50, and the only unhappy people recorded were Mr. Halsey and his fellow village trustees.”
Even with so little of Astor’s cash, however, Astoria thrived—becoming a diverse residential suburb and manufacturing hub in the consolidated New York City on the 20th century (above, in 1915).
Halsey is also remembered; his name graces a junior high school across the borough in Rego Park. And Hallett’s Cove survives as Hallett’s Point, a luxury high rise.
Years ago I was visiting the Dutch Reformed Church near St. Georges Church (where many Blackwell’s are buried). In the back of the reformed church was an obelisk that was laid on the ground with the name Halsey on it. Here is a story about that monument.
Most historians believe the grave of Astoria’s founding father Stephen Halsey is somewhere in Astoria; but finding where is the difficulty.
The general consensus is that he and possibly his family members’ graves are buried in the overgrown backyard of the First Reform Church of Astoria on the historical manor-house-lined 12th Street. That entire area was built up thanks to Halsey’s efforts, and he donated money to the Reform Church’s congregation to build their first chapel at the site in the 1830s.
“I find this very intriguing,” said the church’s pastor, Reverend Dwayne Jackson. “If the founding father is in our backyard then we’re, in a way, the center of the community.”
Over the last few decades, the backyard of the church has become overgrown, due to declining membership and an aging, busy congregation. If the Halsey’s are there, it’s unclear where.
But a couple of months ago, while some congregation members were clearing away some of the vines and dead branches to make a little garden, they discovered a long, triangular monument that had apparently fallen over sideways at some point and buried deep in the ground.
It turned out to be a cemetery marker. No engraving is visible on the part of the obelisk that is above ground, but many historians believe it might be another key to Halsey.
In his book “300 Years of Long Island City, 1630-1930,” Queens historian Vincent Seyfried shows a photograph of a square object that still remains in the churchyard and identifies it as the stone covering of the Halsey family vault.
But in the photograph, the writing on the stone is arguably legible and today the only word clearly visible is “vault.”
Rumors have it that the Halsey’s remains were moved from the churchyard at some point. Other researchers, including Jim Driscoll of the Queens Historical Society, say they’ve seen some references inferring that Stephen Halsey was first buried elsewhere and then moved to the church.
Halsey was born in 1798 and made a fortune as a fur trader. In the 1830s he had a vision for what is now the Western Queens waterfront and convinced investors and developers to move to the area to set up a town.
Halsey had the idea of naming the place after John Jacob Astor, the famed millionaire, believing that doing so would convince Astor to invest in the new village.
Astor, though, was only mildly interested, and donated only $500 to the Young Women’s Seminary of Newtown.
Records show that there may have been some controversy over the naming of the new town, but in the end, Halsey won and Astoria Village was incorporated by the state Legislature in 1839.
It was also in 1839 when the First Reform Church of Astoria was given money by Halsey for its new chapel on 12th Street. That building stood until 1888, when a fire destroyed it. The present chapel was built in 1888.
Halsey is credited by many historians for initiating the ferry service from Astoria to Manhattan that ran until Robert Moses stopped it in the 1930s.
Halsey died in 1875, an honored man.
Lula Thomas has been a member of the church’s congregation for 40 years. She said a former pastor told her in the 1970s that there was someone very famous buried behind the church somewhere.
When the obelisk was found two months ago, church members were excited, though they don’t know how to proceed.
Seyfried was very surprised to hear about the obelisk, saying that it was either not there or buried and so not visible when he visited the churchyard in the 1970s.
Historians like Bob Singleton and Debbie Van Cura of the Greater Astoria Historical Society believe that the monument could possibly be excavated as part of a movement already underway to historically revitalize the neighborhood.
The Greater Astoria Historical Society has been one of several citywide historical groups that are supporting a drive to landmark the historic 12th Street area, which is lined with impressive 19th century wooden homes and known as Old Astoria Village.
Owners of the old houses, distressed by recent sales to developers and demolitions in their once-quiet neighborhoods, have become active in the landmarking efforts.
“The real story is that Halsey moved to Astoria because he thought it was the greatest place to be,” Van Cura said. “We still think it is.”
North of Main Street showing AVAC being built with one building from the FDNY Training Center still standing. On the west side is the future site of Manhattan Park. In the distance is the elevator tower to the water tunnel construction site.
