http://www.cityofsmoke.com New York History, Commentary, and Culture Mon, 26 Oct 2009 20:23:29 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=abc http://www.cityofsmoke.com/archives/4762 http://www.cityofsmoke.com/archives/4762#comments Tue, 19 May 2009 16:04:00 +0000 William Bryk http://www.cityofsmoke.com/?p=4762 If you want to find a mirror of a society's ideal---the image of what it hopes and imagines itself to be---public sculpture is as good a place as any to start, and none is more common or readily available than the public sculpture we carry around with us on the Read More]]> http://www.cityofsmoke.com/archives/4762/feed 0 http://www.cityofsmoke.com/archives/4247 http://www.cityofsmoke.com/archives/4247#comments Sun, 26 Apr 2009 14:45:45 +0000 William Bryk http://www.cityofsmoke.com/?p=4247 Last week, a special election was held for Bronx Borough President, a job which, since the Charter reforms of the early 1990s, is largely ceremonial. The marvelously named incumbent, Adolfo Carrion, had resigned office to accept appointment as Director of the White House Office of Urban Affairs....The Assemblywoman's name rang a chime in memory. She had been Read More]]> http://www.cityofsmoke.com/archives/4247/feed 0 http://www.cityofsmoke.com/archives/2849 http://www.cityofsmoke.com/archives/2849#comments Tue, 24 Feb 2009 14:35:22 +0000 William Bryk http://www.cityofsmoke.com/?p=2849 Theodore Roosevelt, that most virile of presidents, insisted that, "To announce that there should be no criticism of the president, or that we are to stand by the president, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American people." With that in mind Read More]]> http://www.cityofsmoke.com/archives/2849/feed 0 http://www.cityofsmoke.com/archives/868 http://www.cityofsmoke.com/archives/868#comments Tue, 03 Feb 2009 21:40:33 +0000 William Bryk http://www.cityofsmoke.com/?p=868 Occasionally, we think about investments we  could have made that might have made us rich. Armed with clairvoyance, who would not have sunk the farm into Microsoft, back when Bill Gates was a nebbish? But we probably would have put our money into AT&T, U.S. Steel or Western Read More]]> http://www.cityofsmoke.com/archives/868/feed 0 http://www.cityofsmoke.com/archives/579 http://www.cityofsmoke.com/archives/579#comments Sat, 31 Jan 2009 20:26:19 +0000 William Bryk http://www.cityofsmoke.com/?p=579 Phoebe Snow started here. I mean the train, not the singer--although she started here too, come to think of it. Born in New York City, she borrowed her stage name from the premiere express train of the Delaware, Lackawanna & Western Railroad, "The Route of Phoebe Snow," "The Road of Anthracite," which passengers boarded by taking a ferry boat from the railroad's lower West Side ferry terminal to the massive Lackawanna Terminal in Hoboken, New Jersey. Read More]]> http://www.cityofsmoke.com/archives/579/feed 0 http://www.cityofsmoke.com/archives/5431 http://www.cityofsmoke.com/archives/5431#comments Sat, 08 Jun 2002 21:54:38 +0000 Mimi Kramer-Bryk http://www.cityofsmoke.com/?p=5431 Read More]]> http://www.cityofsmoke.com/archives/5431/feed 0 http://www.cityofsmoke.com/archives/1026 http://www.cityofsmoke.com/archives/1026#comments Tue, 11 Jan 2000 20:37:35 +0000 William Bryk http://www.cityofsmoke.com/?p=1026 In 1900, when newspapers were still the only mass media, over thirty daily papers of general and specialized circulation were published in Manhattan alone. But by the Twenties, a combination of massive capital investment and increasing difficulties in getting through traffic jams to deliver the newspapers to customers made launching Read More]]> http://www.cityofsmoke.com/archives/1026/feed 0