October 2, 2024 • 9 mins
On this episode of Our American Stories, if you’re curious enough, the familiar can become fascinating. Bill Bryk briefly recounts how New York City became the city it is today, as well as his love for its past.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:10):
This is our American stories, and we love telling you
stories about our history because we think it's one of
the most important things we can share. Because of this,
we love people who love history. Today, one of our
regular contributors tells us about the history of New York
City in a way you've probably never heard.
Speaker 2 (00:40):
Manhattan, Manahata. The Algonquins Island of Hills is twelve and
a half miles long and two and a half miles
wide at its broadest point. Every day, one point five
million people ride its buses and three point five million
its subways. Each fair was two seventy five when my
wife and I left the city for New Hampshire, but
(01:02):
fifty nine thousand commuters now ride free on the Staten
Island Ferry. Vin Sweeney, a Staten Island historian, defines a
ferry as a function, rather than a boat, water borne
transportation regularly crossing some body of navigable water for the
convenience of persons, vehicles, and animals. The first Staten Island
(01:26):
ferry of which we know, started in seventeen oh eight.
It ran between Williams Street in Manhattan and the watering
place now Tompkinsville on the East shore. Of Staten Island.
Oarsman powered the first ferries. Later, someone devised a horse
driven treadmill to propel the boats. In eighteen ten, Cornelius Vanderbilt,
(01:47):
a handsome, profane Staten Islander, borrowed one hundred dollars from
his mother to run a ferry from Stapleton, another east
shore town, and the foot of Whitehall Street. Seven years later,
he launched the first steam ferry, the Nautilus, and charged
an extortionate twenty five cent fare children have price. By contrast,
(02:08):
the Nickel Fair was sacrisaying for most of the twentieth century,
rising to twenty five cents and then fifty cents only
under pressure of the city's physical crises. Then, on July fourth,
nineteen ninety seven, Mayor Giuliani decreed there would be no
more fare, just in time for that year's mayoral elections.
(02:33):
For five years, five mornings a week, I walked to
the ferry terminal in Saint George, Staten Island, to catch
a ferryboat from its bow. Manhattan's towers gleamed on the
horizon like the fabled city of El Dorado, or like
a vision of the city of God. The boat rumbled
from its slip past the great Bronze Statue on Below's Island.
(02:55):
My paternal grandfather saw the same statue from an immigrant
ship in nineteen oh six. He was then an eighteen
year old adventurer who had escaped Constription into the armies
of the Tsar by crossing the border into Austrian Poland
beneath the load in a manure wagon. He had thence
made his way through Austria, Germany and Belgium, where he
(03:16):
quickly picked up a sound idiomatic French, which he could
speak well into his ninth decade, and then to England,
whence he sailed from Southampton. Within a century of his arrival.
His experience of a long sea passage closing with the
vision of a mighty woman her lamp the imprisoned lightning
has become uncommon, if not unknown. Men and women no
(03:39):
longer come here in steerage. They land from airplanes, something
of which my grandfather probably had no knowledge in nineteen
o six, a practical technology even now barely a century old.
So too, we have changed how we carry freight across
the seas. Now the great container ships glide past Saint
(04:00):
George to Elizabethport and the Bay of Newark, where the
containers stand stacked for transfer to train and truck. Of
the hundreds of ships that once daily lined Manhattan's shores
with a forest of masts, only a few cruise liners
now swaying at anchor at Whitehall in Lower Manhattan. Swift
currents and contrary winds bumped my boat into its slip. Nearby,
(04:23):
a piled driver alternated puffs of steam with hammer blows
as it drives a wooden pile into the harbor floor.
It was probably the last working steam powered machine in Manhattan,
if not the city. Nothing more surely measures progress than
the obsolescence of steam, a driving force of the Industrial Revolution.