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
All image are copyrighted (c) Roosevelt Island Historical Society unless otherwise indicated
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
EPHEMERAL NEW YORK
6 Responses to “The scheme behind the way Astoria got its name”
Mykola Mick Dementiuk Says: May 1, 2023 at 5:36 am | ReplyIn the 1960-70s many Ukrainian people were fleeing from the Lower East Side due to the economic decline of the area and relocating to Astoria, Queens, which offered them better housing and living conditions. I suppose that’s true, but I stayed on the Lower East Side from the 1950s to the late 1990s; no regrets there.
ephemeralnewyork Says: May 1, 2023 at 1:50 pm | ReplyIt’s a true diverse neighborhood, but of course known for its Greek community. People I know who live there consider it the perfect New York City nabe, though it’s getting pricey, I hear…
Louis DeMonte Says: May 1, 2023 at 9:09 am | ReplyThe female seminary eventually became the rectory of St. George’s church. Eventually the parish chose to demolish it in favor or erecting senior housing on the site. The ensuing construction displaced several graves and the building wrapped around the church to cover the stained glass windows behind the altar. We can thank the foot dragging of Queens preservation and the short sightedness of Gloria d’Amico for the destruction of the building that Astoria was named for. Very sad…
Bob Singleton Says: May 1, 2023 at 10:32 am | ReplyGreater Astoria Historical Society:This was a nice article that also includes the various details that pop up with each retelling of the story.Halsey, who used to live in Flushing, took the boat home each day he admired the peninsula and thought it would make a great investment. His older brother, John Cook Halsey, also worked for Astor and had founded a trading post in Oregon which he named ‘Astoria.’ (told by a family member but is not mentioned in the wiki entry for Astoria OR)When Stephen told Astor his idea of naming the community, Astor was alledged to have said that he had no intention on “crossing the river to see the place” (perhaps because he could already see it from his front porch at Hell Gate!) but he contributed money for a ‘Female Academy’. Currier and Ives did a print of it – it later became the rectory for St George’s Church. (link below)https://www.prints-online.com/astoria-institute-education-young-ladies-7254659.htmlAttempts to save the buidling or at least get inside to document it were brushed aside and it was torn down a few years ago.
ephemeralnewyork Says: May 1, 2023 at 1:54 pm | ReplyWhat a shame about the rectory. But thanks so much for filling out the story and sharing your Astoria knowledge.
THIS PUBLICATION FUNDED BY DISCRETIONARY FUNDS FROM CITY COUNCIL MEMBER JULIE MENIN & ROOSEVELT ISLAND OPERATING CORPORATION PUBLIC PURPOSE FUNDS.
Before its burial, Sunswick Creek’s source was located close to 21st Street north of what is now the Queensboro Bridge and Queens Plaza. The creek’s name may have originated from the Algonquin word “Sunkisq,” which translated to “Woman Chief” or “Sachem’s Wife.” In 1664, the land on the northern shore of the creek was purchased by British settler William Hallet from two native chiefs named Shawestcont and Erramorhar, and the peninsula was renamed Hallets Cove. Due to increased industrialization, the lack of a proper sewage system, and the high population density of Long Island City and nearby Astoria, Sunswick Creek became heavily polluted by the 1860s and 1870s. After the outbreak of diseases in 1871 and 1875, the marshes surrounding the creek were drained in 1879. By 1893, the creek had been diverted into one of the new sewage system’s brick tunnels.
In 1915, protest arose among the residents of Ravenswood over the infestation of the creek’s tide gates by mosquitos, arguing to the New York City Board of Health that the tide gates should be opened as they were actually making the water stagnant and trapping the mosquitoes inside the creek. One year later in April 1916, residents broke down the tide gates themselves using axes, which prompted the New York City health commissioner to remark that the residents preferred “to live like hogs.” By the end of 1916, New York City’s government proposed closing the creek and mandated households to divert their sewage elsewhere. Today, the creek exists underground as part of a sewage tunnel, with Socrates Sculpture Park occupying what was once the creek’s mouth.
WEEKEND PHOTO UNION STATION, WASHINGTON, DC
ANDY SPARBERG, GLORIA HERMAN AND NINA LUBLIN GOT IT RIGHT!
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
All image are copyrighted (c) Roosevelt Island Historical Society unless otherwise indicated
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
UNTAPPED NEW YORK
THIS PUBLICATION FUNDED BY DISCRETIONARY FUNDS FROM CITY COUNCIL MEMBER JULIE MENIN & ROOSEVELT ISLAND OPERATING CORPORATION PUBLIC PURPOSE FUNDS.
Every New York City borough has its fair share of lost mansions. Today, we are revisiting the lost mansions of Queens. Now New York City’s most diverse borough and the second most populated, the development of Queens began with farmland and suburbs. Western areas of Queens, which offered an easy commute into Manhattan but lots of land to spread out on, attracted the wealthy families of New York. There are still standalone mansions that you can spot throughout the borough, but here we revisit the country estates and follies that have been long forgotten…
BODINE CASTLE LONG ISLAND CITY
This fantastical castle has inspired fantastical backstories. It was rumored that it was built by a fleeing French nobleman or that it was the headquarters of a secret society. The truth, however, is that it was built by a wealthy grocer, John Bodine, in 1853. Located at 43-16 Vernon Boulevard in Long Island City, the mansion was made of immense granite blocks and had a copper roof. It boasted a crenelated watchtower, Gothic windows, and a tunnel to the beach. These tunnels were a popular feature of grand mansions along the East River. These tunnels were used by servants to go back and forth from the house to the beach to serve guests while they lounged or partied.
