A Hard's Day's Soap

What better way to sell soap than to show the consumer dozens of little, disembodied, mustachioed heads? This must have been the rhetoircal question that the Woodbury Soap Company was asking itself in the late 19th century - and the result is this charming, if rather eccentric looking, advertisement.

It reminded me a little bit of the 1964 cover of A Hard Day's Night. If only the little mustachioed man had made different funny faces, like the Beatles did! Unfortunately all the little heads have the same vaguely unhappy look. You'd think that the Woodbury's would have cheered him up a bit.

Ad image from the Ivory Project. 

A Hard Day's Night image is from Jeff's Picasa album (link is in title).

The Million Dollar Peanut Stand

Of course, no peanut stand was ever worth a million dollars. But the land that one New York City peanut stand stood on in the 1920s - now, that was another matter.

By the early 1900s, upper Fifth Avenue was beginning to be lined with the mansions of fabulously wealthy families, and by splendid public places such as Central Park and the Metropolitan Museum of Art (founded in 1870).

In contrast to these magnificent places, there was a strange sight to be seen on the northeast corner of Fifth Avenue and 82nd Street*, from the mid-1890s until 1922. Across from the massive white splendor of the Metropolitan, and the mansions of high society Astors and Vanderbilts, was a little house surrounded by a picket fence with a side gate, trees and, in back, a huge vegetable garden. It was a large piece of land "whose value," wrote the Times in 1922, "is much more than a million and a half dollars." It added that the "tiny mansion" was not in the Real Estate Directory.

The little house was where Frank Beggi - otherwise known as the Peanut Man of Fifth Avenue - had a peanut and candy shop. An Italian immigrant, he had lived at "the suburbs" of Third and 82nd as a young man in the 1890s, and often walked across "the fields" from his home to Central Park. He noticed a vacant lot right across from the Museum. Seeing all the visitors going in and out, he thought that it might be just the place for a peanut stand. So Beggi asked the landowner for permission to go ahead, and the owner agreed. Beggi started his peanut stand across from the Museum in November 1894. As his business grew, Frank Beggi built a little structure on the land to serve as a shop. It had a soda fountain inside, and he also sold candy, cigars and sandwiches.

Beggi said that the Museum staff were "fine people," friends of his really, who used to run across Fifth Avenue to buy ginger ale, sarsparilla, candy and peanuts from him.

He knew all of his wealthy neighbors, too. They had begun to build mansions on that stretch of Fifth Avenue by the late 1890s. He was also a "Furnace Man" by trade and kept the furnaces of the huge mansions running smoothly - 22 of his clients were in the Social Register. They included the Astors, Andrew Carnegie, Henry Clay Frick and Frank W. Woolworth. They often gave flower boxes for his lilacs and shrubs. In addition, Frank Beggi raised Pomeranian puppies there.

The "tiny mansion" was not where Beggi and his family (including twelve children in all) lived. They resided at 1464 Third Avenue (at 83rd and Third). Beggi considered the little house on Fifth Avenue to be his "summer residence."

But by 1922, he was forced out of business. The landowner had decided to sell. The Times noted that "a palatial apartment house" would soon "crowd him out." And the man known as Frank the Peanut Man would not sell snacks across from the Met any more. He lived for 16 more years, still living in the general area of Third and 82nd.

You can see the "palatial apartment building" in the modern picture on the left - it is the highrise just to the right of the narrow house with the green roof. It is hard to believe it, but right on that spot, less than a century ago, there was a little house with a picket fence, trees and shrubs, where the Metropolitan Museum staff used to send  for their sarsparilla sodas.

Sources:

"Fifth Avenue Landmark and 'Pioneer' to Go," New York Times, Jul. 30, 1922, p. 33.
"Fifth Ave. Vendor of Peanuts Dies," New York Times, Mar. 22, 1938, p. 23.

The picture of present-day 82nd and Fifth is from The City Review. The photos of the peanut stand - not Frank Beggi's - of the Metropolitan Museum of Art around 1902-3, and the Henry Clay Frick mansion on Fifth Avenue and 71th Street (just to give you an idea of Beggi's neighbors' houses) - are from the NYPL Digital Gallery. I looked for a picture of Beggi's little store and million-dollar piece of farmland, but found nothing.

*I had originally thought that the Beggi house was right next to the frame house on 83rd and Fifth - obviously, it is not. I've edited that post to reflect this.

