Building a Modern City, Pt. 2

1. Building a Modern City, Pt. 2 This 1838 anti-Jacksonian cartoon below makes fun of Democratic patronage, depicting the Collector of the Port giving out licenses to cart men who are loyal Democrats. From the collection of the Library of Congress. Such patronage was viewed as corrupt by the Whigs, although they would do the same when they gained power.

2. Building a Modern City New York City Police • Open until 1844, the city had an ancient system of 100 marshals, 31 constables, and a “night watch” completely inadequate to the needs of a metropolis of its size. • Mayor James Harper (1844 one-year term) was elected as a nativist, but was mostly preoccupied with creating a modern police force. The aldermen did not like the mayor having full appointment power, so they rejected the law and passed a new one giving themselves and other city officials the power of appointing policemen as well. Formal military-style uniforms were required, which many saw as undemocratic and unfit for a republic. • Democratic Mayor William Havemeyer, a sugar merchant, replaced Harper in spring 1845 and created a new force of 800. Uniforms were abandoned, but a system of districts and station houses was created. • System of county sheriffs and marshals exists to this day. NYPD badge first issued in 1845

3. Building a Modern City National Media Capital • “Penny press” emerges in the 1830s to serve working-class readers. Previous papers had catered to the wealthy merchant class, such as the Journal of Commerce, founded by Arthur Tappan and Samuel Morse in 1827. • First true penny press paper is the New York Sun founded by Benjamin H. Day in 1833. Employs sensationalism, such as the 1835 “Great Moon Hoax,” a story that claimed that the famed astronomer Sir John Herschel had discovered a race of “moon men” with bat-like wings. • Scottish-born editor James Gordon Bennett founded the New York Herald in 1835, mixing the new sensationalism with appeal to middle-class readers. • Horace Greeley founds the New York Tribune in 1841 as a progressive voice in the Whig Party. He hired Karl Marx as a European correspondent in 1852. • The staid and boring New York Times is founded in 1851 by Henry J. Raymond, to counterbalance sensational coverage.

4. Building a Modern City James Gordon Bennett Sr. (1795-1872) Founder of the New York Herald (1835) ca. 1851-1852, Studio of Matthew Brady Horace Greeley (1811 – 1872) Founder of the New York Tribune (1841) (Date of photo unknown) Benjamin H. Day (1811-1889) Founder of the New York Sun (1833)

5. ANTEBELLUM IMMIGRATION, RACE & THE WORKING CLASS • The Bowery “B’hoy”: The First American Working-Class Culture? • “Rude Boy” working-class culture emerged along the Bowery, embraced by young immigrant men as well as natives; B’hoy” came from the Irish pronunciation of “boy.” • The “b’hoy” would curl and grease his hair into “soap-locks” and wear loud and colorful clothes, often in mockery of wealthy dandies promenading on Broadway. They would wear stovepipe hats known as “plugs.” • Bowery Boys frequented Bowery theaters, brothels, saloons, and dance halls; they enjoyed performances of melodramas and blackface minstrelsy. • Spoke in an elaborate slang called “flash talk,” introducing many new phrases and terms to American English: “chum,” “kick the bucket,” “going on a bender,” “blow-out,” etc. • Many joined volunteer fire companies and street-fighting gangs to prove their bravery; both tended to be organized along ethnic lines.

6. ANTEBELLUM IMMIGRATION, RACE & THE WORKING CLASS • The Bowery “B’hoy”: The First American Working-Class Culture? • Benjamin Baker’s 1848 play, A Glance at New York, introduced the prototypical b’hoy, Mose, who was a butcher by trade and a volunteer fire laddy. • The actor Frank Chanfrau popularized the character, who became the subject of many other plays and a whole series of dime novels. • “Lize” was his girlfriend, a prototypical “g’hal,” who would sing popular songs from minstrel shows. • “Mose” plays became popular across the nation with touring companies.

7. ANTEBELLUM IMMIGRATION, RACE & THE WORKING CLASS • The Bowery “B’hoy”: The First American Working-Class Culture? • Bowery culture served as a anti-bourgeois counterpoint to middle-class and elite religiosity and moral seriousness. • B’hoys enjoyed gambling, especially on bare-knuckle prize-fights, which the upper classes viewed as barbarous and immoral. • Boxing in New York was popularized among the working classes by an Irish immigrant named James “Yankee” Sullivan, who opened a Bowery saloon, “The Sawdust House,” which held weekly bouts starting in 1840. • One of the most famous bouts Sullivan participated in was an 1849 sixteen-round fight with a nativist butcher, Tom Hyer, who won the bout. James “Yankee” Sullivan (d. 1856)

8. ANTEBELLUM IMMIGRATION, RACE & THE WORKING CLASS Astor Place Riot, May 10, 1849 • Very vocal and participatory crowds and even outbreaks of riots were not unusual in New York’s antebellum theater scene—Bowery b’hoys often shouted down at the actors from the galleries—but the scale of what happened on the evening of May 10, 1849, was unprecedented. • The Astor Opera House opened in 1847 as an establishment that tried to keep out lower-class New Yorkers by charging high admission fees, and booked attractions that appealed to the elite elements of New York society. Geographically, it sat between the fancy establishments of Broadway to the west and the working-class Bowery to the east.

