Tag Archives: NYC History

The Jackson Heights Post in Queens reports: Ms. Colombia, a colorful and beloved figure in the Jackson Heights LGBT community, has been found dead, Council Member Daniel Dromm has announced. Ms. Colombia, whose birth name was Osvaldo Gomez, was found dead in the waters off Jacob Riis Park, Dromm’s office said. No foul play is currently suspected, although the Office …

The Washington Post reports: Dick Leitsch, who became a leading gay rights activist in 1960s New York, where he helped end police entrapment of gays and organized the first major act of civil disobedience by a gay rights group — a boozy sit-in known as the Sip-In — died June 22 at a hospice center in Manhattan. He was 83. …

The New York Daily News reports: You can dance if you want to. A law that has banned dancing at the vast majority of the city’s bars and nightspots for nearly a century was struck down Tuesday by a City Council vote. The Council voted to repeal the cabaret law, which prohibits dancing without a cabaret license — which fewer …

It was 48 years ago this week that the queer community of New York City finally said “Enough!” As I’ve done for the last few years on this day, I’m reposting the story that the New York Daily News ran one week after the Stonewall Riots. Note how the story drips with condescension and ridicule. We’ve come a long, long …

NBC New York reports: Firefighters were still dousing flames Monday morning after a massive fire gutted a historic church in Manhattan on Sunday, the day its Serbian Orthodox parishioners had joyously celebrated Easter. The fire started Sunday evening and quickly engulfed the Serbian Orthodox Cathedral of Saint Sava in the Flatiron neighborhood, the FDNY said. More than 700 parishioners had …

From “the dawn of film.” Gothamist recaps: “The below video is a supercut of footage showing New York City between the years of 1896 and 1901. You’ll get to spend just about 10 minutes around town—during a blizzard, an automobile parade, the Central Park ice skating rink—and it’s all set to noise that’s been added in. Something about the noise …

CBS New York reports: Two New York legislators are leading a campaign to designate Stonewall Inn as the first national park honoring LGBT history. Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand and U.S. Rep. Jerrold Nadler made their announcement Sunday in front of the Greenwich Village tavern that was the scene of a 1969 uprising at a key moment for the nascent gay rights …

Mashable has published a photo essay which looks back at the original Penn Station. In 1910, when New York City transportation terminal Pennsylvania Station opened, it was widely praised for its majestic architecture. Designed in the Beaux-Arts style, it featured pink granite construction and a stately colonnade on the exterior.The main waiting room, inspired by the Roman Baths of Caracalla, …

Today’s post about the coming closure of Candle Bar prompted JMG reader John to tip us to OUTgoing, a recently-launched project to map all of the former and current gay bars in New York City history. Citylab reports: Jeff Ferzoco has created an interactive map, OUTgoing, that captures the ever-unfolding history of New York’s LGBT nightlife venues. Ferzoco, an information …

From the New York Times: Before there were Walgreens and frozen yogurt shops, SoulCycle and Thai fusion places, what extinct New York institutions sat on your block? A new website called OldNYC peels away a century’s worth of development and puts you outside coffee shoppes and quarantine hospitals. You might find a trolley running outside your apartment, or a hand-pushed …

Via the New York Times: An imposingly realistic vision of the old 1 World Trade Center, the ultimately doomed north tower, will begin appearing next month in a most unlikely place: the five special elevators servicing the observatory atop the new 1 World Trade Center. From the moment the doors close until they reopen 47 seconds later on the 102nd …

From Oscar Wilde Tours: Everyone knows that gay liberation began on a summer night in June 1969, with the Stonewall riots in Greenwich Village. But who knows that Mae West was arrested in Manhattan for producing a pro-gay-rights play in 1926? Or that Walt Whitman read his homoerotic poems to friends at a bar on Broadway? New York is bursting …

Via Big Appled: If you’ve ever wished you can go back in time to the New York City of 1949, today’s your lucky day. Mighty Manhattan, New York’s Wonder City is an outstanding 15 minute tour of Manhattan, filmed entirely in technicolor. The amazing flashback film visits many of the neighborhoods and landmarks of Manhattan, and it also occasionally includes …

Archeologists digging at New York City Hall have unearthed a douche that dates to the early 19th century. “At first we thought it was maybe a spice-grinder or needle case,” said Alyssa Loorya, president of Chrysalis Archaeology, the firm that oversaw the dig, part of a Department of Design and Construction rehabilitation project at City Hall. “We were stumped.” The …

Members of ACT UP yesterday crashed the ceremony to announce that the home of late New York City mayor and closet case Ed Koch is being named a historical landmark. That apartment building, NOT incidentally, is also the home of Larry Kramer.

JMG reader David points us to this nifty interactive map that reveals the construction date of New York City buildings. My Upper East Side building went up in 1910 and my super once explained that it was built as “overnight dorms” for the doctors at what is now Sloan-Kettering, which is down the street. According to the super, this was …

It was ten years ago today that a blackout darkened most of the northeast and Ontario. (I was at work on the 16th floor on 42nd Street when the lights went out and as it was less than two years since 9/11, a lot of people immediately feared the worst.) The power was out in parts of NYC for 29 …

Gothamist tips us to the below animated rendering of how midtown Manhattan grew skyward from the 1850s onward. The last few seconds depict the monster super-skyscrapers currently under construction.

Thanks to an FCC petition from Vonage . The next time you get a call from area code 212, it might be from Manhattan — Kansas. The sacred 212 area code, for generations synonymous with New York cool, is slowly making its way across the country following a petition by Internet phone provider Vonage. The company last month asked the …

It may not look like a typical subway station, but if you take the 2/5 to the Bronx Zoo you’ll now exit into the above building, which just finished undergoing a $66M restoration. Via Gothamist: “The building was designed with arches and balconies that give it the distinct look of an Italian villa,” said the MTA in a press release …