The Lost House On East 83rd Street

This little flat-topped frame house at 3 East 83rd Street was built sometime between 1845* and 1867, when this part of Manhattan was the countryside.

You can just see a bit of the Metropolitan Museum of Art at the far left. The tall building to the left of the little house is still there**, at the corner of 83rd and Fifth, but the frame house is, alas, long gone.

The house was razed in 1953 in order to make way for a twelve-story apartment building "with penthouse," as the New York Times said admiringly. It added that the curator of maps and prints at the New-York Historical Society, Arthur B. Carlson, had estimated that the house was built between 1853 and 1867 - a time when "geese and goats still thrived in East Eighty-Third Street, and the horse was a major means of transportation."

But there was something else amazing and anachronistic, just one block away from the frame house on 83rd. It - and its owner - are a fascinating part of lost New York history, something hard to imagine on Fifth Avenue now.

I'll tell you all about it in my next post!

* The New York Public Library, see at the link, states that the house dates from 1845.
**Note the unusual feature of the taller building - the windows at the side, which were possible only because there was a small house next to it and not another tall building.

Photograph of the house from the NYPL Digital Gallery. Also see "Century-Old Home Yields to Progress," New York Times, Mar. 19, 1953, p. 31.

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And thank you to Leslie at Lost Family Treasures for the Kreativ Blogger award!

Pa Cat 's Merciless Jokes

Would anyone like to guess what on earth the picture has to do with Dunbar's Diarrhoea Mixture? And is that an alarm bell that the kitten on the right is about to pull?

I think that the consumer was meant to draw an analogy  between the condition that the Mixture was supposed to alleviate, and the distress of the kittens at having to listen to Pa Cat read out not-very-funny jokes from his Very Funny Joke Book. Pa Cat looks so pleased and so determined - and he also looks a bit like the Cheshire Cat in Alice in Wonderland (who would, at most, just smirk at Pa's jokes).

This card made me laugh, and I love cats (even when they are telling bad jokes - whatever sort of jokes are in that book, anyway? I really want to know!) - so here it is.

This amusing advertising card comes to you courtesy of the fabulous Images From the History of Medicine of the National Library of Medicine at Bethesda, Maryland. It was printed at Providence, Rhode Island by the Buker Press, and probably dates from the late 19th century. The picture of the Cheshire Cat is from Wikipedia.

The Inexhaustible Cow

One of the many attractions at Coney Island in the late 19th century was a tireless mechanical wooden cow which dispensed glasses of milk, served by costumed dairy maids, who unfortunately cannot been seen in this charming late-Victorian stereograph entitled "The Inexhaustible Cow."

The cow stood in a pavilion at Culver Plaza, next to the iron observation tower that had been brought there from the Philadelphia Centennial Exposition in 1878. Culver Plaza, on Surf Avenue, was named for developer Andrew R. Culver, whose Prospect Park and Coney Island Railroad had its terminus there.

A glass of milk from the mechanical cow cost a nickel a glass, according to Charles Denson in Coney Island: Lost and Found (2002, p. 21). John S. Berman in Coney Island (2003, p. 16) writes that people could "bathe under the udders" of the cow at this time, too, but I am not sure how the cow would have been able to multi-task

Berman attributes the cow's installation at Coney Island to notorious local politician/police chief John Y. McKane, but the Eagle, in 1879, refers to it as "Paul Bauer's cow." Bauer was a prominent Coney Island hotel owner, whose West Brighton Hotel was one of Coney Island's largest and most luxurious accomodations. The West Brighton Casino, also owned by Bauer, was just behind the hotel.

The cow had been at Culver Plaza since at least 1879, in which year it was first mentioned in the Eagle. The Eagle also noted other pleasures at Culver Plaza in the late 1870s: sipping cream and "eating sweetmeats" at Cable's restaurant while listening to a band play, a children's merry-go-round, "magnetic machines,"a Camera Obscura and a patent weighing machine that would tell not only your weight but your age, too.

The amazing stereograph of the Inexhaustible Cow is from New York City Stereos at Antique Photographics. The modern picture of the cow, sans blanket, is from Collector's Quest, from the 2008 American Antiques Show; it was selling for $95,000 (I don't know who, if anyone, bought it, though). The picture of the iron tower is from the German version of Wikipedia. And over here, in Charles Denson's Coney Island: Lost and Found, is a great picture of the cow in its pavilion.

