History

Soho and Tribeca’s windowed sidewalks provided light to basement factory workers before electricity

Vault lights in Soho, via WooJin Chung for 6sqft

August 9, 2017

Soho and Tribeca’s windowed sidewalks provided light to basement factory workers before electricity

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In many parts of Soho and Tribeca, the sidewalks are made from small circular glass bulbs instead of solid concrete. Known as "hollow sidewalks" or "vault lights," the unique street coverings are remnants from the neighborhood's industrial past when they provided light to the basement factories below before electricity was introduced. These skylight-like sidewalks first came about in the 1840s when these neighborhoods were transitioning from residential to commercial and when their signature cast iron buildings first started to rise.
Find out more about their history
U.S. Army won’t remove Confederate street names in Brooklyn

General Lee Avenue and Robert E. Lee’s former home on Fort Hamilton, via Jeremy Bender/Business Insider

August 8, 2017

U.S. Army won’t remove Confederate street names in Brooklyn

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Despite a push from advocates and politicians, the United States Army decided to keep the names of two streets in Brooklyn that honor Confederate generals. The streets, General Lee Avenue and Stonewall Jackson Drive, can be found in Fort Hamilton, the city’s last remaining active military base. Brooklyn Congresswoman Yvette Clarke, along with U.S. Reps Jerrold Nadler, Nydia Velazquez and Hakeem Jeffries, had written to the Army in June asking them to consider changing the street names. As the Daily News reported, the Army said the names will stay because they remain an “inextricable part of our military history.”
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Why Central Park hasn’t had a six-figure crowd since Garth Brooks’ concert 20 years ago

Via Stephiejeanne on Pixabay and Steve Jurvetson on Flickr

August 7, 2017

Why Central Park hasn’t had a six-figure crowd since Garth Brooks’ concert 20 years ago

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On Aug. 7, 1997, country-music superstar Garth Brooks held a free concert in Central Park, known as “Garthstock,” as part of his 1996-1998 world tour. The show was a hit, featuring special guests Billy Joel and Don McLean, and was streamed live on HBO. The massive crowd filled the park’s North Meadow to capacity, holding a record number of 750,000 total concert-goers. However, Garth’s show became the last six-figure crowd to attend a concert in Central Park because, after that, city officials started to count crowds more accurately. Twenty years later, we know now that Garth’s concert most likely drew nowhere near that staggering number of fans, despite what authorities first reported.
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Metered NYC taxis turn 110 years old this month

Image via Wiki Commons

August 4, 2017

Metered NYC taxis turn 110 years old this month

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110 years ago on August 13th, one of the cornerstones of New York City life, the first metered taxicab, rolled into the city's streets. The metered fare idea was born, fittingly, in 1907 when Harry N. Allen was smacked with a five dollar fare ($126.98 in today's dollars) for being driven a quarter of a mile in a horse-drawn hansom cab. Allen imported 65 gas-powered cars from France, painted them red and green, and started the New York Taxicab Company. The elven hues were replaced by the iconic yellow shortly thereafter so they could be seen from a distance, and a year later 700 cabs were nowhere to be found when you wanted one.
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No state is spared a roasting in this 19th-century nickname map

Image: Library of Congress

August 4, 2017

No state is spared a roasting in this 19th-century nickname map

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When a livestock supply company tries to get clever, the result is likely to be something like this "odd and obscure" (h/t Slate) map of the U.S. showing common state nicknames of the day, many of which haven't changed since the map was printed as a promotional offering by H.W. Hill & Co. in 1884. Each state's nickname is illustrated by a portly porker doing whatever it is that state would probably rather not be known for doing best: New York's "knickerbocker," Ohio's "buckeye" and Michigan's "wolverine" are present and accounted for; Kentucky's "corn cracker" and Georgia's "cracker" are similarly skewered.
This way for more pig tales
The Urban Lens: Documenting the change in Tribeca from the early 1900s to present day
August 4, 2017

The Urban Lens: Documenting the change in Tribeca from the early 1900s to present day

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6sqft’s ongoing series The Urban Lens invites photographers to share work exploring a theme or a place within New York City. In this installment, Ivan Kosnyrev shares before-and-after photos of Tribeca. Are you a photographer who’d like to see your work featured on The Urban Lens? Get in touch with us at [email protected]. When Ivan Kosnyrev and his partner moved to Tribeca from Russia three years ago, they knew no one. To get themselves acclimated with their new home, they decided their first "friend" should be the city itself. Ivan, a philosopher by education and IT manager by profession, immersed himself in New York City guide books and blogs, getting so well versed that he eventually began giving his friends informal walking tours of the area. And when he discovered the New York Public Library's OldNYC collection, an interactive map with photos from the 1870s through the 1970s, he decided to embark on a project that he could share with even more people. After selecting a group of archival Tribeca images, he went out and took present-day snapshots of the same locations, providing a neighborhood-specific view of just how much NYC has changed (and in some cases, hasn't!) over the past 100 years.
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‘Heard it through the grapevine?’ The source was probably at 6th Avenue and 11th Street

