The Destruction Of Penn Station

Mashable has published a photo essay which looks back at the original Penn Station.

In 1910, when New York City transportation terminal Pennsylvania Station opened, it was widely praised for its majestic architecture. Designed in the Beaux-Arts style, it featured pink granite construction and a stately colonnade on the exterior.The main waiting room, inspired by the Roman Baths of Caracalla, was the largest indoor space in the city — a block and a half long with vaulted glass windows soaring 150 feet over a sun-drenched chamber. Beyond that, trains emerged from bedrock to deposit passengers on a concourse lit by an arching glass and steel greenhouse roof. This may sound unfamiliar for present-day residents of New York City, who know Penn Station as a miserable subterranean labyrinth. Though the original Penn Station served 100 million passengers a year at its peak in 1945, by the late 1950s the advent of affordable air travel and the Interstate Highway System had cut into train use. The Pennsylvania Railroad could not even afford to keep the station clean.

The station was demolished in the early 1960s for the construction of the fourth iteration of Madison Square Garden, which was originally located across town, hello, at Madison Square. Hit the link and lament.

MAP: All Of The Former And Current Gay Bars In New York City History

Today's post about the coming closure of Candle Bar prompted JMG reader John to tip us to OUTgoing, a recently-launched project to map all of the former and current gay bars in New York City history. Citylab reports:

Jeff Ferzoco has created an interactive map, OUTgoing, that captures the ever-unfolding history of New York’s LGBT nightlife venues. Ferzoco, an information designer with his own company, linepointpath, came by the idea naturally. “I go out a lot,” he says. “Probably four or five nights a week.” While chatting about spots that had vanished over the years with a fellow patron at his local bar, Nowhere, he started thinking about mapping them all.

Soon, Ferzoco was delving into research, combing through histories such as Gay New York and The Gay Metropolis and consulting old pamphlets. (The “New York City Gay Scene Guide” of 1969 included listings for “all the exciting gay bars, clubs, baths, motels, meeting places THROUGHOUT the CITY” while the 1970 edition promised, “Realistic: Only those places where you will be welcome are listed.”)

The resulting map, which is very much a work in progress, is a fascinating trip through time and space. Each nightspot is marked with its dates, its audience, its “genre” (i.e., “leather” or “lesbian”), and Ferzoco’s source. Ultimately, the map will enable users to submit stories, photos, and other information. Currently, Ferzoco has marked 800 spots on the map. He estimates there will be as many as 1,500 in the end, covering all five boroughs as well as the surrounding area.

His research has uncovered revealing patterns. Between 1931 and 1960, Ferzoco found records of just 26 gay nightspots, a number that rocketed to 318 between 1961 and 1990, then dropped to 264 between 1991 and 2010 and stands at just 99 today. Those numbers reflect the complex history of the closet, the sexual revolution, the AIDS epidemic, and the mainstreaming of queer culture.

I was surprised to see that more than a dozen gay bars once populated the blocks around my place on the now quite dull Upper East Side. It looks like the Chirping Chicken outlet on First Avenue, which I patronize at least once a week, is located next to a storefront which was once home to a gay club called Mildred Pierce, which was open from 1970 - 1980. Fascinating stuff. Click around the map and share your memories.

LAUNCHED: OldNYC.org

From the New York Times:

Before there were Walgreens and frozen yogurt shops, SoulCycle and Thai fusion places, what extinct New York institutions sat on your block? A new website called OldNYC peels away a century’s worth of development and puts you outside coffee shoppes and quarantine hospitals. You might find a trolley running outside your apartment, or a hand-pushed vegetable cart at your corner. The website maps sepia-colored photographs of nearly every block in Manhattan, and has many of the outer boroughs as well. OldNYC is the work of a more modern preservationist: Dan Vanderkam, a software engineer at Mount Sinai’s Hammer Lab. He built OldSF while living in San Francisco, but by the time it went online, he had transplanted to New York. After about 18 months of work, and with help from the public library, OldNYC went public last week.

Check it out here. (And there goes your morning, New Yorkers.) Below is my stretch of Second Avenue back in 1941. Add in a few hundred skyscrapers in the background and it doesn't look all that different.

