Broadway_A History of New York City in Thirteen Miles

by Fran Leadon

  But the canal wasn’t finished. It was estimated that two more years were needed to dredge the Harlem River to the proper depth. By 1903, the canal, its funding withheld, had filled with silt and even the captains of the smallest craft avoided it. Eventually the canal was satisfactorily dredged and, in 1938, straightened on the Spuyten Duyvil side to allow for more direct passage to the Hudson. Hunts Point, Port Morris, and Mott Haven, districts of the Bronx that lay along the edge of the canal, did develop, as predicted, into centers of manufacturing and shipping. But the commercial center of the city never gravitated north to Harlem; the big stores, banks, and offices remained far to the south on lower Broadway and Wall Street, and in Midtown, where Penn Station and Grand Central Station disgorged a constant stream of worker bees every minute of every day.

  The opening ceremonies for the Harlem River Ship Canal, June 17, 1895. The canal snipped off the end of Manhattan and sutured it to the Bronx.

  MARBLE HILL, CUT OFF from Manhattan by the canal, became an island and, its quarries played out, slipped ever deeper into obscurity. In 1914, the remaining section of Spuyten Duyvil Creek that wound around the north edge of Marble Hill was filled in, so that it became, geographically, part of the Bronx. But Marble Hill was still politically part of Manhattan, and residents kept rejecting referendums to join the Bronx. When Bronx borough president James J. Lyons defiantly planted the Bronx flag in Marble Hill in 1939, residents booed him.

  Today, Marble Hill remains an insular community of winding streets and neat houses where residents tend to give visitors the once-over as they walk by. At the north end of the neighborhood, at the corner of Broadway and 228th Street, is No. 5249 Broadway, a C-Town supermarket and Broadway’s northernmost building in Manhattan. It is the unremarkable flipside to No. 1 Broadway, the Washington Building that Cyrus W. Field built in 1882 in place of the old Archibald Kennedy mansion, where George Washington had reconnoitered with his generals in 1776. Poet Carl Sandburg once wrote that Broadway ends in the sea, but that’s only true if you are heading south; if you go north, Broadway ends in a checkout line.

  BUT BROADWAY DOESN’T really end there: It continues through the neighborhoods of Kingsbridge and Fieldston in the Bronx, where it forms the long western edge of the vast Van Cortlandt Park. Then, leaving New York City behind, it winds north through Yonkers, Hastings-on-Hudson, Dobbs Ferry, Sleepy Hollow, Ossining, Crotonville, Peekskill, Cold Spring, and Beacon. A ribbon of highway bounded by woods and open fields and suburbs, the upstate version of Broadway bears no resemblance to the Great White Way. North of Manhattan it follows the path of the eighteenth-century Albany Post Road—here and there, ancient mile markers still poke out from the side of the road—which in turn follows the even older Farmers’ Turnpike. But it keeps digressing: Between Crotonville and Peekskill, it widens and is called the Croton Expressway, a smooth but lifeless artery that promises nothing more than a way to get quickly from one point to another. Maps may say that it’s Broadway, but it’s not: Broadway was never just a thoroughfare; it has always been, first and foremost, a place.

  Broadway ends in Albany but continues, as Route 9, to the Canadian border. It is a perfectly fine road but hardly the confounding, multilayered, vexing, exhilarating, always-changing Broadway that is the centerline and lifeblood of Manhattan.

  “Broadway,” Walt Whitman once wrote, “will never fail in riches, arts, men, women, histories, stately shows, morals, warnings, wrecks, triumphs—the profoundest indices of mortality and immortality.” That’s fine for Whitman, but Stephen Jenkins, writing in 1911, was more to the point: He thought that Broadway was the place where New Yorkers felt most at home.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  I MUST FIRST AND FOREMOST THANK JOHN GLUSMAN, W. W. Norton’s vice president and editor in chief, for editing this book with unerring insight and extreme patience. I must also thank John’s assistant Lydia Brents, who patiently answered my thousands of questions. Thank you also to Norton’s former president and current chairman Drake McFeely, former publisher Jeannie Luciano, sales director Steven Pace, director of publicity Louise Brockett, production manager Anna Oler, project editor Don Rifkin, copy editor Fred Wiemer, and Lydia’s predecessors Alexa Pugh and Jonathan Baker.

  Thank you to my friend Constance Rosenblum for reading and editing the book proposal and early drafts and offering nonstop encouragement. Thanks also to Andrew Dolkart, Robert Marx, Annie Polland, Barnet Schecter, and Carol Willis for reading the manuscript, in whole or in part, and offering insights and suggestions.

