This week Dorothy Parker Complete Broadway, 1918-1923, turns ten years old. It is almost hard to believe that a book I researched for five years has been out for a decade. As I say when I give talks about the book, here are 150,000 words by Dorothy Parker you never read. Such as: “If I were to tell you the plot of the piece, in detail, you would feel that the only honorable thing for Continue Reading →
I guess I’ve been to the museum inside the Statue of Liberty pedestal more than 250 times in the past few years. So I know it pretty well. I’ve been to this modest museum more than any other in New York City. Sometimes I went seven days a week. So I think I’m well versed in what it offers. This week that museum was shutdown and a new $100-million glitzy museum opened in its place. Continue Reading →
My friends of the Guides Association of New York City, of which I’m a proud member, tipped me off to the news today that the Grand Hyatt Hotel is going to be razed. This is sad because 2019 is the centennial of the hotel’s opening. I was immediately reminded of the hotel because it’s an entry in my 2005 book A Journey into Dorothy Parker’s New York (Roaring Forties Press). I wrote a chapter about Continue Reading →
I am really happy my friend Michael Cumella has pushed Woodlawn Cemetery to finally put a gravestone on the final resting place of singer Nora Bayes. The unveiling is Saturday, April 21, at noon at the landmark cemetery in the Bronx. A nice New York Times story explains the whole rigmarole about why the famous singer never got a stone when she died 90 years ago. But this is just the first of a number Continue Reading →
Discovering the Southwest Florida Military Museum and Library was an incredible find on a recent trip. Located in Cape Coral, at 4820 Leonard Street, this museum defines off the beaten track: it’s not listed in guidebooks and is tucked away inside a former supermarket nearby auto repair shops and big box stores. But to walk inside the doors is to be transported back in time to see tens of thousands of artifacts from every military Continue Reading →
For the last few months a good friend and I have been researching new tours based on city fire department history. He’s an active member in the FDNY. Last year on the anniversary of the Triangle Shirtwaist Fire we co-guided a free tour, and he was a natural at it. To make a larger and more involved walking tour, we researched city fires going back to the Great Fire of 1776. There have actually been Continue Reading →
Today is the birth date of Neysa McMein, January 25, 1888, in Quincy, Illinois. Born Marjorie Moran McMein, she was the highest-paid and most in-demand female artist of the Jazz Age, who painted scores of magazine covers and created iconic posters in World War I. She was also a player in Women’s Suffrage in New York, a fashion icon, and a member of the Algonquin Round Table. McMein was a volunteer in France in WWI, Continue Reading →
I visited my first sculpture by E.M. Viquesney, The Spirit of the American Doughboy, 647 miles from our house. I was not disappointed to finally see in person a sculpture I’d only read about. This is the World War I sculpture that was mass-produced and today stands in nearly 150 locations across the United States. The one I got to see is in Charlotte, North Carolina. I was in town for a family wedding, so Continue Reading →
Princeton lost 151 men in World War I. Whether through wounds, accidents, injuries, sickness or the Influenza Pandemic, the toll was high. Of these 151, twenty-nine were members of the Princeton Club of New York. In the club entrance foyer is a beautiful bronze memorial to the honored war dead of the club. For my talk at the club on my book World War I New York: A Guide to the City’s Enduring Ties to Continue Reading →
On November 5 I am going to have a double-feature day: At 10:00 AM take a cemetery walking tour in Cypress Hills, Brooklyn. Followed by a 2:00 p.m. book talk about World War I New York: A Guide the City’s Enduring Ties to the Great War, which will be held at the Queens Historical Society in Flushing. To begin the day, I will lead a free tour of the only national cemetery in NYC in Continue Reading →