Results tagged “oldnewyork”

In a story that reads like it was ripped from the headlines 80 years ago, a Midtown shoeshiner got into a brawl with a passerby yesterday who didn't want to hear that his kicks were dirty. The fight started at the corner of 47th Street and Sixth Avenue when the passerby objected to Don Ward's offer for a $5 deep polish and punched the 43-year-old shoeshiner. "[He] took his anger out on me because of his own dirty shoes," Ward told the Post. After the fisticuffs, the pair — as is only fitting in squabbles involving shoeshiners — spat at each other until cops arrived.

              

As Andrew Sullivan simply stated, "Say goodbye to the rest of your day." Google is now hosting an exhausting millions of images from LIFE's archives, "stretching from the 1750s to today." Here are a few NYC gems, and if you're looking for more of old New York, we'd suggest having some search keywords in mind to make it a bit less overwhelming!

With the Bowery Hotel now open, Gothamist thought it was worth taking one final look at the Bowery of the 1970s and '80s through the lens of Luc Sante, author of Low Life: Lures and Snares of Old New York.

1. From the Gothamist Newsmap: A check cashing joint robbery in Brooklyn, a confined space rescue in the Bronx, and an evidence search in Queens
2. Ugh, a lawyer asked a client for a blow job in return for taking her case; the client is trying to sue him but says the Manhattan DA's office won't take the case, even though she recorded the lawyer admitting he propositioned her!
3. Gowanus Lounge predicts the Red Hook will be at the center of Brooklyn's 2007 development fights
4. Six year old Aidan Fraser, whose father died in the World Trade Center when he was a baby, left Montefiore Hospital today after extensive surgery
5. The Ricky Van Veen way to losing weight includes electronics and various sorts of memberships to Netflix and a gym
6. Ha! With Nascar's TV ratings falling, having a track in Staten Island becomes more desired because of those hot NYC ratings
7. Old New York is being dug out in Lower Manhattan
8. And the Fort Greene ice age rock is in its new Queens home - Forgotten NY spied it!

In the year 1882 one Hyman Sarner, a clothier, who owned several lots on East 82nd Street, wished to build apartment houses on his property, which extended to within a few feet of Lexington Avenue. On the Lexington Avenue side was a very long and very narrow strip of land, absolutely valueless, he thought, for any building purpose, unless taken in conjunction with adjoining land.

Continue reading "Gothamist History: The Queerest House in the Country"

The New York Marble Cemetery, smack between Second and Third Streets and Avenues, is gem of Old New York hidden in the East Village. Not to be confused with its sister cemetery, the New York City Marble Cemetery which you can actually see from the street, the NYMC is the first non-sectarian cemetery in the city. It opened in 1830 and holds over 2,000 people in it's vaults. It is also the last place in Manhattan where a person could still be legally buried (the last burial was in 1937 and if you want in, uh, your family has to own a vault).

Old New York institutions are, of course, always moving, changing and getting run over; it's the nature of the city to be constantly abandoning its past. Nonetheless, the fact that the odor-iffic old-school Fulton Fish Market will be leaving Lower Manhattan in June seems a major shift.