Postcards from Manhattan Sights and Sentiments from the Last Century George J. Lankevich

Synopsis

Though known for its enduring landmarks, New York City has experienced sweeping changes over the years. It has seen buildings rise and fall; fashions come and go; and neighborhoods flourish, fade, and reinvent themselves.

Through authentic postcard images and messages, Postcards from Manhattan takes you on a guided tour of New York old and new. Arranged by region, 120 beautiful postcards show the evolution of seven distinct areas of the city: the tip of Manhattan, lower Manhattan, midtown Manhattan, upper Manhattan, Central Park, the East Side, and the West Side. You’ll visit lost New York, where magnificent hotels like the Astor pampered the rich and famous. You’ll see the changing face of landmarks like Pennsylvania Station and Madison Square Garden. And you’ll view sights that continue to attract visitors today--the towering Empire State building, legendary Tavern on the Green, and beautiful Central Park.

Postcards From Manhattan offers a unique view of a city that has changed with the times, while retaining its distinctive style and spirit. Throughout, you’ll learn how the city that never sleeps has attracted, captivated, and mesmerized New Yorkers and visitors alike--year after year, decade after decade.

George J. Lankevich received his PhD in American History from Columbia University. He taught for over thirty years in the City University of New York, and is now a professor emeritus. Dr. Lankevich is the author of over twenty volumes of history, including American Metropolis: A History of New York City.

Contents

Acknowledgments

Introduction

Chapter One: The Tip of the City
The Statue of Liberty • City of Immigrants • Castle Clinton • Walking on Wall Street • The Curb Exchange • George Washington and Federal Hall • Tribute to the Twin Towers

Chapter Two: Lower Manhattan
Crossing the Brooklyn Bridge • Tammany Hall and the Tweed Courthouse • Life in Greenwich Village • Washington Square • Villages in the City • South Street Seaport

Chapter Three: Midtown Manhattan
Shopping in Manhattan • The Flatiron Building • Garden on the Move • Giants in the Metropolis • Rockefeller Center • Transit Central

Chapter Four: The East Side
Mansions and Museums • The Metropolitan Museum of Art • The Guggenheim Museum,

Chapter Five: The West Side
From Columbus Circle to Columbus Center • Lincoln Center • The Ansonia Apartment-Hotel • Twin Towers of the West Side • The American Museum of Natural History

Chapter Six: A Walk in Central Park
Creators of the Park • Cleopatra’s Needle • Shakespeare in the Park

Chapter Seven: Manhattan Above the Park
The Apollo Theater • The Second Harlem Renaissance • Horses and the Speedway • Grant’s Tomb • The Cathedral of Saint John the Divine • The Cloisters

Conclusion

The Messages in Print
Index

Introduction

As Planet Earth entered its new millennium, New York reigns as the capital city of the world. Its domination is not due to population--other international centers are far larger--or its territory, for its eight million residents are densely packed into only 326 square miles. Rather its prominence arose from a century in which it came to symbolize the finest attributes of Western urban culture and the highest stage of capitalist endeavor. The driving force behind this accomplishment was the island of Manhattan, once the entire city yet only one borough of Greater New York after 1898. In 2000 Manhattan’s million and half people, all residents of New York County, continue to create the glitter and ambition identified with their metropolis. Twentieth century New York achieved its unrivaled position as the commercial heart of the United States and the financial center of international business while remaining the world’s most ethnically diverse and multi-religious city. It is a city of style and sophistication, common ground for moguls and sheiks, artists and artisans, jet-setters and immigrants, struggling members of the working class and corporate “Masters of the Universe.” Manhattan is sui generius, a unique venue to be experienced and treasured. Postcards from Manhattan is designed to help you understand a bit of its history.

Despite its august position New York remains strangely available to multitudes. Everyone can claim to “know” Manhattan for its glories have been the subject of innumerable movies and books. Across the world Wall Street is used as a synonym for capitalism, Broadway means the live theater, Seventh Avenue is equated with fashion and Madison Avenue connotes the advertising profession. Even Manhattan’s neighborhoods have international resonance. Greenwich Village is identified with a bohemian life-style, Sutton Place means enormous wealth, the Lower East Side conjures up harsh images of tenement life while Hell’s Kitchen does the same for docklands. Harlem evokes both visions of the Jazz Age and urban pathology. New York is the city with more Jews than Tel Aviv,, more Irish than Dublin, more Italians than Naples and more Puerto Ricans that San Juan. The streets of Manhattan are such an international mixing bowl it is impossible to imagine any other city as home to the United Nations.

Founded almost four centuries ago by a Dutch trading company, Manhattan has always attracted ambitious people eager to make money. Business is part of the genetic code of the city; unrelenting capitalism and continuous struggle have provided it with an acquisitive aura that repels many observers. From its appearance as New Amsterdam, life proceeded in Manhattan at a faster tempo. As early as the 1640s its many languages and varied population were already a subject of wonder. Just before the American Revolution, future president John Adams noted how the residents of Manhattan “talk very loud, very fast and altogether,” but when he and Abigail later moved from New York she bitterly lamented the loss of Broadway. During the 1790s Manhattan served as capital city for both the nation and its state. George Washington was inaugurated president on Wall Street, and the first sessions of both Congress and the Supreme Court were held in the city. Though political life soon moved elsewhere business opportunities remained centered in New York and the ferocity with which they were pursued gave the city a dubious reputation.

