Coming in March...

IRISH HELL'S KITCHEN

Fleeing starvation during the Famine, Irish immigrants poured into New York City in the mid 19th century in search of a better life. One of the few jobs open to Irish men was back-breaking work on the docks. Hell’s Kitchen faced the west-side waterfront, a squalid, crime-ridden and overcrowded slum. Here the Irish families struggled to survive the poverty, and overcome discrimination. The area’s name still evokes images of:

     • Gang fights along Tenth Avenue
     • Irish killers with names like Happy jack Mulraney, Goo Goo Knox, Stumpy Malarkey,
       and One-Lung Curran
     • Cattle pens and slaughterhouses on West 39th St.

The music, Slaughter on Tenth Avenue, and the musical West Side Story, portrayed the tough life and the dangers well known to Hell’s Kitchen residents in the 20th century. Today, the slaughter houses, open prostitution, gang fights and sweaty old Madison Square Garden are gone, but this tour brings back those vivid images, and shows how that past influences the neighborhood today.

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THE IMMIGRANT, RADICAL, AND NOTORIOUS
WOMEN OF WASHINGTON SQUARE —

Washington Square has been the home of many of the political, creative, and intellectual movements in New York’s history, not least in part to its consistently amazing female population.
 
Perhaps in no other six blocks on earth have so many notable women lived and achieved for the last 150 years. Throughout the years, it has seen an unparalleled variety of women — working class, gentry, radical, literary, academic, theatrical, convict, and immigrant. Eleanor Roosevelt, Edith Wharton, Louisa May Alcott, Lila Acheson Wallace, Paulette Goddard, Emily Roebling, Bella Abzug, Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney, Ida Tarbell, Emily Post, and even the woman who invented the kewpie doll, all shared this famed New York neighborhood.

Highlights of the history of women include:
     • The salon of Mable Dodge, a center of WW I — activism
     • The tragedy of the Triangle fire and its role in the Ladies Garment Worker
        Union revolution
     • The stage shared by Bette Davis and Edna St. Vincent Millay
     • What happened when Sophie Vanderbilt refused to move to Washington Square

Other Washington Square history highlights include:
     • Why the neighborhood was once called "Little Africa"
     • Why there are 10,000 people buried under Washington Square Park