John W. Rapp made his fortune in metal manufacturing. His United Metal Products Company produced steel parts for fireproof buildings according to the New York Times. His products were integral to the construction of such landmarks as the Woolworth Building (which was known for its advanced fireproofing methods) and the Metropolitan Life Insurance Building. The business occupied ten acres of land in College Point, including the former factory of Rhedania Silk Mills. His success in business allowed Rapp to purchase an opulent home close to his business. In the early 1900s, he moved into the mansion seen above with his new wife, Corine.
Located on First Avenue in College Point (now 14th Avenue), this lost mansion of Queens had lovely manicured gardens, a mansard roof, and a large porch. According to an article in the New York Heraldannouncing Rapp’s death in 1922, the metal mogul owned 500 acres in College Point and Flushing. The house was eventually demolished and the area was redeveloped.
The mansion on the right side of this photograph was built by merchant Horace Whittemore around 1840 in the suburbs of Astoria, Queens. Astoria offered expansive plots of land within a short distance of Manhattan, which could be easily accessed across the East River. This classical Greek revival villa had unobstructed views of the river from its spot on what were Perrot Avenue and Franklin Street (now 27th Avenue). The Met Museum describes the interior layout of the home:
Upon ascending the outside staircase at the front of the house, traversing the portico, and entering the first floor, visitors were welcomed into a central hall flanked on the right by a pair of formal parlors and on the left by a family living room and a billiards room. On the ground level below were the dining room, kitchen, and pantries. Five family bedrooms were located on the second floor, and the third floor, with its low ceiling and small horizontal slot windows, likely housed the servants’ quarters.
Franklin Avenue in the 1800s was lined with standalone mansions. You can still see some grand homes along 12th Street in Astoria. The Whittmore House was later known as the La Roque Mansion for its second owner. The house was demolished in 1965. You can get a glimpse of what this opulent home looked like on the inside with a visit to The Met. In the American Wing, you can see the parlor with architectural details from inside the mansion. Two parlors from the home were donated to the museum by the mansion’s final owners, the Molteni family.
SUNSWICK, ASTORIA
One of the earliest grand estates to appear in Astoria, especially around the coast near today’s Hallet’s Point, was that of Major John Delafield and his wife, Ann Hallett. Called Sunswick, their home was built in 1792, faced the East River, and was backed by a wide expanse of farmland. It was named for a now-buried nearby creek.
Delafield fell on hard financial times in the early 1800s and was forced to sell his estate to noted mineralogist Colonel George Gibbs. Gibbs and his family were known for their hospitality at Sunswick. Upon GIbbs’ death, the land was subdivided into four lots. There were multiple owners after that and the house was eventually torn down in the 1920s.
JOSIAH BLACKWELL HOUSE, ASTORIA
Another grand mansion that once stood along the former Franklin Avenue in Astoria was the Josiah Blackwell House. Located around what is today 27th Ave and 8th Street, the home belonged to a decsenadnat of Robert Blackwell, owner of Blackwell’s Island, now Roosevelt Island. The image of the home above was captured in 1937 by photographer Berenice Abbott.
The lost Queens mansion in Astoria remained in the family until the early 1920s when it was sold and converted to a boarding house. It was demolished and replaced by the Astoria Houses in the 1940s.
THE CHISHOLM MANSION
Hermon A. MacNeil Park now stands at the site of the form Chisholm Mansion. The land was originally purchased in 1835 by Reverend William Augustus Muhlenberg for a new stone Episcopal seminary. When the Panic of 1837 hit, his plans were scrapped and the land was sold to his sister, Mrs. John Rogers. She used the leftover stone from the abandoned school project to build her own mansion, at the highest point on the grounds, in 1848.
Mrs. Rogers later gave the mansion to her daughter Mary as a wedding gift when she married William F. Chisolm. The family remained in the home until 1930, when it was acquired by the City of New York. Mayor Fioerello LaGuardia used the mansion as a “summer City Hall” in 1937. Sadly, the mansion was demolished between 1939 and 1941. Today, a flagpole in the park marks where it once stood.
OUR FRIDAY WENT OUT TOO LATE, SO ABOVE IS OUR PHOTO AGAIN.
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
All image are copyrighted (c) Roosevelt Island Historical Society unless otherwise indicated
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
UNTAPPED NEW YORK NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY QUEENS BOROUGH PUBLIC LIBRARY
THIS PUBLICATION FUNDED BY DISCRETIONARY FUNDS FROM CITY COUNCIL MEMBER JULIE MENIN & ROOSEVELT ISLAND OPERATING CORPORATION PUBLIC PURPOSE FUNDS.
