history Archives - GothamJoe

April 18, 2023April 18, 2023

Jackie Robinson Museum

Edification value
Entertainment value
Should you go?
Time spent	74 minutes
Best thing I saw or learned	In 1956 the Brooklyn Dodgers made a goodwill tour of Japan. It’s a footnote to Jackie Robinson’s story but I loved the display containing photos, tickets, and other souvenirs from that trip.

I grew up a fan of both science fiction and dry English humor. As a result, whenever I see the number 42 I immediately think of the Answer to the Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe, and Everything.

42 - 9 - 5 : Jackie Robinson's numbers as a professional athlete If instead I had grown up in Brooklyn and been a fan of baseball, the number 42 would’ve had a similarly huge and cosmic significance. It was Jackie Robinson’s number when he played for the Brooklyn Dodgers from 1947 to 1956.

That significance of 42 is explored in detail at one of New York City’s newest museums (as of April 2023), the Jackie Robinson Museum, located somewhat unexpectedly in Soho.

Jackie Robinson Museum

Texts and timelines

The Jackie Robinson Museum occupies a bright ground floor space at the corner of Canal and Varick Streets. It’s something of a shame, actually, as the south-facing windows are almost entirely blocked by displays. A bit of daylight sneaks around them, but the design diminishes some the potential awesomeness of the space.

The museum comprises two main galleries: One devoted to Robinson the man and the other to Robinson the athlete. Smaller spaces invite visitors to “speak out, stand up!” (in a stairwell) and highlight Jackie Robinson in pop culture (by the restrooms). The curators take a role-based approach to Robinson’s life: soldier, activist, entrepreneur, family man, and of course athlete. Each of those pillars of the man is represented by a literal pillar in the museum, summarized by nice little infographics of key stats: “Jackie by the Numbers.”

There's a lot to read at the Jackie Robinson Museum

Infographics notwithstanding, the museum is extremely text-heavy — it felt like reading a Jackie Robinson biography printed on the walls (the photo here is typical). Indeed, it surprised me how little video the museum uses. (More on that in a moment.)

Beyond the copious amounts of text, each gallery contains a giant wall-filling timeline, one for Robinson’s life and one for his sports career.

Timeline of Jackie Robinson's life and times — Timeline blocking a view of Canal Street

Where’s Jackie Robinson?

If there was one thing missing from the Jackie Robinson Museum it’s, surprisingly, Jackie Robinson himself. For sure, there are lots of photos of him, and memorabilia, and quotations in wall texts. But for a very famous person who must’ve given countless radio and television interviews — the museum says that he even starred in his own biopic — there’s very little of that in the Jackie Robinson Museum.

It’s a notable contrast to the presence of Louis Armstrong that fills the wonderful Louis Armstrong House in Queens. Louis’s self-recorded audio journals bring the place to life. Here, Robinson doesn’t tell his own story so much as have it told for him, and the experience is poorer for it.

Wall of multimedia recordings of interviews about Jackie Robinson

It’s not that the place is against media. There’s a whole corner of interactive tablets featuring public figures delivering encomiums to Jackie Robinson’s general awesomeness, but not Robinson himself.

I’m never one to advocate for tech for its own sake, but in this metaversal age, if there’s any New York museum that could justify a tasteful holographic re-creation of its raison d’etre, it’s this museum.

The museum does include a fun, interactive, multi-sensory recreation of Ebbets Field (the Dodgers’ legendary stadium in Flatbush). So the curators thought along these lines.

A taste of Ebbets Field — Multimedia, interactive, Ebbets Field

Should you visit the Jackie Robinson Museum?

Old-school Brooklynites, Dodgers fans, and fans of historic moments in racial integration will definitely want to visit the Jackie Robinson Museum. Fans of Jackie Robinson’s story should also visit the awesome City Reliquary, which houses a lighthearted shrine to the man.

The museum does its job. I learned a significant amount about a historical figure I didn’t know all that much about –beyond his key historic achievement. However, I wish the narrative struck a better balance between the history and the fun, and with a lot less to read.

And when it comes to fun, the Jackie Robinson Museum swings and misses. For sure, the difficult, painful challenges of fighting racism and integrating Major League Baseball are stories this museum needs to tell. But this is also a story about baseball, and Chock Full O’Nuts coffee (When he retired from the Dodgers, Robinson became a VP there, the first Black vice president of a major American company), and being one of the most famous athletes in the world. It’s not that the Jackie Robinson Museum ignored the triumphs in Jackie Robinson’s life. It’s just that the balance felt off, and the man himself felt strangely absent. And that makes it hard to recommend to anyone with a merely casual interest.