(04:44):
The city's last steam locomotives, the Brooklyn Eastern District Terminal's
oil burning switchers serving the water front north of the
Navy Yard, dropped their fires in nineteen sixty two. The
last steam ferryboat, the Verizano, stopped all engines in nineteen
eighty one. New York is older than Philadelphia or Boston,
(05:08):
yet only a handful of pre revolutionary buildings have survived.
Saint Paul's Chapel on Lower Broadway is the only one
in Manhattan. Walking uptown, I often unfairly contrasted the city
with John D. Rockefeller's colonial Williamsburg. Manhattan's past exists side
by side with the present, and, though fragmented, often remains
(05:31):
oddly alive. Williamsburg was barely a ghost town when Rockefeller
began restoring what had been Virginia's colonial capital. Today, the
hamlet is beautifully restored and maintained. It presents a careful, corporate,
and inoffensive vision of colonial history. Downtown's tortuous, irregular streets
(05:52):
are those laid out by the Dutch and the English,
except Broadway, which was an Indian trail running north from
the battery before the white men came. Some street names
have changed, usually for political reasons. Crown Street was renamed Liberty,
but most remained the same. The Indispensable AIA Guide to
(06:14):
New York City notes that Pearl Street was once the
edge of the island, where mother of pearl oyster shells
littered the beach. Wall Street, the most famous, was the
site of the northern boundary of New Amsterdam, where a
wall was erected against the English and the Indians. Of course,
there have been no beavers on Beaver Street for nearly
three hundred years. In seventeen seventy one, the royal government
(06:40):
erected a guilt bronze equestrian statue of King George the
Third and a black iron fence with ornamental crowns. After
the first reading of the Declaration of Independence on July ninth,
seventeen seventy six, up at the Commons just south of
today's City Hall, a mob of patriots came down town
(07:00):
toppled the statue and broke off the crowns. The statue
was broken up and carried away and melted for shot.
A fountain has taken its place. The fence remains. Downtown's
tangled streets contrast with the grid of right angles and
straight lines imposed on most of Manhattan by a board
of street commissioners in eighteen o seven. Their plan was
(07:24):
memorialized on the Randall Map, named after John Randall Junior,
the engineer and surveyor who created it and drew it
by hand. Nearly twenty five years ago, Harry Kleiderman pulled
me into the Manhattan Borough President's Topographical Bureau. Harry worked there.
He was tough, brofane, and worldly, and I liked him
(07:45):
a lot. His romanticism escaped only in kindness to his friends,
love of history, and fidelity to the memory of Tammany Hall.
The Hall had gotten him as jobs. He had been
a pick and shovel man for the Borough Department of
Works now part of the Department of Transportation, a confidential
secretary to a municipal court justice, and then a clerk
(08:06):
in the Topographical Bureau. We gossiped about politics. Then Harry
asked whether I wanted to see the Randall map. He
opened the cabinet with the reverence one might reserve for
the ark of the Covenant. The map had been made
in several parts and was mounted on rollers so cracks
wouldn't form along fold lines. Harry unrolled part of it.
(08:31):
Randall had drawn and named the streets with India ink
and watercolored the land forms. There was the collect Pond,
and Minetta Brook, and Kipps Bay, and the rolling hills
of Chelsea that would all soon vanish beneath the pavements
and landfills of the city. The map was perfect and exquisite.
Topographical Bureau and its predecessors maintained it as if it
(08:54):
were the Holy of holies, because in a worldly way
it is. It's the root of all Lands News in Manhattan.
I lightly touched its edge for a moment. It's made
of a heavy parchment to endure for the ages. The
Randall map is one of the few objects I've touched
that is so rare and unusual as to be literally priceless.
(09:16):
Then Harry rolled it up again and closed the drawer.