An advertisement for The Hagey Institute first appeared in the Plattsburgh Sentinel in November of 1893 as an establishment which provided the “gold cure,” a permanent cure for the disease of addiction to liquor, morphine, opium and nicotine.
Offered was a “golden opportunity” for an absolute cure in just 21 days. With this promise, The Hagey Institute opened for business on November 4th, 1893 in the Winslow Block across from the Witherill Hotel on Margaret Street in Plattsburgh, Clinton County, NY.
What was the treatment offered? Those taking the cure were injected with “bi-chloride of gold” four times a day and ingested a tonic every two hours. The injected chemical combination was created by Dr. William Henry Harrison Hagey. Later laboratory reports claimed it contained not gold but “practically everything else, including quinine, strychnine and other poisons.” No cost was ever advertised for the treatment.
In June of 1894, local investors formed the New York Gold Company and took over the Hagey Institute in Plattsburgh. They accumulated $125,000 from shareholders and purchased the Hagey formula for $50,000. First National Bank Director Edwin G. Moore was President. Under new ownership, the Institute moved from Margaret Street to lower Bridge Street. A large sign on the west side of the building faced downtown Plattsburgh.
By September of 1896, the New York Gold Company announced that 485 residents had been cured, five for morphine addiction and the rest for alcoholism. Additionally, the Company had opened branches in New Jersey and New Hampshire.
Those cured by the Institute were called graduates, and their testimonials appeared in local newspapers. The names attached to many testimonials can be traced to real people in the community although their vivid descriptions read like professional ads.
One of the most influential endorsements, however, may have been in February of 1894 from 37 Plattsburgh community leaders including Judge John Booth, Plattsburgh Sentinel owner Abram Lansing, three doctors, four members of the clergy, and William T. Howell, owner of the Witherill Hotel.
They certified they “no longer entertain doubts as to the efficacy of this treatment” and recommended it to all who were addicted in the “hope of helping suffering humanity.” It should be clear that this was an endorsement. They were not graduates.
Physicians were often praised in the testimonials. The first physician at the Institute was Dr. Daniel Oscar Fosgate who appears to have left in mid-1894. Dr. Jefferson G. McKinney was next. Originally from Schuyler Falls, he was a long-standing member of the Clinton County Medical Society, and his term as chief physician at the Hagey Institute extended into early 1896 when a Dr. T. Bates Cook from Laconia, NH, took over and stayed until the Institute closed.
Despite the convictions of the owners that “the Hagey treatment will provide a sure and effective cure,” the Institute closed by the end of 1897, and the New York Gold Company was not mentioned again in the local papers.
A blog post from Western Kentucky University reports that although the Hagey treatment promised to be “perfect and pleasant… it more commonly made users nauseous, fatigued, inebriated, confused, and even insane.” As science improved, remedies of this type were moved to the category of quackery. Was this the reason for our local company’s fate?
Or did the “gold cure” work? Not for Gardner McLean of Saranac Lake who took the cure twice and sadly, in a “drunken frenzy,” shot his wife to death. Hopefully, the hundreds of others reported to have taken the cure fared well.
RIOC ERASES ANY EVIDENCE THAT A PATH WAS BEING BUILT. STAY TUNED AND SEND US YOUR COMMENTS AND SUPPORT ROOSEVELTISLANDHISTORY@GMAIL.COM
When walking today you will see no evidence of the path that was being constructed so Coler residents could access the West Promenade.
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
All image are copyrighted (c) Roosevelt Island Historical Society unless otherwise indicated
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
NEW YORK ALMANACK
THIS PUBLICATION FUNDED BY DISCRETIONARY FUNDS FROM CITY COUNCIL MEMBER JULIE MENIN & ROOSEVELT ISLAND OPERATING CORPORATION PUBLIC PURPOSE FUNDS.
When walking north past Coler Long Term Care on the West Promenade, notice that there is no access to the path from the area near Coler. This makes it virtually impossible for the Coler residents to enjoy the promenade and many have to use the roadway as the closest site to view the river and enjoy our fresh air. There is an area that could easily be configured into an accessible pathway.
On Wednesday, April 20th contractors were repairing sidewalks near Coler and a path was being installed to the promenade.
By the end of the day it was marked out.
By Thursday half the path had been cemented
On Sunday I noticed the path was cemented but a curb had been installed, therefore making this an useless and obstacle for Coler residents? What is going on?
Why is there a curb?
WHAT HAPPENED?
