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Local History: The Great Depression in New York City

Local History: The Great Depression in New York City

Reprinted from New York Almanack based on an article from the Blackwell’s Almanac, a publication of the Roosevelt Island Historical Society. https://www.newyorkalmanack.com/2023/09/great-depression-in-new-york-city/

As the 1920s advanced, the economy soared. But with that dramatic expansion came irrational exuberance and unchecked speculation: stock prices reached levels that had no basis in reality; margin purchases were rampant; banks handed out loans lavishly and imprudently; and giddy product production resulted in a vast oversupply of goods. On Tuesday, October 29, 1929, it all came crashing down. This is the story of the Great Depression in New York City.

After an erratic week in which stocks, including blue chip stocks, mostly declined, waves of panicked investors sold off their shares, driving the market ever downward. On that one day, now known as Black Tuesday, the market lost $14 billion in value; over the ensuing week, it erased another $30 billion — eventually suffering the staggering loss of 89.2% over its peak in early September.

Bank failures and business bankruptcies followed, presaging a decade of unprecedented economic hardship. New York City came to be viewed as “the symbolic capital of the Depression, the financial capital where it had started, and the place where its effects were most keenly felt.” Many residents lost their savings, their jobs and their homes. By 1932, half the city’s factories were closed, almost one-third of New Yorkers were unemployed (vs. one-quarter of the rest of the country and over one-half in Harlem), and some 1.6 million residents were on relief. Those who remained employed and therefore ineligible for the dole were often forced to take severe pay cuts.

At the time of the crash, under Mayor Jimmy Walker, there were few centralized municipal services that could be tapped for jobs or rescue: there were no central traffic, highway or public works department; street-cleaning was a function of individual boroughs; there were five separate parks departments; unemployment insurance was non-existent and, in the beginning, the Department of Public Welfare had no funds available. New York City, like most cities, was dependent on charitable institutions and alms houses to succor the poor, the homeless and the hungry. Yet these organizations publicly admitted their inability to meet the heavy demands being made of them.

In March 1930, 35,000 out-of-work protesters marched toward City Hall as part of International Unemployment Day organized by the Communist Party. They were met with violent attack by the New York Police Department. Several years later, it was the Black and Latino population’s turn. In addition to being jobless, they had to deal with blatant discrimination, including exclusion from more than 24 of the city’s trade unions and rejection at public work sites. With tempers boiling, a furious Harlem mob vandalized white-owned stores. Some 4,000 individuals took part, inflicting over $2 million in damages, resulting in 30 hospitalizations and several deaths. While an investigation into discriminatory practices was launched, little came of it and the situation continued unchanged.

Riots in New York flared and petered out. What didn’t peter out was the sheer fight to survive – for the hungry, the need to eat, and for the homeless, the need to find shelter. Breadlines and soup kitchens were one aspect of the fight. People lined up daily in long, snaking queues outside bakeries or pantries to score a ration of day-old bread or thin soup. To hide their humiliation from neighbors, many would leave their homes dressed up as if they were going to work. Once on the line, they just stared straight ahead, refusing to interact with their downtrodden peers — in fact, refusing to admit to themselves where they were.

Thousands evicted from their homes took to living in shacks in parks or backstreets. As more and more homeless joined these camps, they grew into little shantytowns nicknamed “Hoovervilles” in condemnation of the inactivity of President Herbert Hoover to remedy the situation. The largest such settlement was located next to the Reservoir in Central Park. Ironically, many of the Hooverville men were construction tradesmen — bricklayers, stone masons, carpenters — who had helped build the luxury buildings surrounding the park and who now set to building their own shanties out of scavenged materials. Despite the skill and artistry with which these abodes were constructed, they were illegal; so both local and federal authorities regularly raided the settlements, destroying the shelters and scattering their inhabitants.

Conditions were dire and pleading letters from city officials and residents alike piled up in the Mayor’s office. Finally, in October 1930, Jimmy Walker created the Mayor’s Official Committee for Relief of the Unemployed and Needy, and things started to happen. By November there was:

a City Employment Bureau, which obviated the problem of job-seekers having to pay private employment firms;
a stop to the eviction of poor families for rent arrears;
a large-scale investigation by the police to determine needs in all 77 precincts;
a windfall of contributions to unemployment relief from police and other city employees;
an expansion of city lodging facilities; and
a special Cabinet Committee to deal with questions of food, clothing and rent.

In the first eight months of its existence, the Committee raised some $1.6 million. Direct relief funds were paid to 11,000 families, while 18,000 tons of food, including Kosher food, was given out to almost a million families. (Night patrolmen spent a good part of their shifts packing and wrapping these food parcels.) The money also paid for coal, shoes and clothing. Another city agency, the Welfare Council, disbursed over $12 million for relief and emergency work wages. These funds too came from voluntary donations. Private citizens contributed; sports teams organized exhibition matches (for example Notre Dame football vs. the New York Giants); and Broadway staged special benefit performances.