6th Avenue and 11th Street, 1905. Image via Ephemeral New York,

August 3, 2017

‘Heard it through the grapevine?’ The source was probably at 6th Avenue and 11th Street

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On August 6, 1966, the first known recording of "I Heard It Through The Grapevine" was made by the Miracles. Written by Motown pioneers Norman Whitfield and Barrett Strong, the song was re-recorded several times, most famously by Gladys Night and the Pips and Marvin Gaye, whose version landed on the top of the charts for seven weeks in early 1969. But the famous saying about receiving important news or information through a person-to-person chain of communication significantly pre-dates the Motown era. In fact, plentiful evidence and credible sources say it all goes back to a beloved tavern on the corner of 6th Avenue and 11th Street in Greenwich Village.
more on the history here
In 1894, the first bike lane in America was built on Brooklyn’s Ocean Parkway

Photo by Kai Brinker on Flickr

August 1, 2017

In 1894, the first bike lane in America was built on Brooklyn’s Ocean Parkway

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While many New Yorkers can be seen trekking through Brooklyn on their bikes today, the borough’s infatuation with cycling actually dates back to the 19th century. On June 15, 1894, Ocean Parkway became the first street in the U.S. to have a designated bike lane. The nearly five-mile stretch of road was designed by Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux, the urban planning masterminds behind Central Park and Prospect Park. Originally, their design for Ocean Parkway was to be one of four spokes originating at Prospect Park and spanning across the borough. Today, the road doesn’t actually start at the park but runs parallel to Coney Island Avenue to reach the beach.
The full history this way
100 years ago today, the NAACP held its Silent Protest Parade down Fifth Avenue

Photo courtesy of James Weldon Johnson Memorial Collection of African American Arts and Letters, Yale Collection of American Literature, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library

July 28, 2017

100 years ago today, the NAACP held its Silent Protest Parade down Fifth Avenue

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Forty-six years before Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his “I Have A Dream” speech during the March on Washington, nearly 10,000 African-Americans silently marched down Fifth Avenue to protest racial violence in the United States. Organized by the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), the Silent Protest Parade occurred on Saturday, July 28, 1917, and became the first mass civil rights demonstration of its kind. Protesters walked from 55th and 59th Streets to Madison Square, without so much as a whisper (h/t Hyperallergic).
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How a 15th-century French migration gave us the term ‘Bohemian’

Greenwich Village Bohemians outside Cafe Wha in the 1960s, via Vintage Everyday

July 27, 2017

How a 15th-century French migration gave us the term ‘Bohemian’

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“Bohemian” may be hard to define, but we all know it when we see it. But even in a city like New York, where bohemian can be used to describe everything from a polished West Village cafe to a South Bronx squat, few people know why exactly we today use this term, connected to a medieval Central European kingdom, to describe those with a countercultural bent.
The whole history right this way
The history behind how Great Jones Street got its name

Photo via Wiki Commons

July 26, 2017

The history behind how Great Jones Street got its name

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After 34 years of serving giant Cajun-Creole portions alongside obscure jukebox music, Great Jones Cafe is closing its doors for good tonight. The notorious Noho bar at 54 Great Jones Street opened in 1983 when the block was so empty patrons used be able to play whiffle ball in the street, but its closure serves as a reminder of the history of Great Jones Street. This superlative name dates way back to 1789 when politician Samuel Jones donated land to the city under the terms that they name any street within the property after him. But there was one little issue....
Where did the street name come from?
A rejected design for Central Park from 1858 shows colorful, whimsical topiaries

John Rink’s rejected design proposal for Central Park, via NY Historical Society

July 24, 2017

A rejected design for Central Park from 1858 shows colorful, whimsical topiaries

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Central Park, which celebrated its 164th anniversary this month, required elaborate planning to make it what it is today: the most visited urban park in the country. New York City launched a design competition in 1857 for the development of the open space between Manhattan’s 59th and 110th Streets. Most New Yorkers know that out of 33 total entrants, the city chose Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux's "Greensward Plan." However, just five of the losing designs survived and can be seen at the New York Historical Society. One particularly unique design was submitted by park engineer John Rink, who planned Central Park to be highly decorated with whimsically shaped sections dominated by topiaries (h/t Slate).
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Help the NYPL geotag historic photos of New York City
July 20, 2017

