The New York Times, August 23, 1942

At the end of what is frequently termed “the world’s biggest excursion for a nickel,” is Staten Island—this year coming into new prominence as a vacation objective. Remembered by old-timers as a place of big estates and old-fashioned farms, the island retains wooded stretches and grass uplands. Its highest hills still offer the fine panoramic vistas that attracted early settlers seeking a rural retreat within easy reach of Manhattan. Twenty minutes from the Battery, holiday-makers are finding a new field of exploration.

And surprises are in store for the Manhattanite who has never toured the island’s fifty-seven square miles. For the nature lover, there is contrast in the seascapes and the shoreline rising steeply to wooded hills. For the energetic excursionist there are plenty of amusements—South Beach with its boardwalk, picnic grounds and sports fields; thirty-five miles of water front; bathing beaches facing the open sea yet sheltered from heavy surf; Great Kills and Princes Bay with their protected harbors for small sail boats. Indeed the list is a long one.

Some of the early movies were filmed on the island and hard-riding cowboys whooped over hills that present-day hikers climb to view the bay and the skyline of Manhattan. Well-known are Wolfe’s Pond Park, Silver Lake Park and Dongan Hills. Todt Hill, on the ridge that runs across the center of the island, is said to be the highest point of land along the entire Atlantic Coast between Maine and the Florida Keys. At New Dorp and Tottenville, at Willowbrook and Richmondtown, are historic houses. One of them, Conference House, was reputedly the scene of a meeting called to discuss reconciliation between the Colonies and England. Today, horseback riders and golfers are keeping fit on acres where Benjamin Franklin and Admiral Howe once walked and talked.

The New York Times, September 1, 1901

Nearly half a century has elapsed since the first fresh-air charity was instituted in New York by a kind-hearted editor who pitied the waifs playing about City Hall Park in sweltering midsummer days, whose little blistered feet might now run upon the cool grass beside them.

But for the saving help of the many fresh-air agencies in this city thousands of little ones would have perished during the recent hot wave which dealt suffering and death in unsparing measure in the crowded tenement districts of the city.

Nearly all the large churches in Manhattan conduct fresh-air charities for the poor of their districts, some for two weeks, some for the Summer, others for a day, but the burden of such work falls on the Children’s Aid Society, the Association for Improving the Condition of the Poor, St. John’s Guild, St. Vincent de Paul Society, the Mont Lawn Home, Edgewater Creche and Gilbert Robertson Memorial Home. The great work of these associations is supplemented by many smaller ones, and the work of each rendered more effectual and far-reaching by co-operation made possible by the Charity Organization Society.

The Secretary of this association stated that during the hot spell not half his invitations to go to Bath Beach were accepted. The poor people were too prostrated by the heat to come for their tickets and make the journey thither. Mr. Brace of the Children’s Aid Society, on the contrary, was besieged by pale-faced, suffering children eager to go to Brace Farm for two weeks, and so distressing was their condition that the little ones were sent without regard to the adequacy of accommodations at the farm, and allowed to sleep in barns, out-houses, and anywhere about the house. Everything was cool, clean, and comfortable. Barns were like glimpses of paradise to the poor little waifs from east side sweat boxes.

The same state of affairs prevailed at Mont Lawn, near Nyack-on-the-Hudson, where for a number of years a home has been maintained in which 2000 children of the slums may spend two weeks. Some children have gone there eight successive years and show in every way the benefit which they have derived from their surroundings. When a child is over twelve years of age it is not eligible for Mont Lawn, although some young people are taken as helpers about the place.

Great care is exercised in selecting those who shall have charge of the children. They must be women of agreeable manners, sweet dispositions, refined, and highly educated. There is little actual study, but instruction is given in various ways.

All caretakers are salaried and number graduates of Pratt and Armour Institutes, Vassar, Smith and Teachers Normal Colleges, and occasionally public school Principals. The same set of teachers are retained as far as possible.

A child in Mont Lawn is never struck or spoken to harshly, and this law of love works wonders in the manners and morals of the little children of the slums.

Probably the only fresh air organization which takes whole families for a two weeks’ vacation is the Gilbert A. Robertson Home in Westchester County. Its managers state that if they had $500 more they could accommodate twice as many people. There is room enough, but not provisions enough. Families pay their own carfare, which they get at a reduction, and when more cannot be accommodated at the home board is secured for these in surrounding farmhouses for $1.50 to $3 per week apiece. The home entertains eighty-six families each season, numbering on an average 54 men, 86 women and 220 children. Some men only spend Sundays with their families. Besides these 4,670 transients are entertained for a day each. These visitors feast on fruit, vegetables, and milk raised on the place, drive about the country, or amuse themselves in the beautiful grounds. A little work is done, but almost the whole time is given up to enjoyment.

