City of Smoke

Rebels on the Green

William Bryk — Sat, 26 Dec 2015 02:00:30 +0000

On the morning of Wednesday, October 19, 1864, the Civil War seemed far away from St. Albans, Vermont. The local newspaper, the Daily Messenger, wrote that Grant was fighting Lee at Petersburg, roughly 600 miles south. Later that day, the editor would have the scoop of his life when the Civil War’s northernmost battle broke … Continue reading

The Fallen Angel

William Bryk — Fri, 25 Dec 2015 00:53:38 +0000

Around twilight on June 7, 1812 the old soldier landed somewhere near today’s South Street Seaport. The colonel hastened to a friend’s house at 66 Water Street, only to find everyone away. Only around midnight did he find a room—already occupied by five other men—in “‘a plain house’ along a dark alley.” In the morning, … Continue reading

The Best Man

William Bryk — Sun, 29 Nov 2015 03:57:09 +0000

On November 7, 1876 Samuel Jones Tilden, Democrat, of New York, won the election to succeed Ulysses S. Grant as President of the United States. On March 5, 1877 a Republican from Ohio placed his hand on the Bible, looked the Chief Justice in the eye, and repeated, "I, Rutherford Birchard Hayes, do solemnly swear..." The elections of 1876 are unique: the only time when we know the result was fixed and the loser entered the White House.

Charles F. Murphy, Kingmaker

William Bryk — Thu, 29 Oct 2015 03:00:00 +0000

Until 1961 Tammany Hall dominated the New York County Democratic Committee. Tammany was among the oddest, most enduring, and most effective political machines in American history: a fraternal and patriotic society, with arcane initiations and ceremonies drawn from white legends of Chief Tamanend, a Delaware Indian. Its members were braves, its officers the Wiskinkie and the Sagamore, and its elders the Sachems. At times, Tammany resembled nothing so much as a Raccoon Lodge of ballot box stuffers. As one parodist wrote:

Tammany Hall's a patriotic outfit, Tammany Hall's an old society. Fourth of July it always waves the flag, boys, But never will it waive immunity. On Independence Day 1905, the braves gathered

I Fights Mit Sigel

William Bryk — Mon, 22 Jun 2015 05:13:34 +0000

Joseph Brodsky, in "Homage to Marcus Aurelius," describes the "etiquette of equestrian statuary: "...when a horse, for instance, rears up under the rider, it means that the latter died in battle. If all of its four hooves rest on the pediment, that suggests he died in his four-poster." Up at Riverside Drive and West 106th Street, Karl Bitter’s heroic bronze represents Major General Franz Sigel, U.S. Army, astride his stallion (it is, as the Spanish say, an entire horse), gazing toward the Palisades. The horse’s four feet are firmly planted in the ground. He is going nowhere, as if in protest to his rider’s latest imbecility.

Michael Rosano, City Hall Insider

William Bryk — Sun, 24 May 2015 16:19:09 +0000

The first month’s name honors the god Janus, whose two faces let him simultaneously contemplate past and future. I suspect most of us look backwards, contemplating time spent, which increasingly for me is marked by death. In my college’s quarterly alumni newsletter, nearly 25 years after my graduation, an increasing number of familiar names appear … Continue reading

Island of Forgotten Dreams

William Bryk — Tue, 24 Mar 2015 22:18:22 +0000

Foggy or clear, twenty-four hours a day the ferries toot their diesel horns once as they depart the ferry slips at St. George on their five-mile voyage for Whitehall. The old names remain. Ferrymen are traditionalists. Sailing ferries were traveling the Upper Bay before the War of 1812, long before the five-borough City of New York was even a dream. Hence Whitehall and St. George, rather than Manhattan and Staten Island.

The Persistence of Memory

William Bryk — Sun, 22 Mar 2015 05:29:56 +0000

Salvador Dalí came to New York for the first time in 1934. In a symptom of the Civil War to come, the provincial government of Catalonia had unilaterally declared independence from Spain. The subsequent street fighting terrified him and he would not return to Spain for many years. He was Catalonian

No Substitute for Experience

William Bryk — Thu, 05 Mar 2015 17:21:46 +0000

In Roscoe, William Kennedy continues working the vein prospected by two minor classics, William Riordan's Plunkett of Tammany Hall and Edwin O'Brien's The Last Hurrah. The seventh Kennedy novel set in the author's hometown of Albany, New York, is elegantly crafted, often uproariously funny, and betrays both a profound understanding of human frailty born of original sin and the sure knowledge that man born of woman is doomed to sorrow. His characters, of course, enjoy themselves as best they can, usually at each other's expense. Thus, one of Roscoe's numerous memorable minor characters, Mac, one of the cops who assassinated Legs Diamond

Mrs. Satan

William Bryk — Sun, 01 Mar 2015 23:43:08 +0000

Some years ago, the Postal Service issued a stamp commemorating Belva A. Lockwood, Esq., whom the agency believed had been the first woman Presidential candidate. In 1884 and 1888, Mrs. Lockwood waged symbolic campaigns (she appeared on no ballots and received no votes) to publicize the cause of women's suffrage. The first woman admitted to the Illinois bar, Mrs. Lockwood was apparently a paragon of respectability, as worthy of postal honors as, say, Richard Nixon, the unindicted co-conspirator. The Postal Service got the essential thing wrong.