  The Internet is truly a treasure trove of research material these days, and this book never would have been started, much less completed, without around-the-clock access to Chronicling America, the historical newspaper database at the Library of Congress, the New York Public Library Digital Collections, the Internet Archive, and other online sources. But I really prefer printed books, maps, prints, and documents, and so it was a pleasure to frequent New York’s many remarkable libraries and archives, where I was assisted by some amazing people: Hector Rivera at the Manhattan Borough President’s Map Room let me handle the original Randel Farm Maps; Thomas Lannan at the New York Public Library Manuscripts and Archives Division was enthusiastic and extremely helpful in granting access to manuscript diaries and surveying records; Thomas Lisanti, manager of the New York Public Library Permissions and Reproduction Services, and Eric Shows, manager of the New York Public Library Digitization Services, answered countless questions about the library’s digital collections; Tammy Kiter, Joseph Ditta, and Joseph Festa at the New-York Historical Society’s Patricia D. Klingenstein Library cheerfully helped me with manuscript diaries and city directories; and Assistant Commissioner of Records Kenneth Cobb, Municipal Archives director Sylvia Kollar, and researcher Barbara Hibbert at the New York City Department of Records helped me make sense of real-estate assessments and other inscrutable documents.

  And then there are New York’s wonderful bookstores, and I visited them often: Broadway doesn’t have nearly as many bookstores as it once did, but, thank God, it does have the Strand and Book Culture. Thank you to Peter Miller at Freebird Books in Brooklyn, and a special thank you to Laura Ten Eyck and Richard Rosenblatt at Argosy Bookstore, prints department, where I whiled away many blissful afternoons rifling through stacks of Harper’s Weekly and Gleason’s Pictorial Drawing-Room Companion. And with considerable pangs I must also thank Christien Shangraw, Glenn Tranter, and the entire staff of my home-away-from-home, Brooklyn’s late and deeply lamented BookCourt.

  Teresa Fox of FoxPrint Design drew and redrew the book’s maps, a process that continued for five years—mostly because I kept changing my mind. Thank you also to Katherine Slingluff for shooting me (the author photo, I mean).

  I had barely begun this project when Pete Hogden of Grace Church took me on a memorable tour up into the rafters of James Renwick Jr.’s masterpiece at Broadway and 10th Street, a vertical jaunt that allowed me to see Renwick’s genius up close. More recently Mary Miss has inspired me to look at Broadway from an entirely different angle through her ongoing project Broadway: 1000 Steps. Bernie Gelb of Ansonia Realty let me tag along while he inspected vacant apartments in the wondrous Ansonia. Don Rice and Naiomy Rodriguez at the Dyckman Farmhouse Museum Alliance answered my questions and gave me homemade cider.

  Thank you to Walter L. Arnstein, Barbara Samuelson, Mary Sansone, and Gene Yellin for sharing their memories of Broadway with me, and to the incomparable Jeff Kisseloff, author of You Must Remember This (in my opinion the greatest book ever written about New York City), for graciously allowing me to quote from the original recordings of the oral histories he collected on cassette tapes in the 1980s and donated to the New York Public Library. Thanks also to Whitey Flynn at the Trinity Church Archives.

  Partial funding for illustrations and permissions came from grants from the PSC-CUNY Research Foundation and from the Bernard and Anne Spitzer Endowment at the City College of New York School of Architecture, where I must also thank Ja
cob Alspector, George Ranalli, Julio Salcedo, Gordon Gebert, Peter Gisolfi, Alan Feigenberg, Michael Sorkin, Marta Gutman, Michael Miller, Camille Hall, and Erica Wszolek. Special thanks to Judy Connorton, Nilda Sanchez, and Taida Sainvil at the City College Architecture Library; Mayra Mahmood, who helped me dissect city directories and retrieved documents from the New York Public Library and the Municipal Archives; and all my astonishing students from my “Cities” and “Broadway” design studios.

  I never would have embarked on, much less completed, this project without the guidance of my extraordinary agent Howard Morhaim, who not only saw me safely through the treacherous shoals of the proposal phase to the safety of Norton’s harbor but also read draft after draft of the manuscript and offered insightful comments every step of the way. I lift a cup of decaf in your honor, Howard.

  Thank you also to Camilla Crowe White, Tess Tomlinson, Lindsey Weaving, Nathan Sherwood, Beth Kolacki, Janice Campbell, Jacki Fischer, and Susan Goldstein.

  And here’s to my indefatigable family, Leigh, Ben, and Pete, who never complained when I went off to walk up Broadway one more time.