Help the NYPL geotag historic photos of New York City

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The New York Public Library has a challenge for all history gurus and NYC experts: Place unlabeled historic photos of the city at the correct location on a map. The new website called Surveyor crowdsources geotags of the NYPL's photo collections with the goal of creating a digital database to make it easier to find images by the location they were taken. While some photos come with helpful titles that describe the location or the address, others only include the neighborhood or vague details. Since algorithms and search engines won’t be able to pick up locations of these old photos, the NYPL is seeking help from the public.
Get more info
July 19, 2017

The history of Fort George: Manhattan’s long-lost amusement park in Inwood

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Did you know Washington Heights and Inwood used to be home to a giant amusement park? In 1895, the Fort George Amusement Park opened on Amsterdam Avenue between 190th and 192nd Streets, overlooking the Harlem River in what is now Highbridge Park. Located in the same spot as George Washington’s fight against the British, "Harlem’s Coney Island" rivaled Brooklyn’s Coney Island with roller coasters, Ferris wheels, a skating rink, fortune tellers, music halls, casinos, and hotels.
Learn more about the Fort George Amusement Park
The world’s largest tire was used as a Ferris wheel at NYC’s 1964 World’s Fair

Photo courtesy of Gregory Fournier

July 18, 2017

The world’s largest tire was used as a Ferris wheel at NYC’s 1964 World’s Fair

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The world's largest tire, the Uniroyal Giant Tire, reached 80 feet high and weighed 20 tons when it debuted as a Ferris wheel at the New York World's Fair in 1964. First located in Flushing, Queens, the towering tire was commissioned by the Uniroyal Tire Company and designed by Shreve, Lamb & Harmon, the same architectural firm behind the Empire State Building. During its time at the fair, the tire carried over two million passengers, including Jacqueline Kennedy and her children, Telly Savalas, and the Shah of Iran. Each ride cost just $0.25 and would last 10 minutes.
How did the tire end up in Detroit?
Vintage maps reflect the population distribution of Americans in 1930

 Map of U.S. with population of each state and of cities of 50,000+(Printers’ Ink Publishing Co., Inc., Chart by Walter P. Burns and Associates, Inc., New York City)

July 17, 2017

Vintage maps reflect the population distribution of Americans in 1930

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Using the 1930 census for their data, two distorted maps show where residents in the United States lived during this period of time. Both vintage cartogram maps exhibit how bunched Americans were in the north and the east coast, clustered in urban areas, despite the westward expansion of the previous century. As the Making Maps blog first featured and as Slate discovered, the size of New York and New Jersey grows in proportion to its expanding populations, moving further east into the ocean.
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Hess Triangle is NYC’s smallest piece of private land

Photo via Wiki Commons

July 17, 2017

Hess Triangle is NYC’s smallest piece of private land

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If you've ever walked by the busy intersection of 7th Avenue South and Christopher Street, you've likely seen people snapping photos of the iconic corner-facing Village Cigars, but what you probably didn't realize is that they were standing on top of New York City's smallest piece of private land. The Hess Triangle sits on the sidewalk at the southwest corner of this Greenwich Village crossing, a small concrete slab with an embedded mosaic that reads "Property of the Hess Estate Which Has Never Been Dedicated For Public Purposes."
Find out the story behind this cryptic message and one of the city's best historic remnants
On this day in 1645, a freed slave became the first non-Native settler to own land in Greenwich Village

Plan of New York  map courtesy of Curriculum Concepts International

July 14, 2017

On this day in 1645, a freed slave became the first non-Native settler to own land in Greenwich Village

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In 1626, the Dutch West India Company imported 11 African slaves to New Amsterdam, beginning New York’s 200 year-period of slavery. One man in this group, Paolo d’Angola, would become the city’s first non-Native settler of Greenwich Village. As the Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation (GVSHP) discovered, and added to their Civil Rights and Social Justice Map, as a recently freed slave, d’Angola was granted land around today’s Washington Square Park for a farm. While this seems like a generous gesture from a slave owner, d’Angola’s land actually served as an intermediary spot between the European colonists and the American Indians, who sometimes raided settlements. This area, in addition to Chinatown, Little Italy, and SoHo, was known as the “Land of the Blacks.”
Find out more
The Urban Lens: Tour the grimy and crime-ridden subway of 1981
July 14, 2017

