Edgar Allan Poe in New York City
The blog Ephemeral New York is taking note of the Edgar Allan Poe house museum in The Bronx, which is closing in the spring for year long renovations:
“In 1846, Edgar Allan Poe, his wife (and cousin) Virginia, and his mother-in-law moved from Manhattan to a little wooden house built in 1812 in The Bronx’s rural Fordham neighborhood. The isolated, modest home, which rented for just $100 a year, must have suited Poe well- he wrote “Annabel Lee” and “The Bells” there.
But his time in the house would be short. Virginia succumbed to tuberculosis in 1847. Poe died in 1849 in Baltimore.”
According to the blog, in 1905, the New York State Legislature set aside preservation funs, and in 1910 the house was moved to Kingsbridge Road and the Grand Concourse. New York City is a perfect location for a memorial to Edgar Allan Poe – he loved the city, any city.
The Boston of Edgar Allan Poe’s birth in 1809 was one of the world’s wealthiest international trading ports and one of the largest manufacturing centers in the nation. It was also a city of squalor and vice, with a grim and ghastly underworld. It was a fitting start for Poe, whose mother and father (both actors) died when he was young. He came to be a master of the macabre weaving elaborate short stories into a shroud of mystery and death and launching a number of new American pop culture phenomenons.
Poe was a man of the new American city, having lived in the five largest cities in America during his lifetime. His first published work – Tamerlane and Other Poems (1827) – was credited only to “a Bostonian,” but as a young boy he was taken from his native city to Richmond, Virginia, and in his short life he also lived in Charleston, Philadelphia, Baltimore, New York City and the world’s largest city – London.
Poe was a sport, a libertine, as familiar with gambling, hard drinking, and womanizing, as he was with his many literary pursuits. Known to frequent Oyster cellars, brothels, casinos, and other dens of inequity, his literary work reflects the characters he met in his own life, the scoundrels, the bawdy women, and those on the margins of society – he delighted in showing local police unsympathetically in his writing.
Poe was also the first well-known writer in America to try and earn a living through writing alone. As a result, he suffered financially throughout his career until the day he was found on the streets of Baltimore, delirious and “in great distress…- in need of immediate assistance” according to the man who found him. At the time of his death, newspapers reported Poe died of “congestion of the brain” or “cerebral inflammation”, common euphemisms for death from a disreputable cause like alcoholism. Thanks to a disparaging, and now long forgotten literary rival, Poe’s death at 40 remains a mystery – in the end he was the personification of a genre he is credited with inventing.
Poe’s The Murders in the Rue Morgue (1841) is the first true detective story. The Dupin character established a number of literary devices that inspired the likes of Sherlock Holmes and Hercule Poirot – the brilliant detective, his personal friend serving as narrator, and the final revelation offered before the reasoning is explained. But beyond inventing the detective mystery, Poe is best known as a master of the physiological horror story. The Cask of Amontillado, The Fall of the House of Usher, The Masque of the Red Death, The Pit and the Pendulum, The Tell-Tale Heart, and The Raven are disturbing and unsettling works that have found their way into popular culture in literature, music, films, and television. Poe’s writing influenced the creation of science fiction (he often mentioned emerging technologies, such as those in The Balloon-Hoax), and the areas of esoteric cosmology and cryptography. He continues to influence Goth pop culture.
Poe’s most recurring themes deal with death, its physical signs, the effects of decomposition, premature burial, reanimation of the dead, and mourning. But outside horror, Poe also wrote burlesque, satires, humor tales, and hoaxes often in an attempt to liberate the reader from cultural conformity – he wrote for the emerging mass market by including popular cultural phenomena like phrenology and physiognomy. He was also a literary critic, and a newspaper and magazine editor.
New Netherland Institutes Rensselaerswijck Seminar
The New Netherland Institute has announced its 31st Rensselaerswijck Seminar, “Neighbors in the New World: New Netherland and New France,” a one-day conference to be held on Saturday, September 13, 2008, in the Kenneth B. Clark Auditorium of the Cultural Education Center at the Empire State Plaza in Albany.
The theme is the relationship between the Dutch and French in 17th-century North America. Major attention will focus on interactions of these European powers and their respective Indian allies. The following speakers will explore various aspects of this relationship, including direct and indirect contacts between these two European trading powers both in Europe and in the New World:
James Bradley, ArchLink, Boston, MA
“In Between Worlds: New Netherland and New France at Mid Century”
Jose Antonio Brandao, Western Michigan University, Kalamazoo, MI
“An Unreasonable Offer: Iroquois Policy towards their Huron and Mahican Neighbors”
Willem Frijhoff, Free University of Amsterdam, the Netherlands
“Jesuits, Calvinists, and Natives: Attitudes, Agency, and Encounters in the Early Christian Missions in the North.”
Joyce Goodfriend, University of Denver, CO
Introduction and presentation of the Hendricks Manuscript Award
Conrad Heidenreich, York University, Ontario, Canada
“The Skirmish with the Mohawk on Lake Champlain: was Champlain a ‘trigger-happy thug’ or ‘just following orders?’”
