Speaker 1: It's a night out in New York City in nineteen
Speaker 1: fifty four. You could be doing well anything. There are movies, theaters, parties, bars, restaurants.
Speaker 1: You could be at the opera or the ballet. You
Speaker 1: could be dancing among the young and beautiful at El Morocco,
Speaker 1: the Stork Club, or the Copa Cabana. Instead, you're standing
Speaker 1: on a street corner, elbow to elbow with strangers, just
Speaker 1: waiting because in just a few minutes you've been promised
Speaker 1: you're about to get the best show in town, and
Speaker 1: so you shove your hands in your pockets to warm
Speaker 1: them and try not to get elbowed by an overly
Speaker 1: aggressive photographer Next to you. You watch as burly men
Speaker 1: carrying equipment set up for a movie scene they're about
Speaker 1: to shoot. Maybe you get a glimpse of the actor
Speaker 1: Tom Ewele, but everyone knows that, despite his recently celebrated
Speaker 1: turn on Broadway, he's not the one who anyone is
Speaker 1: here to see. Finally, you get a glimpse of white fabric,
Speaker 1: a flash of a blonde bob, a smile that sets
Speaker 1: the world sideways. The crowd comes to life with shouts
Speaker 1: and cheers around you. Marilyn Monroe is here to shoot
Speaker 1: what will become the most iconic scene in her career. Today,
Speaker 1: there's nothing extraordinary about the corner of Lexington and fifty
Speaker 1: second Street in twenty twenty six. There are three lanes
Speaker 1: of fast moving traffic. There's a halal cart on the
Speaker 1: sidewalk and a Paris baguette at the intersection, where in
Speaker 1: a pen you can get a fairly generic sandwich on
Speaker 1: the sidewalk on the southwestern side of the intersection, and
Speaker 1: there's a mundane looking office building. It's the site of
Speaker 1: a moment that redefined celebrity a few decades earlier, and
Speaker 1: there's not even a plaque. Even if you've never seen
Speaker 1: the Billy Wilder movie The Seven Year Itch, I can
Speaker 1: almost guarantee you're aware of its most indelible image, immortalized
Speaker 1: on the movie's poster and in recreations and parodies in
Speaker 1: the decades since. In the movie, Marilyn Monroe, playing the
Speaker 1: character credited only as the Girl, leaves the Translux movie
Speaker 1: theater on fifty second Street with Tom Mule's character Richard
Speaker 1: Sherman after seeing the creature from the Black Lagoon, and
Speaker 1: then Monroe's character in a white halter dress with accordion pleats,
Speaker 1: stands on a subway grate to enjoy the breeze from
Speaker 1: a passing train below, her dress lifting around her. The
Speaker 1: scene was scheduled to shoot on September fifteenth, nineteen fifty four.
Speaker 1: Twentieth Century Fox, the studio behind the picture, smelled an
Speaker 1: opportunity for publicity. They got word out to the public
Speaker 1: about when and where that scene would be filming and
Speaker 1: what exactly the scene would be. Fans and photographers descended,
Speaker 1: all jocking for position to get a glimpse of the
Speaker 1: movie star's legs and whatever else they might see. And
Speaker 1: it was quite the crowd. Anywhere from two thousand to
Speaker 1: five thousand people were shouting and screaming. Every time Wilder
Speaker 1: queued the special effects man below the grate to turn
Speaker 1: on the giant fan cameras flashed and snapped, and Marilyn's
Speaker 1: dress blew up around her again and again and again.
Speaker 1: The crew shot the scene fourteen times as the crowds roared.
Speaker 1: The truth was the crowds were never going to see
Speaker 1: what they were probably hoping for. In her biography, Marilyn
Speaker 1: noted that she wore two pairs of white underwear beneath
Speaker 1: the dress to prevent a wardrobe malfunction. But still the
Speaker 1: sexy little scene was a sensation. As it turns out,
Speaker 1: all that noise from the crowds screaming and shouting and
Speaker 1: trying to get close enough to see whatever Marylyn's underwear
Speaker 1: wasn't hiding, well, it kind of made the footage unusable.
