http://www.cityofsmoke.com New York History, Commentary, and Culture Sat, 12 Feb 2011 03:02:39 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v= http://www.cityofsmoke.com/archives/1638 http://www.cityofsmoke.com/archives/1638#comments Sat, 14 Feb 2009 23:24:02 +0000 William Bryk http://www.cityofsmoke.com/?p=1638 At her death, the Witch of Wall Street was worth more than J. P. Morgan, and nearly all of it was in cash. Yet Hetty Green had worn the same dress for thirty years and lived in squalor. The Witch's son Ned was another matter, a six-foot, four-inch, 300-pound eccentric]]> http://www.cityofsmoke.com/archives/1638/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]]> 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.]]> http://www.cityofsmoke.com/archives/579/feed 0