CHELSEA | June 4–Rally to Save Oldest House

This house was a major stop for Harriet Tubman and others who aided fugitive slaves from the south.

I have written about it before on this blog and on Huffington Post (65 "Likes").

Rally is June 4 at 2 PM.

This is the only building in the Underground Railway left in Manhattan. Support the preservation of what is left in New York City of the Underground Railway. 

September 8 - New Amsterdam surrenders to the British, who rena med it New York

This sign was still up on September 24, 2013 at a
restaurant on Fifth Avenue and about 19th Street
(Brooklyn). Photo by JTMarlin. 

Today in 1664, Dutch Governor Peter Stuyvesant surrendered New Amsterdam, the capital of what was then called New Netherland, to an English naval squadron under Colonel Richard Nicolls. Stuyvesant didn't even get back the $24 Peter Minuit paid in 1626 to the local Manhattans (Algonquin-speaking Indians) for the island, Battery not included.

Since Stuyvesant was unpopular, his Dutch subjects failed to rally around him to resist the Brits. Following capture, New Amsterdam's name was changed to New York, in honor of the Duke of York, who organized the mission to capture the city.

The Manhattan Indians didn't realize they had sold to Peter Minuit their right to be on inhabited parts of the island. Beginning in 1641, a war was fought between the colonists and the Manhattans. When New Amsterdam passed to English control, English and Dutch settlers lived together peacefully except for 1673 when English rule was interrupted by a Dutch raid.

In 1674, New York was returned to the English, and in 1686 became the first city in the colonies to receive a royal charter. After the American Revolution, it became the first capital of the United States. Today, New Yorkers say that Albany is the capital of New York State, Washington is the capital of the nation, and New York City is the capital of the world.

BALLOONING | Durant 1st American Aloft

Book by Durant on his flights.

This date in 1830, the first American aeronaut, Charles F. Durant, completed his first balloon flight – from Castle Garden in Battery Park at the lower tip of Manhattan to Perth Amboy, N.J., 25 miles.

(Thanks to Garrison Keillor for noting this historic trip. My comments below on Durant are based on Keillor's story and other sources.)

Americans were late to ballooning. The first manned balloon ride was in Paris in 1783, almost half a century before Durant. A year later, in 1784, a group crossed the English Channel.

The first balloon flight in America was in 1793, observed by a crowd including President Washington. But the aeronaut was French.

So when Durant took off in 1830, he was the first American.  Ballooning still seemed new and exciting in the USA. The New York Post declaimed:

The spectacle drew many persons to the Battery, which was literally covered with an immense multitude of every age, sex, condition and color, whose faces were all turned upwards. It is estimated that upwards of 20,000 persons were collected to see a man risk his neck for their amusement and for their money.

Durant wore a top hat and tails. From the balloon, he dropped copies of poems praising the joys of flight. He was aloft for about three hours, and he landed in a farm field, surprising a New Jersey farmer by the name of Johnson.

Three years later, in May 1833, Durant published a letter in the Journal of Commerce called "A New York Balloon Ascension":

Here burst upon my sight one of the most imposing views I have ever beheld. Call it majestic, splendid, or sublime, — invoke a Shakespeare's mind to describe, or a painter's to portray it, — they, and even thought must fail to conceive the rich downy softness and white fleecy accumulation of clouds piled in waves as far as the eye could reach, covering the earth, and closing to my sight the land, water, and everything, animate or inanimate, that I had so long and often viewed with delight. Above me nothing but a clear, cerulean expanse, — the golden sun-beams spreading over the vast ocean of clouds, and extending through immensity of space where sight is bounded, and from whence even thought returns, unable to traverse the confines of the vast field beyond. 

This gaga writing about flight and open skies continued for a century through Antoine Saint-Exupery in his Vol de Nuit and Little Prince.

The commercial airlines, particularly since the security checks became intrusive, have since taken some of the romance out of flying. But still in 1969 in East Hampton, NY a group of three people – two men and a woman – set off to cross the Atlantic in a balloon called "The Free Life". A book was written about their failed attempt:

Theirs was to have been the first balloon crossing [of the Atlantic] in history. Two of the three, Pamela Brown and Rod Anderson, were inexperienced adventurers who sought a daring route to money, fame and thrills; the third-the pilot-was Malcolm Brighton, a well-known British balloonist intrigued by the challenge. The author (The Dangerous Sort), Brighton's friend and a balloonist himself, here tries to reconstruct what happened from fragmentary records and interviews with friends and family. It becomes clear that in their zesty determination the two amateurs ignored warnings about the balloon's faulty construction, and that Brighton evidently knew the vessel was imperfect but trusted his skills to compensate for its defects. A moving meditation on risk-taking, luck and folly.

A tree and a plaque have been dedicated to them on the lawn outside Ashawagh Hall, where Old Stone Highway runs into Springs Fireplace Road. LTV, whose officer Genie Henderson was a close friend of Pamela Brown, put together a video about the attempt.

CHELSEA | Saving Manhattan's Sole Underground Railway Bldg. (Updated June 1, 2016)

Julie Finch, Host of Fundraiser in
her loft home. Photos by JTMarlin.

March 17, 2013–Yesterday my wife Alice and I were privileged to be able to attend a fundraiser on behalf of the only underground railroad site in Manhattan, at 339 West 29th Street, between 8th and 9th Avenues.

(I have also written about this on Huffington Post.)

This was a stop for fugitive slaves and their families from below the Mason-Dixon line to upstate New York, where they felt safe, or even to Canada if their pursuers were prepared to spend a lot of money to get them back.

The fugitives headed north in the night, guided by the Big Dipper – "Follow the drinking gourd," they were told, because it pointed to the North Star.

A major hero in bringing people through the railway system was Harriet Tubman. (Update May 17, 2015: Tubman just won a poll to be the first woman on a dollar-denominated bill, to replace Jackson on a $20.)

The only documented underground railway site on the island of Manhattan is the Gibbons Underground Railway Site at what used to be known as Lamartine Place. The current owner of the site has added an "ugly, illegal" floor to the historic house on a block that is of historical importance. The Friends of Lamartine Place are raising funds to pay Jack Lester, an attorney who has gone to court to require the landlord to remove the addition.

Fern Luskin, who documented
the historical importance of
the Gibbons Site.

Prior owners of the house – Abby Hopper Gibbons and James Sloan Gibbons – harbored runaway slaves in their home.

The house is also of historical importance because the family residing there managed to escape from the house during the Draft Riots by running over the rooftops of the row houses on what was then Lamartine Place and is now just called 29th Street.

The Friends of the Gibbons Underground Railroad site was organized by Fern Luskin and Julie M. Finch. I heard of the fundraiser via Assemblyman Richard N. Gottfried and the Chelsea Reform Democratic Club, which was represented by several officers.

One candidate for Borough President, Robert Jackson, was in attendance, and another candidate, Julie Menin, was represented by Andrew D. Brokman. The other two main Democratic candidates are Gale Brewer and Jessica Lappin. (Postscript: Gale Brewer was elected Borough President.)

For information on the broader problem of landmarking in New York City, visit the site of the Historic District Council at http:/hdc.org/.