By Caitlin Hawke

At the turn of the last century, the Bloomingdale Reformed Church stood at 949 West End Avenue starting in 1905. But the congregation disbanded by 1913.  It had these nifty buttresses, which you can see in some of these images.

So, fellow Bloomingdalers, it's time for another round: locate the element below! Tell me what it is and where it is.  Extra points for any history you know about the element.

Put your answer in the comments or email: [email protected].  Stumped and have to know? Check back and at the top of the next "It's Elemental" post, I will reveal the location.

By Caitlin Hawke

I'd like to know how many issues editor Hedy Campbell has under her belt at this time.  My feeling is that the newsletter just gets meatier and better all the time. And Hedy's invisible hand is always at work, making sure that assignments are parcelled out, pieces jibe, and facts are checked. She even finds time to write.  Personally, I *love* coming home and finding the old print copy under my door, slipped caringly into place by a neighbor deployed in the block association's distribution chain. It's a good, old, shoe-leather approach. 

And I hope the paper version won't go away. But paper is paper. And some of you just like your reading material on your apparatus -- whatever that may be.

So here's a reminder that the Summer 2016 issue is now live online and ready for download. And you can leaf back over past issues, too. It's all right here, or you can get there at the "Quarterly Newsletter" tab above.  With a full bench of writers, the newsletter team is spearheaded by Hedy.  And Hedy successfully recruited a new team member, Bradford Spear, the local graphic artist and designer responsible for the layout and fetching look of the last two issues.

Hedy has been at the editing thing for a long time. And she's looking to pass the baton. So, if you have appreciated the newsletter over the years and have the skills to shoehorn and polish pieces, please let us know by sending an email to: [email protected]. It's excellent experience, a great way to stay involved, and a hugely valuable way to give a little back to the community.

Calling all potential newsletter editors. Sharpen your pencil! We've got a gig for you!

By Caitlin Hawke

Looking northeast...in 1935 and today.  Pretty similar except for the cars.

The "One from the Vault" feature plumbs the archives of back issues of block association newsletters for new neighbors and lovers of our community and its history.  To read others pieces from the vault, click on the category at right.


By Caitlin Hawke

Jock Davenport strikes again. This time with an article that clocks in at 16 years old. It was Y2K, the year that the CVS -- a third chain drugstore in two square blocks -- was beaten back by a community boycott.  We'd recently lost our Associated Supermarket and had two large drugstores, already.

And now, by 2016, we've dwindled back down to just one mega-drug-mart in our catchment.  As a sign of the times, the new tenants of choice are the urgi-care storefronts.

Speaking of Associated markets, today up in Washington Heights at W. 187th and Fort Washington Avenue, the neighbors just came together and beat back a Walgreens to preserve their beloved and much-needed Associated.  Strangely reminiscent.

In June 2000, Jock asked a lot of questions that a decade and a half later are still relevant.  With the recent landmarking of much of our western catchment, there were still plenty of carve-outs along Broadway.  So the specter of development looms large.

The lessons live on.  And, Jock, to answer your headlining question: Yes, we can!

We know.  Because we did.

And now, one from the vault...originally published in June 2000.

By Caitlin Hawke

It's comforting that some things don't change, to me at least. Have a look at the north side of W. 100th Street on the west side of Broadway, and you'll see that oldest of old wooden buildings right on the corner, occupied by the Metro Diner in all its retroness.  And moving north you have status quo for the next 107 years!  Oh, but have a look south, today.  Bottom photo is current for comparison's sake.

Above: The vandalized gingko tree on the east side of W. End Ave. between 102nd and 103rd St. in May.

And to add compliment to victory, a big thank you goes to NYC Parks for the two new plane trees on the north side of W. 102nd Street just around the corner from the feisty gingko.

Go have a look.  Keeping it modern, the trees are tagged with a QR code for those who wish to know more.  (h/t to Terence Hanrahan for the photo below).

Just when you were ready for some shade, Bloomingdale, we got it!

So, robins, come and get 'em.  These are your next "No-fee studios, w/ EIK, hrdwd floors and vu."  I trust it is not a problem that it's a walk-up?

By Caitlin Hawke

When I first considered this feature for the blog -- "Throwback Thursdays" of internet meme fame -- I had the notion that contributions of old snapshots would pour in from readers and neighbors.  I would still love for that to happen. I'd like to see you in your habitat, as my 4-year-old niece Clare would say.  But I also like the deep diving architectural history. You can see the whole historical library by clicking on the "Throwback" category, which you will find at right.

Chance had it this week that I came upon Chauncey.  Chauncey G. Olinger, Jr., to be exact.  Among other things, he chairs a University Seminar at Columbia on the university's history.  So we were destined to meet.

Chauncey was a resident of W. 105th Street back in the 1970s.  And he was the kind of neighbor who leaned into block beautification as you see below.  He was the engineer of the first new-fangled tree guard and a motor of the landmarking process for that beautiful block of houses, status that was designated on April 19, 1973 incredibly enough.  (It's a great report; I recommend the read!) Chauncey's DIY tree guard is, to my eye, particularly successful and of its era -- yet not unadaptably so.  But take a close look. It's not at all what you think!

So a big hat tip to Chauncey, today, as well as to all the other folks who toil to prettify these parts.  It's not lost on us. And history remembers you well. 

