This photo was taken by Matthew Brady in his New York studio at Broadway and Fulton streets, February 7, 1871.
Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) first came to New York, a city of more than 500,000, in 1853 to see the Crystal Palace Exposition. New York, filled with free blacks, Germans, Jews and Chinese, challenged the views of a nativist (Twain wrote snidely to his mother, “I reckon I had better black my face, for in these Eastern States niggers are considerably better than white people”). He walked four miles a day, living in a lower Manhattan boardinghouse on Duane Street, working as a printer for John A. Gray at 95-97 Cliff Street and regularly stopping off at the free printers’ library on Chambers Street. “I have taken a liking to the abominable place [New York],” he wrote, “and every time I get ready to leave I put if off a day or so from some unaccountable cause.” After two months, Twain traveled to Philadelphia and became a substitute typesetter for the Pennsylvania Inquirer and National Gazette. But he would return to New York more than 100 times, living there or nearby in 1867 (when he first met his wife-to-be, “timid and lovely”), 1900-03 and 1904-08. Mary Mapes Dodge called him the “Belle of New York.” He became senior partner in the publishing house of Charles L. Webster & Co., a founding member in the Players Club on Gramercy Park, a resident of a house at 14 W. 10th Street in Greenwich Village , then Wave Hill, a Riverdale mansion, and finally 21 Fifth Avenue. He also continued to write, though more bitterly “with a pen warmed up in Hell.”
October 10-October 13
Columbus Day, what better day to recall the story about Mark Twain and his prankster pals hoodwinking an Italian tourist guide, who believed American travelers wanted to know the tiniest tidbit about “Christo Columbo.” When the … Read more
This is Chandelier, one of the first people we talked to in New York City. We met her after having brunch at Red Rooster in Harlem. Chandelier has aspirations to be famous. Video by Dan
Scenes from Zuccotti Park in New York City’s Financial District: a look at Wall Street’s occupants with a surprise cameo from Mark Twain himself. Video by Dan
One thing about the Occupy Wall Street protest in Lower Manhattan’s Zuccotti Park: Don’t visit too early. Like, before 2 p.m. We made that mistake last week and arrived around 11 a.m. Everyone was still sleeping, … Read more
From its owner and art to its food, staff and clientele, the Red Rooster Harlem restaurant, our first stop in New York City, sends a multicultural message. Owner-celebrity chef Marcus Samuelsson, born in Ethiopia, orphaned at … Read more