Jackie Robinson Apple Ad

For Reference:

Address	75 Varick Street, Manhattan
Website	jackierobinsonmuseum.org
Cost	General Admission: $18
Other Relevant Links	City Reliquary’s Jackie Robinson page The Guardian on Douglas Adams and the number 42 (no Jackie Robinson reference)

March 8, 2020March 8, 2020

Museum of the American Gangster

Edification value
Entertainment value
Should you go?
Time spent	108 minutes
Best thing I saw or learned	I liked this dusty model rum runner, combined with Mimi’s commentary drawing a direct line from these boats to World War II PT boats and Kennedy’s wartime heroism. Rum Runner!

I arrived at the Museum of the American Gangster predisposed to dislike it. A small, threadbare operation by the sound of it, two modest rooms over a nautically-themed absinthe-specialist dive bar on St. Marks Place (with a fancy take-out-window sandwich shop embedded in it). Combine that premise with a steep $20 admission charge and it seemed sketchy — like the execrable Ground Zero Museum Workshop, a ploy to separate gullible museum-goers from their hard-earned cash.

Museum of the American Gangster-Entrance

And, yup, it’s that.

But it’s not just that. It’s also Mimi, the guide on the Sunday shortly before New Year’s when I took my tour. Mimi who gave a rather astonishing, 105-minute, note-free, free-associative, and fascinating history of the entire American project, from colonization through today, as viewed through the lens of organized crime and from the unapologetic perspective of a smart, funny, middle-aged, super-liberal, Jewish New Yorker.

I realize that description contains a fair amount of redundancy.

What I Saw at the Gangster Museum

The Gangster Museum is indeed basically two rooms, the size of a starter New York apartment (which in a past life it probably was). Very much of the Science Fair variety of exhibition: lots of photos, reproduction documents, and wall text with a few artifacts (old bottles, models, some bullets from the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre…Tommy gun) to liven things up.

Museum of the American Gangster-Tommy Gun

You can only visit on a tour — no wandering in off the street. For the first chunk of it, covering the early history of organized crime and booze and America, there are thankfully seats. The second part is about standing and peering at pictures on the walls. There’s not much of any time for self-guided exploration, but then again, there’s not much to explore.

Museum of the American Gangster-Office The space is, to put it kindly, disheveled. A desk in at the front of the first room serves as the office, with various bits that should probably be thrown out or tidied up, just kind of out there. If you need a restroom break, visit the dive bar on the ground floor.

Eventually, the tour takes you down to said dive bar, which was a speakeasy during Prohibition, and which also now houses the old St Mark’s Theater, installed after the Prohibition days. Then you put on somewhat sketchy hard hats (are these things sanitized between visitors?) and go down to the basement, which is even sketchier, and gives you a great view into what the basement of an East Village apartment building that also contains a dive bar and trendy sandwich shop looks like. Cluttered with utility pipes and ducts and wires and conduits dangerously everywhere.

Museum of the American Gangster-Basement — Typical East Village Basement

In the Prohibition days, the organized criminal who ran the enterprise kept his office down there, and you can see what the space is like today. It didn’t add much.

What I Heard at the Gangster Museum

I’m not going to try to reconstruct the Gangster Museum spiel from my notes. You need to hear it firsthand. Some highlights of what we covered, though:

The triangle slave trade
Women’s rights and the dawn of Prohibition
Southern plantations as Auschwitz
Rum Runners and Kennedy’s WWII Heroics
Prescription Booze
The Dawn of the Cocktail
The Chemist Wars as Extrajudicial Killing — or “Assisted Suicide”
Prohibition was just for the poor

And then we finally got to gangsters. This review is already long enough but two of my particular favorite quotes from the gangster part were:

Arnold Rothstein (real gangster): “I think we can do crime better.”
Omar Little (fictional gangster): “You come at the king, you best not miss.”

We rolled right over our allotted tour time and still barely had time for the history of the building. As it was Mimi turned away a guy who arrived for the 2:30 tour — sent him to the bar for a hot apple cider, because she wasn’t finished with us yet.

Museum of the American Gangster-Interior

We learned of lost safes, buried in concrete. The speakeasy turned theater, the lost office, the whole building an “improvised explosive device” should the Feds come knocking. Escape tunnels and expired Italian dinners (locked in said safes).

I can’t even.

There was a whole heck of a lot left out. No real conversation about organized crime post-Prohibition, or certainly not post-WWII.

