Lost Foods of New York City is a column that celebrates the food and drink that once fed the city, but have disappeared. This week, chef Leah Koenig investigates the history of Charlotte Russe, and offers a recipe!
In May of 1891, Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky was on his way to Niagara Falls when, changing trains in Utica, he composed a letter to his brother, Modest, that read in part: “ginger bread and toy soldiers have started dancing in my head.”
These images were to become the “Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy,” part of The Nutcracker, one of the most familiar works by the Russian composer, who was going to see Niagara Falls—then considered one of the Wonders of the World—at the end of a 20-day stay in the United States.
For Gino Francesconi, those 20 days are a door between the past and present of American culture, and the relationship between European and American culture. To him, it began with Carnegie Hall, where he is the gatekeeper of history.
The origin of The Nutcracker’s “Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy,” and other New York secrets discovered by a Carnegie Hall archivist
Don’t know what these are called but they’re all over the streets of SoHo. And apparently one corner in Tribeca. (Taken with Instagram at Tribeca, NYC)
They’re called Sidewalk Vault Lights (via Preservapedia!):
Beginning in the 1850s, sidewalk vault lights became a common feature amidst the burgeoning manufacturing districts of America’s urban streetscapes. These cast-iron panels, fitted with clear glass lenses, were set into the sidewalk in front of building storefronts. They permitted daylight to reach otherwise dark basements (or “vaults”) that extended out beneath the sidewalks, creating more useable or rentable space for building owners.
Vault lights typically extended four to five feet out from the building line toward the curb. Each panel was screwed to a cast-iron saddle and the iron framework that spanned the basement vault. They were cast with molded iron knobs set around each lens to protect the glass and improve the footing of passers-by. Originally simple glass lenses were set in the panels, usually with a cement grout. Advances in daylighting technology including the development of prismatic glass pendants that refracted the sun’s rays further into basement areas, and the use of reinforced concrete panels made vault lights popular through the 1930s.
Here’s a photo of those guys in Tribeca.
Also, here is a fascinating article about what’s underneath our feet as we walk these aging New York sidewalls, and some of the engineering challenges there.
Remember when NYC was a shithole? Most of us can’t because we’re not from here. But these pictures are a good look into some of the grossness that was The Big Apple.
Check Steven Siegel’s photos out on Gothamist.
EDIT: Now with the correct link. Thanks, Kate!
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in front of the United Nations headquarters in New York on April 18, 1967. After leading more than 125,000 peace marchers from Central Park to the U.N., he called for an end to the U.S.’s bombing campaign against North Vietnam. (Photo: John Littlewood/The Christian Science Monitor)
Declaration of Independence from the War in Vietnam
These are revolutionary times. All over the globe men are revolting against old systems of exploitation and oppression, and out of the wombs of a frail world, new systems of justice and equality are being born. The shirtless and barefoot people of the lan d are rising up as never before. “The people who sat in darkness have seen a great light.” We in the West must support these revolutions. It is a sad fact that, because of comfort, complacency, a morbid fear of communism, and our proneness to ad just to injustice, the Western nations that initiated so much of the revolutionary spirit of the modern world have now become the arch anti-revolutionaries. This has driven many to feel that only Marxism has the revolutionary spirit. Therefore, communism is a judgment against our failure to make democracy real and follow through on the revolutions that we initiated. Our only hope today lies in our ability to recapture the revolutionary spirit and go out into a sometimes hostile world declaring eternal hostility to poverty, racism, and militarism.
We must move past indecision to action. We must find new ways to speak for peace in Vietnam and justice throughout the developing world—a world that borders on our doors. If we do not act we shall surely be dragged down the long, dark and shameful corridors of time reserved for those who possess power without compassion, might without morality, and strength without sight.
Lost Foods of New York City: Butter cakes from Childs Restaurant
At the turn of the century, Childs’ customers could order a lunch of corned beef hash or creamed oysters on toast for 15 cents, try the 10-cent bean soup or Graham cracker and milk combo, or order a glass of thick, cool buttermilk for a nickel. And then there were the butter cakes. The phrase butter cake may conjure up images of dense, sunshine-colored loaves worthy of a Paula Deen cookbook. But Childs’ take on the butter cake was decidedly humbler—thick rounds of griddled yeast dough that fell somewhere between a biscuit and an English muffin on the baked goods spectrum. The name is something of a mystery, considering butter cake dough contains just a small amount of its namesake fat. One hint comes from another downtown eatery, Butter-cake Dick’s, which predated Childs’ by several years. There, according to the late and great Michael Batterberry and Ariane Ruskin Batterberry’s On the Town in New York, “an army of sharp-faced adolescents gathered every midnight, hoarse from news-hawking, to consume a butter cake, ‘a peculiar sort of biscuit with a lump of butter in its belly…’” It would seem, then, that “butter cake” stems from its requisite topping, rather than the cake itself.
90 years ago today, The World Series was broadcast on the radio for the first time. The New York Giants beat the New York Yankees 5 games to 3. It was the last best of 9 series ever.
I strongly suggest checking out an upcoming event on mystery fiction and NYC history featuring author and Sherlockian Lyndsay Faye (Dust and Shadow and the upcoming The Gods of Gotham) along with Joseph Wallace, and Edgar-winner Stefanie Pintoff. Along with the integration of history into their novels, they will be discussing issues of gender, race, and ethnicity in early New York City and how such issues have changed over time.
Recommended! September 26 at 6:30 p.m. at the Gotham Center.
When New York was founded in 1609, it was teeming with over 55 different ecological communities. The Wildlife Conservation Society’s Welikia Project seeks to recover traces of the city’s lost ecologies.
100 years ago today, Samuel J. Battle became the City’s first black police officer - via @NYPDnews
New York Fight Clubs—on the city’s once-popular clubs where members of rival ethnic groups and neighborhoods clashed in the ring—available to watch online for free at Thirteen.org.
Looking North at Allen St. x Delancey St.– July 5, 1907
Allen Street was known as a red light district plagued with crime and overpopulation. As its peak, there were over 2,000 residents living there in crowded tenements. “On September 17, 1903, a gun battle was fought beneath the El tracks at Allen and Rivington Streets between followers of Paul Kelly, leader of the Five Points Gang, and the rival gang of Monk Eastman. At one point a hundred men joined the fray, with police driven off by gunfire. Three men were killed and numerous innocent civilians were injured.”
Have you been reading Smart Crew’s A-Z streets series, which chronicles the history of downtown crossroads? It’s great.
