The New Year in New York City, 19th Century Style: Calling on New Year's Day

Before the 1890s, when New Year's Eve celebrations became the chief means to welcome the new year, New Yorkers spend most of their time, energy, and money on the traditional custom of visiting private homes on New Year's Day.* These extravagant all-day affairs involved the well-established men of New York City, or those with social aspirations, walking about the fashionable neighborhoods to pay courtly visits to fashionable well-heeled New York women. The women - wives, mothers, sisters, aunts, cousins, and their staffs - spent days preparing for the visits, fixing themselves up and laying out vast spreads of food and spirits upon tables and sidebars. It wasn't unusual for a group of men to visit sixty or seventy visits from morning to night. You can imagine their condition by the end of the day. I'd hate to host the last reception.

The pressure was on. If you didn't show up at a house on New Year's Day, it meant that you must not think much of the friendship. Imagine having to visit all your Facebook friends in person during the course of one day.

The early Dutch settlers celebrated New Year's Eve with their European traditions, but even so, the reception of "callers" on New Year's Day took on great significance.

The Year in Review: Walking off the Big Apple's Top New York Stories from 2011

Walking around New York City often involves bearing witness to many headline news stories. As a pedestrian journalist, I often report on the everyday life in New York City, but on occasion I like to report, if not without the occasional bias of an opinionated blogger, on the bigger stories as they unfold. The following 10 events or developments from 2011 stood out from the pack.

10. East River Ferry

Back in the Gilded Age, ferry service was a regular thing on the East River, but the construction of the Brooklyn Bridge in 1883 put many of the ferries out of service. Beginning in June of 2011, the NY Waterway's East River Ferry returned to the waters, inaugurating a commuter ferry service from Manhattan to stops in Brooklyn and one in Queens. The service is a testament to the need for alternative transportation in the city.

9. De Kooning Retrospective at MoMA

Two hundred works by the influential postwar artist, almost all breathtaking in ambition and color, made this critically acclaimed retrospective richly rewarding. (through January 9, 2012)

8. High Line, Section 2

The section of the High Line north to W. 30th Street opened to the public in June, providing intimate views of adjacent old and contemporary buildings, a patch of lawn, and imaginative plantings along the way. One of the best places to walk the tracks in all of America.

From the Arch and Back Again: A Nighttime Stroll to See the Holiday Lights

Running around to complete holiday preparations is often so frantic that the idea of taking an extra leisurely walk for pleasure seems somewhat ridiculous, if not inefficient. Yet, taking this additional stroll, especially in a city known to produce stress, provides the means to walk off some of the excessive pressures of the holiday season. In addition to the benefits of unwinding an overly tight psyche, a restorative walk around the neighborhood can include the pleasures of the city draped in bright holiday colors. It's a nice change from our city uniform of browns, grays and blacks.

We begin at the Washington Square Arch, our little Paris-like monument in Greenwich Village's famous park. As a neighbor, I am proud of the Arch, the holiday tree, and the views of the Empire State Building, festooned in red and green, in the distance up Fifth Avenue at 34th Street.

Taxis veer south on Fifth Avenue toward its finale in the Village at the Arch.

Shopping Ladies' Mile in the Second Gilded Age: A Self-Guided Walk and Map

Ladies' Mile, the term for the historic shopping district of New York City's Gilded Age in the late 19th century, continues as an important neighborhood for shopping. The boundaries of the designated historic district stretch roughly from W. 15th to W. 23rd Street, the area northwest of Union Square up to Madison Square. The previous post on New York City Holiday Shopping in the Gilded Age seemed to invite this obvious follow-up post and self-guided walk.

the former Lord & Taylor Dry Goods Store,
Broadway and 20th St. southwest corner

Many of the Beaux-Arts style store palaces built for New York's wealthy class of the former century are now repurposed for contemporary needs. These blocks on Broadway are particularly rich with the fancier French 19th century architectural styles, but check out the extraordinary current locations for stores like Bed, Bath & Beyond (620 Sixth Avenue) and Home Depot (40 W. 23rd St.)

New York City Holiday Shopping: Online Artifacts from the Gilded Age

Several commentators in the popular press have started comparing our own time to the Gilded Age, a term for the late 19th century decades in the United States that were marked by rapid industrialization, economic development, financial havoc, and extreme inequality between the rich and the poor. New York City was one of the most important economic and social centers of the era, a city where the wealthy industrialists built their mansions in Beaux-Arts opulence while the newly-arrived immigrant families crowded together in confined tenement structures.

Between these two groups, an expanding middle class grew with the founding of new manufacturing, commercial, and retail businesses, enterprises that would depend upon consumer spending habits. The popularization and commercialization of the Christmas holiday also rapidly grew during the 1880s and 1890s, with an emphasis in the city on the festive presentation of store windows and special marketing. Here, then, are a few documents that provide a glimpse into the holidays in New York City during the Gilded Age.

I've added the bold type to emphasize geographical locations in the city.

• "Broadway" by Richard Harding Davis. Illustrations by A. B. Frost. ‪Scribner's magazine, Volume 9‬, by Edward Livermore Burlingame, Making of America Project. Charles Scribners Sons, 1891.

Broadway, south of Grace Church. 1891.
Farther ahead is Union Square and the beginning of the fashionable Ladies' Mile.

