New Yorkers, today is your day. Make something happen. For centuries, May 11 has been a bat-call for big moments in New York City history. In 1647, Peter Stuyvesant a/k/a Peg Leg Pete, arrived in New Amsterdam to take charge as the new governor of the wayward Dutch West India Company town. Garbage ran through…
Fans of the woeful New York Knickerbockers haven’t had a lot to cheer for in recent years, or ever. But on May 8, 1970, an electric Madison Square Garden crowd saw the Knicks crush the Los Angeles Lakers to bring home their first NBA championship. Coached by New York native Red Holzman, the Knicks resembled the…
On May 6, 1626, the Dutch purchased the island of Manhattan from a local Native American tribe for $24. Or did they? There are dozens of articles online about the purchase of Manhattan, yet few paint a coherent narrative about what actually took place or properly acknowledge the limit to which we will ever be certain of…
On a dreary winter night in Pittsburgh, 1885, a dispirited father wrote the Pittsburgh Dispatch asking what to do with his five unmarried daughters. The paper responded with an editorial explaining that women were only good for housework, and that America must have sunk pretty low if a father didn’t have time to find suitable…
Equal parts magical, frightening, odd and successful, the 1939 World’s Fair offered tourists from all over the world the possibility of a peaceful, technocratic future, just as World War II began. It opened to great fanfare in Flushing-Coronoa Park, Queens, 76 years ago today. The idea for the 1939 World’s Fair was cooked up by…
On April 28, 1883, a Hungarian immigrant named Joseph Pulitzer paid $386,000 to purchase the New York World from robber baron Jay Gould. Not one to waste time, Pulitzer immediately shook up the moribund newspaper and turned it into the most powerful media operation in the United States, dominating the New York and American press…
Witty, sexy, and way ahead of her time, few performers brought more swagger to the stage and big screen than Brooklyn-born Mae West. On April 27, 1927, West was released from the Women’s Workhouse, a prison on what today is called Roosevelt Island. Her crime? “Indecent public performance” for her hit show, Sex. Born and…
Very excited that Michael Gould-Wartofsky and I finally caught up yesterday so that we could do a podcast about his new book, The Occupiers. We had a really great conversation about what OWS was, what it could have been, and what it has meant to the political narrative and activist strategy since it ended. I…
Janos.nyc reader Jon Reznick has joked that this site is a daily history of riots in New York City, and it’s true that Gotham’s manic energy has lent itself to nearly every type of riot imaginable. So why not a folk singer riot? In 1961, beatniks were ascendant. Ginsberg and Kerouac were mainstream hits, and…
One of the first great student protests to come out of the 60s counter-culture movement, the Columbia University occupation began on April 23, 1968. Over the next week, students took over five different buildings and completely shut down campus while calling attention to issues from local race relations to the Vietnam War. The occupation ended when the…
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