Ed. Note: Okay, so this story is a little off geographically, but it's my blog and I wanted to share.
The girl in the headline, 16 year old Cecilia Sherman, is my grandfather's sister, or as I knew her, "crazy" Aunt Ceil. (If you read the article, you can see she really may have been nuts.) I remember visiting her when I was as a kid at her apartment on the Upper West Side.
Interested in knowing more about this bit of family history, I also focused on this portion of the story:
...started off for the Oak Street station, half a block away...At Pearl Street and the Bowery she caught up with the prisoner...at New Chambers Street she again caught up with him...Bromley map c. 1911 that includes all of the mentioned streets.
NYPL Digital Gallery
I'm assuming that the story uses the shorthand "Bowery" for the street that was mapped as "New Bowery".
Bromley map c. 1911 detail showing location of the Oak Street Station at no. 9.
NYPL Digital Gallery
While trying to find some contemporary photos of the neighborhood, I found that many of the referenced streets simply no longer exist, nor do any of the surrounding neighborhoods. The neighborhoods were razed and some of the streets demapped from the 1940's through the 1960's for a variety of projects, including ramps connecting the FDR Drive to the Brooklyn Bridge, the construction of One Police Plaza, and the opening of the massive Alfred E. Smith Houses in 1953.
Specifically:
- Oak Street was demapped around 1947
- New Chambers was demapped between 1947 and 1966
- New Bowery is the present St. James Place (as of 1947)
- Pearl Street remains mostly unchanged
A comparison from Google Maps and the c. 1911 Bromley map.
I'm confused by the reference to 5 Chrystie Street as the home of Cecilia Sherman. My grandfather (Ceil's brother) always said he was born and grew up on Pearl Street. 5 Chrystie Street is nowhere near the other places in the story, so something seems amiss with that address.
This is one I'll continue to research...
3 comments:
Wow... love this family anecdote..
And, technically, wouldn't you say there is a New Bowery today?
Great story and fantastic amount of research! Kudos to you! Maybe for Christmas you could print each map and article on nice quality paper and get it bound like a little book and distribute it to members of your family. Oops, did I just blow a gift idea? :-D
@Anonymous 7:39
Thanks for the comments and the ideas! I actually already sent my father a full-page reprint of the Times article!
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