The Slocum Tragedy Through 9/11 Eyes

Q:  A reader asks "I know that the 9/11 tragedy was the biggest loss of life in the city's history.  What event is the second biggest and are there any parallels to 9/11?"




September 11, 2001 Attacks

A: The Slocum tragedy in 1904 was the second biggest loss of life in New York City history and the worst inland-waters, peacetime tragedy in the nation’s history. On the clear summer day of June 15, 1904, more than 1,300 New Yorkers, mostly German immigrants from the congregation of St. Mark’s Evangelical Lutheran Church of East 6th Street in the heart of what was then Little Germany, boarded the Slocum, a triple-decker wooden ship built in 1891 and named after General Henry Warner Slocum (1827-1894) who commanded the extreme right line of the Union Army at Gettysburg, for the church’s seventeenth annual picnic in Locust Grove on Long Island.  


Slocum Ship (1904)

Donning their best attire and ready for a much anticipated day of picnics and dancing, the passengers waived goodbye to loved ones on shore as the ship left dock on the Third Street Pier in the East River around 9:30 am and headed north.  Less than 30 minutes into the journey, the ship caught fire, likely due to an errantly tossed match.  The fire ferociously spread, engulfing the ship in an inferno and leaving those on board with the difficult decision of remaining on the burning ship or jumping to their likely death by drowning in the East River.  In less than an hour, the tragedy claimed 1,021 lives.  Describing the scene of death and destruction, Coroner William O'Gorman, Jr. said no witness "will ever forget the scene.  It is the kind of thing that a man will wake up nights and see again before him in the darkness." 

 The events of 9/11 have awakened new interest in the Slocum tragedy and its comparison to 9/11.  While the Slocum Tragedy and 9/11 are two markedly different events ─ the former rooted in negligence, the latter in evil ─ there are many parallels between the two events.  Like 9/11, the Slocum tragedy brought out the best in the city.  Upon hearing the news, many rushed to the scene and risked their lives to help.  Lulu McGibbon, a switchboard operator who possessed the rare skill in 1904 of being able to swim, saved a dozen people in a series of daring rescues into the water before she passed out on shore in exhaustion.  Also like 9/11, there was an inspiring response to the tragedy in which many dipped into their pockets to help those in need.

Unlike 9/11, however, the Slocum tragedy was a "concentrated tragedy" in the words of several newspapers at the time.  Nearly all of those killed resided near each other in what was once called Little Germany, or “Kleindeutschland” to residents, a thoroughly German area that has its origins in the German stampede that began in the 1830s.  One observer in the 1850s remarked that Little Germany “has very little in common with the other parts of New York” and that there was not a single business there which was not run by Germans.  The tragedy accelerated the decline of Little Germany, which, at the time, was an expansive one-hundred block area north-south from Houston to 14^th Streets and east of Second Avenue to the East River. 

Slocum Memorial Fountain (Tompkins Sq Park)

Edward O’Donnell, author of Ship Ablaze: The Tragedy of the Steamboat General Slocum, told Hidden New York that ethnic enclaves like Little Germany have very short lifespans ─ they provide new immigrants with advantages such as family, friends, and customs, but over time as immigrants prosper they look to move to better neighborhoods.  “Many people in the neighborhood were likely considering a move elsewhere before the Slocum disaster, but the tragedy pushed them to take action.  Many people, even those who had not lost loved ones, said the neighborhood held too many dark memories of the fire,” said O’Donnell.  The Slocum Memorial Fountain in Tompkins Square Park commemorates the tragedy.  Dedicated in 1906 by the Sympathy Society of German Ladies, the nine foot upright stele is made of pink Tennessee marble with a relief of two children looking seaward and the words “They were Earth’s purest children, young and fair” over a lionhead spout.  Although one hundred years of acid rain and city air has faded the memorial considerably, the lionhead spout remains operational.

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The Knickerbocker Hotel - Where Fitzgerald, Rockefeller Partied - Returns in Fall 2014

Secret Passageway to the Knickerbocker Hotel at the Times Square Subway Station

Exiting the Times Square subway station yesterday, I noticed an obscure doorway bearing a masonry plaque "Knickerbocker" that looked like it had been boarded up for years.  Could it be that this once led to the iconic Knickerbocker Hotel?  The city’s subways began construction in 1900 and retain certain oddities of the past such as this one hidden doorway still exist.  It once connected the Times Square subway station to the rear lobby of the Knickerbocker Hotel, which operated from 1906-1920, through a corridor lined with settees and heraldic banners.  Although the passageway has since been severed, the façade of the fifteen-story Beaux-Arts hotel built by John Jacob Astor (1864-1912) remains largely in tact.  