  NOTES

  “A SORT OF GEOGRAPHICAL VIVISECTION”

  xiii “The best way of finding out the inside of an orange”: William Henry Rideing, “Life on Broadway,” Harper’s New Monthly Magazine LVI, no. 331 (December 1877), 229.

  PREFACE

  xv a “mighty ever - flowing land - river ”: Jerome Loving, “ ‘Broadway, the Magnificent!’: A Newly Discovered Whitman Essay,” Walt Whitman Quarterly Review 12 (Spring 1995), 210.

  xv Broadway as “a kind of animated mirror”: Valerian Gribayedoff, “The ‘Flaneur’ on Broadway,” Illustrated American XX, 352 (November 7, 1896), 619.

  xvi “Broadway’s a great street when you’re going up”: Sidney Skolsky, Times Square Tintypes. New York: Ives Washburn, 1930, viii. Skolsky attributed the quote to McGuire, but it may be apocryphal.

  CHAPTER 1. SOARING THINGS

  3 “Every window” . . . “appeared to be a paper mill”: “The Sights and Sightseers,” New York Times, October 29, 1886, 2.

  4 15,000 people marched in the parade: “The Croton Jubilee,” New York Tribune, October 15, 1842, 1.

  4 the tail end of the procession was still visible: John Aspinwall Hadden diary, New York Public Library, Division of Manuscripts and Archives, 110.

  4 Field said he was overwhelmed: “The Atlantic Telegraph Celebration. Procession, Festivities, Speeches, & c. A General Jubilee,” New York Evening Post, September 2, 1858, 1.

  4 He was hailed as “Cyrus the Great”: Samuel Carter, Cyrus Field: Man of Two Worlds. New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1968, 164.

  5 Laura Keene’s Theatre: Thomas Allston Brown, A History of the New York Stage from the First Performance in 1732 to 1901. Three volumes. New York: Dodd, Mead & Co., 1902, II, 132.

  5 Archbishop John J. Hughes buried: Carter, Cyrus Field, 166.

  5 The “Atlantic Telegraph Polka”: Ibid., 169.

  5 a banquet in Field’s honor: Isabella Field Judson, Cyrus W. Field: His Life and Work, 1819–1892. New York: Harper Brothers, 1896, 117–120.

  6 “A carnivalesque appearance”: “The Cable Carnival,” New York Herald, September 2, 1858, 1.

  7 Einstein insisted: “Zionists Greet Einstein, Here for Palestine,” New York Tribune, April 3, 1921, 1, 3. It is unclear whether ticker tape was involved in Einstein’s parade.

  7 “New York has been kind”: “ ‘Don’t Worry,’ Dr. Einstein Advises Public,” New York Tribune, April 4, 1921, 9.

  7 the Times blamed “imps of office boys”: “The Sights and Sightseers,” 2.

  8 acquired the decaying Washington Hotel: “A Historical Building Sold. The Oldest Building in the City to Be Destroyed—Some Points in its History,” New York Tribune, August 30, 1881, 8.

  9 a crank “with no moral sense”: “The Railroad Situation,” Real Estate Record & Builders’ Guide XXIX, 722 (January 14, 1882), 26.

  9 Field invited six architects: “Mr. Field’s New Building. Plans for the Offices to be Erected on Battery-place,” New York Times, November 17, 1881, 8.

  10 “If I had the time”: “Seen and Heard on a Saturday Walk,” New York Tribune, January 31, 1887, 5;

  10 machinations of Gould and Sage: Carter, Cyrus Field, 342–343.

  10 “Leaning over the ship’s rail”: Paul Bourget, Outre-Mer: American Impressions. London: T. Fisher Unwin, 1895, 17.

  10 He called the Equitable a “gigantic palace”: Ibid., 28.

  11 “At what time of day do they die here?”: Ibid., 26–27.

  11 “ Sky - Scrapers ”: I. N. Phelps Stokes, The Iconography of Manhattan Island, 1498 to 1909. Six volumes. New York: Robert H. Dodd, 1915–1928. Reprinted, New York: Arno Press, 1967, III, 967.

  11 “must be every inch a proud and soaring thing”: Louis H. Sullivan, “The Tall Office Building Artistically Considered,” Lippincott’s Magazine 57 (March 1896), 403–409.

  CHAPTER 2. MUD AND FIRE

  16 “unconstitutional and oppressive”: New York Post-Boy, November 7, 1765. Quoted in I. N. Phelps Stokes, The Iconography of Manhattan Island, 1498 to 1909. Six volumes. New York: Robert H. Dodd, 1915–1928. Reprinted, New York: Arno Press, 1967, IV, 753.

  16 A “moveable Gallows” was erected: Ibid.

  17 “The whole Multitude then returned to the Fort”: Ibid.

