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By William Bryk, on March 5, 2009 Among the publishing sensations of 1836 was a book by one Maria Monk entitled Awful Disclosures, which purported to be her memoir of life in a Montreal nunnery. Hot stuff by early 19th-century standards, Monk’s book claimed that all nuns were forced to have sex with priests and that the “fruit of priestly lusts” were baptized, murdered, and carried away for secret burial in purple velvet sacks. Nuns who tried to leave the convent were whipped, beaten, gagged, imprisoned, or secretly murdered. Maria claimed to have escaped with her unborn child.
By William Bryk, on February 9, 2009 Among the stories recently published in the dailies about past transit strikes, I saw none about the brief strike by motor-men employed by the privately owned Brooklyn Rapid Transit Company (BRT) in November 1918. It led directly to the Malbone Street wreck, in which a strikebreaker lost control
By William Bryk, on February 8, 2009 New York’s first great police detective was Thomas F. Byrnes. A largely self-educated Irish immigrant, Byrnes joined the force in 1863. He rose to sergeant by 1869 and captain by 1870. In 1878, the Manhattan Savings Bank, which was in his precinct, was robbed. Byrnes took the robbery
By William Bryk, on February 7, 2009 Acommercial for the last season of Sex and the City showed Sarah Jessica Parker doing an elegant balancing act in stilettos along old steel rails set in a Brooklyn cobblestone street. I recognized the location: I had been there myself.
Around 1994, attending to business down in the old
By William Bryk, on February 7, 2009 My first “Old Smoke” column recounted the adventures of the Hon. John Morrissey, Congressman and heavyweight boxing champion of the United States, who once, according to the Philadelphia Bulletin, told the House of Representatives that he “had reached the height of my ambition. I have been a wharf rat, chicken
By William Bryk, on February 4, 2009 The fighting ended when Cornwallis surrendered his army to George Washington at Yorktown on October 19, 1781. But the Royal Army held New York for another two years. They had taken the city in the fall of 1776. By 1782, New York City’s population was less than 10,000 Most resided below Wall Street. Accident, disaster, and the war had disrupted civic life. The Great Fire of September 21, 1776, had burned everything between Whitehall and Broad Streets, as far up Broadway as Rector Street and as far up Broad as Beaver St. Rents rose 400 percent within the first year of occupation; the price of food and other goods and services 800 percent.
The provincial assembly, city council and courts were dormant, although nothing indicates the politicians had stopped drawing their salaries. The city was governed by the Royal Army, and in the absence of a free press its government had become corrupt.
By William Bryk, on February 2, 2009 Walter Francis O’Malley is infamous because he moved the Dodgers from Brooklyn to Los Angeles in 1957. Thirty-six years later, Wilfred Sheed dedicated My Life as a Fan not to, but against, “the villainous Walter O’Malley.” According to Peter Golenbock’s Bums, one man claimed the best news he
By William Bryk, on February 1, 2009 If warfare were boxing, General Sir William Howe had George Washington on points in early September 1776. Having driven the rebels off Long Island in eight days, Sir William now spent two weeks in peace negotiations with John Adams and Benjamin Franklin at Colonel Christopher Billopp’s stone mansion in Tottenville, Staten Island, now called Conference House. Howe’s secretary wrote, “They met, they talked, they parted. Nothing now remains but to fight it out…”
Washington had reorganized his army, with 5,000 men in New York City, below Chambers Street in lower Manhattan; 5,000 along the East River; and 9,500 on Harlem Heights, the bluffs running from the Hudson at 135th Street to Point of Rocks at 127th Street and St. Nicholas Avenue to the Harlem River at 155th Street. On September 12, Congress authorized Washington to withdraw from New York City. The army began moving supplies to Harlem Heights via the West Side’s Bloomingdale Road and the East Side’s Post Road.
By William Bryk, on January 30, 2009 Twenty-five years ago, I was traveling by train up the Hudson’s east shore. About an hour out of Manhattan, I glanced up from my book. We were about four miles north of West Point, near Storm King. About a thousand feet away, a great red castle
By William Bryk, on January 30, 2009 Dr. Herman Livingston Collyer, a successful gynecologist, his wife Susie, and their sons Homer and Langley moved from Murray Hill to 2078 Fifth Avenue, at 128 Street, in 1909. The house was a three-story brownstone mansion, with mahogany paneling
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