Speaker 1 (09:22):
And you've been listening to Bill Brake give a short
history lesson of New York his own personal history lesson
of New York. And it is a city with many bridges,
many tunnels, and a whole lot of interesting dimensions. And
we want your stories about your town and send them
to Ouramerican Stories dot com. Bill Brake Short history lesson
(09:45):
of New York City here on our American Story
This is our American stories, and we love telling you
stories about our history because we think it's one of
the most important things we can share. Because of this,
we love people who love history. Today, one of our
regular contributors tells us about the history of New York
City in a way you've probably never heard.
Speaker 2 (00:40):
Manhattan, Manahata. The Algonquins Island of Hills is twelve and
a half miles long and two and a half miles
wide at its broadest point. Every day, one point five
million people ride its buses and three point five million
its subways. Each fair was two seventy five when my
wife and I left the city for New Hampshire, but
(01:02):
fifty nine thousand commuters now ride free on the Staten
Island Ferry. Vin Sweeney, a Staten Island historian, defines a
ferry as a function, rather than a boat, water borne
transportation regularly crossing some body of navigable water for the
convenience of persons, vehicles, and animals. The first Staten Island
(01:26):
ferry of which we know, started in seventeen oh eight.
It ran between Williams Street in Manhattan and the watering
place now Tompkinsville on the East shore. Of Staten Island.
Oarsman powered the first ferries. Later, someone devised a horse
driven treadmill to propel the boats. In eighteen ten, Cornelius Vanderbilt,
(01:47):
a handsome, profane Staten Islander, borrowed one hundred dollars from
his mother to run a ferry from Stapleton, another east
shore town, and the foot of Whitehall Street. Seven years later,
he launched the first steam ferry, the Nautilus, and charged
an extortionate twenty five cent fare children have price. By contrast,
(02:08):
the Nickel Fair was sacrisaying for most of the twentieth century,
rising to twenty five cents and then fifty cents only
under pressure of the city's physical crises. Then, on July fourth,
nineteen ninety seven, Mayor Giuliani decreed there would be no
more fare, just in time for that year's mayoral elections.
(02:33):
For five years, five mornings a week, I walked to
the ferry terminal in Saint George, Staten Island, to catch
a ferryboat from its bow. Manhattan's towers gleamed on the
horizon like the fabled city of El Dorado, or like
a vision of the city of God. The boat rumbled
from its slip past the great Bronze Statue on Below's Island.
(02:55):
My paternal grandfather saw the same statue from an immigrant
ship in nineteen oh six. He was then an eighteen
year old adventurer who had escaped Constription into the armies
of the Tsar by crossing the border into Austrian Poland
beneath the load in a manure wagon. He had thence
made his way through Austria, Germany and Belgium, where he
(03:16):
quickly picked up a sound idiomatic French, which he could
speak well into his ninth decade, and then to England,
whence he sailed from Southampton. Within a century of his arrival.
His experience of a long sea passage closing with the
vision of a mighty woman her lamp the imprisoned lightning
has become uncommon, if not unknown. Men and women no
(03:39):
longer come here in steerage. They land from airplanes, something
of which my grandfather probably had no knowledge in nineteen
o six, a practical technology even now barely a century old.
So too, we have changed how we carry freight across
the seas. Now the great container ships glide past Saint
(04:00):
George to Elizabethport and the Bay of Newark, where the
containers stand stacked for transfer to train and truck. Of
the hundreds of ships that once daily lined Manhattan's shores
with a forest of masts, only a few cruise liners
now swaying at anchor at Whitehall in Lower Manhattan. Swift
currents and contrary winds bumped my boat into its slip. Nearby,
(04:23):
a piled driver alternated puffs of steam with hammer blows
as it drives a wooden pile into the harbor floor.
It was probably the last working steam powered machine in Manhattan,
if not the city. Nothing more surely measures progress than
the obsolescence of steam, a driving force of the Industrial Revolution.
(04:44):
The city's last steam locomotives, the Brooklyn Eastern District Terminal's
oil burning switchers serving the water front north of the
Navy Yard, dropped their fires in nineteen sixty two. The
last steam ferryboat, the Verizano, stopped all engines in nineteen
eighty one. New York is older than Philadelphia or Boston,
(05:08):
yet only a handful of pre revolutionary buildings have survived.