I WAS INFORMED BY COLER ADMINISTRATION THAT RIOC WOULD NOT PERMIT A PATH TO THE PROMENADE. (IT IS THEIR PROPERTY)
I HAVE NOT BEEN HOME FOR 3 DAYS (TO CELEBRATE A LANDMARK BIRTHDAY)
THIS SURELY ADDED A SOUR NOTE TO MY WEEK AND MORE IMPORTANTLY TO THE COLER RESIDENTS.
WE WILL BE ON THE CASE THIS WEEK AND SEE WHAT AND WHO IS NEEDED TO GET THIS PATH INSTALLED.
VOICE AND SUPPORT IS NEEDED NOW
FROM OUR APRIL 17TH ISSUE
This area is directly across from the Coler driveway.
There is direct path to the building entrance.
There is even a curb cut. A crosswalk and stop sign would make a wonderful addition so our neighbors could cross the street safely.
Vincent a Coler resident express frustration at not being able to access the promenade.
Coler Administration has contacted RIOC to no avail for over a year. Recently Borough President Mark Levine and State Senator Liz Kreuger inspected the site. We need community and political support to motivate RIOC to do a small construction project to make the promenade truly wheelchair accessible.
This wonderful walk has been denied to mobility challenged for years.
TUESDAY/WEDNESDAY PHOTO OF THE DAY
OCTAGON DOME IN THE 1920’S SORRY, TOO LATE TO SEE WHO GOT IT RIGHT
PHOTO OF THE DAY
WILL RETURN TOMORROW
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
All image are copyrighted (c) Roosevelt Island Historical Society unless otherwise indicated
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
JUDITH BERDY
THIS PUBLICATION FUNDED BY DISCRETIONARY FUNDS FROM CITY COUNCIL MEMBER JULIE MENIN & ROOSEVELT ISLAND OPERATING CORPORATION PUBLIC PURPOSE FUNDS.
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
All image are copyrighted (c) Roosevelt Island Historical Society unless otherwise indicated
THIS PUBLICATION FUNDED BY DISCRETIONARY FUNDS FROM CITY COUNCIL MEMBER JULIE MENIN & ROOSEVELT ISLAND OPERATING CORPORATION PUBLIC PURPOSE FUNDS.
CHAPLAIN AND GUESTS AT THE OPENING OF COLER IN 1952. THOM HEYER GOT IT!
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
All image are copyrighted (c) Roosevelt Island Historical Society unless otherwise indicated
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
JUDITH BERDY
THIS PUBLICATION FUNDED BY DISCRETIONARY FUNDS FROM CITY COUNCIL MEMBER JULIE MENIN & ROOSEVELT ISLAND OPERATING CORPORATION PUBLIC PURPOSE FUNDS.
On a chilly November day in 1829, a man dressed completely in white stood before a crowd on the precipice of the High Falls of the Genesee River in the middle of Rochester, New York. Many watching had traveled for days to view the spectacle. All eyes were riveted on one of the most famous men in America.
In our own day, we’ve been fascinated by Philippe Petit walking a wire between the World Trade Center towers, or by Evel Knievel leaping over a row of buses on a motorcycle. A forerunner of these daredevils was Sam Patch.
As a boy, Sam had learned the art of jumping when he leapt for fun from the roof of the six-story stone textile mill where he worked. Slater’s Mill in Pawtucket, Rhode Island, was the first major factory in the nation. Sam turned every jump into a four-act drama: the tense anticipation, the thrilling leap, the heart-stopping disappearance, and the joyful resurrection.
The opening of the Erie Canal in 1825 had made Rochester the largest flour-milling city in the world. The town roared with the clattering machinery driven by the river’s water power. The walls of the Genesee gorge formed a misty amphitheater below the falls. On Friday, November 6, a crowd of more than ten thousand people gathered there for the show.
Sam had earlier scouted the river, taking soundings below the falls. Part of his secret was that dropping into the frothy water at the base of a cataract softened the impact of the landing. Now he bowed, said a few words, launched himself, and plummeted. Some cried out, “He’s dead!” After a tense moment, he bobbed to the surface, relieving the onlookers.
Why did he do it? Was it a hunger for attention? A death wish? For Sam Patch, it went beyond the personal. He was reasserting the worth of industrial laborers like himself. Sam had started working twelve-hour days in the mills at the age of eight. He had found little time for play or for schooling. As a factory hand, he was a hireling, dispensable, worth less than the machinery he tended. He worked for someone else’s profit.
Americans did not take easily to factory work. In 1824, workers in Pawtucket walked off the job to protest a decision by mill owners to cut wages by a quarter and extend the work day by an hour. Women and girls instigated the nation’s first industrial strike. Men, including Sam Patch, joined in.
