Posts Tagged New York

Photo Credit: National Archives

“Four young members of the Madison Square Boy’s Club rowing a boat in a rooftop pool, Manhattan skyscrapers in the background, Feb. 1950.” With such little space in New York City, I guess people have to get their training in anywhere they can…

Postcard featuring the 14-ton Giant Underwood Master Typewriter on display at the World’s Fair. Photo Credit: Moore’s Postcard Museum

The 1939-40 New York World’s Fair was hosted in the Flushing Meadows Park in Queens. It was the first to be based on the future with the slogan “Dawn of a New Day.” An estimated 44 million people attended. At the Underwood Elliott Fisher exhibit in the Business Systems Building an unusual item was on display – a typewriter. However, it was not any ordinary typewriter but rather it was The Giant Underwood Master Typewriter.

The typewriter, according to Moore’s Postcard Museum

Operates daily at the Underwood Elliott Fisher Exhibit in the Business Systems and Insurance Building at the New York World’s Fair. This huge machine, weighing 14 tons, is 1,728 times larger than the regular Underwood Master. It required 3 years to build. Each typebar weighs 45 pounds and the carriage alone weighs 3,500 pounds. Letters are typed on “stationery” measuring 9 by 12 feet, and the ribbon in the machine is 100 feet long and five inches wide. Two box cars were required to transport the Giant to the World’s Fair.

A man dressed as a cowboy studies a large letter in front of the massive typewriter. Photo Credit: New York Public Library/Retronaut

With her right foot poised on the “N” key, pretty Miss Muriel Davis is about to complete a message of greeting from Harvey D. Gibson, chairman of the board of the World’s Fair of 1940 in New York to visitors to the big exposition. Photo Credit: New York Public Library

A happy group, including a clown, poise with the giant typewriter. Photo Credit: New York Public Library

Frank Buck’s elephant and giant typewriter. Photo Credit: New York Public Library

Employees of twenty years who brought the 5 millionth typewriter to the fair exhibit sitting on the typewriter. Photo Credit: New York Public Library

Two woman and the giant typewriter. Photo Credit: New York Public Library

Women posing with giant typewriter at the Underwood Elliott Fisher exhibit in the Business Systems Building. Photo Credit: New York Public Library

This image shows the scale of the typewriter with a man and woman standing next to it. Photo Credit: New York Public Library

Photo Credit: George Bradford Brainerd/ Brooklyn Museum Collection

Boy playing tug with a dog near the Iron Pier at Coney Island, Brooklyn, ca. 1885.

Photo Credit: NAACP Collection/Library of Congress

“Lynching flag flying at NAACP headquarters, ca. 1938.”

In conjunction with the anti-lynching campaign, in 1920 the NAACP began flying a flag from the windows of its headquarters at 69 Fifth Avenue when a lynching occurred. The words on the flag were “a man was lynched yesterday.” The threat of losing its lease forced the NAACP to discontinue the practice in 1938. The original canvas flag is housed with the NAACP Records in the Library of Congress Manuscript Division.

Photo Credit: Al Ravenna/World Telegram/Library of Congress

Dorothy Belaski (left) of Ozone Parks, Queens, and Patricia Caserta of Brooklyn hold their Erin Go Bragh flags while straining for the first glimpse of marchers in New York City’s St. Patrick’s Day parade, 1950. New York City held its first St. Patrick’s Day parade on March 17, 1762 when a group of Irish militia in Lower Manhattan marched a few blocks to a tavern. It has since become the largest St. Patrick’s Day parade as well as the oldest civilian parade in the world.

“I see dance being used as communication between body and soul, to express what is too deep to find for words.”

Ruth St. Denis in Radha, ca. 1906 (Photo Credit: Denishawn Collection/The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts

Ruth St. Denis, along with her contemporary Isadora Duncan, is credited with founding the American dance movement, especially American modern dance. She was the first American dancer to appear in a full-length dance performance. Additionally, St. Denis was a pioneer in American sacred dance when she actively explored dance forms from diverse world religious and spiritual expression.

Ruth St. Denis in Black and Gold Nautch. (1916). Photo Credit: Denishawn Collection/The New York Public Library

Born Ruth Dennis on a farm in New Jersey, her father was an inventor and her mother was a physician who encouraged Ruth’s early interest in theater and dance. Her early training included formal and social dancing techniques, ballet lessons with Italian ballerina Maria Bonfante and skirt dancing.

In 1892 Ruth began her professional career in New York City. Initially she worked as a skirt dancer, a dance in which women dancers would manipulate long, layered skirts with their arms to create a motion of flowing fabric. Six years later, Ruth was noticed by David Belasco, a successful Broadway producer and director. He gave her the stage name “St. Denis” and hired her as a featured dancer in his company. With the dance company she toured around the United States and Europe and met diverse dancers and dance forms that would later inspire her solo dances.

She became very interested in the dancing techniques and emotions of Eastern cultures and created her own theory of dance based upon all of her early training, dancers she worked with and her reading on mythology and cultures. She left Belasco’s company in 1905 for a career as a solo artist.

In 1906, she shocked a New York audience with her portrayal in flowing robes and freestyle dance of Radha, an Indian goddess. “Radha” was her attempt at translating her understanding of Indian mythology and culture into dance form. At this point in her career, Ruth thought that Europe might offer her more. She spent three years traveled Europe performing her “translations” before returning to the United States where her dances were well-received.

