history

‘Modern times’

I got the idea for today’s Tomversation cartoon from seeing old photos.

I follow sites on social media that show images from years ago – the 1920s and even the 1860s. And I stare at them.

Like this picture. It pops up once in awhile. It’s from 1907.

Here’s a closeup. These guys, in their heads, feel it’s the most modern of times. And it was. They are all dressed up, going somewhere or coming from somewhere. The guy in the center looks like the main guy – the boss, the ringleader.

It’s so interesting to look at. What were they talking about? Where were they going? How did it feel being in the new century – all being born in the 1800s – maybe the 1860s or 1870s. Fascinating. They didn’t have radio or tv, just barely had movies, all silent. They didn’t have modern transportation, although they did have subways and to them, they were in “modern times.”

I remember one of my father’s old aunts telling me about the subway opening in Brooklyn in 1905. She remembers that it was free the first week and then it went up to a nickel. “Modern times” for her.

I saw a silent move one time from the early 1900s and I was amazed at seeing people who looked to be quite old, born in the 1830s or 1840s.

This image is from 1908 at Atlantic City. It’s been colorized.

You can almost jump right into the picture. I’ve seen this image often, and I stare at it. These people are all long gone now, but at the time they were at the height of modern times.

Look at the guy in the green. Was that daring at the time? Most people wore black and just a few years before, everyone was covered up from head to toe. Is he wearing the “Speedo” of the time?

This was “modern times” in the 1860s in NYC. Look at the people – look at the carriages. There is City Hall in the background, which is still there, today.

And this is an image of The NY World/Pulitzer building in 1890. Right across from City Hall, which is to the left. You can’t see it, but next to the World was the Sun, the Tribune and the NY Times. The Times building is still standing today, it houses Pace University.

But check out these guys all dressed up in 1890. Part of those old Tammany Hall days.

Speaking of Tammany Hall, the 1928 structure, is at Union Square it’s at 17th Street and Park Avenue/4th Avenue. That was the last place Tammany Hall reigned. It was at a few other places before this.

The Decker Building, on the other side of Union Square on Union Square West, was built in 1892 and it’s still there today. It’s the tall building here. Check out the people walking by in their time period.

Andy Warhol’s “The Factory” was here from 1968 to 1973. This is the building where Valerie Solanas shot Andy. When Andy moved out of this location in 1973, he moved a short block away, still at Union Square. That building is still there. It’s been modernized, but it’s still there.

All these photos were modern at the time the photos were taken. Just like the cavemen in the cartoon above. Just like us, who 100 years from now will be considered cavemen.

Receive an email each time I publish this Tomversation blog
by clicking here

Newsboy selling the NY Herald

nyherald

1910. Jerald Schaitberger 7 yrs. old, of 416 W. 57th St. N.Y. as he helps to sell papers until 10 P.M. on Columbus Circle. Photo taken 9:30 P.M. on October 8, 1910.
Photo by Paul B. Schumm.

A moment in time

25398179_1503224806380360_5215864665177442463_o

Look at this photo. It’s Broadway in NYC, in 1902. I can stare at this photo for a long time and just sort of fall right into it.

I have to find another template for this blog so that the photos appear larger (if you click on the right mouse button and hit “open image in a new tag” it will open much larger), but anyway, look at the one guy closest to Santa. He looks to be about 25 or 30 years old, perhaps born in 1872 or 1875 and at the prime of life – dapper, cool, looks like he has money. I like how his pants cuff falls onto the shoe. And now he is gone. Dead.

This period in time captured here and “alive” forever, yet everyone in the photo is gone.

This looks to be near Macy’s. Isn’t that the New York Herald in the back left?

Ghosts of the L train

I just got off the L train. I met my cousins in Ridgewood, Queens, and took the L from Union Square to Myrtle-Wyckoff Avenues. Ridgewood is the new up and coming neighborhood in New York. There was SoHo, then the Lower East Side, the Meat Packing District and Williamsburg and now it’s Ridgewood. The L train is the train into Hipsterland, but not so long ago, it was the link between Manhattan and a working class Brooklyn.

As I took the train this time and usually when I take the L train, I think of days past, days before my time, and I think of the ghosts of the subway and the Brooklyn neighborhoods that we pass through. Bedford, Graham Avenue, Lorimar Street, Montrose Avenue and so on. They are names from my past, you see my father and his sister and their mother (my grandmother) and a lot of our relatives lived here so many years ago. I picture them in Brooklyn 1945 and thinking of them on this same subway line. The trains of course, were different and they called it the BMT, (Brooklyn Manhattan Transfer), my aunt told me Saturday – they changed it later to the LL, rather than L, to differentiate it from the EL, which was the elevated train. But it was the same route, the same stops and even the same tiles on the wall that spell out the stations. Those same exact tiles were seen and perhaps touched by my father and grandmother 70 and 80 years ago.

I had an old aunt, who in the 1980s, told me about the first day the line opened in 1905 and how that first week the rides were free to the public; they were a nickle after that. She told me of her first hand experience, remembering it vividly, she must have been seven years old at the time. I read a book once called “When Brooklyn Was the World.” That’s the time period I think of as I ride the L train today. To me the train is “The footprint of a lost world,” a quote I got from Anthony Bourdain.

Now as I ride the line I see hipsters who have taken over the neighborhood. There they are with their ipods and iphones and skateboards and beards and manbuns and fedoras; acting all cool and as if they have discovered something new. Do they ever think about the people who were there before them? Probably not.

It’s the same with all the train lines in the city, there is so much history, but visiting Graham Avenue and Lorimar Street and Bedford, as a child and hearing so many stories of my father’s childhood, it makes me think of all those ghosts of times past. My mother grew up near Coney Island, so those train lines have meaning too, but I don’t take them as often as I take the L train. I think of my father taking the train to Ebbets Field, or my grandmother taking him to the doctor’s office or visiting relatives, in a time that was much simpler.

People have come and gone, but the subway lines are still running, on the same routes on the same tracks, among all those ghosts of happy times past.

Here is an old film of the 1905 subway in New York. It isn’t the L line, but you can get the idea of the time period.