Speaker 1: They had to reshoot that scene on a studio lot
Speaker 1: in California, a set dressed up to look like New
Speaker 1: York City. That's the shot that actually appears in the
Speaker 1: movie The Seven Year Itch, not the one where hordes
Speaker 1: of fans and uppertunity were shouting just beyond the camera's sightline.
Speaker 1: But that night in New York wasn't a total wash.
Speaker 1: It created plenty of buzz, and photos they took became
Speaker 1: publicity pictures for the movie, Pictures that would arguably become
Speaker 1: the most iconic images of a woman who was already
Speaker 1: an American icon, and that night in New York City,
Speaker 1: with the fan below her and the fans surrounding her,
Speaker 1: would change Maryland's life forever in a more personal way.
Speaker 1: It wasn't just strangers in the crowd watching as Billy
Speaker 1: Wilder told her to pretend to feel the subway breeze
Speaker 1: over and over again. Her husband was also on set
Speaker 1: that day, Joe DiMaggio, the Yankee Clipper himself, the guy
Speaker 1: who set a record for the longest ever hitting streak
Speaker 1: in Major League Baseball, which still stands to this day.
Speaker 1: At this point, he was just a few years into
Speaker 1: retirement and only a few months into their marriage. He
Speaker 1: stood there, just waiting and watching. Every time Billy Wilder
Speaker 1: called action, and the crowd cheered and jeered, heckling his wife,
Speaker 1: their eyes glued to her legs. Joe DiMaggio was a
Speaker 1: jealous man, and he had a temper. Now it's impossible
Speaker 1: to know exactly what occurred in the privacy of a marriage,
Speaker 1: but according to sources, that night, the couple argued loudly
Speaker 1: in the Saint Regis Hotel, where they were staying while
Speaker 1: they were in New York. There are some accounts that
Speaker 1: DiMaggio was physically abusive. Less than three weeks later, the
Speaker 1: couple announced their divorce. The Daily News put it plainly,
Speaker 1: quote Marilyn splits with Joe over sexy pictures. These days,
Speaker 1: the trans Lux theater is long gone, and even the
Speaker 1: original subway grades themselves have been replaced. There's no plaque,
Speaker 1: but still you can stand on the site of the
Speaker 1: most successful publicity photoshoot in history, the place where an
Speaker 1: American icon revealed her legs and her husband revealed his insecurities.
Speaker 1: Welcome to a very special episode of Very Special Episodes
Speaker 1: and iHeart original podcast. I'm your host, Danas Schwartz, and
Speaker 1: this is Very Special Places NYC Today will be taking
Speaker 1: you through some of our favorite stories of New York
Speaker 1: City's secret history, stories that prove that the world is
Speaker 1: a very interesting place. You know where to look.
Speaker 2: Welcome back to Very Special Episodes. I am Jason English,
Speaker 2: she is Dana Schwartz. He is Zaren Burnette Yo. Usually
Speaker 2: on this show we tell one incredible story, but today
Speaker 2: we're going to do something a little different, and we're
Speaker 2: going to talk about one incredible location and several stories
Speaker 2: that are hiding in plain sight. Dana, tell us about
Speaker 2: your trip to New York City.
Speaker 1: I'm very excited for this episode. I love New York City.
Speaker 1: It's you know, let me be the first to say
Speaker 1: it's one of the greatest cities in the world. And
Speaker 1: I love secret history and stories and so on this
Speaker 1: trip to New York City. I made it my mission
Speaker 1: to try to find locations that just seem ordinary, that
Speaker 1: a normal person might just walk on by, but have
Speaker 1: full stories behind them. And so that was what was
Speaker 1: very exciting to me, is to find the places in
Speaker 1: the city where you might not even know important, fascinating,
Speaker 1: interesting history happened right there.