Knickerbocker Hotel today

 
The Knickerbocker Hotel was a fashionable hotel of its time, with a popular Knickerbocker bar which has been called the “Forty-second Street Country Club” because of the wealthy patrons that frequented it.  The bar is said to have been the birthplace of the modern martini.  A New York Times article celebrating the hotel’s opening commented on its opulence, including the “tapestries and beamed ceiling” modeled after the French Chateau de Fountainbleau in the main dining room which accommodated 2,000 guests.  The hotel had 556 sleeping rooms which rented on average for $3.25 per day.  Enrico Caruso, a world famous opera singer, was a long time resident of the hotel.  F. Scott Fitzgerald is said to have once went on a three-day bender there, and John D. Rockefeller and his friends from Wall Street ordered martinis from the cocktail bar. 

Knickerbocker Hotel Dining Room

 Fitzgerald opens the second chapter of his 1920 novel This Side of Paradise with a scene at the bar.  “The Knickerbocker bar, beamed upon by Maxfield Parrish’s jovial, colorful ‘Old King Cole,’ was well crowded,” Fitzgerald writes.  The “Old King Cole,” a thirty-foot 1906 oil painting by artist Maxfield Parish, was commissioned by Astor for the Knickerbocker bar.  The painting has since been moved to the St. Regis Hotel in midtown Manhattan where it currently hangs as the focal point of a lobby bar.

Prohibition laws enacted in 1919 slowed the hotel’s business in its restaurants and bars and the building was converted to office space in 1920.  In December 2011, FelCor Lodging Trust purchased the building and is currently restoring it to a 330 room four-plus star hotel which will open in early fall of this year under the Knickerbocker name.

Stephen Schafer, Vice President of Investor Relations at FelCor, told Hidden New York that the new Knickerbocker Hotel will keep the same exterior but add a completely new interior.  “The entire exterior will remain the same and we have already completed the restoration work, which was minimal since the building was in good condition.  The interior was gutted and taken down to floor plates, so the interior will be completely new.”  Schafer also said the calling card of the hotel will be a 3,000 square foot rooftop space open to the public that will be “the only outdoor, rooftop bar where you can watch the ball drop on New Year’s Eve or watch the hustle of Times Square.”

 

The Unknown Story of the Real James Bond in Manhattan

Ian Fleming (1908-1964), author of the Bond novels

Who was the real James Bond?  Was it someone Bond author Ian Fleming met during WWII?  Or perhaps a better version of Fleming, the chain-smoking, oversexed and underachieving spy turned author who suffered severe depression because his visions for himself never matched reality.  While the answer is surely some of each, one double agent whom Fleming shadowed one night during the war was a strong inspiration.  In rare documentary footage viewed by Hidden New York, Fleming said his first book Casino Royale was based on his experiences at the Casino Estoril and the spies he met there.
 

Dusko Popov (1912-1981), double agent during WWII

During World War II, neutral Portugal became a weigh station for espionage activity.  Enter Dusko Popov (1912-1981), a Nazi spy turned by the Allies to work for the British.  In August of 1941, the day before Popov was due to depart for Manhattan on what the Nazi’s believed to be an intelligence gathering mission, Popov was shadowed at the Casino Estoril by none other than Ian Fleming.  The British were keeping tabs on Popov to see where his loyalty really lied, but Popov instantly picked up on the fact he was being shadowed by the clumsy Fleming.  According to his autobiography Spy/Counterspy, An incident broke out at the Baccarat table.  Popov became irritated by an arrogant player who placed enormous bets knowing others could not match him.  Popov trumped him with a $50,000 bet to the dismay of all around, including Fleming who was watching from a distance.  According to Popov, Fleming turned the “green of bile” before flashing a sly smile to Popov when the player backed down.  This incident was memorialized in Fleming’s first book Casino Royale (1953).    

Casino Royale (1953), the first Bond novel

The next day Popov headed for Manhattan.  His assignment was to gather all information he could about the American outpost of Pearl Harbor and report it back to the Nazis.  Arriving in New York, Popov dropped his bags off at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel before heading to a meeting with the FBI warning them of the impending attack and providing them a questionnaire on Pearl Harbor supplied by his Nazi handlers.  The FBI, however, brushed off Popov as an untrustworthy playboy who they felt was still secretly working for the Nazis.  Popov claims in his book to have had a confrontational meeting with FBI director J. Edgar Hoover prior to the attack on Pearl Harbor.  While Popov’s claims are shocking and have been denied by the FBI, there are many indications they are true.  Powerful people in British intelligence have backed Popov’s claims, including Sir John Masterman, the chair of Britain’s Double Agent Committee who recruited Popov.  Popov was even awarded the prestigious Order of the British (OBE) award for his service.  And the FBI has every reason to dispute Popov’s claims to avoid the blame for not heeding his warning on Pearl Harbor.