"The Broadway side of Union Square is its richest and most picturesque. The great jewelry and silver-shops begin here, and private carriages line the curb in quadruple perfection in any plate - glass window with a sufficiently dark background to throw a reflection.

Imagining Christmas: Washington Irving's Solitary Walk, and a Stroll from Clement Clarke Moore's Chelsea to O. Henry's Irving Place

Washington Irving, Clement Clarke Moore, and O. Henry

(The following post includes material previously published on Walking Off the Big Apple, now gathered together around the virtual holiday hearth. - TT)

Many of the ways we think of Christmas, in most of its secular and popular forms - the chubby Santa and his reindeer, the newly fallen snow, the warm hearth donned with Christmas stockings, family and friends celebrating in cheer, can trace its roots to the pens of two New York native sons, Washington Irving (1783-1859) and Clement Clarke Moore (1779-1863), and to another popular storyteller who drifted to New York, William Sydney Porter (1862-1910), better known as O. Henry. 

Washington Irving's Solitary Walk Through Christmas

"Stranger and sojourner as I am in the land,--though for me no social hearth may blaze, no hospitable roof throw open its doors, nor the warm grasp of friendship welcome me at the threshold,--yet I feel the influence of the season beaming into my soul from the happy looks of those around me." - Washington Irving

New York native and storyteller Washington Irving made Christmas an important holiday in the United States, reworking Dutch folk tales of Saint Nicholas to invent the jolly Santa Claus and publishing popular sketches of the time he spent Christmas in rural England with an aristocratic family.

A subtle and important aspect of Irving's writings about the holiday is how he approached a convivial family-oriented time of year as a homesick solitary man. The much loved and charming youngest child of a large New York merchant class family, Irving was pressed to study for the law though he loved literature and drawing. He and his brother Peter started writing the witty satirical history of New York, but he was left with finishing it when Peter was called away to England for the family business. During this time Washington fell in love with Matilda Hoffman, the 17-year-old daughter of a judge, and he put his literary career aside to join the judge's law practice to demonstrate his responsibility. Matilda soon took ill of consumption and died in April of 1809. Irving never married.

So, You've Arrived by Bus: Short Walks to NYC Attractions from the Port Authority Bus Terminal

Due to its proximity to many of the city's well-known attractions and transit stations, the Port Authority Bus Terminal, located just a long block west of Times Square, is also one of the most convenient points of entry to the city. In addition to the Theater District, many popular destinations are within easy walking distance, including Bryant Park, Madison Square Garden, Herald Square, Rockefeller Center, and more. Even MoMA or the top of the High Line are only about a mile away, making for a pleasant walk on fair weather days. With 200,000 people making use of the facility every day, the equivalent of the population of a large city, the Port Authority Bus Terminal is not surprisingly the largest bus terminal in the world.

Interior, Port Authority Bus Terminal, decorated for the holidays.

20 New York City Books: Gift Guide 2011, Non-Fiction Edition

2011's crop of New York-centered books yields fantastic stories, uncommon vistas, and (sorry for the cliché) something for everyone. Be sure to bookmark this page while out browsing your favorite bookstore.

• High Line: The Inside Story of New York City's Park in the Sky by Joshua David and Robert Hammond. Farrar, Straus and Giroux. 2011. 352 pages. (paper) The two citizens who founded the city's sensational elevated park tell their story.

• Guide to Contemporary New York City Architecture by John Hill. W. W. Norton & Company. 2011. 304 pages. (paper) It's about time we get a book that looks at the new New York architecture. Projects arranged by neighborhoods allow for self-guided adventures.

• Field Guide to the Street Trees of New York City by Leslie Day with illustrations by Trudy Smoke. The Johns Hopkins University Press. 2011. 295 pages. (paper) A guide to fifty trees that line New York streets. Let's be well-versed on our strolls through leafy neighborhoods.

• Stories in Stone New York: A Field Guide to New York City Area Cemeteries & Their Residents by Doug Keister. Gibbs Smith. 2011. 256 pages. (hardcover) Photos and GPS directions to the city's permanent residents and their gravesites.

• Andy Warhol's New York City: Four Walks, Uptown to Downtown by Thomas Kiedrowski with illustrations by Vito Giallo. Little Bookroom. 2011. 144 pages. (paper) Warhol fans will delight in following the art giant through his favorite places in the city.

• Raised by the Church: Growing up in New York City's Catholic Orphanages by Edward Rohs and Judith Estrine. Fordham University Press. 2011. 240 pages. (hardcover) Compassionate and humorous story of a New York social worker's life and thoughts about growing up in a charitable institution.

• The Other Islands of New York City: A History and Guide (Third Edition) by Sharon Seitz and Stuart Miller. Countryman Press. 2011. 344 pages. (paper) Strange to think, but the city is situated among 42 islands in a complex archipelago. Learn about the other islands beyond Mannahatta.

Nighttime New York Glamour: Three Blocks of 59th Street

Walking just three blocks west along E. 59th Street - from Lexington to Park to Madison to Fifth Avenue - yields the glamorous essence that many visitors expect of New York City. While a few large upscale national retailers line these blocks, stores found in other cities such as Williams-Sonoma, Pottery Barn, and Crate & Barrel, the presence of luxury European retailers and names from old New York (Argosy Bookstore is one comfortable reminder) kicks up the glamour quotient to a higher notch.

Argosy Bookstore, founded in 1925

lights along 59th Street near Park Avenue