The conference program and registration information can be found online [pdf].
The New Netherland Institute is the friends group of the New Netherland Project, which, according to their website:
Was established under the sponsorship of the New York State Library and the Holland Society of New York. Its primary objective is to complete the transcription, translation, and publication of all Dutch documents in New York repositories relating to the seventeenth-century colony of New Netherland. This unique resource has already proven invaluable to scholars in a wide variety of disciplines. It also serves to enhance awareness of the major Dutch contributions to America over the centuries and the strong connections between the two nations. The Project is supported by the New York State Library, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the New Netherland Institute.
The New Netherland Institute (formerly Friends of New Netherland) seeks to increase public awareness of the work of the New Netherland Project and supports the Project through fund raising. The Institute assists authors of scholarly and popular material- disseminates information to educators, researchers, historians, curators, genealogists, and anthropologists- develops collaborations with academic institutions and other organizations interested in early American history- provides learning opportunities, such as internships, as well as research and consulting services pertaining to New Netherland- and sponsors activities related to the work of the New Netherland Project.
The Big 400: Champlain Descendants Still Local
2009 will mark the celebration of the 400th Anniversary of Samuel de Champlain’s arrival on the big lake, Henry Hudson’s on the big river, and the 200th Anniversary of Fulton’s steamship. Both New York and Vermont will be celebrating Champlain.
Here is an interesting article in the Plattsburgh Press Republican about the family of Champlain’s 12-year-old bride Helene Boulle, daughter of Nicholas Boulle. Helene’s nephew Robert was the first of the family to travel to America and his descendants are still in the area:
Helene was married to the 43-year-old explorer when she was 12 but remained with her parents for a few years after the wedding because of her age…-
Robert Boulle farmed land on the Isle of Orleans in the St. Lawrence River near Quebec City, and that 160-tract of land is still intact, said Boule, who visited the property in the mid-1990s…-
Helene Boulle accompanied Champlain to the area in 1620, but returned to France in 1624.
Debate Over The Future of The Erie Canal
There is an interesting piece in the Canadian Press about using Thruway tolls to support the Erie Canal. It’s correctly notes that it’s been a periodic debate over the canal’s nearly 200-year history:
Advocates say the Erie – and New York’s three smaller canals – are historical treasures that are essential to the state’s economy and worthy of public investment.
Opponents counter that the canal system is no longer a critical part of the state’s transportation network and the money would be better spent elsewhere, especially as the state faces crushing deficits in coming years…-
New York City soon became one of the country’s busiest ports and the canal spurred development of major upstate cities including Buffalo, Rochester, Syracuse and Albany, whose proximity attracted industry. Dozens of smaller industrial hubs also sprouted along its banks.There were two major upgrades – one completed in 1862 and the other in 1918 – to accommodate heavier traffic and larger vessels. But the rise of the railways in the late 1800s and the advent of the interstate highway system in the 1950s plucked the vast majority of freight off the canal.
In 1949, 3.5 million tonnes of freight plied the waters of New York’s canals. Last year, it was just over 11,790 tonnes, according to Canal Corp. figures.
For more than 10 years, state officials have been trying to reinvent the canal, marketing it as a tourist attraction and keeping its locks – most of which still use equipment installed in the early 1900s – operating.
The aim is to lure pleasure boaters to spend their money in the communities along the canal, many of which have suffered a decades-long economic slump following the decline of the region’s once thriving manufacturing industry.
[Carmella] Mantello [director of the New York State Canal Corp] says the canal agency has spent $250 million to help those communities fix up waterfront amenities…-
Mantello points out that there were roughly 200 festivals and other events planned on canal shores this year, compared with about 30 just three years ago.
She and other canal boosters point to a study that found canal tourism contributed about $380 million a year to the state’s economy in 2002 – a little more than one per cent of the total $34.4 billion the Travel Industry Association of America estimates travellers spent in New York that year. An update of that study is scheduled to be done this year.
The canals cost about $80 million a year to operate but take in only about $3 million from users. The rest comes from tolls collected from drivers on the New York State Thruway.
Brooklyn College Aquires Boxing History Collection
The New York Times is reporting that the Brooklyn College Library has acquired an outstanding collection of boxing history materials from boxing historian Hank Kaplan. According to his obituary (he died at 88 in 2007), Kaplan served was “founder and editor of Boxing Digest magazine, editor of Boxing World and served as consultant to such media outlets as Sports Illustrated, London Times, Der Stern and HBO.” According to the Times:
As yet unavailable to researchers, the collection — so far publicly confined to a small exhibition area in the library — consumes a 10-foot-high chamber in the Archives and Special Collections Division.
