User menu

Menu

New York: Old & New; Its Story, Streets, and Landmarks

Wilson, Rufus Rockwell. New York: Old & New; Its Story, Streets, and Landmarks. Philadelphia: J.B. Lippincott & Co., 1903.
Type: 
book
Genre: 
history
Abstract: 

This two-volume history of New York City written at the turn of the century includes a brief description of the Pfaff's bohemians in its second volume.

People Mentioned in this Work

Arnold, George [pages:140]
Clapp, Henry [pages:140-42]
Clare, Ada [pages:142-43]

Describes Ada Clare as "a Southern girl of birth and breeding, a cousin of the poet Paul Hayne, and had been carefully educated; but with the taste that seemed born in her for an unconventional life, she drifted to New York, where she became an occasional writer and actress, and the boon companion of the hale fellows who gathered about Pfaff's round table. She was a great beauty 'and the embodiment of female Bohemianism. Seated at the table, with her mass of yellow hair shining abover her head and her face flushed with excitement, she parried thrusts of wit as deftly as a swordsman would a foil, and her laugh rang the clearest when an unfortunate one was unhorsed in the shock of intellect.' Ada Clare's last years were sorrowful ones. She outlived her beauty and most of her old companions to die of hydrophobia, the result of a bite of a pet dog" (2:142-43).

Danforth, Jennie [pages:142-43]
Greeley, Horace [pages:372-373]

As a demonstration of his statement, "New York's growth during the quarter century that preceded the Civil War nowhere more clearly manifested itself than in the development of its daily press," Wilson notes that Greeley's Tribune, "a four page penny sheet," was first publised April 10, 1841, at No. 30 Ann Street (372). Greeley was thrity at the time and had lived in New York for ten years after learning the printing trade in Vermont. Before establishing the Tribune Greeley had spent his time in New York "occupied generally in directing the fortunes of some popular publication." "He had already proven himself a powerful and persuasive writer, with a gift for keen satire and fine invective, and he made the Tribune an advocate first of the Whig and later the Republican principles the like of which, for vigor and moral earnestness, had never been known in America" (372). By the end of three months, the Tribune's circulation reached fifteen thousand copies; "Its career thereafter was one of steadily increasing prosperity, and its editor, whose breadth of vision widened with the years, remained until his death in 1872 the strongest individual force in journalism" (372-373).

O'Brien, Fitz-James [pages:140-42]
Pfaff, Charles [pages:140]
Raymond, Henry [pages:373,382]

Raymond was Greeley's first "chief lieutenant" when he began the Tribune. At this time he was "a young man of twenty-one, with a capacity for hard work and for straightforward narrative which soon made him a man of mark in his calling" (373). Raymond left the Tribune after two years to work at the Courier and Enquirer and founed the New York Times in September 1851. He remained editor and "directing spirit" of the paper until his death (373).

During the riots of July 13-15, 1863, Raymond's home was attacked. The Times strongly supported the draft that the protests that began the riot opposed (382).

Ward, Artemus [pages:140-41]
Whitman, Walt [pages:141]
Wilkins, Edward (Ned) [pages:140]
Winter, William [pages:5]

The book is dedicated to William Winter, "Poet, Scholar, and Kindly-Hearted Gentleman 'Far distant be the day that takes him from us!'" (5).