Nothing about the potentially awesome, deep topic of organized crime in popular culture. Though Mimi did talk about the ways that early gangsters masterfully manipulated their images in popular culture — at least until their extralegal activities got too bloody or grandiose for their generosity or outsized personalities to balance.

I left exhausted and excited in a way I hardly expected from a two-room, threadbare, quasi-museum.

Museum of the American Gangster-Interior

Is The Museum of the American Gangster a Hit?

Rarely in the course of my museum project have I found myself so stymied by the bottom line. Generally, it’s an easy “go” or “don’t go.” Or a “go if you’re into so-and-so topic.” The Museum of the American Gangster isn’t a good museum — it’s not worth it if you approach it as one, even if you’re into organized crime.

But think of this place, instead, as a theatrical experience. Your reaction to it will completely depend on your guide and whether you click with that person. I can only speak for Mimi, who reminded me why I love this city in all its quirky, passionate, fascinating diversity.

Note also that there’s a Groupon deal seemingly always available that gets you in two-for-one. Do that. Even for Mimi, I have trouble recommending spending $20 on the Gangster Museum.

Museum of the American Gangster-Exterior

For Reference:

Address	80 Saint Marks Place, Manhattan (near First Avenue)
Website	museumoftheamericangangster.org
Cost	General Admission: $20, check website for guided tour times. Note, check Groupon for a 2 for one deal.
Other Relevant Links	Foxface, the fancy sandwich window, reviewed by the Times William Barnacle Tavern, reviewed in World’s Best Bars

June 27, 2018

Coney Island Museum

Edification value
Entertainment value
Should you go?
Time spent	52 minutes
Best thing I saw or learned	I liked three bumper cars on display, dating from (from left to right) the 1950s, the 1930s, and the 1980s. They demonstrate that if a technology is sufficiently perfect, it won’t change much over time. Evolution of Bumper Cars

It often goes overlooked, but New York, like Venice, is a city of islands. And not just the obvious Manhattan, Staten, and Long. This project has taken me to many of the city’s lesser islands, including City, Governor’s, Liberty, and Ellis. There’s no museum on Roosevelt Island, I note. But now, near the end of my journey, I’ve gone to Coney.

Coney Island Museum — The View From the Museum

Coney Island. Iconic playland for New York City, and thanks to twentieth century mass media, for the entire country. Maybe the world. Slightly tawdry, slightly tacky, entirely fun and open to one and all, the very name evokes the image of hot summer days, boardwalks, hot dogs, and a thousand and one sticky, sunburned delights. Continue reading “Coney Island Museum”

May 16, 2018

Federal Reserve Bank of New York Museum

Edification value
Entertainment value
Should you go?
Time spent	108 minutes
Best thing I saw or learned	The tantalizing glimpse into the gold vault. I’m not awed by wealth, generally, but there’s wealth and there’s WEALTH.

The Federal Reserve Bank of New York occupies a huge (full city block) beautiful Italian palazzo of a building constructed for it in 1924. Its classical grandeur meant to evoke the stability of many centuries of tradition. Solid and rich, like a Medici. Which was important, because the Fed was then still a fairly young institution created to stabilize the financial system and steer the economy in the right direction.

Security at the New York Fed exceeds even that of the United Nations. And frankly, in terms of relative institutional importance, that might be appropriate.

However, mere mortals can in fact visit. Limited free tours introduce visitors to the history and role of the Federal Reserve System, explain what the New York Fed does in particular, and, best of all, permit them to ogle one of the largest accumulations of gold in the world. Continue reading “Federal Reserve Bank of New York Museum”

May 14, 2018

Ellis Island National Museum of Immigration

Edification value
Entertainment value
Should you go?
Time spent	213 minutes
Best thing I saw or learned	Ellis Island’s mental health tests were simple puzzles designed to be as culturally and linguistically neutral as possible. In theory, they quickly weeded out anyone who needed a closer cognitive look.

The classic twofer of New York Harbor is typically viewed as nerdy little brother Ellis overshadowed by big sister Liberty, who enlightens the world. But from a museum perspective it is the reverse. Ellis Island’s outstanding National Museum of Immigration tells the story of a unique era in American history, in the space where that era unfolded. Twelve million people got their starts in the United States right here.

Ellis Island National Immigration Museum, New York Continue reading “Ellis Island National Museum of Immigration”

May 8, 2018

Conference House

Edification value
Entertainment value
Should you go?
Time spent	65 minutes
Best thing I saw or learned	As is very often the case with historic houses, I was enamored of the Conference House kitchen, which includes the original open hearth stove. I wouldn’t want to have to cook there, especially not in the summer. But it’s neat to look at.