Crammed into the space are 2,600 books, 200,000 rare prints and negatives, 790 boxes of newspaper clippings from 1890 to 2007, 300 tapes of fights and interviews, reams of correspondence and hundreds of items of memorabilia, including belt buckles, trading cards and signed boxing gloves. Among the treasures is a heavy punching bag pounded by Cassius Clay in Miami before he renamed himself Muhammad Ali.
Although it might seem incongruous for an academic institution to devote space to a boxing collection, Professor Anthony M. Cucchiara said he hoped the Kaplan collection would be “a valuable archaeological dig” for scholars. “I suppose some people would want to turn their noses up at a boxing collection,” he said. “But the story of America is in this archive. Boxing is a prism for our cultural history, and is important for its associations with immigration, ethnicity, class, race and nationalism.”
Hank Kaplan received the James J. Walker Award from the Boxing Writers Association of America for “Long and Meritorious Service to Boxing” in 2002. In 2006 he was elected to the International Boxing Hall of Fame.
A number of his recent feature pieces are available online at The Sweet Science.
This Weeks Top New York History News
Americas First Railroad Tunnel Located?
Incredible news from the Schenectady Gazette this morning. Schenectady City Historian Don Rittner has apparently found the first railroad tunnel ever constructed buried in the historic Schenectady stockade district. The find includes a section of the original tracks:
The 15-foot-deep tunnel snakes its way across what are now a dozen or more private backyards. But in 1832, that land was a major thoroughfare — the foundation of the city’s prosperity and growth for the next century.
Hundreds of business owners and daring families rode through the tunnel on trains so experimental that they were considered too dangerous to be allowed on city streets. They could travel so fast and their engines could produce so many wild sparks that city leaders feared pedestrians would be run over and buildings burned down.
So horses dragged the trains from the Erie Canal to the Scotia bridge along a safe, deep tunnel. It was an experiment that lasted just six years, but in that time it was guaranteed a place in the history books. Not only was the tunnel the first ever constructed for a locomotive, but the entrance was the first junction of two railroad companies, according to Rittner.
Technically, the first rail road in the United States is believed to have been a gravity railroad in Lewiston, New York in 1764. The Mohawk and Hudson Railroad, of which the tunnel would have been a part, was the first modern-style railroad built in the State of New York- it was incorporated in 1826 by the Mohawk and Hudson Company and opened August 9, 1831. On April 19, 1847, the name was changed to the Albany and Schenectady Railroad. The railroad was consolidated into the New York Central Railroad on May 17, 1853. In 1867, the first elevated railroad was built in New York.
American Presidents Blog: The Roosevelts
One of the blogs I follow here at New York History is Michael Lorenzen’s American Presidents blog. he recently took a trip to New York and posted a three-part blog on the Roosevelt sites:
Part One – covered Sagamore Hill, the Long Island estate of Theodore and Edith Roosevelt.
Part Two – looked at Eleanor Roosevelt’s home Val-Kill.
Part Three – was a visit to the FDR Presidential Library and Museum in Hyde Park.
Interesting reads, from an interesting blog.
A New Book: Thomas Nast vs Boss Tweed
Morgan James Publishing has announced a new book on the Tammany Hall / Thomas Nast conflict titled Doomed by Cartoon: How Cartoonist Thomas Nast and the New York Times Brought Down Boss Tweed and His Ring of Thieves
In many respects, a nineteenth century story of David and Goliath. The legendary politician, Boss Tweed, effectively controlled New York City from after the Civil War until his downfall in November 1871. A huge man of almost 300 pounds, he and his Ring of Thieves appeared to be invincible as they stole an estimated $30 to $200 million—up to $2 billion in today’s dollars.
In addition to the city, county and state government, many judges and the police, the Tweed Ring effectively controlled the press except for Harper’s Weekly, American’s leading illustrated newspaper, and (after August 1870) The New-York Times.Thomas Nast was the most dominant American political cartoonist of all time. Physically, he was a head shorter than Tweed and about half his weight. Using his pen as his sling, he attacked Tweed almost single-handedly before the Times joined the battle in September 1870. After the Ring was beaten, Nast caricatured what happened to Tweed and his cohorts as justice pursued each of them.
Where Doomed by Cartoon differs from previous books about Boss Tweed is its focus on look¬ing at circumstances and events as Thomas Nast visualized them in his 160-plus cartoons, almost like a serialized but intermittent comic book covering 1866 through 1878. It has been organized to tell the Nast vs. Tweed story so that ordinary readers with an interest in politics, history and/or cartoons—or just in a uniquely caricatured political adventure story—will enjoy it.
For those who don’t recall, Tweed was arrested in 1872 and convicted the following year. He was sentenced to 12 years prison sentence, but that was reduced on appeal and he ended-up serving only one year. After his re-arrest on civil charges he was held in debtors prison. On January 3, 1875 Tweed escaped, fled to Cuba, but was arrested there by Cuban authorities. He then bribed his way onto a ship bound for Spain but was again arrested as he entered the Spain and returned to New York where he was re-imprisoned. Tweed died in the Ludlow Street Jail on April 12, 1878 and was buried in Brooklyn.