TENEMENT MUSEUM TALKS

After They Closed the Gates

Monday, April 216:30 PM

 Despite quotas set in the 1920s meant to sharply reduce the influx of immigrants into the country, immigrants continued to come. Historian Libby Garland tells the untold stories of the Jewish migrants and smugglers involved in that underworld. Garland also helps us understand how Jews were linked to, and then unlinked from, the specter of illegal immigration. Tenement actors will dramatize some of the cases highlighted in the book.

This event is free and seats are first-come, first-serve; however, you can reserve two seats by purchasing a copy of After They Closed the Gates. Contact Laura Lee at llee@tenement.org or 212.431.0233, ext. 259 to purchase the book.

Events take place at 103 Orchard Street at Delancey Street in Manhattan.

NEW YORK CITY TIMELINE - 1799

1799

Apr 2

The Manhattan Company is formed.

June

Jacob Housman, a future developer of Florida's Indian Key, future county seat of Dade County, is born in Staten Island.

Sep 22

Irish immigrant James Jackson dies in Manhattan at the age of 28. He will be buried at the potter's field, located at the future site of Washington Square Park. A backhoe working on the site in October of 2009 uncovers his gravestone. His body will not be found.

Dec 22

Twenty-one-year-old Gulielma "Elma" Sands leaves her home in the Lispenard Meadows area of the future Greenwich Village.

Dec 24

The body of Elma Sands is found at true bottom of a well near her home. Boyfriend Levi Weeks, a carpenter, is taken into custody and indicted for murder, although the evidence is circumstantial. He will be exonerated when Alexander Hamilton and Aaron Burr defend him, and will soon move to Natchez, Mississippi, and become a major architect.

New York City

When Colonel William Stephens Smith, son-in-law of John Adams, runs into financial problems he sells the unfinished Manhattan home he began last year on what will become East 61st Street to wealthy merchant William T. Robinson.    **    The summer home of Scottish-born shipping merchant Archibald Gracie is completed, on the eastern side of Manhattan.    **    Wholesale merchant  Joshua Isaacs build a clapboard home at the future Bedford Street - the first house in the future Greenwich Village.    **    The thrice-weekly Gazette Francaise newspaper, begun in 1796 by the Claude Parisot and Company, ceases publication.    **    The Manhattan Company, formed as a water company that will serve 2,000 homes through 25 miles of piping. At this year's end the company - now serving mainly as a bank -  has cash resources totaling $447,029.    **    Yellow fever strikes the city.    **    A house claimed to be dating back to this year is built in Jamaica, Queens, for the Reverend Abraham Ketelas.    **    A carriage house - the future 1826 Mount Vernon Hotel - is built at the future East 61st Street.

Staten Island

The New York State legislature passes an act appointing commissioners to select sites on Staten Island, appraise the lands for their value, appropriate them from their owners, and erect quarantine stations on them. A Marine Hospital/Quarantine Station is erected in the St. George neighborhood, largely due to fears over Yellow Fever.    **    The 8-acre Fountain Cemetery on Staten Island opens on the site of a Revolutionary War skirmish and an Indian burial ground. The first burial will take place in 1802.

© 2014    David Minor / Eagles Byte

MARCH NYC BORO EVENTS

PEOPLE V. BOYD: THE MURDER TRIAL THAT NEARLY REDREW THE MAP OF NEW YORK CITY 

Bronx County was carved out of New York County in 1914, one hundred years ago. For seventy years the division seemed clear, but then in 1984 an otherwise unremarkable murder case generated a startling legal decision that threw the long-standing boundary between the two counties into question at the sleepy little neighborhood of Marble Hill. The ruling threatened to wreak havoc with New York’s criminal justice and electoral systems. Using historic images and videotaped interviews with the principal players in the story, Michael Miscione, the Manhattan Borough Historian, will examine this little-known ruling and its aftermath. This presentation is part of the "Lost in Inwood" lecture series presented by Donald Rice every month at the Indian Road Cafe.

Tuesday, March 4, 2014 

7:30p 

Indian Road Cafe 

600 West 218th Street (corner of Indian Road) 

(212) 942-7451 

Admission is free, but the venue is an fully operating restaurant-bar, so come prepared to eat and/or drink. 

CALLING ALL NEW YORK CITY KNOW-IT-ALLS! IT’S PANORAMA CHALLENGE TIME AGAIN! 

Come to the recently reopened Queens Museum to participate in the world’s greatest geo-historical trivia game night at the Panorama of the City of New York, a sprawling three-dimensional scale model of the five boroughs built for the 1964 World’s Fair! Early next month Levys’ Unique New York, the Queens Museum, and the City Reliquary will present the 7th Annual Panorama Challenge. 