Far, far away, on the southern shore of Staten Island, is an old farmhouse. And I mean, pretty darn old. The Billopp House, better known as Conference House, dates to around 1675. Wyckoff House in Brooklyn and Bowne House in Queens are older. And there are four houses in Staten Island that are older, too. I suppose Staten Islanders don’t tear stuff down as aggressively as they do in other boroughs.

Conference House, Staten Island

Anyway, Billopp House survives not through an accident of fate or because the Billopps themselves did anything particularly great or notorious. Rather, it survives because of a single afternoon there in 1776. Continue reading “Conference House”

May 2, 2018

Roosevelt House

Edification value
Entertainment value
Should you go?
Time spent	88 minutes
Best thing I saw or learned	Happy Days Are Here Again Set This 1934 pitcher and mug set featuring caricatures of FDR and other Democrats, created by the Stangl Pottery Company following the repeal of prohibition. Cheers!

Roosevelt House on East 65th Street is Hunter College’s public policy institute. Lots of schools name places after people who gave them money or famous alums (or both!) so you might just think, “Oh the Roosevelts bought naming rights back in the day.” Or, I mean, it’s Roosevelt, why not name something policy-related after any or all of them? But all those hypotheses are wrong!

Roosevelt House, Hunter College For nearly a quarter of a century FDR and Eleanor lived there as their place in New York City. Actually it’s two houses designed to look like one from the outside. Franklin and Eleanor lived to the right, while FDR’s mom lived to the left. While few historic furnishings remain, the house’s internal fabric is similar enough that you can get a sense of the space the Roosevelts occupied. And it’s open for public tours on Saturdays.

For some reason, Hunter keeps this quiet. I stumbled on to the place late; it was not on my initial list of museums. I think this is the most under-the-radar historic house museum in Manhattan. And I’ve been to all of them. At least, I think I have.

Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt in New York City

When Franklin and Eleanor married in 1905, Sara Delano Roosevelt, FDR’s mom, gave them a drawing of a townhouse as a wedding gift. It took a while to deliver on the real-world equivalent, and it’s unclear whether she specified she’d be their extremely close neighbor. But still, pretty neat wedding present.

The Roosevelts moved into the Charles Platt-designed house in 1908. They already had Anna and James, and had a further three surviving children while living there. The house feels big by New York standards, though small by modern McMansion ones. And maybe not so big for a family of 7 plus assorted staff.

Each of the paired houses featured a teensy elevator, installed mainly for staff use initially. They turned out to be extremely important once FDR contracted polio in 1921. His wheelchair, designed to be as small and discreet as possible, could fit.

Roosevelt House, Hunter College

The Roosevelts’ library is still a library today, and contains an array of interesting Rooseveltiana, including a complete set of travel guides published by a Works Progress Administration program to provide work for unemployed writers. Today, I guess, the government would just give ’em a blog.

Among other historic events, the Roosevelts were living in the house when FDR won the presidency in 1932. FDR’s first radio address to the nation (also recorded for newsreel distribution by Fox Movietone News, which I can’t help but find ironic) was broadcast from the drawing room.

The House and Hunter

Franklin and Eleanor were living in the White House when Sara Delano Roosevelt died in 1941. By that point, it seemed unlikely that their path would take them back to NYC, and so they decided to put the house/houses on the market. Hunter approached the family with an offer, and, generously, the Roosevelts both cut their asking price and donated some money to the school. In exchange, the house was named the “Sara Delano Roosevelt Memorial House for Religious and Racial Tolerance.”

Hunter used the house primarily as a student center, filling a vital need to build community in what was then an all-girl school that specialized in training teachers.

As a part of a not-very-wealthy academic institution, the house was hard used and ill repaired. Eventually in the 1990s the school had to close it; conditions inside were becoming downright dangerous.

Fortunately, Hunter admins and donors realized the importance of the house to the college, the city, and the country. The school raised nearly $20 million for a lengthy rehab. The restoration was bad in terms of the historicity of the place, permanently merging the two houses into a single space. But it was good in the sense that we might otherwise have lost the house entirely. As happened with Teddy Roosevelt’s torn down then rebuilt birthplace.

Should You Visit Roosevelt House?

Roosevelt House, Hunter College Today if anyone thinks of Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt’s residence at all, they likely think of Hyde Park, the estate north of New York that houses FDR’s presidential library. That’s absolutely worth a visit; Roosevelt House in Manhattan pales by comparison.

But Hunter’s public policy institute was the Roosevelts’ city home as they were growing their family; as Franklin suffered and recovered from polio; and as FDR and Eleanor plotted out the beginnings of a political career that would lead to arguably America’s greatest presidency.