Saint Paul's Chapel on Lower Broadway is the only one
in Manhattan. Walking uptown, I often unfairly contrasted the city
with John D. Rockefeller's colonial Williamsburg. Manhattan's past exists side
by side with the present, and, though fragmented, often remains
(05:31):
oddly alive. Williamsburg was barely a ghost town when Rockefeller
began restoring what had been Virginia's colonial capital. Today, the
hamlet is beautifully restored and maintained. It presents a careful, corporate,
and inoffensive vision of colonial history. Downtown's tortuous, irregular streets
(05:52):
are those laid out by the Dutch and the English,
except Broadway, which was an Indian trail running north from
the battery before the white men came. Some street names
have changed, usually for political reasons. Crown Street was renamed Liberty,
but most remained the same. The Indispensable AIA Guide to
(06:14):
New York City notes that Pearl Street was once the
edge of the island, where mother of pearl oyster shells
littered the beach. Wall Street, the most famous, was the
site of the northern boundary of New Amsterdam, where a
wall was erected against the English and the Indians. Of course,
there have been no beavers on Beaver Street for nearly
three hundred years. In seventeen seventy one, the royal government
(06:40):
erected a guilt bronze equestrian statue of King George the
Third and a black iron fence with ornamental crowns. After
the first reading of the Declaration of Independence on July ninth,
seventeen seventy six, up at the Commons just south of
today's City Hall, a mob of patriots came down town
(07:00):
toppled the statue and broke off the crowns. The statue
was broken up and carried away and melted for shot.
A fountain has taken its place. The fence remains. Downtown's
tangled streets contrast with the grid of right angles and
straight lines imposed on most of Manhattan by a board
of street commissioners in eighteen o seven. Their plan was
(07:24):
memorialized on the Randall Map, named after John Randall Junior,
the engineer and surveyor who created it and drew it
by hand. Nearly twenty five years ago, Harry Kleiderman pulled
me into the Manhattan Borough President's Topographical Bureau. Harry worked there.
He was tough, brofane, and worldly, and I liked him
(07:45):
a lot. His romanticism escaped only in kindness to his friends,
love of history, and fidelity to the memory of Tammany Hall.
The Hall had gotten him as jobs. He had been
a pick and shovel man for the Borough Department of
Works now part of the Department of Transportation, a confidential
secretary to a municipal court justice, and then a clerk
(08:06):
in the Topographical Bureau. We gossiped about politics. Then Harry
asked whether I wanted to see the Randall map. He
opened the cabinet with the reverence one might reserve for
the ark of the Covenant. The map had been made
in several parts and was mounted on rollers so cracks
wouldn't form along fold lines. Harry unrolled part of it.
(08:31):
Randall had drawn and named the streets with India ink
and watercolored the land forms. There was the collect Pond,
and Minetta Brook, and Kipps Bay, and the rolling hills
of Chelsea that would all soon vanish beneath the pavements
and landfills of the city. The map was perfect and exquisite.
Topographical Bureau and its predecessors maintained it as if it
(08:54):
were the Holy of holies, because in a worldly way
it is. It's the root of all Lands News in Manhattan.
I lightly touched its edge for a moment. It's made
of a heavy parchment to endure for the ages. The
Randall map is one of the few objects I've touched
that is so rare and unusual as to be literally priceless.
(09:16):
Then Harry rolled it up again and closed the drawer.
Speaker 1 (09:22):
And you've been listening to Bill Brake give a short
history lesson of New York his own personal history lesson
of New York. And it is a city with many bridges,
many tunnels, and a whole lot of interesting dimensions. And
we want your stories about your town and send them
to Ouramerican Stories dot com. Bill Brake Short history lesson
(09:45):
of New York City here on our American Story
Host
Lee Habeeb
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