Also see "Coney Island" (Jul. 9, 1879, p. 6) and "Sweltering" (Jul. 14, 1880, p. 4) in the Brooklyn Daily Eagle, for mentions of the cow.

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Thanks so much to Prim Girl for the Best Blog award!

Afternoon Tea at the Claremont Inn

This beautiful inn is long gone, but in the 1930s the Claremont still stood at Riverside Drive and 125th Street, just opposite Grant's Tomb. According to Helen Worden in This Is New York (1939), you could have lunch or afternoon tea on the terrace overlooking the Hudson River, and it was a lovely place "although it lost much if its charm when the interior was altered" (p. 167).

The house was built in 1797 by the Post family.Worden writes that the Claremont stood on the site of the Battle of Harlem Heights, fought in September 1776 during the Revolution. And it was here that people gathered to watch Robert Fulton's famous steamboat make its maiden voyage down the Hudson. Worden also notes that Joseph Bonaparte, "the mournful exiled heir to the French throne," spent the final years of his life here, too.

Lossing says that among the residents of the house was Viscount Courtenay, later Earl of Devon, in the early 19th century. Worden writes that the nearby "Grave of an Amiable Child" was the grave of Courtenay's illegitimate child. However, it is the grave of St. Claire Pollock, who fell to his death off the cliffs into the Hudson in July 1797. Roadside America notes that it is one of only three private gravesites in Manhattan (the other two are Grant's Tomb and the grave of William J. Worth at Broadway and 25th Street).

The Claremont had become an inn by the early 1860s. There were lovely formal gardens with arbors and pavilions, according to Benson Lossing's The Hudson (1866), quoted in Arthur G. Adams' The Hudson (1981): "...Jones' Claremont Hotel [is] a fashionable place of resort for the pleasure-seekers who frequent the Bloomingdale and Kingsbridge roads on pleasant afternoons. At such times it is often thronged with visitors, and presents a lovely appearance."

James Rian wrote about the pleasures of dining here in 1930's Dining In New York. Although Rian writes that it was by then "the lonesomest place in New York," it was one of New York's finest French restaurants. One could have "perfect planked steak" and "the most marvelous Turtle Soup L'Anglaise" and "a special Claremont Inn interpretation of Salmon Steak en Gelee that would inspire awe in a robot." Or one could simply have profiteroles and lemonade. One dined out on the "broad ample veranda" facing the river and "watch[ed] snooty little tugs puff up and down the river, dodging in an out among a perfect maze of ferries, battleships and square-riggers in the coastal lumber service."

According to Nathan Silver in Lost New York (2000) the inn was "burned and demolished" (p. 59) by the City in 1951; Silver doesn't say why, but I suspect that there was no very good reason for the destruction of this beautiful building. They did, however, put up a commemorative tablet at Claremont Playground the following year. It hardly seems like a fair trade, though.

Photograph of the Claremont is from the NYPL Digital Gallery. Also see here at Morningside Heights.net.

Adams, Arthur G. The Hudson: A Guide to the River (New York: SUNY Press, 1981)  [he quotes the Lossing book on p. 374]
Rian, James. Dining in New York (orig. pub.1930, 2007 Rian Press reprint) p. 136.
Silver, Nathan. Lost New York (Mariner Books, 2000).
Worden, Helen. This Is New York (Doubleday and Doran, 1939).

Le Flou-Flou

The plan today was to write about some of the research that I'm doing for my NaNoWriMo novel, which is set in 1896 in Brooklyn and New York City. However, I'll be getting to more research after I hit the 50,000 word mark. I hope to make it to that point within a week or so - thanks to writing masses at first and then plugging away every day since then. Though I must tell you I am looking forward to slowing down and working on some of the descriptive stuff. I just need to get Eleanor (the amateur detective) out of her final dangerous incident, and then wrap things up. I will still have a lot of work to do so am going to use the rest of November to motivate myself. In previous years I would stop and take the next 11 months off so it will be best to just keep on going.

Anyway, this post is not about NYC mass transit in 1896 or Green-Wood or Charlotte Canda (a NYC girl who died in a carriage accident in 1843 and is a partial inspiration for the title). It is, as you see above, about Le Flou-Flou. I'll be writing about mass transit, Green-Wood and Charlotte later in the month (hence no links about Charlotte, they will go in her post). But this post is, as you see, about Le Flou-Flou.

