Hangover Cure

Have a rough New Year's Eve?  The Bird-in-Hand Restaurant features a "Hangover Breakfast" for only 50 cents.  It consists of Tomato Juice, Two Raw Eggs, Dry Toast, Black Coffee, Aspirin, and "Our Sympathy." Billed as being "For the Morning After the Night Before," I'm sure this menu item caught the attention of many a NYC partier back in the day.

The Bird-in-Hand Restaurant was located at 1659 Broadway, between 51st & 52 Streets.  It would have been fun to stop there after spending New Year's Eve in Times' Square for a late night breakfast!

Happy New Year to my regular readers and newcomers!

The "Flagship" of Holiday Inns

This Holiday Inn on 57th St. in New York City is advertised as the "flagship" of Holiday Inns, but I'm not sure why.  Sure, it's got a lot of rooms, and it's in the biggest city where "The World's Innkeeper" has inns, but I don't think it was that awesome.

I'm including the card as a tip 'o the hat to a best friend from high school, with whom I made a trip to NYC for the first time in 1980.  We had a great time, leaving on a 3:00am Greyhound bus from Portland, ME, for the long weekend.  After a few years, we drifted apart, but managed to reconnect last weekend for dinner after about 30 years.  Somewhat disappointed in ourselves for letting so much time slip by, I think we'll keep in better touch now!

It's still there today as a Holiday Inn, and the buildings that were there on either side are still there, although they didn't show up in the idealized postcard illustration above!

Never Built

This graceful bridge, from New Jersey to Manhattan, won't look familiar to you, because it was never built. The precursor to the George Washington Bridge, this version was severely scaled down due to the Great Depression. The entire story is here:

http://www.jamesmaherphotography.com/photoblog_view_post/143-old-postcard-the-west-jersey-bridge

The First Day of the NYC Subway

An outstanding handwritten message on this postcard. The New York City subway system opened on October 27, 1904, and Ruth wrote to her friend Jane about riding on it the very next day. The text reads, "We rode on the subway today and it was jam(m)ed. It only opened last night, so of course there would be a crowd." She goes on to say, "Why don't you answer my letters? We went down to the Docks and saw the big steamer in there and went all through it. We also went to the aquarium down at Castle Garden. Give my love to your mother and all the rest. Yours, lovingly." The postmark on the other side is October 29th, 1904.

We don't know Ruth, but we can imagine how excited she was about the new subway! Read more about opening day here: http://www.nycsubway.org/articles/dayone_index.html

The postcard image itself is of the Brooklyn Bridge station. If you walk up the steps from street level to the station on the left, that's the terminus of the Brooklyn Bridge, where you caught the streetcar to go to Brooklyn. The building in the center of the image is the Pulitzer building, demolished in 1955 so that more automobiles could get over the Brooklyn Bridge.