Inside the Apple

Eighth Street, ca. 1945, by Berenice Abbott Seventy years ago, photographer Berenice Abbott and writer Henry Lanier published Greenwich Village: Yesterday and Today, a book that was one part...

http://blog.insidetheapple.net/2019/09/greenwich-village-today-and-yesterday.html

From June 1 to June 30, New York's Urban Archive is collecting photos shot in New York City for their "My Archive" project, which documents scenes from all around the city. As the website ...

http://blog.insidetheapple.net/2019/06/urban-archives-my-archive.html

Next year, Law and Order: Special Victims Unit will launch its twenty-first season, becoming the longest-running prime-time television show in history. (The current season wraps up next week....

http://blog.insidetheapple.net/2019/05/law-and-order-new-york-on-screen.html

1902 advertisement for the Moyea, available from a deal at 3 West 29th Street On April 25, 1901, New York State became the first in nation to require license plats on automobiles. The plates...

http://blog.insidetheapple.net/2019/04/the-first-license-plate.html

SPRING UPDATES FROM MICHELLE AND JAMES NEVIUS TWO NEW ARTICLES BY JAMES NEVIUS: Recently, James had two interesting stories published on the architectural history of the New York. In CURBE...

http://blog.insidetheapple.net/2019/04/some-spring-updates-from-michelle-and.html

In honor of the 188th anniversary of this notable event, enjoy this entry from the Inside the Apple archives. * * * When workers arrived at the City Bank at 52 Wall Street on Monday, Mar...

http://blog.insidetheapple.net/2019/03/march-21-1831-nycs-first-bank-robbery.html

On March 7, 1876, the US Patent Office granted Alexander Graham Bell the patent for his brand-new telephone or "harmonic telegraph." Bell was in a race to secure a patent with Elisha Gray, wh...

http://blog.insidetheapple.net/2019/03/alexander-graham-bell-and-st-denis-hotel.html

One of the most complicated legacies in presidential history is that of John Tyler, our tenth president. Elected to the vice presidency in 1840, he became president in April 1841, when Presid...

http://blog.insidetheapple.net/2019/02/john-tyler-julia-gardiner-and-awful.html

On February 14, 1849 -- 170 years ago today -- President James K. Polk sat down in the photography studio of Mathew Brady in New York City to have his portrait taken. This photo is the earli...

http://blog.insidetheapple.net/2019/02/james-k-polk-and-early-presidential.html

On February 7, 1964 -- fifty-five years ago today -- four lads from Liverpool landed at JFK airport and took America by storm. Coming just ten weeks after President Kennedy's assassination ...

http://blog.insidetheapple.net/2019/02/beatlemania.html

Jackie Robinson rookie card, 1947 100 years ago today Jackie Robinson was born in Cairo, Georgia. On April 15, 1947, he broke baseball's color line went he was sent out start at first base fo...

http://blog.insidetheapple.net/2019/01/happy-100th-birthday-jackie-robinson.html

Ramblin' outa the wild West, Leavin' the towns I love the best. Thought I'd seen some ups and down, ‘Til I come into New York town. People goin' down to the ground, Buildings goin' up to t...

http://blog.insidetheapple.net/2019/01/thought-id-seen-some-ups-and-downs-bob.html

Benjamin Franklin on the facade of the Brooklyn Historical Society On January 17, 1706, Benjamin Franklin -- printer, author, inventor, statesman, Postmaster General, and ladies' man -- wa...

http://blog.insidetheapple.net/2019/01/the-curious-case-of-benjamin-franklins.html

James has a story in today's NEW YORK POST that examines many of the hidden homes in New York City that were once carriage houses, rear tenements, or -- as is the case in the photo above --...

http://blog.insidetheapple.net/2019/01/postcard-thursday-rear-views.html

On January 3, 1959--sixty years ago today--Alaska was admitted to the union as the forty-ninth state. There had been some jockeying in congress to decide whether Alaska or Hawaii would beco...

http://blog.insidetheapple.net/2019/01/postcard-thursday-alaska-admitted-to.html

On December 27, 1845, John L. O'Sullivan wrote an influential editorial for the New York Morning News that is credited as the first use of "manifest destiny" to describe and justify the conti...

http://blog.insidetheapple.net/2018/12/postcard-thursday-manifest-destiny.html

The Elevated Railway near Morningside Park 'Tis the season for year-end wrap-ups and "Best of 2018" lists. James is pleased to have been awarded two slots in CURBED NEW YORK 's list of  t...

http://blog.insidetheapple.net/2018/12/postcard-thursday-year-at-curbed.html

Two hundred years ago, on December 13, 1818, Mary Ann Todd was born in Lexington, Kentucky. She met Abraham Lincoln after she'd moved to Springfield, Illinois; they married in 1842. We de...

http://blog.insidetheapple.net/2018/12/postcard-thursday-mary-todd-lincoln.html

Co-op City in the Bronx under construction in the early 1970s Fifty years ago, on December 10, 1968, the first families moved into Co-op City in the Bronx. Within five years, it would become...

http://blog.insidetheapple.net/2018/12/postcard-thursday-co-op-city-at-50.html

On November 29, 1877 -- one hundred and forty-one years ago today -- Thomas Edison first demonstrated the device that he would patent seven months later as the phonograph. Edison's first crud...

http://blog.insidetheapple.net/2018/11/postcard-thursday-edisons-phonograph.html

The modern holiday of Thanksgiving has become totally enmeshed with the story of the Pilgrims and The Mayflower, though the feast held by those denizens of Plymouth, Massachusetts, was certainly ...

http://blog.insidetheapple.net/2018/11/postcard-thursday-some-thanksgiving.html

Installation view; Whitney Museum of American Art. Photography by Ronald Amstutz A few years ago, James wrote a story for CURBED about the artist Hans Haacke and one of his most famous artwork...

http://blog.insidetheapple.net/2018/11/postcard-thursday-hans-haacke.html

image of the Malbone Street subway crash courtesy of the New York Transit Museum When Governor Andrew Cuomo jokingly (?) suggested the other day that the Newtown Creek be renamed the Amazon ...

http://blog.insidetheapple.net/2018/11/postcard-thursday-whats-in-street-name.html

I've got an old mule and her name is Sal Fifteen years on the Erie Canal She's a good old worker and a good old pal Fifteen years on the Erie Canal We've hauled some barges in our day Filled with...

http://blog.insidetheapple.net/2018/10/postcard-thursday-erie-canal.html

site for processing whale oil, Antarctica On October 18, 1851, a novel called The Whale by Herman Melville was published in England. It would come out in America about a month later under t...

http://blog.insidetheapple.net/2018/10/postcard-thursday-melvilles-whale.html