1WTC Elevator NYC Time-Lapse

Via the New York Times:

An imposingly realistic vision of the old 1 World Trade Center, the ultimately doomed north tower, will begin appearing next month in a most unlikely place: the five special elevators servicing the observatory atop the new 1 World Trade Center. From the moment the doors close until they reopen 47 seconds later on the 102nd floor, a seemingly three-dimensional time-lapse panorama will unfold on three walls of the elevator cabs, as if one were witnessing 515 years of history unfolding at the tip of Manhattan Island. For less than four seconds (roughly proportional to the time the twin towers stood), jarringly familiar pinstripe facades will loom into view on one wall of the cab. Then, in a quick dissolve, they will evanesce. There would have been no way around Sept. 11, 2001, said David W. Checketts, the chairman and chief executive of Legends Hospitality, the company chosen by the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey in 2013 to operate the three-level observatory.

Hit the link for much more. The ride will cost $32.

Launched: LGBT History Tours Of NYC

From Oscar Wilde Tours:

Everyone knows that gay liberation began on a summer night in June 1969, with the Stonewall riots in Greenwich Village. But who knows that Mae West was arrested in Manhattan for producing a pro-gay-rights play in 1926? Or that Walt Whitman read his homoerotic poems to friends at a bar on Broadway? New York is bursting with gay lore and gay history—and Oscar Wilde Tours is bringing it all out of the closet. From Herman Melville to Leonard Bernstein, from Edna St. Vincent Millay to Andy Warhol, and from James Baldwin to Rudi Nureyev, New York has been home to an astonishing array of gay artists and celebrities—men and women who have shaped American culture and made gay history. If you want to discover this history in depth, Oscar Wilde Tours is your destination. We are proud to offer the first tours covering the entire gay history of New York — plus a tour of homoerotic art in the Metropolitan Museum.

The tours include a four-hour bus tour of Manhattan and Brooklyn, two-hour walking tours of the East Village and Greenwich Village, and the above-cited tour of the Met. Get tickets at the link.

1949 Flashback: Mighty Manhattan

Via Big Appled:

If you’ve ever wished you can go back in time to the New York City of 1949, today’s your lucky day. Mighty Manhattan, New York’s Wonder City is an outstanding 15 minute tour of Manhattan, filmed entirely in technicolor. The amazing flashback film visits many of the neighborhoods and landmarks of Manhattan, and it also occasionally includes a history lesson on the various sights and sounds of that wonderful NYC. The neighborhoods visited include the Bowery, Chinatown, Herald Square, and Times Square. Some of the architectural highlights are the Empire State Building, the New York Public Library, the Central Park Zoo, and the Rockefeller Center.

NYC Archeologists Find 200 Year-Old Douche That Isn't Phyllis Schlafly

Archeologists digging at New York City Hall have unearthed a douche that dates to the early 19th century.

“At first we thought it was maybe a spice-grinder or needle case,” said Alyssa Loorya, president of Chrysalis Archaeology, the firm that oversaw the dig, part of a Department of Design and Construction rehabilitation project at City Hall. “We were stumped.” The early incarnation of a douche — a hollow, cylinder with small holes at its top made from unidentified mammal bone — was found in a massive heap of buried garbage that dates back to between 1803 and 1815, Loorya said. The centuries-old trash, in a pile found three feet underground and extending to a depth of about six feet was also filled with liquor bottles and various items associated with food waste, suggesting it may have all came from one celebratory event, Loorya said.

According to a researcher, women would fill the device with an astringent made from minerals or tree bark for use as a contraceptive.

NEW YORK: ACT UP Crashes Ceremony Honoring Home Of Closet Case Ed Koch

Members of ACT UP yesterday crashed the ceremony to announce that the home of late New York City mayor and closet case Ed Koch is being named a historical landmark. That apartment building, NOT incidentally, is also the home of Larry Kramer.

Interactive Age Map For NYC Buildings

JMG reader David points us to this nifty interactive map that reveals the construction date of New York City buildings. My Upper East Side building went up in 1910 and my super once explained that it was built as "overnight dorms" for the doctors at what is now Sloan-Kettering, which is down the street. According to the super, this was a "shit neighborhood" at the time and doctors wouldn't live around here. Anyway, cool map.

Ten Years Ago Today

It was ten years ago today that a blackout darkened most of the northeast and Ontario. (I was at work on the 16th floor on 42nd Street when the lights went out and as it was less than two years since 9/11, a lot of people immediately feared the worst.) The power was out in parts of NYC for 29 hours and while much of the city spilled into the streets for wild parties and literal fucking, I spent my night reading magazines by the light of menorah candles, which was all my West Village roommate and I had in the house. Ho-hum. For dinner we had pizza from the long-gone Goodfellas, which was the one place nearby that was open. (They had gas ovens.) On our way home, a lone NYPD cruiser crawled up Bleecker Street as the officer in the passenger seat gently chided the crowds on the street, "Please return to your homes. The beer in your fridge is getting warm." Where were you and what did you do that night?