Speaker 2: Well, I think since I read your first draft of this,
Speaker 2: it's made my walking around New York more interesting. And
Speaker 2: I don't even know, I'm just imagining the history that's
Speaker 2: happening at places there might not even have been any,
Speaker 2: but the idea that look deeper into these mundane places
Speaker 2: and you might have a whole other world opened up.
Speaker 3: That's it.
Speaker 1: So should we go to New York. There are more
Speaker 1: than one hundred sculptures in New York's Central Park. Some
Speaker 1: are fictional characters like Alice in Wonderland. Some, like the
Speaker 1: sculpture of Balto, the heroic sled dog, aren't even human.
Speaker 1: But plenty of the sculptures are honoring real living people,
Speaker 1: including a sculpture by John Quincy Adams Ward of William Shakespeare.
Speaker 1: It's a statue mid Park at the southern end of
Speaker 1: the mall, the head of an area known as the
Speaker 1: Literary Walk because of the number of statues of notable writers.
Speaker 4: In fact, there is this area called the kind of
Speaker 4: Artists and Writers Walk. It's actually one of the most
Speaker 4: beautiful areas of Central Park, especially in the fall and
Speaker 4: all the leaves. It's like a canopy of trees. And again,
Speaker 4: there were no statues in Central Park before this one,
Speaker 4: and today this gorgeous walk, which used to be a
Speaker 4: carriage path. You know, people in the Gilded Age would
Speaker 4: write their carriage.
Speaker 1: That's Greg Young. Greg is a historian and half of
Speaker 1: the duo behind the wildly successful Bowery Boys podcast, which
Speaker 1: explores hidden New York City history. Nothing about the Shakespeare
Speaker 1: sculpture in Central Park seems particularly out of the ordinary.
Speaker 1: It's a nice bronze sculpture, a perfect backdrop for your
Speaker 1: picnic or frisbee game. Its plinth is very tall. It's
Speaker 1: impossible to get at eye level. Maybe that's fitting, after all,
Speaker 1: William Shakespeare is arguably the greatest playwright in world history,
Speaker 1: should be looking down at all the passers by swirling
Speaker 1: the clinking ice in their machas and arguing about whether
Speaker 1: they should try to get a reservation at Balthazar. Like
Speaker 1: I said, it's a nice statue, but there's something astonishing
Speaker 1: about it that you won't learn from its engraving or
Speaker 1: from the little information board nearby. That statue of William Shakespeare,
Speaker 1: still standing today in Central Park, has a connection to
Speaker 1: one of the most notorious murderers in American history. Back
Speaker 1: in eighteen sixty four, when the idea came about for
Speaker 1: a statue of William Shakespeare for the three hundredth anniversary
Speaker 1: of his birth, a committee put together a plan for
Speaker 1: raising the funds Now, a statue in Central Park obviously
Speaker 1: doesn't seem like a big deal, but as Greg explains,
Speaker 1: back then, it was actually a pretty big decision.
Speaker 4: Let me explain how like kind of shocking or just
Speaker 4: how stunning that even is as a story, because Central
Speaker 4: Park isn't even completed yet, okay, And the original design
Speaker 4: of Central Park was that it was not supposed to
Speaker 4: have any kind of ornamentation, whether it wasn't going to
Speaker 4: have statue, It was going to be a place where
Speaker 4: you could like sort of take your horse, ride around
Speaker 4: your carriage, or walk around, and it wasn't supposed to
Speaker 4: have a lot of memorials to culture in it.
Speaker 1: The fact that this statue got the go ahead just
Speaker 1: goes to show how prominent and powerful the committee of
Speaker 1: men advocating for it was. The committee was made of
Speaker 1: well the type of people you expect for this kind
Speaker 1: of thing, people who love public art and theater, actors, directors,
Speaker 1: wealthy people, the literati. One of the men on that
Speaker 1: committee was a man named Edwin Booth, almost universally celebrated
Speaker 1: as the pre eminent Shakespearean actor of his day, and
Speaker 1: Edwin had quite the theatrical pedigree. His father, Junius Brutus Booth,
Speaker 1: was the most famous Shakespearean actor of his day, who
Speaker 1: had moved from England to the United States and spent
Speaker 1: decades touring with his portrayals of Shakespeare's most famous characters.