For a while spirits rose and hopes of normalcy returned. But by April 1931, it was clear that private welfare measures and one-off City actions could not keep up with the growing distress. Help was needed and it came from a now-familiar individual — Franklin Delano Roosevelt, not as president, but as Governor of New York State. Despairing of any constructive efforts by the Federal government, Roosevelt, unique among governors to accept liability for his constituents, declared: “upon the State falls the duty of protecting and sustaining those of its citizens who, through no fault of their own, find themselves… unable to maintain life.” By August 1931, foreshadowing elements of the future New Deal, a robust public works program was in effect to reduce unemployment. State income tax was increased by 50% and the Comptroller authorized the issuance of revenue bonds at both the state and local level. Some would say that New York City was in better shape than many other cities. Yet it was still on the critical list.

It wasn’t until 1932, when Walker resigned amid an investigation for graft and Herbert Hoover was voted out of office, that the way was paved for major innovations. Newly elected President FDR embodied the optimism of his catchy campaign song, “Happy Days Are Here Again.” Within a couple of years, he promulgated the historic, blockbuster New Deal, and working in close partnership with newly elected Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia, transformed both the country and the City. The “New Deal” New York — the most populous American city with almost seven million residents — was the single greatest beneficiary of the New Deal’s Works Project Administration (WPA) in the entire U.S.

Under the WPA, more than a dozen federal agencies paid for the labor and materials to support hundreds of projects designed to put New Yorkers back to work. The New Deal built housing, schools, courthouses, roads, hospitals and health clinics, libraries, post offices, bridges, and highways. It was the impetus and money behind the Triborough Bridge, LaGuardia Airport, the Lincoln Tunnel, and the East River (FDR) Drive. It also gave the city an extensive system of recreational facilities, including swimming pools, playgrounds, ball fields, hiking trails, and parks.

But construction wasn’t its only recipient. FDR, Eleanor Roosevelt and Harry Hopkins (head of the WPA) recognized that funding culture and practitioners of culture was just as important. (“Hell, they’ve got to eat just like other people,” Hopkins is reported to have said). So, jobless artists, designers, craftsmen and photographers were hired to embellish public spaces with murals and sculptures, while posters publicized other WPA programs, and illustrations, photos and crafts found their way into newly opened galleries and respected museums. Playwrights, writers, actors and singers were paid to create theatrical shows — even Yiddish and German theater. And out-of-work musicians and composers of all stripes (classical, folk, jazz, light opera) were employed to give concerts indoors and out. At the same time, New Deal legislation began strengthening workers’ rights by allowing them to organize, earn a minimum wage and, as discussed below, obtain unemployment compensation and sign up for Social Security.

When Frances Perkins, a fierce advocate of social justice and economic security, was tapped as Secretary of Labor, she brought a list of proposals for FDR’s approval. Among them were unemployment insurance and what she called “old age” insurance. Both of them knew that the development of such programs would encounter many obstacles, not the least of which would be challenges to their constitutionality.

Be that as it may, in 1935, the enabling legislation passed overwhelmingly and FDR authorized the establishment of unemployment insurance and Social Security. And in 1937, the Supreme Court affirmed the constitutionality of levying taxes to fund both programs. IBM won the bid to create the largest and most complicated data processing system ever built. It even designed novel equipment for the unprecedented task of enrolling some 30 million employers and workers, and registering their contributions into the Social Security system for later retirement payouts. According to Perkins, “Nothing [other than the Great Depression] would have bumped the American people into a social security system except something so shocking, so terrifying, as that depression.”

Above and beyond the homeless, 30% of the City’s housed population lived in deteriorating, squalid tenements. There were other slums deemed “unfit for human habitation.” The National Recovery Act of 1933 authorized the clearance of slums, repair of salvageable structures and construction of low cost housing. And the country’s very first “public housing” — a previously unheard of concept — was built in New York under the newly formed New York City Housing Authority (NYCHA). The first three public projects were: First Houses, between First Avenue and Avenue A, from Second to Third Streets in the East Village; Williamsburg Houses, Scholes to Maujer Streets, Leonard Street to Bushwick Avenue, Williamsburg, Brooklyn, Harlem River Houses, Seventh Avenue to Macombs Place, Harlem River Drive, and 151st to 153rd Streets in Harlem. Their public ownership represented a radical step that both created jobs and sheltered people in up-to-date homes. By 1941, nine such projects had been developed in New York City, providing 11,570 units. They are all still with us and the first three have been designated New York City landmarks.