The Urban Lens: Tour the grimy and crime-ridden subway of 1981

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6sqft’s ongoing series The Urban Lens invites photographers to share work exploring a theme or a place within New York City. In this installment, we share a set of vintage photos documenting the NYC subway in 1981. Are you a photographer who’d like to see your work featured on The Urban Lens? Get in touch with us at [email protected]. Grim, gritty, grimy--these are just a few of the adjectives one could use to describe New York City in the 1980s. Homicide rates were at near-record highs, the crack epidemic had exploded, the police force had dwindled after the recession, and government mismanagement left the city on the brink of bankruptcy. At the time, a 22-year-old photographer from Florida named Christopher Morris was interning at the photo agency Black Star. According to TIME, he saw the graffiti-covered subway, dark, dank, and dangerous, as a battleground that "proved an opportunity to work on something of a domestic front line." Now an award-winning photojournalist, Morris recently rediscovered this set of shots that he took over six months in 1981, during which time he devoted himself to this unique, seedy underworld.
See his photo series ahead
The story behind ‘Scabby the Rat,’ NYC’s symbol of unionized labor

Photo courtesy of Big Sky Balloons

July 12, 2017

The story behind ‘Scabby the Rat,’ NYC’s symbol of unionized labor

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Despite a nationwide decline in union membership, New York City continues to defy this trend. The number of city workers who belong to unions has risen for the last three years in a row, growing from 21.5 percent of all workers to 25.5 percent in 2016. And because of this high number of unionized employees, city residents have become even more familiar with Scabby the Rat--one of the most recognizable symbols of unions. The giant inflatable rodent, with its sharp buck teeth and beady red eyes, has been a staple of union construction protests in NYC and across the country for decades, and if there's a development project that enlists nonunion labor in New York, expect to see Scabby out on the street.
Find out more about Scabby's story
‘Talking Statues’ project brings NYC history to life with a new smartphone app

Statue of Frederick Douglass can be found at Central Park North and Frederick Douglass Boulevard, via CityRealty

July 11, 2017

‘Talking Statues’ project brings NYC history to life with a new smartphone app

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If statues could talk, what would they say? Thanks to a new project called New York Talking Statues, you will now be able to find out. Beginning tomorrow, July 12, New Yorkers will be able to listen to the voices of 35 statues across the city through a smartphone app (h/t Untapped Cities). Users will be able to scan the QR code found on a sign next to each statue or type in the web address into the web browser. The team behind the project chose the statues by looking at their historical significance to the city, especially those with a special tie to immigrant communities as well as artists who have contributed directly to the city.
Find out more
An architect’s 1969 nuclear shelter plan shows a mini-Manhattan built thousands of feet underground
July 7, 2017

An architect’s 1969 nuclear shelter plan shows a mini-Manhattan built thousands of feet underground

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The 1960s Cold War years were America's peak fear/fantasy period as far as the threat of nuclear weapons being deployed. Related scenarios played heavily in science fiction works and frequently surfaced in art and writing. On occasion the line between sci-fi and urban planning tends to blur, at least in hindsight; such is the case for architect and city planner Oscar Newman's probably tongue-in-cheek vision of an enormous spherical underground replica of Manhattan located thousands of feet below the city itself, to be switched into action in the event of a nuclear event. Atlas Obscura reveals Newman's fantastical map to a subterranean metropolis where New Yorkers would wait out the fallout.
Head underground for a look-see
The Urban Lens: Vintage NYC photos show everyday life in the 1940s
July 7, 2017

The Urban Lens: Vintage NYC photos show everyday life in the 1940s

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6sqft’s ongoing series The Urban Lens invites photographers to share work exploring a theme or a place within New York City. In this installment, we share a set of vintage photos documenting NYC in the 1940s. Are you a photographer who’d like to see your work featured on The Urban Lens? Get in touch with us at [email protected]. The 1940s were marked with both dark times and bright hopes. Nightly dim-outs, meant to both conserve energy and hide the skyline from possible WWII air and naval attacks, were a regular occurrence; police scuffled with citizens over race riots in Harlem and the AFL Strike on Wall Street; and President Roosevelt died. But towards the end of the decade, New Yorkers and the nation celebrated the end of the War; Times Square and Coney Island drew record crowds; and retail venues like the Fulton Fish Market and Orchard Street reached their height. Ahead, this collection of vintage photos showcases what everyday life was like in NYC in the 1940s, from the good times to the bad.
See all the photos here
VIDEOS: Watch footage from the Third Avenue El train’s last days in 1955
July 6, 2017

VIDEOS: Watch footage from the Third Avenue El train’s last days in 1955

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As a solution to Manhattan's rapid population growth and street congestion in the late 1800s, railroad companies decided to better serve their passengers by elevating the trains above ground. Originally, four elevated lines ran the length of Manhattan, but after complaints about the trains blocking light and emitting extremely loud noise, they suffered from a decrease in ridership. The elevated trains that ran along Second, Sixth and Ninth Avenues were all demolished between 1939 and 1942. The one line that stood its ground for a bit longer was the Third Avenue El, which was constructed between 1875 and 1878 and ran from South Ferry to Chatham Square before closing for good in 1955.
See the final days of the El train
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