Bloomingdalers, send in your pictures from the 1960s and 1970s.
Our operators are standing by!
Email: [email protected]
​

By Caitlin Hawke

A block association is about nothing if not people and place.  This blog leaves a lot of room to depict our members pursuing activities like the Halloween Parade or planting day together. And we've been featuring a lot about our place, but in historical context.  So now here's a new occasional feature: It's Elemental, My Dear Bloomingdale!

This space will be reserved for pieces of our neighborhood. Literally, morsels.  Disconnected from their other context.  Think of it as a sort of "Name That Tune" game but in an architectural edition.  We may get creative.  If you have something you'd like to submit once you get the hang of the game, send a shot my way: [email protected].  The ground rules are simple:  it should be an architectural or abstracted detail that one could see on a stroll around our catchment.  And you should provide in your email an exact address or location so the element you submit may be found. 

So here goes:  name that tune, er, I mean, locate that element!  Put your answer in the comments or email: [email protected].  Stumped and have to know? Check back and at the top of the next "It's Elemental" post, I will reveal the location.

Game on!

By Caitlin Hawke

Here's one not to miss.  On Tuesday, June 7th at 6:30 p.m., check out this talk organized by the Bloomingdale Neighborhood History Group at the hostel (Hostelling International, 891 Amsterdam Avenue at W. 103rd Street).

"¡Unidad Latina! Political Activism on the UWS in the 1960s and 70s"
 
Featuring Rose Muzio, Professor of Politics at SUNY Old Westbury and author of Radical Imagination, Radical Humanity: Puerto Rican Political Activism in New York
Discussion with Lourdes García and other community activists
Photos by guest artist Máximo Colón.

By Caitlin Hawke
h/t to Neil and Gerry Borrell

It's uncanny how things come around in cycles. 

Cherie and Leonard Tredanari are names from our neighborhood that I can't shake.  I've lived here for a long time, but I never knew them. Still, because they hold an almost mythic presence in our parts, slowly I have gotten to know a bit about them. This is thanks, mostly, to tales I've heard from neighbors, like artist Neil Borrell, while hanging out at the Spring Bazaar.  Tales of barbequing in the street.  Of homemade wine. Of shenanigans.

I love the connection both to place and to past that this annual ritual -- our block association yard sale -- gives us.  And as you know, if you read this blog, place and past -- that is to say, this place and our collective past -- make me tick.  That's probably why I made a contribution to the appeal for the bench in memory of the Tredanaris.  I just think their names should be remembered around here.  If you knew them or if you feel the same way, maybe you, too, are supporting the effort for the Tredanari bench (more at the end of this piece).

What I have also learned is that Len had an incredible career in television...that is live television.  And he knew a bit about life's cycles, news cycles and election cycles. He was the TV director for the 1960 campaign of JFK. And as you'll see below he was in-house at Doyle Dane Bernbach (DDB) at a turning point for the Johnson campaign of 1964.

I thought about Len recently when my mind turned to mushroom clouds -- but not because our current president was making his historic remarks at Hiroshima.  Though that certainly also did the trick. No, the mushroom clouding my mind was one in a political ad made by the DDB Mad Men while Len worked there on the agency's LBJ campaign unit.  It was so powerful that the Democratic National Committee, DDB's client who commissioned the ad, only aired it once.  It had an estimated audience of 50 million viewers.

Just ponder it for a second.  A political ad that is so searing, it is only aired once.  If you can't quite imagine it in our day, I am with you.  For this happened 52 years ago, just two months before the 1964 election when Johnson defeated Goldwater in a landslide.  Landslides are something I want to talk about, too. But I will get to that in a minute.

The ad I am referring to has many names and, if you are of a certain age, you'll know it immediately when I say "Daisy Girl" or "Daisy" or its official name "Peace, Little Girl."  I am embedding it below to refresh your memory or initiate you, whichever is the case.  And lots more good stuff may be found here.  A transcript of the voiceover, courtesy of the LBJ Presidential Library is also below.

 

Of course the ad was such a media sensation that despite that it only had one paid airing on September 7, 1964, it was in fact played ad infinitum in the ensuing meta-analysis -- probably by every news outlet in America.

Without ever mentioning LBJ's opponent, the ad played on Goldwater's recent shot from the hip when he referred to nukes as "merely another weapon."  This helped LBJ move to a more moderate stance, as depicted in the ad, effectively branding Goldwater an extremist and intoning "Vote on November 3rd. The stakes are too high for you to stay home."  One uprooted daisy in September helped unleash a major landslide in November.

And so to cycle back to landslides and cycles themselves, I was discussing the current presidential race this morning with a good friend over coffee.  The topic: what the point spread might ultimately be come November 2016 between our two presumed candidates Clinton and Trump.  Will Trump (the one slightly lagging in the current general election polls that pit him against Clinton) come from behind and overtake his opponent?  Surely he has less to lose right now. And it is always better to stay in the leader's slipstream in almost any contest.  Should we look for that already small gap to close?

Or is my friend right: will Trump be overwhelmed in a Goldwatery landslide?

And on that note of political quandary, I will buy back your favor with a little Stevie Nicks, who by the way is once again hot stuff, embraced by Millenials as if she were theirs.  But she's ours.  Just saying.

P.S. Don't forget the campaign to honor the memory of the Tredanaris with a bench in Riverside Park.  For more, see the recent Block Association newsletter piece here:
http://www.weebly.com/uploads/8/8/7/5/8875571/102-3blkassociationspring16.pdf#page=9