Between 1905 and the 1920s, numerous Japanese art goods, import-export, and housewares businesses clustered on the southern border of today’s Upper East Side in Midtown East. The shops included the importer S. Kuwayama at 114 E 59th St., the Japan Art … Continue reading
In the early 20th century, the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway did not yet cut across this somewhat unsightly section of downtown Brooklyn to the east of Cadman Plaza. The area was hardly tranquil, of course. The Brooklyn Bridge and the newer Manhattan … Continue reading
In early 1930, theater-goers in New York City enjoyed an unusual oppor-tunity: Mei Lan-fang, the most famous Peking opera actor in China, visited the city as part of a US tour to showcase his art and to make a case … Continue reading
According to the website SidwaysNYC.com, “Dawn Powell, novelist and playwright; Marianne Moore, the Pulitzer prize-winning poet; Argentinean tango composer Astor Piazzolla; musician Jimi Hendrix; children’s author and illustrator Maurice Sendak; and Barbra Streisand all called 9th Street home at one … Continue reading
Situated on the southern edge of Manhattan’s Upper West Side, the Lincoln Center performing arts complex is one of the most famous products of midcentury urban renewal. The process of bulldozing the neighborhood began in the 1940s, when the New York … Continue reading
This two building complex at 331-332 Riverside Drive is the current home of the New York Buddhist Church, which has occupied the spot since 1955. Before that time, the congregation was located in a smaller brownstone building at 171 W … Continue reading
This simple brownstone at 28 East 20th Street in Manhattan is a replica of the original building that once occupied the same site. That townhouse was the birthplace of Theodore Roosevelt, the twenty-sixth president of the United States. TR was … Continue reading
This ordinary townhouse at 168 Clinton Street, Brooklyn Heights, served as New York City’s first hostel for Japanese American resettlers during World War Two. I’ve discussed resettlement in New York City in a previous post about the newspapers the Japanese Times … Continue reading
This building, 12 W. 17th Street, is the address where the Japanese Times (New York Shimpo) newspaper operated until World War Two. The publisher of the Japanese Times was Shozo Midzutani, a local businessman and art dealer who started the paper in 1911. … Continue reading