City of Smoke » Soldiers & Sailors

Sheridan’s Ride

William Bryk — Sat, 07 Feb 2009 01:03:42 +0000

Greenwich Village’s Sheridan Square is not named for Richard Brinsley Sheridan, who wrote The Rivals. The statue of General Philip Sheridan, for whom the square is named, is around the corner in Christopher Park. And the only nearby battle was the Stonewall Riot at 53 Christopher Street in June 1969. Sheridan’s statue, erected in 1936, [...]

The Man Who Did Not Invent Baseball

William Bryk — Fri, 06 Feb 2009 22:16:39 +0000

Abner Doubleday," baseball historian Harold Peterson wrote, "didn't invent baseball. Baseball invented Abner Doubleday." Even Ezra Warner's Generals In Blue, the biographical dictionary of Union generals, says Doubleday is more famous "for the canard that he originated the game of baseball than his military career." Most Union generals were forgotten in

The Commodore

William Bryk — Fri, 06 Feb 2009 21:13:24 +0000

In 1802, Uriah Phillips Levy ran away to sea at the age of ten. He returned two years later, as he had promised his mother, to prepare for his bar mitzvah. Then he was apprenticed to a Philadelphia ship owner. To Levy, it was life and death. A

Haughty Bill, Fighting Cock of the Army

William Bryk — Wed, 04 Feb 2009 01:53:38 +0000

Broadway and Fifth Avenue meet between 23rd and 25th Streets, across from Madison Square Park. North of the intersection stands a marble obelisk. On bands around the shaft are names of battles and wars: Monterey, Chapultepec, Chippewa, Molina del Rey, Churubusco, Contreras. On its southern face is a bronze relief

Napoleon’s Older Brother

William Bryk — Sat, 31 Jan 2009 05:43:48 +0000

On August 19, 1815, the Commerce, an American brig of 200 tons, Captain Misservey commanding, raced through the Narrows under full sail after outrunning two British frigates in the lower Bay. Someone—Misservey never said who—had paid him 18,000 francs in gold to depart immediately from Bordeaux for New York, and

Honore Jaxon, Professional Rebel

William Bryk — Fri, 30 Jan 2009 04:08:14 +0000

In December 1951, a ninety-year-old man was evicted from 157 East 34th Street. The building's former live-in janitor and furnace tender, his old age and ill-health had precluded satisfactory performance and the landlord had fired him. Out on the sidewalk, his books and papers, neatly tied and wrapped in brown paper, were piled six feet high, eleven feet across, and forty feet long. Major Honoré Joseph Jaxon told reporters that