Thousands of working girls find rest and refreshment at several places conducted under the auspices of the Working Girls’ Vacation Society, while its sick and weakly members are cared for at the Santa Clara Home in the Adirondacks.

It is not possible to enumerate the lives saved by St. John’s Guild. Its two floating hospitals, the Emma Abbott and the Juliard (the latter donated by Mrs. Augustus D. Julliard) carry on an average 70,000 patients, and of these at least 5,000 are usually critically ill. Yet no deaths occur on these boats. Salt and medicated baths are given all; doctors and surgeons take women and children in charge, and the trained nurses speak between them seventeen languages, for the poor and often squalid and ignorant mothers speak seventeen separate tongues and cannot be won to confidence and contentment save by the language to which they are accustomed.

Many thousands of mothers and children are treated in the splendidly equipped hospital at New Dorp, Staten Island. But St. John’s Guild, like other fresh air charities, is hampered in perfecting and extending its good work by lack of funds. It needs more wards where mothers with very sick children may obtain isolation and quiet, just as the Association for the Improvement of the Condition of the Poor finds crying need for an isolation hospital where children suspected of having infectious diseases may be detained.

At Sea Breeze, LI, the association has at present but one room for that purpose, while among the poor families in their charge in this city are at present many cases of smallpox, measles, chickenpox, scarlet fever, diphtheria, and minor diseases. Sorting well from sick children is a difficult and dangerous task, and one which confronts every fresh air association.

The Association for improving the Condition of the Poor has spend $8,500 on improvements at Sea Breeze since last season, and now has 18 new bathhouses, one new suithouse, and a fine pavilion for children and mothers who come on day parties, and new fences around its property.

Last season 17,814 people enjoyed the day trips, and 1,510 spent two weeks each. As an average 5,300 have an outing of two weeks at Sea Breeze, Bath Beach, and the home for crippled children.

Edgewater Creche on the Hudson, opposite Fort Lee Ferry landing, has for seventeen years proved a blessing to little ones and their mothers or caretakers who flock there to the number of 10,192 in a season. Tickets to the crèche are furnished by the Charity Organization Society, and 7,000 children, attended by parents, sisters, hospital nurses, or missionaries, enjoy the shady playgrounds, bathing pools, pavilion, hammocks, and cribs provided by the crèche. Lunches and milk are furnished for a few pennies, and nothing is lacking to insure comfort and health. Mothers with sick infants are kept at the crèche until they can be sent to some fresh-air home for treastment.

Always most interesting is the word done by the Children’s Aid Society, who have nine agents in this and six Western cities seeking out and placing in good homes pauper children. More than 70,000 have been placed in homes during the past forty-seven years, and the city has been relieved of their care. Of these two have been Governors of States, several are members of Congress, and large numbers of them stand at the head of every profession and many great commercial enterprises.

Boys are sent to the Brace farm and school and remain there until they have learned how to be useful and the manners and morals of gentlemen. Homes are then found for them, usually by adoption, and each child is visited until its future happiness is thoroughly assured.

Besides the fresh-air work on the farm carried on all the year, 5,162 homeless boys and girls have been sheltered during the year in the eight lodging houses provided by the society, and homes or situations found for all. Families and children have been helped to reach friends, twenty-six industrial schools, both day and evening, have aided American, German, and Italian children-including cripples—who would otherwise not attend school at all, and five fresh-air homes at Bath Beach, West Coney Island, Kensico, NY, and East Broadway have cared for the ill or helpless or poverty-stricken children and brightened their lives, not only for a Summer, but for always.

It cost $35 apiece to place in permanent homes 581 children, who would otherwise have cost the city $120 per annum if placed in an orphanage.

The average attendance at Bath Beach is 6,508, of whom 3,955 remain a week each. At Coney Island 7,385 mothers with sick babies find rest and health, and 1,810 boys from the industrial schools spend a week at the Boy’s Farm School in Summer.

These figures do not represent half the work done by the Children’s Aid Society, any more than brief mention tells of the thousands of little slum children who learn religion and happiness at Pelham Bay, in charge of the good priests of St. Vincent de Paul’s Society; or the thousands of others who continually fill the five special trolley cars set apart for use of the Association for Improving the Condition of the Poor to carry children to and from the seaside.

New York leads the country in the number and efficiency of its fresh-air associations, and these attest to the wonderful influence for good exerted by the fresh air and happy surroundings upon the ignorant, the sick, and the poor.