9. ANTEBELLUM IMMIGRATION, RACE & THE WORKING CLASS Astor Place Riot, May 10, 1849 • William Charles Macready, an English Shakespearean actor beloved of the British aristocracy, opened Macbeth at the Astor Opera House on May 7, 1849, and was shouted down by members of the audience. The b’hoys cried “Down with the codfish aristocracy,” threw rotten eggs and vegetables at him, and generated so much noise that the actors could not be heard over the din. • The friction was generated by a rivalry between Macready and American actor Edwin Forrest, whose muscular and histrionic style was well suited to Bowery melodrama compared to the cerebral and refined approach of Macready. Macready publicly stated that Forrest lacked “taste,” while Forrest had hissed Macready in mid-performance in 1846. • Forrest was performing at the same time at the Broadway Theatre, not too far away.

10. Building a Modern City Astor Place Riot, May 10, 1849

11. Building a Modern City Edwin Forrest (1806 – 1872) William Macready (1793-1863)

12. Building a Modern City Jenny Lind -“The Swedish Nightingale”(1820 – 1870) Phineas T. Barnum (1810-1891)

13. Building a Modern City

14. Building a Modern City Barnum’s American Museum, 1841-1865 (corner of Broadway and Ann Street)

15. Building a Modern City Barnum’s American Museum (1841-1865) An 1850 guidebook lists the following attractions: • Busts of presidents, Shakespeare, Cicero, Homer, Byron, etc. • Waxworks • Portrait gallery featuring likenesses of figures like Henry Clay, Daniel Boone, John Jay, Madison, Hamilton, painter Charles Willson Peale, etc. • Naked Venus statue • Tom Thumb’s suit • “The Automaton” • Live and stuffed animal specimens • Dioramas or “cosmoramas” of foreign or exotic scenes like “The Bath Room of the Turkish Sultan,” the Port of Naples, London as viewed from the bridge, etc.

16. Building a Modern City Italian Opera at Castle Garden in 1853 Francis Guy, The Tontine Coffee House (1797). New-York Historical Society.

17. Jasper Francis Cropsey (1823-1900)Completed in 1859, this painting by a well known Hudson River School artist depicted a Castle Garden that no longer existed, having been surrounded by landfill by 1855. This idealized image shows the structure in its days as an opera house Building a Modern City

18. Building a Modern City Another Wonder of the City: Mathew Brady’s Gallery Mathew Brady (ca. 1822-1896) – famed photographer • Born in upstate New York to Irish immigrant parents. • Studies painting with William Page, a student of Samuel F.B. Morse, who Brady meets. • Morse had Louis-Jacques-Mandé Daguerre in France, the creator of the daguerreotype, and teaches Brady that method. • Brady opens his photography studio at 205-207 Broadway, at Fulton Street. Enters annual fair of the American Institute and wins top prize. • Starts to display his portraits of famous Americans in 1845, and his gallery becomes a sensation. Matthew Brady in 1861

19. Building a Modern City Portrait of Lincoln by Brady in 1860 Matthew Brady in 1861

20. Building a Modern City Portrait of Walt Whitman by Brady during the Civil War

21. Building a Modern City Growth of New York Railroads • Mohawk & Hudson Railroad: This was the first in New York, connecting the cities of Albany and Schenectady. It was chartered in 1826 and opened in 1831. • New York & Erie Railroad: Chartered in 1832 with construction beginning in 1836. Ran from Piermont on the Hudson River to Goshen by 1841, reaching Binghamton by 1848. It did not reach Lake Erie at Dunkirk until 1851. Took a southern route across the state. • Railroads along the Erie Canal: Utica and Schenectady Railroad (opened 1836), Tonawanda Railroad (1837), Syracuse and Utica Railroad (opened 1839), Auburn and Syracuse Railroad (opened 1838), Attica and Buffalo Railroad (1842) Rochester and Syracuse Direct Railway (1853). • Hudson River Railroad: A rail connection between New York City and Troy (across the river from Albany) at last opens in 1851. New York City had been slow to connect because of its reliance on river steamboats to Albany. Steamship mogul Cornelius Vanderbilt acquired this line in 1864. • New York Central System: Many of the above roads (not the Erie) were consolidated under Erastus Corning in 1853 as the New York Central system. This system was acquired by steamship mogul Cornelius Vanderbilt in 1867, who merged it with the Hudson River Railroad. Vanderbilt acquired land between 42nd and 48th Street between Lexington and Madison Avenues to build the Grand Central Depot, which opened in 1871.