The sheer range of educational programs implemented by the New Deal was remarkable. From kindergarten to college (for example, Hunter College, Brooklyn College, the Merchant Marine Academy in the Bronx), new buildings expanded the student population. Thousands of teachers were hired, and adjunctive programs such as preschool, work-study programs for young people, and vocational classes for adults were instituted. Community education classes were held in libraries, settlement houses, local facilities, trade union halls, park buildings, and even on the radio. There was no end to what a willing individual could learn, including driving, English, home arts, visual arts and new vocational skills. Much of the funds secured for New York City can be directly attributed to LaGuardia’s force of personality. According to Roosevelt, he would show up in Washington “and tell me a sad story. The tears run down my cheeks and tears run down his cheeks and the first thing I know he has wrangled another $50,000,000.”

For many City residents, lack of work had devolved into declining health, malnutrition, and increasing rates of infant mortality. New Deal funding produced new hospitals and neighborhood health clinics. The latter were often located in or near public housing developments and provided free medical and dental care, including immunizations, for all ages. The clinic doctors and nurses also visited homes and schools, and gave classes in healthy living. The clinics even sent housekeepers to help out where parents were ill. Access to regular health care was a first for many New Yorkers and its effects were incontestable: decreased infant mortality, a drop in serious illness and a decline in the suicides that so darkened the Depression years. It took entry into the Second World War to completely obliterate the Great Depression. Tens of thousands of men went off to battle, while the rest of the country was galvanized into full employment by the war effort. Still, the New Deal, with its plethora of alphabet soup subsidiaries, was nothing short of miraculous. It carried the country and New York City through one of the most challenging eras in our history. It transformed the relationship of government to its citizens — embodying a dynamism that has strengthened New York through the years and continues to empower it to this day

Book Review: !Brigadistas! An American Anti-Fascist in the Spanish Civil War edited by Miguel Ferguson, Anne Timmons, Paul Buhle, and Fraser Ottanelli

!Brigadistas! An American Anti-Fascist in the Spanish Civil War edited by Miguel Ferguson, Anne Timmons, Paul Buhle, and Fraser Ottanelli (Monthly review Press, 2022).

(Review by Anika Amin, St. Ann’s, Brooklyn)

¡Brigadistas! is a graphic novel about the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939). It tells the story of three friends from Brooklyn, New York who travel to Spain where they join the Abraham Lincoln Brigade. The book was super descriptive and did not include unnecessary details. This made it comprehensive but still clear and intelligible. The moments about the effects of the war and the regular people it affected were extremely powerful. The descriptions of the war’s effects on children and people who were not soldiers made the graphic novel very impactful. There could have even been more of these moments included to reinforce the significance. Overall it was informative, clear, and very powerful. Although it was very clear, it could have made it easier to read if it had chapters or sections. Breaking up the text and providing landmarks throughout the story could have also made it easier to follow. Additionally, depending on the target age group, some of the terms and concepts could have been explained more to keep the writing flowing. Overall it was great to read and it presented important and difficult topics in an understandable way.

Book Review: The Sewing Girl’s Tale: A Story of Crime and Consequences in Revolutionary America by John Wood

The Sewing Girl’s Tale: A Story of Crime and Consequences in Revolutionary America by John Wood

Sweet (Henry Holt) uses the trial of the accused rapist, Harry Bedlow, of a seventeen-year-old seamstress named Lanah Sawyer in 1793 to analyze New York City’s social hierarchy during the early republic. Alexander Hamilton was part of Bedlow’s legal team. Bedlow’s acquittal[1] after the jury deliberated for only fifteen minutes sparked riots in the streets and ignited a vigorous debate about class privilege and sexual double standards. Sawyer received some justice when her stepfather won a civil suit against Bedlow and the family was awarded a significant sum. The book received a Bancroft Award from the American Historical Association.

Book Review: The Great New York Fire of 1776: A Lost Story of the American Revolution by Benjamin Carp

The Great New York Fire of 1776: A Lost Story of the American Revolution by Benjamin Carp (Yale University Press, 2023).

In many ways, New York City was the strategic center of the Revolutionary War. During the summer of 1776, George Washington threatened to burn the city rather than let the British take it and shortly after the Crown’s forces took New York City, more than one-fifth of the city mysteriously burned to the ground. This book examines the Great Fire of 1776 and why its origins remained a mystery even after the British investigated it in 1776 and 1783. Benjamin Carp paints a vivid picture of the chaos, passions, and unresolved tragedies that define a historical moment we usually associate with “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” Carp is a professor of history at Brooklyn College and the CUNY Graduate Center. He is the author of Defiance of the Patriots: The Boston Tea Party and the Making of America and Rebels Rising: Cities and the American Revolution.

From Scratch: Adventures in Harvesting, Hunting, Fishing, and Foraging on a Fragile Planet

From Scratch: Adventures in Harvesting, Hunting, Fishing, and Foraging on a Fragile Planet, by David and Jon Moscow (New York: Permuted Press, 2022)

Review by Alan Singer

Jon Moscow is the co-executive director of the Ethics in Education Network located in New York City and a podcaster. David Moscow is an actor and producer. Jon and David are father and son. In the preface to From Scratch they wrote “There are also many meals in here. Some are unique. Some are gut-turning. Most are great.” They are clearly more adventurous than me. I recommend staying with the less gut-turning suggestions.