Midtown Manhattan Over 163 Years

Gothamist tips us to the below animated rendering of how midtown Manhattan grew skyward from the 1850s onward. The last few seconds depict the monster super-skyscrapers currently under construction.

You Too Can Be 212

Thanks to an FCC petition from Vonage .

The next time you get a call from area code 212, it might be from Manhattan — Kansas. The sacred 212 area code, for generations synonymous with New York cool, is slowly making its way across the country following a petition by Internet phone provider Vonage. The company last month asked the Federal Communications Commission to free up a national pool of unused numbers normally distributed by regional middlemen — and sever the link between geography and area codes. Coveted 212 numbers normally become available only when their holders move away or die, when businesses fail or when carriers bite the dust.

Several years ago I was assigned a 212 number for the landline that came with my cable package.  The Time Warner rep had never had a 212 number pop up in her entire time working there.

This Is A Bronx Subway Station

It may not look like a typical subway station, but if you take the 2/5 to the Bronx Zoo you'll now exit into the above building, which just finished undergoing a $66M restoration. Via Gothamist:

"The building was designed with arches and balconies that give it the distinct look of an Italian villa," said the MTA in a press release today. "On the exterior is a restored plaque topped with the head of Mercury, the Roman god of transportation." Added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1980, the building formerly served as the administration office for the old New York, Westchester and Boston Railway system. The terminal once connected the Bronx with White Plains and Port Chester. In 1940, NYC took ownership of the Bronx portion of the line and tied it into the IRT.

Photos of the interior at the link.

HomoQuotable - Richard Kim

"By January 1984, New York City under Koch’s leadership had spent a total of just $24,500 on AIDS. That same year, San Francisco, a city one tenth the size of New York, spent $4.3 million, a figure that grew to over $10 million annually by 1987. The mayor of San Francisco during those years was Dianne Feinstein, who like Koch was no radical. She came from the centrist coalition that included Dan White, the city supervisor who murdered Supervisor Harvey Milk and Mayor George Moscone, whose office Feinstein assumed in the wake. Like Koch, she had a troubled relationship with the gay community (she infamously vetoed a domestic partnership bill in 1983). And like Koch, she was, above all, a political opportunist with national ambitions who happened to live in a liberal city with a large, politically active gay population. But she was straight, and paradoxically, that made a difference in how those two cities treated people with AIDS in those formative years.

"Ed Koch might not have been in a position to accelerate antiretroviral drug development or slow the transmission of HIV on a national scale, but he definitely could have made the lives of thousands of people with AIDS in New York City a whole lot more humane, which might also have extended some of those lives until an effective treatment was available. That he has blood on his hands seems likely. That he is guilty of the curious combination of paranoia, myopia, self-interest and callousness that so often attaches to closeted public officials seems undeniable. Would the fight against AIDS been helped had Ed Koch come out of the closet? Possibly. But it definitely would have been better had he just been straight. God bless his surely weary soul. I won’t." - Richard Kim, writing for The Nation.

Read the full essay.

Ed Koch's Tombstone

Saying that he couldn't bear the idea of spending eternity in New Jersey, in 2009 Ed Koch purchased a plot in the Washington Heights cemetery which was the last in Manhattan still doing burials.  The tombstone, which Koch designed himself, has been waiting at the site since then. The inscription bears the final words of slain Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl and notes that Pearl was "beheaded by a Muslim terrorist."  Before settling on the Washington Heights location, Koch had conferred with rabbis for permission to be buried in a "non-Jewish" cemetery.

Evening View - Grand Central

I hopped off the subway at 42nd Street tonight to go upstairs and see the goings-on for Grand Central Terminal's 100th birthday. If you embiggen the photo, you might be able to tell there's a stage on the far side of the clock, but it was really too crowded to hang around.  Notice the big 1-0-0 in the windows.  That's the Apple Store on the far balcony, by the way.

Newsday, 1989

While Ed Koch may spent the last two decades of his life refusing to discuss his sexuality, he did say something about it in 1989. (Tipped by JMG reader Bill)

Ed Koch Dies At Age 88

Former New York City mayor Ed Koch died this morning at the age of 88.