Brushed aside by the FBI and unable to return to Europe because the Nazi’s believed he was on a fact-finding mission for them, Popov was effectively marooned in Manhattan for nearly a year.  In the Big Apple, Popov did what he did best – enjoy life and live a playboy lifestyle.  True to the Bond form, Popov dressed in expensive clothes, rented a lavish apartment with a wrap-around terrace at 61^st and Park, went gambling, smoked and drank heavily, took beach trips to Miami and ski trips to Part City, Utah, and, of course, loved women.  His nights passed in a “blur of sex and alcohol.”

Daniel Craig (1968-), current Bond actor

He had numerous female companions, including most significantly Hollywood actress Simone Simon, whom he escorted to the finest restaurants and nightclubs in New York City.  “[Simone and I] became regular fixtures in the fashionable restaurants,” Popov writes, “an item of inventory in [Manhattan nightclubs] El Moracco and the Stork Club.”  But Popov, codenamed “Tricycle” by the British, was also serious about his work and put his life on the line many times for the Allies.  Had his Nazi handlers known he was working for the Allies, Popov would have faced most certain death.

In 1972, John Masterman, former chair of the British XX Committee that ran Popov published a history of the cloak and dagger committee that included a copy of the entire Pearl Harbor questionnaire that agent “Tricycle” had passed to the FBI with a stern conclusion that it represented a “somber but unregarded warning of the subsequent attack upon Pearl Harbor.”  Popov wrote his memoirs Spy/Counterspy just two years after the Masterman book, believing Masterman had opened the door to discussing his clandestine operations and discussing his meeting with Hoover and warning about Pearl Harbor.  Clarence Kelly, Hoover’s successor as FBI director, denied that Popov and Hoover had ever met and insisted that the FBI never had information that Japan would attack Pearl Harbor.  Popov set off on a book endorsement tour in which he was hailed as the real James Bond and glamourized by the media for his attractive wife over thirty years his junior.  When he died on August 10, 1981, forty years to the day when the then 29-year old spy left for New York City to warn the FBI about Pearl Harbor, his widow said “He lived how he wanted to live.”  Negatively viewed by many as a mere playboy, Popov once responded, “When you love life, good wine, good company, and can still do good serious work, it is not being a playboy it is living life to the full.”   

Renwick's Ruins

Renwick Ruins today

The majestic ruins of the Smallpox Hospital, sometimes called "Renwick's Smallpox Hospital," are one of the most eerily romantic places in New York.  Situated on Roosevelt Island, just a five minute gondola ride from midtown east, the 100 bed Gothic revival hospital was built in 1856 by famed architect (and Home Alone "southbend shovel slayer" look-alike) James Renwick Jr. who also designed St. Patrick's Cathedral.

James Renwick Jr. (1818-1895), architect of the hospital

Roosevelt Island, formerly called Blackwell's Island, is an island in the East River just a few hundred feet off the banks of Manhattan.  Although now it is mostly residential, it formerly was the place New York City sent its outcast - those with smallpox, mental illnesses, or criminals.

The Smallpox Hospital appears to have been a success.  According to a report by the New York Commissioner's of Health only 267 people died from small pox in New York City 1862, about half the number of smallpox deaths in the preceeding few years when the hospital began.  Nearly all of those diagnosed with smallpox went to the Smallpox Hospital for treatment, though it was not mandatory.  Once there, boarders paid a fee of approximately $5/week and many died within a matter of days. 

In 1872, the New York Times reported "scandalous chicanery" associated with the hospital, including overcharging boarders and allowing a slimy undertaker named Mr. Slevin to monopolize burials of those who died there.  For example, Mr. Frieling, a healthy German, was stricken with smallpox and went to the hospital in early February 1872.  When he died the following month, nearly all the money he had on him was stolen.  In addition, the slimy undertaker Mr. Slevin charged his family more than $300 for the funeral, including such fees as $1 for his brother see the dead's face and $2 to the captain of the "Hope," the boat that carried the dead to the grave site.  In 1875, the hospital closed and became a training center for nurses.  It is unclear whether the scandal played a part in its closing.  In the 1950s, the training center closed and the building fell into disrepair.  According to the staff at Roosevelt Island, it became a hangout for vandals and mischievous youth who stole and graffitied the building.



Smallpox Hospital circa 1875 (Roosevelt Island was called Blackwell's Island)

The hospital is now a shadow of its former self.  Although the frame remains in tact, the roof has vanished.  According to the staff at Roosevelt Island, Renwick built the hospital with a copper roof, a rarity given the expense of the material.  At some point in the 1970s, the roof was stolen. 

The public may walk the perimeter but the hospital is now fenced off.  The staff at Roosevelt Island said that there have been recent discussions to build a larger building open to the public around the hospital ruins, but to leave the inner shell in tact.  Something similar was done to a nearby insane asylum which has been built into a fancy residential complex.  In any event, the Smallpox Hospital is one of the most romantic ruins of New York City, offering an eerie glimpse into a forgotten past.

View of Manhattan from the ruins today

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