The first gastronomical adventure is in New York City and it is about harvesting and eating oysters from Long Island Sound. David claims he dreamed about oysters since his boyhood in the Bronx with trips to Orchard Beach. I also grew up in the Bronx, back in the 1950s, frequented Orchard Beach, and I warn readers, nothing good comes out of those waters that I would eat, then and now. Today the water is considered clean, but when I was a boy we frequently saw raw sewage and condoms on the waves.

The best part of this chapter, and every chapter, are the gastronomical history lessons. The original inhabitants of the New York metropolitan region were the Lenni-Lanape who harvested oysters before the water was polluted and cooked them by wrapping them in seaweed and tossing them into a fire. We also learn that Pearl Street in Manhattan was “paved” by burning oyster shells to create lime that was mixed with broken oyster shells, sand, ash, and water. New York continued to be the oyster capital of the world until the early 20th century when New York City oyster beds were closed because of toxicity. David does admit that New York City oysters are still considered unfit to eat so that he and friends actually harvested oysters further east on Long Island.

Other adventures in harvesting and eating include trips to South Africa for avocados and “dune spinach,” to Mediterranean Malta and Sardinia for octopus and snails, Peru with its thousands of potato varieties, Kenya for barley and honey, and back to New York after a stop on the Amalfi Coast and Naples to savor pizza. David discusses some of his favorite New York pizza parlors including his childhood haunt, Three Brothers, on Kingsbridge Road. Brother’s Pizza is still located at 27 E. Kingsbridge Rd. Another noteworthy Bronx pizza destination is Catania’s Pizzeria & Café at 2307 Arthur Avenue. However my favorite is Pizza Plus on 359 7th Avenue in Brooklyn because their pizza has the best red sauce. The best part of this chapter is the authors’ discussion of the history of the tomato, which traveled from the Americas to Europe as part of the Columbian Exchange. Who knew there were over 15,000 varieties of tomatoes?

Fred Ende, Director of Curriculum and Instructional Services at Putnam/Northern Westchester BOCES, who also reviewed the book, points out that in the first and second chapters the authors show that the history of both Long Island and South Africa was influenced, in some cases deeply, by food, and that food was influenced by history. Ende appreciated the interdisciplinary nature of the story the Moscows are telling because too often secondary schools disciplines are taught in isolation. Elde likes that the book melds science, art, culture and history pretty seamlessly.

The book ends with recipes including a Philippine dish, Kilawin made with mackerel, tuna and coconut, a Native American trout and potato dish from Utah, and D Michele’s famous pizza dough. I make my own pizza from scratch and I do all my foraging at a local supermarket.

Alan’s Homemade Pizza

Ingredients for the dough

2 cups flour, plus more for rolling
1/2 tsp. sugar
1 tbs. dry yeast
1 tsp. salt
3/4 cups warm water (body temperature)
2 tbs. olive oil to mix into the dough and 2 tsp. to oil the bowl

Instructions

1. Combine and stir the dry ingredients and then add the water and oil. Stir and knead the dough until it is smooth with a slight gleam. If the dough is too sticky add a little more flour. If it is too dry, add a very small amount of water. I rub a little flour on my hands as I knead the dough. After about ten minutes I roll the dough into a ball and place it in a covered oiled bowl for about an hour and keep the bowl in a warm place; sometimes in the oven with the temperature set at the lowest level.

2. While the dough rises I prepare my toppings. I use sliced olives, mushrooms, and green peppers After an hour, preheat the oven to 475°F. I usually use a commercial sauce; my preferred one is Barilla. I roll out the dough as flat as I can with a rolling pin (without tossing it up and down) and put it on a large oiled baking sheet. I brush a light oil coat on the dough, cover the pie with sauce leaving a thin 1/2 crust on the edges, sprinkle with lots of thinly sliced mozzarella, feta bits, oregano, and parmesan, and add the toppings.

3. Now its time to bake the pizza in the 475°F oven for about 15 minutes until the crust is brown and the cheese is melted. Magnifico!

Nineteen Reservoirs: On Their Creation and the Promise of Water for New York City

Nineteen Reservoirs: On Their Creation and the Promise of Water for New York City (The Experiment, 2022) by Lucy Sante with photographs by Tim Davis

From 1907 to 1967, a network of reservoirs and aqueducts was built across more than one million acres in upstate New York, including Greene, Delaware, Sullivan, and Ulster Counties. This feat of engineering served to meet New York City’s ever-increasing need for water, sustaining its inhabitants and cementing it as a center of industry. West of the Hudson, it meant that twenty-six villages, with their farms, forest lands, orchards, and quarries, were bought for a fraction of their value, demolished, and submerged, profoundly altering ecosystems in ways we will never fully appreciate. This paradox of victory and loss is at the heart of Nineteen Reservoirs, Lucy Sante’s meticulous account of how New York City secured its seemingly limitless fresh water supply, and why it cannot be taken for granted. In inimitable form, Sante plumbs the historical record to surface forgotten archives and images, bringing lost places back to life on the page. Her immaculately calibrated sensitivity honors both perspectives on New York City’s reservoir system and helps us understand the full import of its creation.