Speaker 1: As a young man, Edwin had traveled alongside his father,
Speaker 1: absorbing the words of the Bard's poetry by osmosis, before
Speaker 1: he eventually set out on his own, becoming a prominent
Speaker 1: and celebrated actor in his own right, known for his
Speaker 1: signature role Hamlet. The Booth Theater in New York City
Speaker 1: is still named for him today, and Edwin had become
Speaker 1: not only a critically acclaimed actor, but also a man
Speaker 1: of society with famous and connected friends, the type of
Speaker 1: person whose deserves on a committee to erect a statue
Speaker 1: of William Shakespeare in Central Park.
Speaker 4: William Shakespeare was actually really popular in the mid nineteenth
Speaker 4: century with all different classes. In fact, I would even
Speaker 4: say that, like the working class, a lot of immigrant communities,
Speaker 4: especially out in the West, really understood and connected to Shakespeare,
Speaker 4: which I find really heartening in a way, because I
Speaker 4: think a lot of times it's seen as like hiphaluten
Speaker 4: and hard to understand.
Speaker 1: To raise money for the statue, there would be a
Speaker 1: one night only benefit performance of what else a Shakespeare play,
Speaker 1: and to really bolster up interest, they would do something
Speaker 1: really special. That night, for the first and only time.
Speaker 1: Edwin Booth would be performing alongside two of his brothers,
Speaker 1: his older brother Junius Brutus Junior and his younger brother,
Speaker 1: John Wilkes. Yes, that John Wilkes Booth.
Speaker 4: You have to remember, I mean you probably know this
Speaker 4: from American history, but John Wilkes Booth is an actor, right.
Speaker 4: He was a part of the crew of the American Cousin,
Speaker 4: you know, on that night where Lincoln was assassinated. But
Speaker 4: not only was he an actor, he was like one
Speaker 4: of the most famous actors. He and his brother and
Speaker 4: his father Junius.
Speaker 1: The play they decided to put on was Julius Caesar.
Speaker 1: I know what you're thinking, but no, John Wilkes did
Speaker 1: not play the role of the man who assassinates a tyrant.
Speaker 1: Brutus was actually played by Edwin, who, it really should
Speaker 1: be noted, was the far better actor compared to John Wilkes.
Speaker 1: Although John was notably handsome. John Wilkes played Mark Antony.
Speaker 1: The show was a rousing success.
Speaker 4: They were such a prominent family and this statue was
Speaker 4: actually seen as something very civic that they were really
Speaker 4: going to be a part of building this aspect of
Speaker 4: New York. No one's thinking of Central Park at this
Speaker 4: time as being what it is today. So the fact
Speaker 4: that they're responsible for this is very significant. And so
Speaker 4: they end up it's like a fundraiser. They appear they
Speaker 4: do Julius Caesar. It's the three brothers, John Wilkes, Edwin
Speaker 4: and Junius and they perform on the stage of Edwin's
Speaker 4: theater to raise money for this particular statue. And it
Speaker 4: is one of the biggest shows. Like New York has
Speaker 4: some big shows. You know, whatever you've got like Maady
Speaker 4: Gaga five nights at whatever Barkley Center. You've got the Beatles,
Speaker 4: You've got Simon and Garfunkele. This is really like a
Speaker 4: top ten type of sellout show.
Speaker 3: And it's like Julius Caesar. Right, we've all seen this.
Speaker 4: It would not be the show I would have selected
Speaker 4: as one of the greatest of all time, but it
Speaker 4: drew so many people they were able to immediately raise
Speaker 4: money for the construction of the statue.