Le Flou-Flou is a device for putting ribbons in your hair. Flou-flou was a French for "rustling" and I suppose that is what your beribboned curls would do.

The ad for Le Flou-Flou is from the NYPL Picture Collection Online. It is from an 1896 Le Figaro magazine. There is a bigger image there if you'd like to take a look at the device, which looks like a modern curling iron.

The Quintessence Of Petroleum

Here is Petrolina, an 1880s rival of Vaseline, a petroleum jelly invented by Robert Chesebrough in the 1870s. It is still widely used for everything from lip balm to eye makeup removal. What is amusing about Petrolina is the name - the oil-refinery tang of the word 'petroleum' coupled with the Victorian way of naming medicines as if they were the heroines of third-rate yellowback novels. Petrolina sounds pretty close to being something that Mrs. E.D.E.N. Southworth or Augusta Evans Wilson might have written (I've read novels by both ladies, and would not have been surprised to find a Petrolina therein).

Petrolina was made by the Binghamton Oil Refining Company of Binghamton, New York. Acccording to the ads, you could use it:

-externally, much as we use Vaseline today: to soothe burns, or as a cleanser

-internally to soothe coughs and colds (take by the teaspoon!)
- as a hair pomade

- and it works on horses too, soothing scratches, "contraction of the hooves" and sprains

The picture of the Petrolina container is from NMAH. The advertisements are from the Southern Medical Record (Vol. 10, 1880, pp 17-18). A bigger version of the ad at right is here, in case you'd like to read more about the wonders of Petrolina.

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Thanks so much to Dr. Lauren at The Ancient Digger (one of my favorite reads!) for the Best Blog award!

The Mystery of the Catacombs in Manhattan

This really is a history mystery, and I'm hoping that someone will be able to confirm or deny this (actually, I hope that it is true).

Back when Frozen Charlotte (my NaNoWriMo mystery) was in a previous incarnation as The Black Mirror (which draft will someday become the second in the Eleanor Grey detective series, I hope) I did a lot of research into New York's underground places - not just the subways and secret passages under the street, but also hidden rooms (as in the Seabury Tredwell house) and other odd semi-subterranean and secret places. Julia Solis' New York Underground is a superb resource, by the way, as is the non-New-York but fascinating zine, Infiltration.

Anyway - I wanted to have Eleanor searching for a clue down in some catacombs (underground burial galleries and passageways) under an old church. Now, most sources I've found do not say anything about their being catacombs in New York City. However, in a 1939 book called Here Is New York by Helen Worden, she writes:

Ghosts might also flit through the catacombs beneath the Church of the Holy Apostles, at Twenty-Eighth Street and Ninth Avenue. The passageway which forms a labyrinthlike network of underground chambers was once the repository for coffins. Years ago bodies awaiting burial were kept there. They say there are about seven different exits from those spooky walks.

The cornerstone of Holy Apostles was laid in 1846 and the building was completed two years later. The church is a designated New York Landmark; and what the NYC Architecture site calls its "ambiance of a quaint country chapel" and differing architectural styles make it a charming addition to its Chelsea neighborhood.

I did a search for other mentions of the catacombs (and the seven different exits) but (so far) have not found any corroboration. However, Worden tends to be pretty accurate in her New York lore, and knew a lot of people interested in old New York so I would imagine there is something to this. For now, I have created a fictional NYC church based on Holy Apostles - with catacombs.

Image of the church from NYC Architecture. More pictures of Holy Apostles and its Chelsea surroundings over here at the Bridge and Tunnel Club. And see here also at NYC AGO (a historic church organ site primarily).

Amazing Inventions From 1909

This has nothing to do with Brooklyn or mysteries. There will be more of that next week but too much of the same thing makes even someone very interested in, just for example, Brooklyn and mysteries (i.e. me) just a little bit - bored! And it's Friday, which means it is time for something fun and amusing.

So here is something fun from the April 1909 issue of Popular Mechanics. Take a look at some of the cutting-edge inventions that were in the news! (You can see the big version of the inventions page over here at Google Books, bu the way). For example:

-The Dog Sweater - I had no idea it was around this early, did you?

-The Violin with Horn Attachment - just sling a drum around your neck and you can be a one man or one woman band.

-A special telephone receiver for long boring calls - looks like modern headphones.