Digital History of Slavery and Runaways in New York: History Student Project Creates Digital History

Digital History of Slavery and Runaways in New York: History Student Project Creates Digital History

State University of New York: Fredonia

R eprinted with permission from SUNY-Fredonia.

In the Spring 2022 semester, Dr. Nancy Hagedorn of the Department of History led a group of history students to develop a Digital History of Slavery and Runaways in New York.

As part of the history department’s efforts to help students develop historical research and digital technology skills, students created an innovative, public history using arcGIS Story Maps.

The project was conceived as an applied history course to introduce students to digital history methods and techniques by focusing on New York runaway ads. The class began by reading about digital history and its methods and uses, and then extensively about the history of runaways and slavery generally. Finally, the class focused on slavery in New York and New York City specifically. To facilitate the class’ digital history research and answer questions about slavery and runaways in New York, members compiled a database of New York runaway ads using transcribed ads culled primarily from the Freedom on the Move database at Cornell University. The class input data on 641 runaways between 1730 and 1811, and also compiled census data on slaveholding in New York State using the Northeast Slave Records Index at Lloyd Sealy Library and John Jay College of Criminal Justice.

More information on the project can be found online.

New York History: Colored School No. 4

New York History: Colored School No. 4

Tom Miller

(Reprinted with permission from “The Daytonian in Manhattan”)

The first Blacks arrived in New Amsterdam in 1626, imported from Africa as slaves by the Dutch West India Company. During the British occupation of New York City in 1776 the population soared after the Crown promised freedom to slaves who deserted their rebel masters. It resulted in thousands of runaway slaves flocking into the city. By 1780, there were more than 10,000 Blacks living in New York. Finally, in 1827, slavery was abolished in New York. But freedom did not necessarily translate into improvement in the lives of Black citizens.

The city, of course, was tasked with the education of all children; but integrated classrooms was not conceivable. “Colored schools” were established, staffed by Blacks. They were an offshoot of the first African Free School, established in 1787 on Mulberry Street. Seven Colored Schools were organized in 1834.

In 1853 Primary Schools No. 27 and 29 shared the new 25-foot wide building at No. 98 West 17th Street (renumbered 128 in 1868). Three stories tall and faced in brick, it had two entrances–one for boys and the other for girls–as expected in Victorian school buildings. In the basement was a small living space for the janitress, Mary Sallie.

There were four teachers in each school, all unmarried women. Their wages in 1855 ranged from $400, earned by H. A. McCormick (about $12,200 a year today), to the $100 salaries earned by Abbie M. Saunders and Eliza Ideson. How the women survived on the equivalent of $3,000 a year in today’s money is remarkable.

The street address was not the only thing about the school building that would change. By 1861 it was renumbered Primary School No. 14 (H. A. McCormick was still teaching here at the time), and within two years it became Colored School No. 7. That year it was staffed by seven teachers–four teachers in the Boys’ Department and three in the Primary Department.

By 1866 the name was changed yet again, now known as Colored Grammar School No. 4. Schools across the city staged a yearly exhibition of the children’s work and this one was no exception. On May 30 that year, the New York Herald reported “The exhibition of Colored Grammar School No. 4 took place last evening at the Cooper Institute. The audience was quite large, and included a few white persons, both male and female, and was well pleased with the exercises embraced in the programme.” The newspaper was careful to point out that the school was “formerly No. 7.”

Rather surprisingly, two specialized teachers were added to the staff in 1868. William Appo, a renowned Black musician, taught music and S. Anna Burroughs taught drawing.

Graduating from grammar school was an important milestone, especially for Black children who were often pulled from school in order to work and help their families financially. On March 5, 1869 The Sun reported “In Colored Grammar School No. 4, in Seventeenth street, Mrs. Sarah J. S. Thompkins, the principal, treated her pupils to an inauguration celebration. Remarks were made by the Rev. Charles B. Ray, Fred Sill, C. E. Blake, Jacob Thomas, and William F. Busler.”

The position of music teacher was taken by Joan Imogen Howard, who came from Boston, Massachusetts. Like William Appo, she was recognized as an accomplished musician. She was as well an ardent worker for integration and racial rights. On October 30, 1892 The World reported “Miss J. Imogen Howard, the only colored woman on the Board of Lady Managers of the [Chicago] World’s Fair, is busily engaged in gathering statistics concerning colored women in New York State.