Patch later moved to Paterson, a prosperous mill town in New Jersey. On a whim, he upstaged the opening of a pleasure garden by leaping from the top of the 77-foot Passaic River Falls. In doing so, he defied the city’s upper classes — the place of amusement was off-limits to working people. He jumped again on the Fourth of July, 1828, advertising his feat with the terse phrase that would become his motto: “Some things can be done as well as others.” It was the working man’s sneer at the pretensions of the elite. Sam Patch had found his calling.
By the time he was thirty, Sam was traveling the country, jumping from ships’ masts and over waterfalls. He became the first of the Niagara Falls daredevils, leaping from a platform into the seething cauldron at the bottom of the falls. With this feat, the Buffalo Republican declared, “he may now challenge the universe for a competitor.”
Now, to the consternation of Rochester’s respectable citizens, Sam scheduled another jump in the city a week after the first — on Friday the thirteenth. He had a platform constructed to raise him even farther above the river, 120 feet. “There’s no Mistake in SAM PATCH,” his handbills read. “HIGHER YET! Sam’s Last Jump.”
Again the great mass of spectators assembled. The mills shut down. Watchers crowded windows and roofs. The sensation, one viewer noted, was “between a horse race and an execution.” All waited in the penetrating cold of a gray November afternoon.
Sam Patch wore the white togs that were the uniform of mill workers. He stepped onto the platform. He had imbibed enough whiskey to make him sway a bit as he looked out on all those looking back.
“Napoleon!” he shouted, knowing few could hear. “Napoleon was a great man. But he couldn’t jump the Genesee.” Sam paused. The wind carried his words away over the housetops. “That was left for me to do. I can do it and I will.”
That was his belief. Anyone, even a working man, could be great. Could be somebody. Instead of a cog in a machine. A man could take his life into his own hands. He could dare.
The anticipation had built long enough. Sam stepped to the very edge of the platform. A man in the crowd bit his thumb until it bled. Each spectator drew a breath and held it. Sam looked into all their eyes, into the abyss. He jumped.
He lost control of his erect posture halfway down. His arms flailed. He tipped sideways. Some spectators covered their eyes. Sam Patch slammed into the river.
“When the bubbling water closed over him,” a journalist wrote, “the almost breathless silence and suspense of the multitude for several minutes was indescribably impressive and painful.” No one moved or spoke. Then, finally, “it became too apparent that poor Sam had jumped from life into eternity.”
It wasn’t until the next March that a workman watering horses near the mouth of the river broke the ice and discovered Sam’s frozen body, still dressed in white. Over his grave, someone mounted a wooden plaque that read: “Sam Patch. Such is Fame.”
CHAPLAIN AND GUESTS AT THE OPENING OF COLER IN 1952.
THOM HEYER GOT IT!
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
All image are copyrighted (c) Roosevelt Island Historical Society unless otherwise indicated
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
NEW YORK ALMANACK Illustrations, from above: High Falls of the Genesee River and Sam’s Last Jump handbill.
THIS PUBLICATION FUNDED BY DISCRETIONARY FUNDS FROM CITY COUNCIL MEMBER JULIE MENIN & ROOSEVELT ISLAND OPERATING CORPORATION PUBLIC PURPOSE FUNDS.
Dating from 1785, Edward Mooney House at 18 Bowery, at the corner of Pell Street in Lower Manhattan’s Chinatown, is one of New York’s oldest surviving brick townhouses. Built shortly after the British evacuated New York and before George Washington became President, its architecture contains elements of both pre-Revolutionary (British) Georgian and the in-coming (American) Federal style. Designated in 1966 as a landmark sample of domestic architecture, Mooney House has three stories, an attic and full basement.
The property itself and the land on which it was built are manifestations of Manhattan’s socio-political emergence. The house harbors a history of various functions that involved a diverse mix of tenants and occupants, reflecting the chaotic rise of the metropolis.
Edward Mooney House
Born in New York in November 1703 (his father was a French Huguenot refugee from Caen; his mother descended from the prominent Dutch-American Van Cortlandt family), James De Lancey (Delancey) was educated in England, attended Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, before studying law at the Inner Temple in London. Having been admitted to the bar in 1725, he returned to New York to practice law and enter politics. In the course of his career he served as Chief Justice, Lieutenant Governor and acting Colonial Governor of the Province of New York.
De Lancey was also a substantial property owner. Known as “De Lancey’s ground” it included a 300-acre estate on today’s Lower East Side. Having sided with the British during the Revolutionary War, his land and assets were seized by the city’s authorities after the end of hostilities.
Part of the estate was purchased by Edward Mooney, a wholesale butcher and racehorse breeder. He erected the townhouse there, close to the slaughterhouses, holding pens and tanneries where Mooney made his money. He occupied the house until his death in 1800.
In 1807, the size of the house was doubled by an addition to the rear. It was in use as a private residence until the 1820s after which at various times the building served a range of purposes, including as a brothel, general store, hotel-restaurant, and pool room.