Ruth St Denis in The Greek Veil Plastique. Used in vaudeville act. (1918). Photo Credit: Denishawn Collection/The New York Public Library

In 1915 she, along with her husband and dancing partner Ted Shawn, founded the Denishawn School of Dancing in Los Angeles. The school was known for its influence on ballet and experimental modern dance. It became the training grounds for dancers including Martha Graham, Jack Cole, Charles Weideman, Lillian Powell, and Doris Humphreys. The school also had a touring dance troupe that traveled the country popularizing dance as a performing art.

In 1931, Denishawn disbanded and Ruth turned to religious dance, a lifelong interest, and performed in churches and synagogues. She founded Adelphi University’s dance program in 1938. It was one of the first dance departments in an American university. Additionally, she continued to teach and choreograph independently as well as with other artists.

Ruth died of a heart attack in 1968 at the age of 89. She left a lasting legacy on the American modern dance movement, not just with her interpretations of cultural-inspired dances, but also in fostering dance through her Denishawn School of Dance. Many of her students would later became pivotal figures in dance.

Video shows Ruth St. Denis in the ‘East Indian Nautch Dance’ (1932)

Sources
Ruth St. Denis Biography at University of Pittsburgh website
Ruth St. Denis: Her Life & Legacy at ruthstdenis.org
Dance Heritage Coalition
Jacob’s Pillow Dance

[Zim's Note: Today is the 80th Anniversary of the premiere of King Kong. I thought this was a fitting tribute to the classic film.]

(Source)

“Every time I’m in New York I say a little prayer when passing the Empire State Building. A good friend of mine died up there.”

- Fay Wray, actress who portrayed the original Ann Darrow in King Kong (1933). King Kong comes to love and protect Ann Darrow and famously carries her to the top of the Empire State Building.

Two days after her death at age 96 on August 8, 2004, the lights on the Empire State Building were extinguished for 15 minutes in her memory.

Charles “Old Hoss” Radbourn (top left in the photo) was the first documented public figure photographed “giving the finger.”

Nicknamed “Old Hoss”, Radbourn was a pitcher who played 12 seasons in Major League Baseball. A butcher by trade, Radbourn made his MLB debut in 1880 with the Buffalo Bisons. He then played for the Providence Grays (1881–1885), Boston Beaneaters (1886–1889), Boston Red Stockings (1890) and Cincinnati Reds (1891). Baseball was not his only claim to fame. In a 1886 photograph of the Boston Beaneaters (Radbourn was their pitcher) and their rivals, the New York Giants, Radbourn was photographed extending his middle finger to the camera, the earliest known photograph of a public figure using this gesture.

Baseball pitcher Old Hoss Radbourn pictured giving the finger to cameraman, 1886. (Back row, far left). First known photograph of the gesture. Photo Credit: 19th Century Baseball

Detail from 1886 Boston/New York team photo. The only pitcher in the history of major league baseball to win 60 games in a single season, Charles “Old Hoss” Radbourn extends his middle finger towards the camera. Photo Credit: 19th Century Baseball

Also of interest: Radbourn and “Charley Horse”

Information and Photographs via 19th Century Baseball

James Knox Polk, three-quarter length portrait, three-quarters to the right, seated. Photo Credit: Mathew Brady/Library of Congress

James K. Polk, the 11th President of the United States, was the first president to be photographed while in office. The daguerreotype was taken by famous photographer Matthew Brady in New York City on February 14, 1849. Polk was also the first president to be extensively photographed during his presidency.

White House History

Photo by Margaret Suckley. Courtesy of the Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library and Museum, Hyde Park, New York.

“Franklin D. Roosevelt, Fala and Ruthie Bie [a friend's granddaughter] at Hill Top Cottage in Hyde Park, N.Y. The better of two extant photos of FDR in a wheel chair.”

Photo Credit: National Archives

“The lion statues at the New York Public Library, with a mantle of snow during the record December 1948 snowfall.”

Defense Bond display at Grand Central Station, 1942 (Photo Credit: Arthur Rothstein/Westchester Magazine).

War is expensive, no matter when or where it is fought. During the World Wars, the United States government issued war bonds to help finance military operations. The purpose of these bonds were two-fold, they generated capital for the government as well as making citizens feel as though they were involved in helping the war efforts. The push for selling war bonds during the Second World War was important. The country just dug itself out of the Great Depression and the attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941 struck a deep chord. In an effort to increase citizen participation and reiterate the sense of patriotism, war bond drives became successful campaigns. Mass media and Hollywood stars and starlets helped to sell defense bonds. Drives and displays were created all over the country to promote homefront efforts. One such display is a massive mural by the Farm Security Administration in New York’s famed Grand Central Station.

The Library of Congress documents the progress of how the massive display at Grand Central Station came to be.

Fabrication of the mural by Farm Security Administration:

Photo Credit: Arthur Rothstein/Farm Security Administration (Library of Congress)

Installing the defense bond sales photomural in the concourse of the Grand Central terminal:

Photo Credit: Arthur Rothstein/Farm Security Administration (Library of Congress)

Photo Credit: Edwin Rosskam/Farm Security Administration (Library of Congress)

Photo Credit: Arthur Rothstein/Farm Security Administration (Library of Congress)

Source: History.com