Reflecting the innate racism of the time, the reporter asked Howard if it was possible for a Black woman to become a member of “the learned professions here.” Her reaction was visible. “Miss Howard looked surprised,” said the article. She replied “I know of a great many. In Brooklyn there are three doctors, each of them enjoying a large practice and doing well…I am personally acquainted with one colored woman who graduated from law school with honors…Miss Ida B. Wells, a young colored girl, is assistant editor of the New York Age, a weekly paper devoted to the interests of the colored people.” She went on to list a number of other successful professional women.

In 1873 the attendance of Colored School No. 4 was 120 pupils. The school building was showing the effects of two decades of use. An inspection by the School Board that year found in part: “ceilings cracked through and need repairing; ventilation by windows; water closets of wood, in poor condition; heated by seven wood stoves, properly shielded with tin.”

The tin-lined flues of the cast iron stoves would cause problems at least twice. On January 6, 1879 The New York Evening Express entitled an article “Scared Colored School-Children” and reported “A defective flue caused a fire this morning in Colored School No. 4, at 128 West Seventeenth street. The fire occurred just before the assembling of the school, and a panic was thus averted, although the children collected around the building were considerably frightened.”

It may have been that incident that prompted Principal Sarah J. S. Garnet to routinely instruct the pupils on how to react to a fire. (Sarah Garnet was the widow of the Rev. Dr. Henry Highland Garnet, the former Minister to Liberia.) It proved to be worthwhile instruction. On February 14, 1883 The Sun reported that another flue fire had broken out.

At around 10:30 that morning children on the second floor noticed wisps of smoke “and became restless.” Mrs. Garnet told a reporter “I had frequently told the children that if fire broke out they would have sufficient warning from me to enable them to walk safely out of the school building. Their faith in me is what saved them from a panic.”

There was a total of 150 children in the building. Garnet instructed a teacher to arrange the pupils on the second floor in straight lines, while she went upstairs to do the same with the youngest children. “At a signal the pupils marched down the narrow, wooden stairways and stood quietly in the inner court yard.” One child ran three blocks to the nearest fire station. The fire was quickly extinguished and the pupils were marched back to their desks. “They were as busy in the afternoon as though nothing had happened,” said The Sun.

In 1884, Joshua S. Lawrence published an article in Ballou’s Monthly Magazine entitled “The Negroes of New York.” He praised racial advances, beginning, “What a contrast between now and twenty years ago! Then they were vassals, now they are clamoring for the offices and other perquisites of a free government.” His out-of-touch assessment was highly biased and he insisted “The negro in this city is not debarred or hindered in any way…Their children are allowed to enter public schools all over the city, besides having separate ones, taught by their own teachers.”

The article pointed out that integration was slowly coming about. “In order to show that the color line is breaking in this regard, an idea encouraged by the Board of Education, is not to take notice of complaints when two or more negro children happen to be near the offspring of some fastidious parent.” Lawrence mentioned Colored School No. 4, saying it combined “both primary and grammar,” levels.

At the time of the article the prospects for the school were dim. The Board of Education had already proposed closing the school. The minutes of the Board of Education on March 5, 1884 documented the receipt of a petition “From the Teachers of Colored Grammar School No. 4, asking that said school be continued for a longer period than that assigned by the action of the Board in 1883.” The petition was forwarded to the Committee of Colored Schools. Its decision was no doubt disheartening.

The teachers were permitted to continue to teach “in other premises than the school building, but without incurring any expense on the part of the Board.” In other words, if the teachers wanted to continue the school, they were responsible for all aspects of it, including funding.

But there was obviously a change of heart. The facility continued, now known as Grammar School No. 81. Sarah J. S. Garnet was still principal, and Joan Imogen Howard was still teaching here in 1892. Another inspection that year reflected the poor sanitary conditions. It said “the sinks are defective and cannot be cleaned and flushed regularly. The closets [i.e. toilet rooms] are not ventilated, but are filled with sewer gas and foul air.”

The push to discontinue the school in the 17th Street property continued. In December 1894, Mayor William L. Strong received a resolution from the Board of Education “requesting the sale of property No. 128 West Seventeenth street.” By the following year, the building was unoccupied.

Finally, on March 24, 1896 the City signed a deal with the Civil War veterans of the 73rd Regiment to lease the ground floor as its clubhouse. Four months later renovations had been completed and on July 6, 1896 the New-York Daily Tribune reported “The members of the Veteran Association of the 73d New-York Volunteers-2d Fire Zouaves–held a celebration in honor of the opening of their new headquarters, No. 128 West Seventeenth Street–the old schoolhouse.” Among the entertainment that night was John J. Moloney, who “gave his bone solo, which elicited much applause.”

The club rooms were decorated with war relics, perhaps the most significant of which was the first Confederate war flag captured by the North. On March 11, 1907 The Yonkers Statesman explained that it had been taken by Corporal Daniel Boone on May 2, 1862 at Yorktown, Virginia. Interestingly, the city retained possession of the old school house property. On January 19, 1921 The City Record announced that renovations would be made “to properly place the premises…in a state of occupancy for the Veteran Fire Association.” The 73rd Regiment Veterans remained in the ground floor while $5,000 was spent in renovations on the upper floors for the Veteran Fire Association.