In the early 1900s the Edward Mooney House functioned as a tavern that gained a notorious reputation; Barney Flynn’s Saloon was a hangout for pugilists, gamblers, gang members and political hacks in an area that by then was referred to as Chinatown.
Chinatown
Manhattan’s ethnic enclave of Chinatown was born of exclusion. First established by Chinese merchants putting down roots near what was then a multi-ethnic port area. By 1870 there was a population of some two hundred immigrants. Soon after, these numbers increased sharply. During the post-1873 Long Depression, blatant discrimination in California and elsewhere drove large numbers of Chinese workers eastwards in search of employment in New York’s laundries and restaurants.
The Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 (repealed in 1943), made it impossible for immigrants to legally enter the country. The law did not halt the flow of arrivals and their illegal entrance intensified racist prejudice in the wider society. In 1900, the US Census reported over 7,000 Chinese males in residence, but only 142 Chinese women. Chinatown was a “bachelor society.” The district was shared with various other groups of migrants. Its local funeral parlor served both Irish and Chinese customers.
George Washington O’Connor claimed that he was born in 1852 on Mott Street in Chinatown (he probably hailed from Providence, Rhode Island). Having changed his name to Connors to clear his presence of Irish associations, he became known as Chuck (for his love of chuck steaks which he cooked over an open fire in the middle of Mott Street). As a youngster he joined gangs that pestered Chinese citizens, but Chuck also learned to speak some Cantonese (which eventually endeared him to the local population). He subsisted on an Irish-Chinese diet of chop suey and potatoes.
Connors had a brief career as a professional prize fighter and then worked as a bouncer for James (“Scotty”) Lavelle, a gangster who ran several joints in Chinatown. He was a regular at The Dump, a saloon at 9 Bowery owned by Jimmy Lee and Slim Reynolds where criminal fraternities met and alcoholic ‘Bowery Bums’ gathered. Its clientele was described at the time as the ‘dirtiest species of white humanity.’
Inevitably Chuck got involved in criminality. His association with a thug named Big Mike Adams got him into trouble. Acting as an enforcer for local tongs (brotherhoods), Adams bragged he killed a slew of Chinese men by decapitating them. After the latter was murdered himself, a rumor spread that Chuck had been implicated in the attack. Having decided that Chinatown was too dangerous a place for him, he moved uptown, learned to read and write, and got married. Chuck took on a job on the Third Avenue El.
When his young wife suddenly died, Connors hit the bottle. Blind drunk one day, he was shanghaied onto a ship that set sail for London docks. He washed up in Whitechapel.
Spectacles of Deprivation
Deprivation in the Victorian period was associated with London’s East End. It was outside the Blind Beggar tavern on Whitechapel Road that William Booth founded the Salvation Army; it was here that social investigator Henry Mayhew researched his four-volume survey London Labour and the London Poor (1851); and it was in these slums that Arthur Morrison located his moving account of childhood suffering in A Child of the Jago. The East End was a nightmare, a gothic tale of distress that sparked deep indignation amongst social critics.
In literature and painting scenes of poverty and criminality were used in narratives to stir up a Cockney playhouse of images and emotions. Viewing the street as theater encouraged artistic license and misrepresentation. Sentimentalism and sensationalism were part and parcel of the process. Excursions into London’s poorest districts provided both scenes of bitter social hardship and accounts of crude merriment. There was an additional element.
Following the assassination of Tsar Alexander II in 1881 a wave of pogroms swept across Russia and neighboring countries leading to mass migration to Britain and America. London’s Jewish population rose in the course of the next quarter of a century from some 47,000 to approximately 150,000, of whom some 100,000 lived in the East End.
These new immigrants formed tight-knit communities. Yiddish was used in signs, newspapers and in theaters. Local shops sold bagels, salted herrings and pickled cucumbers; kosher butchers provided brisket and salt beef. Itinerant Jewish hawkers dealt in second-hand wear and discarded household articles. It offered an urban spectacle never witnessed before in Britain. By the 1890s “slumming” in the East End had become a pastime for the rich. Colorful myths about Cockney life and familiar stereotypes about Jewish culture and people were expressed there and then.
It was in these harsh urban surroundings that Connors found safety and a sense of comfort. East End eccentricities appealed to him. Working for and with local costermongers, the itinerant traders who cried their trade lines (London Cries) to attract customers, he absorbed Cockney culture.
Mayor of Chinatown
Once returned to his Manhattan haunts, Chuck presented himself in an East London costermonger attire of bell-bottom trousers, blue stripped shirt, yellow silk scarf and a blue pea coat with big “pearly” buttons. He even adopted a Cockney song he had learned:
Pearlies on my front shirt, Pearlies on my coat,
Little bit of dicer, stuck up on my nut, If you don’t think I’m de real thing, Why, tut, tut, tut.