Mr. Loan Lost His Horse. He Lost His Companion Also, but She Was Found Again

The New York Times

Published: February 6, 1886

A man with a nose like an August sunset and cheeks like the roses that bloom in the Spring drove up to Kelly’s Hotel, on the Ocean Parkway Boulevard near the King’s Highway station on the Prospect Park and Coney Island Railroad, at midnight on Thursday and called for a drink. He gave his horse to the care of a stable boy and assisted a bundle of cloaks and scarfs and hoods to alight from the sleigh and walk into the hotel. In the parlor, when part of these numerous articles of wearing apparel had been laid on a chair, the bundle resolved itself into a young woman of prepossessing appearance with an affinity for hot lemonade. The man repeated his call for a drink several times with great success, for he soon got thawed out, and the crimson hue of his face gradually softened to the color of an underdone tenderloin of beef. Every time the wind whistled around the corner of the hotel he called for a drink, and on each occasion he took whiskey. He remarked casually that it was a cold night and that he needed something bracing. Before calling for a drink he invariably commented with a reckless increase of adjectives upon the abnormal condition of the weather. At the sixth drink it was the coldest night on record.

After a time the man took another drink, the woman concealed herself in many swathings of clothes, and the pair went forth into an atmosphere 8 degrees below zero. Relieved of the bustle and confusion incident to the call for drinks, the hotel drowsed back into its normal condition. An hour later the strange man, covered with snow from head to foot, walked into the hotel alone and called for a drink. He seemed stupefied, and to all appearances was under the influence of liquor.

“Where’s your horse and sleigh?” the bartender asked.

The man looked at him stupidly for a moment, and replied: “In Coney Island Creek, I guess.”

The bartender did not question him through fear of rousing his anger. After warming himself at the stove for a few minutes the man walked out of the hotel and disappeared. The bartender spoke to John Kelly, the proprietor of the place, about the man’s conduct, and subsequently started down toward Coney Island Creek to find the woman. On the embankment near the bridge which spans the creek he saw cutter tracks leading down to the creek, and in peering about in the faint light he found the horse and cutter in a big hole in the ice in the bed of the creek. He spoke to the horse but the animal did not move. Then walking out on the ice he found that the horse was frozen stiff. A woman’s woolen scarf was in the sleigh, and a small shawl lay on the ice. No trace of the woman could be found.

The accident was reported to the Gravesend police early yesterday morning, and was telephoned from Coney Island to Brooklyn. Several detectives were sent out on the case. A Fourth Precinct officer called at the house of William Loan, at No. 145 Classon-avenue, Brooklyn, late in the afternoon.

“Billy,” said the officer, “did you lose a horse and cutter last night?”

“Yes, I did,” returned Mr. Loan.

“Do you know where they are?”

“Yes. They are in Coney Island Creek!” Mr. Loan then explained that while driving down the Boulevard his horse had become unmanageable, and swerving from the road had fallen off the bridge into the creek. The ice broke and let the horse into the water. Loan tried to get the horse out, but failed. He did not know what became of the woman with him, but not seeing her anywhere about, concluded that she had either been drowned or had sought a place of safety. He refused to give the name of the woman to the officer, but said that he had learned upon reaching home yesterday morning that she had returned home at about 4 oclock in the morning.

It was learned last evening that the woman was Mrs. Jennie Williams of No. 205 Marcy-avenue, Brooklyn. Mrs. Williams is about 30 years of age, and has been separated from her husband for some time. She said that when the sleigh struck the ice she was thrown out and partially stunned. She was confused for a time by the struggles of the horse, and when she regained her presence of mind she was alone. The horse struggled desperately for a while, and then lay still. Mrs. Williams then climbed up to the road and wandered about until she found a man who for the minor consideration of $20 consented to take her to Brooklyn. Upon arriving home, she found that her nose, ears, and toes were frostbitten. She was put to bed for medical treatment. She was called upon during the afternoon by Mr. Loan, who, she said, seemed both surprised and pleased to find that she had returned in safety.

Mr. Loan is a boss stevedore of some means. He does a thriving business on the Wallabout docks, keeping about 25 horses employed most of the time. He is about 40 years old, and has a wife and family. The horse that he drove into Coney Island Creek was Mollie Brannagan, a young trotter which he purchased in Danbury, Conn., a year ago for $1,000. The animal was a good roadster, with a record of 2:30 on a heavy track. She was a vicious beast, and was fond of running away. She had run away with Loan three times, on one occasion injuring him severely.