The new residents renamed their portion of the building Firemen’s Hall. Like its downstairs neighbor, it was a social club. On February 17, 1923, for instance, The Brooklyn Standard Union reported “The Veteran Firemen’s Association held its annual banquet last Saturday night, at Firemen’s Hall, 128 West 17th Street, Manhattan. There were 300 members and their guests present, and it was a most unique affair.” The two organizations remained in the building at least into the 1930’s. A renovation in 1931 made “general repairs to the toilets, urinals and all the fixtures.” The building was later acquired by the New York City Department of Sanitation, which utilizes it today. At some point a veneer of yellow brick was applied. Remarkably, the small paned windows survive. The little building with its remarkable history is easily passed by today with little notice.

New York Survived the 1832 Cholera Epidemic

New York Survived the 1832 Cholera Epidemic

Daniel S. Levy

(originally published in History News Network)

After sweeping through Asia and killing hundreds of thousands in Europe, cholera neared New York in the spring of 1832. The city had long been afflicted by diseases like yellow fever, smallpox, diphtheria, Scarlet Fever and measles, but this ungodly pandemic would be like none it had ever experienced. New Yorkers tried to prepare as this new sickness spread south from Canada and fanned across the United States, with Thomas Wharton noting in his diary on June 19 how citizens kept busy “cleaning the streets and alleys, strewing the gutters with Chlorine of Lime, and After sweeping through Asia and killing hundreds of thousands in Europe, cholera neared New York in the spring of 1832. The city had long been afflicted by diseases like yellow fever, smallpox, diphtheria, Scarlet Fever and measles, but this ungodly pandemic would be like none it had ever experienced. New Yorkers tried to prepare as this new sickness spread south from Canada and fanned across the United States, with Thomas Wharton noting in his diary on June 19 how citizens kept busy “cleaning the streets and alleys, strewing the gutters with Chlorine of Lime, and the druggists busily occupied in … specifies and prescriptions.” Little, though, could slow its advance, and six days later a Mr. Fitzgerald who lived on Cherry St. became ill. While he recovered, his wife, Mary, and children, Margaret and Jeremiah, soon died. The disease progressed quickly. When Dr. John Stearns jotted down his observations on his visit with John Coldwell on Maiden Lane, he noted how the patient reported that “The attack was sudden & violent—his impression was that ‘he fell as if knocked down with an ax.’”

Churches, offices, warehouse and shops shuttered as 100,000 residents, half the city’s population, fled. Departing carts, carriages and people jammed the streets. Passengers packed ferries, and the Evening Post wrote on July 3 how “Almost every steamboat which left New York yesterday was crowded with a dense mass of fugitives flying in alarm from the imaginary pestilence.” But what they ran away from proved to be far from chimerical. Those who remained cowered at home. James Riker Jr. wrote that his family “scarcely ventured farther than the apothecary’s opposite to obtain drugs, or examine the daily report of deaths by cholera.” Like others, the Rikers didn’t know what to do. Then his grandmother took sick on July 15. “As the day passed on she grew worse notwithstanding the efforts of a number of physicians to check the disease, and died in the night.” Riker’s uncle also perished “that gloomy night,” and the family “packed furniture enough to serve us… closed the house, and left the city in several wagons.”

Many believed cholera sprang from moral faults, drinking, depravity and filthy living. A report by hospital physicians noted how, “The disease fell in a very remarkable degree upon the dissolute and the intemperate.” The New York Mercury blamed places of “infamy,” commenting on a prostitute on Mott St. “who was decking herself before the glass at 1 o’clock yesterday, was carried away in a hearse at half past 3 o’clock.” And yet, pillars of society—doctors, alderman, clergymen and businessmen, along with Magdalen Astor Bristed, the eldest child of John Jacob Astor, the richest man in America—also died. Playwright William Dunlap wrote how “we begin to be reconciled to being killed.”

Ministers preached throughout that only the righteous would be saved, with Episcopal Bishop Benjamin Onderdonk imploring citizens to pray “in a truly devout and Christian frame of mind, with deep repentance for your sins.” While their congregations scattered, many religious figures stayed, with those like Father Félix Varela and the Sisters of Charity caring for the physical and spiritual needs of their flocks.

People had no concept of cholera’s origins or how to treat such a plague. Most did sense the existence of a link between filth and sickness. Yet unbeknownst to the most learned doctors and scientists of the time, a microscopic comma-shaped bacterium called Vibrio cholerae caused the malady. The devastating sickness spreads through water tainted by human waste and brings on nausea, vomiting, leg cramps and diarrhea. The victim’s blood pressure drops, their eyes assume a hollow, sunken look and their skin wrinkles. Subsequent dehydration bestows on the flesh a bluish hue, thus earning cholera the name the “Blue Death.”

