Old New York History

Puerto Ricans Arrive
(Pic Magazine, 1955)

In the early Fifties many of the people from the U.S. territory of Puerto Rico decided to pack their bags and move to New York City. Overnight, it seemed, a portion of Harlem came to be known as Spanish Harlem – where hastily assembled mambo dance halls could be found among restaurants serving the exotic cuisine of the Caribbean. There were also complications that emerged with the new comers that are addressed in this 1955 article:

Today, however, there is a forceful change taking place, an influence so great that New York City officials have forecast a startling racial shift within a few years and are already making plans for meeting this switch…

New York City: 1917
(Vanity Fair, 1917)

A VANITY FAIR article covering the social and patriotic transformation of New York City just eight months after The U.S. entered the First World War:

Already the greatest manufacturing center in the world, our coming into the War made New York the money center, the distributing center, the very hub of the universe as far as resources were concerned. London and Paris sank to the level of mere distributing points….


An additional event took place in 1917: Congress granted full U.S. citizenship rights to the citizens of Puerto Rico – but they didn’t move to New York until the Fifties. Click here to read about their integration.

New York City Bars at Four in the Morning…
(Stage Magazine, 1937)

Tickled by the New York laws that prohibited bars from serving spirits between the hours of 4:00 to 8:00 a.m., this correspondent for Stage Magazine, Stanley Walker, sallied forth into the pre-dawn darkness of a 1937 Manhattan wondering what kind of gin mills violate such dictates. He described well what those hours mean for most of humanity and then begins his catalog of establishments, both high and low, that cater to night crawlers.

For something a shade rougher, more informal, smokier: Nick’s Tavern, at 140 Seventh Avenue South [the building went the way of Penn Station long ago], dark and smoky, with good food and carrying on in the artistic traditions of the old speakeasies.


Click here to read about the arrest and conviction of New York’s high society bootleggers.

Greenwich Village Bohemians
(Vanity Fair, 1916)

Robert Benchleystyle=border:none (1889 – 1945) drama critic, humorist and actor. Upon graduating from from college (1912) he began his career writing for a number of New Yorkstyle=border:none papers. At the time this witty anthropological study of Greenwich Village wildlife was printed, Benchley was serving as a contributing editor for Conde Nast’s ‘Vanity Fair’.

Click here if you would like to read a 1934 profile of Robert Benchley.

A Word on New York Waiters
(Stage Magazine, 1939)

Waiters are to New York City what lobbyists are to Washington and celebrated illustrator, author and all-around foodie Ludwig Bemelmans (1898 – 1962) had some thoughts on this very diverse group:

New York is full of waiters, Chinese, American, Congo, French, Italian and German waiters, Jewish and Christian waiters, Vegetarian and Greek waiters, many good waiters, many bad waiters.

Click here to read an article by Benny Goodman concerning the arrival of Swing on Park Ave.

Frank Lloyd Wright Hated the U.N. Building
(Rob Wagner’s Script Magazine, 1947)

When architects and builders howled in protest when the firm of Wallace Harrison (1895 – 1981)was commissioned in 1947 to design the United Nations Center in New York City, the editors of SCRIPT MAGAZINE dashed off asking Frank Lloyd Wright to pick up his quill and ink-up his arguments against the project – and here it is.

Jewish Population Growth in New York
(The Independent, 1921)

Attached is a spirited article that gives an account of the Jewish population surge in 1920s New York. Even as early as 1921, nearly half of the Jews in all of North America lived in that city and every fourth New Yorker was a Jew.


Click here to read about the Jewish population growth in the Unites States during the 1920s.

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