- Lock up those milk bottles in case you have "thieving cats' or "tramps" around early in the morning.

-Strengthen your finger muscles by wearing a leather harness fitted with iron rods. Better lock up the milk bottles before putting this on, though.

-Anti-Snoring device, which is still made, I think. Even back in 1909, scientific types were being inspired in the middle of the night by snoring spouses, to come up with this.

-And to feel extra healthy in the morning even if you are being kept awake by snoring - the Electrically Vibrated Bed, with "spring legs" and a motor at the foot.

-Lastly, an invention that we know was not new in 1909 - that Sunshade Hat, which had been around since the 1880s, as you can see over here.

The Coney Island Bowery

The Bowery at Coney Island was a plank street laid out in 1882 by George C. Tilyou, one of the pioneer developers of Coney Island as a summer resort and amusement complex. It was named for the Bowery, the oldest street in Manhattan - which by the 1880s had a reputation as a rather shady place lined with cheap amusements, saloons and flophouses.

Originally a little alleyway between larger streets running down to the sea, the Coney Island Bowery was enhanced by the wooden planking and gave it a new importance. Tilyou's idea was to give people  a quick route past the amusement places which would lead them straight to the Tilyous' Surf Theater.

Many dance halls, saloons and cheap stands which sprouted up on either side, hoping to benefit from the crowds of pedestrians using the walk. The Bowery soon became the center of Coney Island amusement, often photographed and the subject of penny postcards.

The Stauch's sign in this 1907 photo advertises a popular restaurant, which had a ballroom and cigar store in the same building, which had been opened in 1904. They served seafood, steaks, a variety of pickles and vegetables, and ice cream for dessert. You could have frankfurters with potato salad for 30 cents, but it cost 10 cents extra to have Imported Frankfurters. The menu is here and it is lots of fun to read over, as old menus usually are.

The magnificent building pictured at right is Strauch's, from the front of the 1906 menu.

In the near future (after a couple of medical ads I've found that I want to write about) we'll look at the differences between Sea Gate, West Brighton, Brighton beach and Manhattan Beach, which are all technically part of the larger area of Coney Island - but very different in character.

At this point in NaNoWriMo, my heroine/detective has - in the midst of trying to solve a murder at Coney Island -  inherited a cottage at Manhattan Beach (the wealthier, more sedate end of the island) - I might have her inherit property further inland in the second draft, depending on various plot issues.

For some time, I've had an image of Eleanor (my amateur detective) riding around on the railway and taking ferries, looking into things and snooping, really moving around New York in 1896. She could commute down to Coney (this takes place over the winter, because I like beach resorts off-season). It was quite easy to get down to Coney Island from anywhere in New York by 1896 - and in a future post I'll remind myself - and tell you -  how she would have done that.

The photograph is from Staley's Views of Coney Island (1907). Picture of Stauch's restaurant from a 1906 menu at the New York Public Library Digital Gallery.

Justus For Hair

Dr. Justus August - who may or may not be the splendidly bearded man in this advertisement from 1901 (Brooklyn Daily Eagle, April 15, 1901, p. 31) - shows us that even over 100 years ago (and much earlier than this, too), people were concerned about going grey.

The Hair Rejuvenator was a device "applied with electricity" and was supposed to stimulate regrowth and prevent greying.  Dr. August's Hair Coloring, advertised in small print at the bottom, was of course for dealing with the grey hair you already had. It had no "sugar of lead" in it - which sounds like a good thing.

Advertisements in the Eagle in the late 1890s (for example, April 8, 1898, p. 9) proclaimed that this product was also called (at least by Dr. August) the Greater New York Hair Grower. The print ad above is from the Brooklyn Eagle, November 22, 1900, p. 7.

A John August was listed in the 1859 Brooklyn Directory as a barber living at 316 Fulton with a work address of 7 Clinton; this directory is digitized at the wonderful Brooklyn Genealogy Information Page - the link is here. In the 1860 census he is listed as being 38 years old, born in Germany, and a "Master Barber" [John August household, 1860 US Census, Brookyn Ward 3, Kings, NY; #353/404, Series M653, Roll 764, p. 504].

John August was also listed in the 1873 Boyd's Brooklyn Directory, digitized here, residing at 7 Clinton and listing his occupation not as physician but "hairdresser." By the end of the century, though, August had promoted himself to being not only a physician but a Professor, too.