Even though they lacked real knowledge of what to do, doctors did their best. The Board of Health set up hospitals, while physicians searched for treatments. Most proved brutal. The evangelist Rev. Charles Grandison Finney recalled how “the means used for my recovery, gave my system a terrible shock.” The most widely attempted remedy was calomel, a chalky mercury-chloride compound, and when doctors saw their patients developing pus on the gums—a sign of mercury poisoning—they believed that their treatment had worked. Physicians also did bloodletting, applied mustard poultices, immersed patients in icy water, administered powdered camphor and had patients inhale nitrous oxide and drink brandy.

Homemade cures circulated around town. The Evening Post recommended that their readers drink strained gruel, sago or tapioca. Some businesses offered disinfecting solutions, and the chemist Lewis Feuchtwanger sold cholera lamps to purify rooms by spreading “Perfumes, Scents, Essences, Aromatic Vinegar, Chloride of Soda and Lime.” And while physicians and pharmacists tried to save people, E.T. Coke commented on how quacks “flocked into the city from all quarters.”

Unfortunately, little that doctors, citizens or hucksters tried had positive effects. Death came painfully, often in just two days to a week. The minister Henry Dana Ward wrote of a friend named Maynard who “took the cholera bad.” Ward’s wife Abigail was “very attentive to him. And we were able to soothe the last moments of an invaluable life.” Yet “in the morning we buried him cold in the grave.” As painter John Casilear would note, “There is no business doing here if I except those done by Cholera, Doctors, Undertakers, Coffin makers.” Cemeteries became overwhelmed. So many bodies filled the areas that grave diggers found it easier to simply dig large trenches. In untended parts of the city, corpses lay in gutters. By the time the cholera had run its course in late August, the city of more than 200,000 residents saw the death of 3,513.

It would take years before doctors and researchers understood the cause of the disease. In 1854 Dr. John Snow studied the pattern of deaths during a cholera outbreak in London. By mapping out the location of the stricken, he showed that the disease originated from a specific polluted street water pump. When officials closed the source, cases dropped. At the same time, the Italian microbiologist Filippo Pacini first identified the cholera bacterium, and in 1885 the Spanish physician Jaime Ferrán created the first vaccine. Yet despite newer and more effective vaccines, the sickness still takes the lives of some 120,000 people around the world each year.

While cholera continued to visit New York into the late 19^th century—in 1849 it killed 5,071 citizens—New York always recovered. On August 25, 1832 merchant John Pintard wrote of his relief that the disease had finally quit the city. “The stores are all open, foot walks lined with bales & Boxes & streets crowded with carts & porters cars… Now all life & bustle, smiling faces, clerks busy in making out Bills, porters in unpacking & repacking Boxes, joy & animation in every countenance.”

Educated for Freedom: The Incredible Story of Two Fugitive Schoolboys Who Grew Up to Change a Nation, by Anna Mae Duane

Educated for Freedom: The Incredible Story of Two Fugitive Schoolboys Who Grew Up to Change a Nation, by Anna Mae Duane

Anna Mae Duane, the author of Educated for Freedom, is Associate Professor of English and director of the American Studies Program at the University of Connecticut. According to the book blurb, “In the 1820s, few Americans could imagine a viable future for black children. Even abolitionists saw just two options for African American youth: permanent subjection or exile. Educated for Freedom tells the story of James McCune Smith and Henry Highland Garnet, two black children who came of age and into freedom as their country struggled to grow from a slave nation into a free country. Smith and Garnet met as schoolboys at the Mulberry Street New York African Free School, an educational experiment created by founding fathers who believed in freedom’s power to transform the country. Smith and Garnet’s achievements were near-miraculous in a nation that refused to acknowledge black talent or potential. The sons of enslaved mothers, these schoolboy friends would go on to travel the world, meet Revolutionary War heroes, publish in medical journals, address Congress, and speak before cheering crowds of thousands. The lessons they took from their days at the New York African Free School #2 shed light on how antebellum Americans viewed black children as symbols of America’s possible future. The story of their lives, their work, and their friendship testifies to the imagination and activism of the free black community that shaped the national journey toward freedom.”

Duane argues, “The questions that plagued Smith and Garnet remain relevant today. The notion that somehow Black bodies are doomed – stuck on a historical wheel that keeps returning them to the same place – has powerful resonance in the twenty-first century, as the country continues to reenact bitter divisions over the role of race in remembering our history and imagining our future” (10).

According to Karen Ordahl Kupperman, Professor Emerita, New York University, “Duane unravels the story of two boys enrolled in New York’s African Free School” who “as accomplished adults . . . confronted the reality that America offered African Americans.” Derrick Spires believes the book “will become indispensible for those invested in deep and complex understandings of black life and letter in the long nineteenth century.” James Brewer Stewart, founder of Historians Against Slavery, calls the book a “methodological tour de force.”