Instead of an East End flat cap, Connors wore a derby (a “dicer”) that was two sizes too small with a nod to Bowery traditions.
A sharp observer of life in Whitechapel, he was well aware of the weird vogue by which sightseers paid good money to be escorted through the city’s slums and witness “picturesque” sites of local and migrant deprivation. He exported the idea to Chinatown.
Connors was able to rebuild his life after meeting Richard K. Fox, publisher of the Police Gazette. The latter owned several properties in the district and offered his protégé free accommodation at 6 Doyers Street in exchange for magazine tales about the exploits of “The Great Chuck Connors.” He would enthral New Yorkers with lively stories (in a colorful dialect) about his neighborhood. In 1904 Fox assisted Connors in producing an autobiography Bowery Life where the author is introduced as the “Mayor of Chinatown.” The label stuck.
Doyers Street was, according to contemporary guidebooks, a seriously crooked street. Connors exploited that reputation. The Bowery Boy became the Godfather of Manhattan’s slumming industry, a phenomenon that was described in The New York Times (September 1884) with the headline “A Fashionable London Mania Reaches New York.”
One of his favorite stop-overs was The Pelham Café at 12 Pell Street, headquarters of Mike Salter, a Russian-Jewish gangster known as the uncrowned “Prince of Chinatown.” Every single night, his saloon hosted a crowd of visitors who came to hear pianist “Professor” Nicholson play ragtime, accompanied by a seventeen year old waiter named Izzy Baline who belted out raunchy versions of various popular songs. For the young singer this was the start of a glittering career. He would soon change his name to Irving Berlin.
Although he did have macho and no-nonsense competitors in the Bowery, Connors – with the blessing of local tong leaders – made Chinatown his exclusive territory. No other “lobby-gow” (Chinese slang for tour guide) would dare to bring his clients into the district.
Slum Tourism & Stereotyping
Chuck made Barney Flynn’s Saloon the headquarters from where he organized his “vice tours.” He sat his customers down for an “authentic” Chinese dinner; he took them to the Chinese Theatre at 5/7 Doyers Street (with reserved seats for “Americans”). There was the standard introduction to a temple, known in local jargon as a “joss house” (a corruption from the Portuguese Deos for God).
The tour’s climax was a visit to an opium den where his clients encountered the “terror” of drug dependency. It was pure theater. Connors employed Chinese actors to create illusions of addiction and drug-induced stupor.
To add a street element of imminent danger, fights with hatchets and knives between rival gangs were staged whilst in the distance gunfire could be heard. Shocked visitors were neither shot nor robbed in Chinatown. They safely left the area to re-join their respectable families under the impression that they had witnessed a glimpse of “primitive” life in the depraved and seedy margins of society. Slumming had been an adventurous day trip.
Chuck himself became a celebrity host and his tour was a ‘must’ for other prominent figures, including tea magnet Thomas Lipton, novelists Israel Zangwell and Hall Caine, actors Henry Irving and Anna Held. When Chuck Connors died of pneumonia on May 10, 1913, his passing was widely reported. According to the New York Times his funeral was attended by sporting friends, local businessmen, gangsters and Tammany Hall politicians, all paying their respect to the Mayor of Chinatown.
The procession, consisting of sixty three coaches of mourners and another six of floral arrangements, started outside Chuck’s room in Doyers Street. The cortège snaked through Chinatown, stopping for mass at the Catholic Church of the Transfiguration in Mott Street, after which it continued over the new Manhattan Bridge towards Calvary Cemetery in Queens. As the coffin passed by, Chinese merchants set off traditional funeral firework displays, honouring a white man they considered one of their own – and therein lies a painful irony.
Slum tourism consisted of typecast representations that were based on anti-immigration rhetoric and bigoted press reports linking urban deprivation to an ‘alien’ culture of addiction, debauchery and violence. Chuck’s Chinatown was a stage on which white stereotypes about ethnicity and color were either formed or confirmed. It contributed to the racial profiling that Asian-Americans would experience subsequently.
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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
All image are copyrighted (c) Roosevelt Island Historical Society unless otherwise indicated
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Illustrations, from above: the Edward Mooney House at 18 Bowery on the corner of Pell Street; Chuck Connor’s presentation card, 1900 (Museum of the City of New York); The Bowery Burlesquers presenting a satire on New York’s slumming craze, 1898 (Library of Congress); Chuck Connors’ autobiography; Doyers Street, Chinatown, 1909; Chinese Theatre entrance, 5-7 Doyers Street (date unknown); and Slumming according to Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper (Library of Congress).
THIS PUBLICATION FUNDED BY DISCRETIONARY FUNDS FROM CITY COUNCIL MEMBER JULIE MENIN & ROOSEVELT ISLAND OPERATING CORPORATION PUBLIC PURPOSE FUNDS.
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