Speaker 1: The Three Brothers for the price of one performance ended
Speaker 1: up raising four thousand dollars or about eighty thousand dollars today.
Speaker 1: But there was a brief hiccup during the second act.
Speaker 1: Shakespeare's dialogue was drowned out by the sound of clanging
Speaker 1: fire bells outside on the street. The show paused, and
Speaker 1: Edwin quietly spoke with the theater manager before returning to
Speaker 1: stage and breaking the fourth wall to address the audience.
Speaker 1: He informed them that a small fire had broken out
Speaker 1: nearby at the Lafarge Hotel, but it was put out
Speaker 1: the show could continue. At that time, neither the audience
Speaker 1: nor the actors on stage had a full understanding of
Speaker 1: what had actually occurred that night. The year is eighteen
Speaker 1: sixty four, and the performance might have been entertaining enough
Speaker 1: to put the Civil War out of mind, but the
Speaker 1: war was still going on. A group known as the
Speaker 1: Confederate Army of Manhattan had infiltrated the city and they
Speaker 1: were attempting to burn the city down.
Speaker 3: At the time that this happened, this was in November.
Speaker 4: It was like around Thanksgiving in fact of eighteen sixty four,
Speaker 4: and the Confederacy were.
Speaker 3: They were losing by this time.
Speaker 4: They were losing very, very badly, and it was almost
Speaker 4: a set done by this time. But there were a
Speaker 4: collection of Confederates who came to New York City in disguise,
Speaker 4: you know. They met in New York City, and they
Speaker 4: thought that one great way to turn the tide, or
Speaker 4: just a real sudden like sha gunaw type of situation,
Speaker 4: was to go through New York and to set all
Speaker 4: of these fires all over the place. And they use
Speaker 4: what was called Greek fire. Today it's almost like a
Speaker 4: Molotov cocktail.
Speaker 1: They lit fires in a theater in P. T. Barnum's
Speaker 1: New York City Museum, and in nineteen hotels including the LeFarge.
Speaker 3: And so a group of these men went out.
Speaker 4: Into the city one particular night, and they were to
Speaker 4: some degree successful, some of them, I mean overall they
Speaker 4: were a bit incompetent, Thank goodness. This was really before
Speaker 4: even like go out and do the circus properly. This
Speaker 4: was like a major venue, kind of like freak show
Speaker 4: meets zoo meets sort of like an anything goes type
Speaker 4: of place. They attempted to burn that down that someone
Speaker 4: ran in, and they threw the flames onto the stairs
Speaker 4: and it caught fire. But again like they didn't do
Speaker 4: a very good job of it. Most of these fires
Speaker 4: were put out very quickly.
Speaker 1: Though there was momentary panic, the fires were effectively put
Speaker 1: out and the plot was foiled. The next morning, the
Speaker 1: Booth brothers all met for breakfast at Edwin's home on
Speaker 1: East nineteenenth Street. Of course, the news of the day
Speaker 1: came up how Confederate radicals had tried to burn the
Speaker 1: city to the ground. To Edwin's shock and surprise, John
Speaker 1: Wilkes defended the plot. Those men were trying to get
Speaker 1: retribution for all of the atrocities the Union had committed.
Speaker 1: Can you blame them? Well, yes, yes you can. Edwin,
Speaker 1: who had just voted for Lincoln's reelection, was a guest.
Speaker 1: He kicked John Wilkes out of his house then and there.
Speaker 4: So John Wilkes Booth, actually yeah, was very Southern sympathizing,
Speaker 4: which would set him askance from his brother.
Speaker 3: Edwin, who was more for the Union.
Speaker 4: He didn't have anything to do with these fires, but
Speaker 4: as we know, as the Confederacy decided to do more
Speaker 4: and more things that were more desperate in nature, he
Speaker 4: ended up getting pulled into the conflict eventually himself.
Speaker 1: In April of the following year, John Wilkes Booth would
Speaker 1: assassinate President Abraham Lincoln, fewer than five months after he
Speaker 1: had starred in a famous play about a political assassination.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, exactly, Julius Caesar right.