  17 “many Insults to the Effigy”: Ibid.

  17 “[It] soon kindled to a great Flame”: Ibid.

  17 he asked Captain Kennedy to move the paper: Ibid., 754. Later, on December 24, 1765, a mob did threaten Kennedy’s house but was “suppressed by the mayor.” Quoted in ibid., 759.

  18 William Smith’s house at No. 5 Broadway: Barnet Schecter, The Battle for New York: The City at the Heart of the American Revolution. New York: Walker & Co., 2002, 21.

  18 captured and confined in Morristown: Stokes, The Iconography of Manhattan Island, V, 1001.

  18 Washington stayed at first: Thomas Jones, History of New York During the Revolutionary War. New York: New-York Historical Society, 1879, I, 85.

  18 “With a fair wind and rapid tide”: Henry Knox to William Knox, July 11, 1776, in Francis S. Drake, Life and Correspondence of Henry Knox, Major-General in the American Revolutionary Army. Boston: Samuel G. Drake, 1873, 28.

  18 “The city in an uproar”: Ibid.

  20 “I have nothing in particular to communicate”: George Washington to John Hancock, September 22, 1776, in The Papers of George Washington, Revolutionary War Series, VI, 13 August 1776 – 20 October 1776, Philander D. Chase and Frank E. Grizzard Jr., editors. Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1994, 369–370.

  21 “as at noon day”: Joseph Henry, The Campaign Against Quebec: Being an Accurate and Interesting Account of the Hardships and Sufferings of That Band of Heroes Who Traversed the Wilderness, by the Route of the Kennebec, and Chaudière River, to Quebec, in the Year 1775. Watertown, N.Y.: Knowlton & Rice, 1844, 200–202.

  21 “If we could have divested ourselves”: Henry was among many eyewitnesses who saw several fires break out simultaneously, which some took as proof that Washington’s agents had intentionally tried to burn the town to make things harder for the British. It is more likely that wind carried embers onto buildings far ahead of the flames, making it appear as if many fires were started at the same time. Henry, The Campaign Against Quebec, 200–202.

  21 In all, some 493 houses were destroyed: D. T. Valentine, Manual of the Corporation of the City of New-York. New York: Edmund Jones & Co., 1866, 767. Since Trinity Church’s losses were so staggering, many clergy and parishioners assumed the fire had been a plot aimed at the Church of England.

  22 “some good honest fellow”: George Washington to Lund Washington, October 6, 1776, in The Papers of George Washington, Revolutionary War Series, VI, 13 August 1776 – 20 October 1776, 493–495.

  22 “Had I been left to the dictates”: Ibid.

  22 moved into townhouses on broadway: David
C. Franks, The New-York Directory. New York, 1786 and 1787 editions; Robert Hodge, Thomas Allen, Samuel Campbell, The New-York Directory and Register. New York, 1789 and 1790 editions.

  22 the Alexander Macomb mansion: In 1821 the Macomb mansion was converted into a hotel called Bunker’s Mansion House.

  23 “All persons having demands”: Gazette of the United-States, September 1, 1790, 3. In 1789, Washington was listed in Hodge’s New-York Directory as residing at 3 Cherry Street.

  23 “most convenient and agreeable part of the city”: William Winterbotham, An Historical, Geographical, Commercial, and Philosophical View of the American United States, and of the European Settlements in America and the West-Indies. London: J. Ridgway, H. D. Symonds, and D. Holt, 1795, II, 315.

  23 John Jacob Astor, then amassing: Longworth’s American Almanac, New-York Register, and City Directory. New York: Thomas Longworth. (Editions for 1798, 1803, 1813, 1826–1827, 1839.)

  24 In 1797, New York surpassed Philadelphia: Robert Greenhalgh Albion, The Rise of New York Port, 1815–1860. New York and London: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1939, 8.

  24 Dead cats: Boston Gazette, August 18, 1803. Quoted in Stokes, The Iconography of Manhattan Island, 1498 to 1909, V, 1412.

  24 “bottomless pit of finance”: New York Gazette & General Advertiser, November 4, 1805. Quoted in Stokes, The Iconography of Manhattan Island, V, 1439.

  CHAPTER 3. PROMENADE

  26 “as much crowded as the Bond - street in London”: John Lambert, Travels Through Canada and the United States of North America, in the Years 1806, 1807 & 1808. London: Baldwin, Cradock & Joy, 1816, II, 58–59.

  26 “[Dressed] in their best”: John J. Sturtevant memoir, Manuscripts and Archives Division, New York Public Library, Astor, Lenox, and Tilden Foundations, 51.