So what if they don’t have the sofas or the lamps or the bric-a-brac. They have the place, and places matter. The guided tour was terrific, too. Rachel, a doctoral student when not guiding people around Roosevelt House, told the story with wit, warmth, and intellect, augmented by photos and videos in the various rooms to help bring the Roosevelts back to life.

If you’re at all interested in 20th century American history, presidential lives and times, or how wealthy New Yorkers lived in the early 1900s, Roosevelt House is well worth a visit.

For Reference:

Address	47-49 East 65th Street, Manhattan
Website	roosevelthouse.hunter.cuny.edu
Cost	General Admission: $10 suggested donation

May 1, 2018March 31, 2024

Statue of Liberty Museum

Edification value
Entertainment value
Should you go?
Time spent	123 minutes (not counting time going through security, waiting for the ferry, or on the ferry)
Best thing I saw or learned	I’d never given much thought to the Statue of Liberty’s pedestal. So the story of its design — and the near failure of the effort to raise the money to build it — fascinated me. Yes, it’s like choosing frame over the painting, but still. Think how different she’d look if they’d gone with a stepped, Aztec-looking pyramid as her base. Or something Egyptian revival.

Note: This is my entry about the original Statue of Liberty Museum, dating from May of 2018. Please see my updated review of the new museum on Liberty Island, here.

There aren’t all that many museums built to honor a single work of art. Right? I assert that and now suddenly I’m unsure of myself. In New York, there’s Walter de Maria’s Earth Room. And I think of the Hall of Fame for Great Americans as a single, unified whole, even though many busts of great men (and a few women) comprise it. And the Statue of Liberty Museum makes three.

Statue of Liberty, New York Harbor — Lady Liberty

The Statue of Liberty Museum occupies a substantial space in Liberty’s pedestal. It tells the story of the genesis, engineering, construction, and gifting of the statue, as well as her absolutely iconic role as a symbol of freedom, democracy, New York, and the United States. Among other treasures, it includes the statue’s original torch, glass and lit from inside. Continue reading “Statue of Liberty Museum”

March 27, 2018March 27, 2018

Kehila Kedosha Janina Synagogue and Museum

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Edification value
Entertainment value
Should you go?
Time spent	32 minutes
Best thing I saw or learned	In addition to the historic photos and artifacts the museum has a series of odd, delicate, contemporary wire sculptures hanging below the skylight. I couldn’t find any explanation for who made them or why they were there. Google solves the mini-mystery: they’re by Judy Moonelis.

Almost all Jewish people in the U.S. are either Ashkenazi or Sephardic. Ashkenazi Jews trace their ancestry to central or eastern Europe, while Sephardic people lived in the Iberian peninsula, until they were expelled by Ferdinand and Isabella. However, they are not the only European Judaic traditions. Tucked away on Broome Street in the Lower East Side is the only synagogue in the Western Hemisphere serving Romaniote Jews, a distinct, ancient, Greek community.

Kehila Kedosha Janina Synagoge and Museum, Lower East Side

The congregation of Kehila Kedosha Janina occupies a modest 1927 building, currently one of the last active synagogues on the Lower East Side. And since 1997 the building has also housed a museum on its upstairs floor– open only on Sundays as of this review– presenting photographs and artifacts describing the community and its traditions. Continue reading “Kehila Kedosha Janina Synagogue and Museum”

March 24, 2018

Staten Island Museum

Edification value
Entertainment value
Should you go?
Time spent	94 minutes
Best thing I saw or learned	I had completely forgotten about New York’s state fossil, until the Staten Island Museum reminded me. It’s a sea scorpion or eurypterid, which I would absolutely not want to meet on a Jurassic beach. The State Fossil!

The Staten Island Museum started as a private pooling of personal natural history collections in 1881, opening to the public in 1908. Currently it claims to be New York’s only truly encyclopedic museum, embracing science, history, and art. And so it does, albeit in small doses of each.

The museum formerly resided in a classical building in St. George, near the Staten Island Ferry, until last year, when it moved to Snug Harbor. It’s a bus or car ride from the ferry terminal, but at least the architecture is still appropriately museum-y.

Staten Island Museum

The Snug Harbor Cultural Center is Staten Island’s Mall of Enlightenment. A Chinese Scholar’s Garden, a Children’s Museum, the fantastic Noble Maritime Collection, the hit-or-miss Newhouse Center for Contemporary Art, and the Staten Island Museum all reside within its more-or-less renovated, beautiful, Greek revival grounds and buildings. Continue reading “Staten Island Museum”