As mayor from 1978 to 1989, the forceful, quick-witted Koch, with his trademark phrase "How'm I Doing?," was a polarizing figure and the city's constant promoter. Koch died at about 2 a.m. (0700 GMT) at New York-Presbyterian hospital, the spokesman for Koch said. Koch was credited with lifting New York from crushing economic crises to a level of prosperity that was the envy of other U.S. cities. Under his leadership, the city regained its fiscal footing and undertook a building renaissance. But his three terms in office were also marked by racial tensions, corruption among many of his political cronies, the rise in AIDS and HIV, homelessness and a high crime rate. In 1989, he lost the Democratic nomination for what would have been a record fourth term as mayor.

Throughout his life Koch refused to acknowledge his gayness.  Four years ago he spoke to the New York Times about being asked.

“I do not want to add to the acceptability of asking every candidate, ‘Are you straight or gay or lesbian?’ and make it a legitimate question, so I don’t submit to that question. I don’t care if people think I’m gay because I don’t answer it. I’m flattered that at 84 people are interested in my sex life — and, it’s quite limited.”

During his tenure as mayor, Koch was especially despised by AIDS activists, who accused him of slowing the reaction to the epidemic out of fear of being outed himself. None were more disdainful of Koch than Larry Kramer.

A few years after he left Gracie Mansion, Ed Koch ran into gay-rights activist and playwright Larry Kramer in the lobby of their apartment building on Washington Square. Mr. Kramer had famously been a harsh critic of what he believed was Mr. Koch’s slow response to the AIDS crisis, satirizing him as closeted and craven in his 1985 play The Normal Heart, about the syndrome then baffling doctors, and confronting the indifference of public health officials like those in Mr. Koch’s administration. Hundreds of New Yorkers dead or dying from a terrifying new disease and the mayor couldn’t give less than a damn, according to Mr. Kramer. For Mr. Koch, though, it was bygones.  “He was trying to pet my dog Molly and he started to tell me how beautiful it was,” Mr. Kramer once told The New Yorker of the incident, recounted in N.Y.U. Polytechnic historian Jonathan Soffer’s Ed Koch and the Rebuilding of New York City. “I yanked her away so hard she yelped, and I said, ‘Molly, you can’t talk to him. That is the man who killed all of Daddy’s friends.’”

Koch was a regular target of ACT UP.

Koch, a documentary about his life, debuted this week.

NYC Council Speaker Christine Quinn, the favorite to win this year's mayoral campaign, this morning issued a statement on Koch's death.  Via press release:

"All of New York City is in mourning today as we say goodbye to a great mayor, a great man, and a great friend.  Ed Koch dedicated his life to the five boroughs. He loved this city fiercely and it loved him back. He saved us from the brink of bankruptcy, raised our spirits, and restored our city’s reputation in the world. He rebuilt our crumbling infrastructure, adding more than 150,000 units of affordable housing. And after leaving office he continued to make New York a better place, inspiring us through his writing, his activism, and his commitment to change. But he was more than just the sum total of his accomplishments. Mayor Koch was larger than life. He stood taller than the bridge that bears his name. His sense of humor and tenacious spirit personified this town. Ed Koch was New York."

Morning View - Cornelius Vanderbilt

The statue of 19th century rail and shipping magnate Cornelius Vanderbilt stands outside Grand Central Terminal. Vanderbilt is the great-great-grandfather of Anderson Cooper and at his death in 1877 his net worth comprised a significant percentage of the GNP. In 2012 dollars, he would be more than twice as wealthy as Bill Gates is today. Vanderbilt was the inspiration for the rail tycoon in Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged.

NYC Releases Massive Digital Archive

The New York City Department of Records has spent the last four years digitizing hundreds of thousands of images in its photo archive, which stretches back to the 1880s. That project is still underway, but beginning today the archive is open to the public for (mostly) free use. Amazing.

The Online Gallery provides free and open research access to over 800,000 items digitized from the Municipal Archives’ collections, including photographs, maps, motion-pictures and audio recordings. The holdings are arranged by collection; or you may search “All Collections” by keyword or any of the advanced search criteria. Patrons may order prints or digital files, and license images or film clips for commercial use.

At this writing the archive, understandably, is groaning under the weight of today's announcement. For now you can see a small sampling at Gothamist.