This is a team sport, but contestants who come alone or in small groups need not fret; they will be folded together with others to form a 10-person team. The Challenge’s quizmaster will pose clever questions about the city’s various landmarks, bridges, neighborhoods, parks, and more, and the team that identifies the most locations will have its name etched on a trophy at the Queens Museum! 

Two of this year's categories will include “I heard it on the 1010 WINS traffic report,” and “It happened 15 / 20 / 25 Years Ago.” There will be twice as many music clues as last year! Also this year, while the judges tally the final scores, there will be an electrifying performance by Batala NYC -- New York's only all-woman Brazilian drum corps! 

Our panel of all-star judges will include the Manhattan Borough Historian, Michael Miscione; the Dean of NYC Tour Guides, Lee Gelber; NYC Know-It-All, Andy Sydor; and Webmaster and author of “Forgotten New York,” Kevin Walsh. 

The Challenge’s format and questions will be designed by Levys' Unique New York, aka “New York’s First Family of Tour Guides.” All proceeds will go to support the City Reliquary Museum in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, dedicated to collecting and displaying NYC's historic, cultural, and artistic ephemera. Beer will be supplied by the Brooklyn Brewery. 

Friday, March 7, 2014 

7:00p to 10:00p; doors open at 6:00p 

Queens Museum at Flushing Meadows-Corona Park 

(A free shuttle will be traveling between the museum and the Mets-Willets Point 7 Train stop, both before and after the event.) 

$15 suggested donation 

$10 for City Reliquary members & NY Trivia League teams. Reliquary membership available on site. 

Admission includes a free beer; snacks and more refreshments available for an additional donation. 

Full details: http://levysuniqueny.com/5028/the-7th-annual-panorama-challenge/ 

JUDGE NOT

(Continued from December 20, 2011)

The City Hotel, where James Stuart stayed on his first visit to New York City last year had another guest now in 1829. John Lansing, Jr.'s family was old Albany aristocracy, dating back to the 1660s. The 75-year-old retired jurist had been an ensign in the American Revolution, where he served as secretary to General Philip Schuyler. After the war he'd been elected to the state assembly, in the late 1780s serving simultaneously as speaker and as Albany's mayor. He'd also been a delegate to the U. S. Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia but, not having a clear mandate from the state, leaving before ratification. He'd gone on to serve on the state supreme court then accepted the post of Chancellor of New York State, retiring in 1814. Through the years he'd acquired large sections of land north of Troy (today's Lansingburgh) and in the Schoharie River valley to the west of Schenectady.

It's possible that over the past year or two he'd come across news items in the overseas section of New York newspapers back in January referring to an execution in Edinburgh. Huge crowds gathered on the 28th to watch Irish-born peddler William Burke exterminated. It had been discovered that in the past year his primary stock in trade was dead people. Working with lodging house keeper William Hare, he'd taken the body of an elderly lodger and selling it to a local surgeon who ran dissecting rooms for the training of doctors. The seven-plus pounds sterling they were paid for the corpse brought out the entrepreneurial spirit in the pair and they'd soon sold another sixteen of the newly-departed, mostly women. Newly-departed that is at the hands of the two men.

When their lethal venture was discovered and the two arrested, Hare agreed to a plea bargain offer and was spirited away to protect him against mob violence. Burke's more violent and final departure delighted the huge crowds - some estimates put the number at close to 40,000 - gathered for the public execution. After Burke danced on air for a short while he had one more service to perform for the medical profession. The body was taken to the medical school rooms where a number of doctors examined the corpse - some making sketches - then a number of students were allowed in to watch as the top of the dead man's head was surgically removed for a lesson on the human brain. Other young fans of the anatomical arts, kept out of the building for lack of space, began attacking the police and it wasn't until the town council intervened and promised everyone a good look that order was restored.

Violent death was no stranger to New Yorkers, but the news from Scotland had put people on edge. As the Manhattan diarist calling himself Octogenarian noted, "With Burke's deeds fresh in memory, it was easy to connect horrid imaginings with the stories, either true or false, of unexplained disappearances in New York, and thus a great excitement and wide-spread terror were engendered. Women and children never ventured forth alone after nightfall, and citizens generally were armed during their evening walks, though only with heavy sticks."

Meanwhile, judge John Lansing was preparing to return to Albany in time for the holidays. On December 12th he walked out of the City Hotel to mail some letters. He was never seen again.

© 2005 David Minor / Eagles Byte