Category Archives: Essay Categories
Dressed to Kill
By the autumn of 1856 Emma Cunningham had all but given up on Harvey Burdell making good on his marital promises. One of her boarders, a bearded, balding fellow named John Eckel, was all too eager to lend a sympathetic ear to his landlady. Eckel was a bachelor, like Burdell, a middle-aged man with little […]
Also posted in Butchery on Bond Street: Essays
X Marks the Spot
Little tangible remains on earth to summon up the somber history of Dr. Harvey Burdell and Emma Hempstead Cunningham other than their final resting places at Brooklyn’s Green-Wood Cemetery. These unmarked plots and the gravesites of many other players in Butchery on Bond Street continue to transport me to a place in which I love […]
Also posted in Butchery on Bond Street: Essays
A Sore Loser
In Chapter 9 of Butchery on Bond Street, I’ve offered glimpses, both from real life as well as from a contemporary novella, into the gambling underworld that formed a vital part of the downtown demi-monde which Harvey Burdell inhabited. Burdell’s game was faro, but he acted as dealer, eliminating any financial risk for himself while […]
Also posted in Butchery on Bond Street: Essays
With My Head In the Clouds…
The attendants at the garage where I park my van are always gracious when I show up with that expectant look on my face. It’s not because I love my car. Prostate cancer treatment has perhaps forever altered my bladder management, so before I head out, I routinely ask to use the little concrete-block enclosure […]
Also posted in A Walker in the City: Flaneur Pieces
I am the Resurrection and the Life
Abutting the north side of James Renwick Jr.’s lacy Gothic Grace Church at Broadway and Tenth Street sits the Rectory. Set back from Broadway by a manicured greensward, the matching stone offices are entered via a curving flagstone path. You might as well be in mid-19th century Britain at one of the innumerable such churchyards […]
Also posted in Butchery on Bond Street: Essays
The Locus Delicti Still Stands on Bond Street… almost!
It was a chilly December day in 2001, a full year or more into my project, a day spent running hither and thither between archives and courthouses. Dusk had descended and I was headed home from the East 77th Street subway station. My route took me past a real estate office on 78th Street and […]
Also posted in Butchery on Bond Street: Essays
A Walk around Bond Street Way Back Then
Seeing history before one’s very eyes is always thrilling. After discovering the sordid story behind Butchery on Bond Street, I quickly made my way downtown, hoping I’d find the house where Harvey Burdell met his gruesome end. No such luck. The little townhouse was probably torn down before the start of the 20th century. A […]
Also posted in Butchery on Bond Street: Essays
Mister Dog
My father was a gentle, quiet, swarthy man, slow and decisive, both with logic and love. It was Summer-time, 1957. The day at a close, he’d read me a picture book. Sitting beside me on my trundle bed, Daddy was all mine. The four others could wait. My favorite story, for the umpteenth time. Once […]
Also posted in Faves, Lost New York
Glossolalia
Did Sci-Fi ever appeal to me? Not that I can remember. Even as a kid growing up in the town that built the first atom bomb, spaceships never grabbed me. Real life was strange enough, thank you, and not for the reasons you might guess. In the 50s and 60s, many of the local folks […]
Also posted in Yiddish Land + Jewish Themes
A Miner’s Lantern
***** Why? People constantly ask me this question: Why are you learning modern Hebrew? Why did you learn Yiddish? Why is it so enticing to you, that old newspaper article, that strange lantern slide? I listen, and then I stare off into space, speechless. All I can think of is that corny phrase my superannuated […]
Also posted in Found Objects