Manhattan was the largest city in the United States during the nineteenth century. The construction of the Erie Canal (1825) guaranteed that the trade of the interior continent would flow into the metropolis through the only geographic break in the Appalachian Mountains. By mid-century, Manhattan handled more goods than all other American ports combined, fully two-thirds of national exports and a third of imports. The city was the destination for unending waves of immigrants seeking a better life behind its shore. Already the small island at the mouth of the Hudson River possessed a legendary quality as the land of opportunity; though it is certain that not all the newcomers were successful they added immensely to the human capital of the city. Generations of Irish, German, Italian, Jewish, Chinese, Dominican, Vietnamese and dozens of other immigrant groups have followed their dreams to the “North Star” of Manhattan. No temporary difficulty, from Civil War to economic collapse to racial animosity to terrorism, has ever stemmed the tide of immigrants who make Manhattan an ever-changing kaleidoscope.

By 1898, when Manhattan united with Brooklyn, Queens, the Bronx and Staten Island to form the City of Greater New York, the image and reality of the metropolis was well established. Geographic expansion made possible a population that now exceeds eight millions, but to this day residents of the “outer boroughs” still refer to Manhattan as “the city.” Such deference is not misplaced because Manhattan, an island encompassing merely 22.7 square miles, had alone been New York since 1664. Barely more than thirteen miles long and only 2.3 miles across at mid-town, much of Manhattan Island was still undeveloped and consolidation provided the incentive to fill in unsettled portions of its northern lands. Thus well established neighborhoods such as Greenwich Village, the Lower East Side or Harlem would soon be augmented by newer creations such as Times Square, the Upper East Side and Morningside Heights. On the busy wharves of the Fulton Street Market, amid the canyons of Wall Street, the garrets of the Village and new apartment complexes on the West Side, in the bright lights of Broadway and the gritty reality of 125th Street, the legend of the “city that never sleeps” was created daily. Manhattan became a metropolis of multitudes, a chaos that was constantly changing and infinitely challenging. Justly famous as the citadel of the skyscraper, Manhattan appeared ever-ready to tear down its past and eliminate part of its history in the firm conviction that tomorrow it could build something better. No other place on earth built so high or with such arrogant disregard for gravity. During the twentieth century Manhattan became the most influential business, commercial and artistic center on earth. Tracing the trajectory this “shooting star” of a city followed in possible in many ways, but the pages that follow do so by showing the many faces it presented to an awed world.

An entire library of histories tell the amazing story of New York, but often their prose fails to convey the color, vibrancy and glamour of Manhattan. Indelible memories were made on that island, and we are fortunate that so many images have been captured in one of the nation’s most unpretentious historical records--the picture postcard. The United States did not invent postcards, but they became an almost ubiquitous way of marking the stages of national development during the American Century. Citizens first began to send photographic memories during Chicago’s Colombian Exposition of 1893, and soon deltiology--the collection and study of postcards--became a popular hobby. The modern split back postal card did not make its appearance until 1907, a year when over a billion cards were sold annually. According to the postal service, 667 million cards were actually delivered in 1908 as the mania for collecting cards and sharing images became more widespread. Enterprising companies soon offered views of most major American cities, but no urban center was as popular among collectors as were picture postcards from Manhattan, the national metropolis. People passing through Manhattan, foreign visitors and proud residents of the city all used the postcard as a means to “keep in touch.” As a result we possess a unique historical record of the expansion of Manhattan during the course of the century, a visual testimony offering a different sort of city history.

Collectors of postcards, whether in 1901 or 2001, have always been fascinated by representations of New York. Although the form and style of postal art has changed over time, Manhattan’s rise to world prominence remains an infinitely enticing subject. Postcards printed abroad dominated the early decades of the last century, but American firms created most of the “linen” and “chrome” cards sold from World War I to the 1960s; printing then again shifted overseas. Regardless of the source, however, Manhattan’s images were always prized both by collectors and the general public. It is a simple truth that for generations sending a post card was the most efficient way to travelers to inform relatives and friends of their doings. Messages on cards cost less than a letter, saved time, and trumpeted the fact that senders were in a place everyone dreamed about visiting. New York was the national metropolis, Manhattan was its vibrant heart, and Tom, Dick or Mary was there. The pace of the city was overwhelming, its buildings fantastic, and the style of the inhabitants difficult to fathom--the personal commentaries written on these cards make those points continually. But the pictures made clear why Manhattan remained important to every American.

In 1898 New York was almost three centuries old, but many parts of Manhattan would have been recognizable to famed city residents such as Washington Irving, Clement Moore, Walt Whitman or Herman Melville. In its next century it experienced violent and continuous change, both in its infrastructure and its population, and altered itself many times. Postcards enable us to recapture some of the essence of nineteenth century Manhattan, and trace the twentieth century alterations which transformed it into the biggest, the most envied and the most mistrusted American urban centers. The face of the city changed, its famed diversity expanded, citizens suffered conflict as well as confidence, displayed boorish behavior as well as brilliance, their buildings soared and metropolitan wealth grew. Attempting to summarize the paradoxes, a wondering reporter analyzed “a wilderness of human flesh; crazed with avarice, lust and rum” and concluded that Manhattan’s true name was “delirium.” But he was wrong. Under the constantly changing surface, there exists solidity and order, pattern and control. Living in Manhattan challenges everyone, but the island is a spectacular success continually in process. Hopefully the images which record that story will provide as much pleasure to the viewer as they did to collectors.

Reviews

"This postcard-shaped book gives readers a walking tour of Manhattan, from Battery Park to the top of the island via a terrific set of vintage and contemporary postcards. The images are from all eras and generally document one or another landmark building or site straightforwardly--with the rare fanciful or moody shot. Combine that with vintage drawings and photographs of places like the Empire State Building, Riverside Drive mansions, a teeming Hester Street, and cheesy productions incorporating all of the most famous at once--and the result is an unusual perspective on a much-vaunted metropolis.