He Was Her Husband's Friend

New York Times

Published: February 7, 1886

Mrs. Jennie Williams, of No. 205 Marcy-avenue, Brooklyn, who had such an unpleasant experience in Coney Island Creek on Thursday night in company with Mr. William Loan was seen at her home by a Times reporter yesterday. She introduced the reporter to a tall, broad-shouldered gentleman about 30 years of age, whom she said was her husband. He is in the same business as Mr. Loan and the two are friends. Her husband, Mrs. Williams explained, was not able to own a horse and sleigh, so when Mr. Loan asked her to take a drive he was perfectly willing to let her go. The lady felt hurt that some of the accounts of the story represented her as being divorced from her husband, which she denied.

The New York Times

The New York Times

Published: July 29, 1886

Ex-Alderman Nicholas R. O’Connor, of this city, is interested in many enterprises, chief among which is a gaslight company which illuminates the greater part of New Jersey. Besides being a member of the Union Club, Secretary of a lawn tennis society, and the leader of the german in Harlem, he is an amateur photographer, second only in skill to the son of Mr. Arnold, of Arnold, Constable & Co. The ex-Alderman last year had made for him at great expense a gorgeous pair of knickerbockers, or knee breeches. McCarthy, the tailor, told him that with the upper part of his lower limbs incased in these knickerbockers he would create a flutter among the gentler sex at the seaside. The ex-Alderman observed that he was married, and the subject was dropped. He went to Fire Island for a few days’ recreation, and, while promenading on the beach, was attacked by a party of fisherman who afterward declared that they thought they had clubbed the life out of a new kind of sea serpent. When the ex-Alderman recovered from his injuries he swore a mighty oath that he would never again wear the knickerbockers, and he gave them to his wife, telling her to sell them to the old clo’ man.

A few weeks ago the ex-Alderman was seized with the amateur photography mania, and purchased an expensive camera and other apparatus. He rushed out to Pike County, Penn., and took views of all the wild scenery in that picturesque country. He photographed farmers, their wives and children, and returned to this city rejoicing. He presented the photographs to his neighbors, and they are asking themselves the question, “What did we ever do to Nick O’Connor?”

On Friday evening, the regular monthly meeting of the Bacon and Cabbage Club was held in its clubroome in Park-place, and Major P.M. Haverty presided. After the pig’s head and bacon and cabbage had disappeared, and the only beverage—hot whiskey—allowed to be served in the clubroome had been liberally passed around, ex-Alderman O’Connor opened a large trunk and produced his camera, saying that he would take views of the members of the club in various groups by electric light. The temperature of the room was about 140°, but no member was allowed to put ice in the hot whiskey, and it is against the rules of the club for any member to use a fan or other cooling machine. The ex-Alderman took several very satisfactory views, and the club members voted that copies should be sent to the various charitable institutions. The members learned with deep regret that the ex-alderman intended to spend the remainder of the season at Fire Island catching instantaneous views of passing steamers. McCarthy, the tailor, persuaded him to again wear knickerbockers, and the ex-Alderman consented. All of Tuesday night a force of tailors were at work making the knickerbockers, and early yesterday morning they were sent to the ex-Alderman.

Last evening the ex-Alderman appeared at his office in Park-place. He walked lame and told a strange story. He said that yesterday morning, upon the invitation of a relative of his old friend, Police Justice Andrew Jackson White, he went to Barren Island. He had heard of Barren Island before, but had never visited it. He had an idea that it was a charming and picturesque spot if its name meant anything. He wore his knickerbockers and carried his photographic apparatus with him; also a special permit from the President of the Bacon and Cabbage Club to carry a fan. When he neared the island he was certain that he was not approaching a bed of roses. He saw some buildings which looked like factories of some kind, and when he landed he wished he was at his home in Harlem. He determined, however, not to lose the opportunity to gather some views and aimed his camera at a building which he was told was Justice White’s Summer residence. He was hard at work when, he says, a shot was fired at him. He shrieked, “Murder!” “Police!” at the top of his voice and aroused the natives. Search was made for the would-be murderer, but he was not discovered. Blood trickled from a spot on the calf of the ex-Alderman’s left leg. The surgeons of the Barren Island Hospital examined the wound and gave it as their opinion that it was the work of a mosquito. They actually laughed over it. Ex-Alderman O’Connor was highly indignant. He said that he not only heard the shot, but saw a man with a gun, and felt the wound in his left leg all at the same time. He was certain that an attempt to murder him had been made. His wound was dressed last night by Tailor McCarthy, who was a surgeon in the army, and the ex-Alderman was conveyed to his home in a carriage. He will go to Fire Island as soon as he recovers from his injuries. He is thankful that he escaped from Barren Island with his camera, and promises to do great work at Fire Island.

This article was presented as a theatrical reading by actor Mark Emerson Smith at the Brooklyn gallery Proteus Gowanus’s show Transport III with Underwater New York on July 8, 2010.