Speaker 4: In fact, I believe John played Mark Anthony and Edwin
Speaker 4: played Brutus, and then Cassius was the brother Junius. So
Speaker 4: but I wonder, I mean, certainly things were already clicking
Speaker 4: in John Wiok's mind by this point.
Speaker 1: I assume Lincoln's assassination occurred at the Ford's Theater in Washington,
Speaker 1: d C. During a production of Our American Cousin. Booth
Speaker 1: knew the play well. He supposedly tried to time his
Speaker 1: gunshot with a moment in the play where he knew
Speaker 1: the line always got a laugh to help muffle the sound.
Speaker 1: After the killing, John Wilkes Booth leapt from the box
Speaker 1: with Abraham Lincoln's bloody body and his shocked wife on
Speaker 1: to the stage. It was a feat of athleticism that
Speaker 1: had actually become something of a signature stunt for John
Speaker 1: Wilkes when he was performing, and with the addiction of
Speaker 1: a trained actor, he shouted out the phrase sick semper tyrannus,
Speaker 1: thus always to tyrants. It's a line that's attributed most
Speaker 1: often to Lucius Junius Brutus, or to his descendant Marcus
Speaker 1: Junius Brutus, who took part in the assassination of Julius Caesar.
Speaker 1: As I mentioned earlier, there's a Broadway theater still named
Speaker 1: after Edwin Booth. I've seen a few shows there, actually,
Speaker 1: next to normal the Glass Menagerie. More recently they put
Speaker 1: up the Tony Award winning musical Kimberly Akimbo and the
Speaker 1: crowd favorite John Proctor is the villain. But its history
Speaker 1: goes back much further than that. The Booth Theater has
Speaker 1: been around for more than one hundred years. It opened
Speaker 1: in nineteen thirteen, named for the famous Shakespearean actor who
Speaker 1: had died twenty years earlier. The first show they ever
Speaker 1: put up was an import from London called The Great Adventure.
Speaker 1: I've never heard of it, and I'm guessing you haven't either,
Speaker 1: but I did recognize the name of the second play
Speaker 1: they ever produced at the Booth Theater. It's a three
Speaker 1: act play by Tom Taylor that today isn't really known
Speaker 1: for its merits. The next play they put up at
Speaker 1: the Booth Theater in nineteen fifteen a revival of Our
Speaker 1: American Cousin. You could spend a lovely afternoon in New
Speaker 1: York shopping in Soho. The streets are dense with designer
Speaker 1: clothing and jewelry stores, but even if you're not in
Speaker 1: the market for four thousand dollars jackets, there are plenty
Speaker 1: of options. Next Door to the Berbery on Spring Street
Speaker 1: is a store called Costs, where you can get minimalist
Speaker 1: fashion for well a slightly more reasonable price. But if
Speaker 1: you happen to be in the neighborhood, the best fined
Speaker 1: at Costs wouldn't be its corduroy barrel leg pants or
Speaker 1: gallery tote bag with crock effect.
Speaker 3: Leather.
Speaker 1: No, the most interesting thing in the store isn't for
Speaker 1: sale at all. If you go into the store and
Speaker 1: turn left, you'll find a staircase leading down to the
Speaker 1: menswear department. You'll have to keep walking past the racks
Speaker 1: of funnel necked wool jackets and wool blend straight leg pants.
Speaker 1: In the back near the register, there's well a well,
Speaker 1: a circular brick well that looks extremely old and extremely
Speaker 1: incommon GUIs among the Scandinavian style minimalism of cosses clean lines.
Speaker 1: It looks extremely old because it is the now sealed well.
Speaker 1: At one hundred and twenty nine Spring Street is what's
Speaker 1: left of the Manhattan Well, the site of a grizzly
Speaker 1: and tragic death On January twod in eighteen hundred, the
Speaker 1: body of a young woman named Elma Sands was found
Speaker 1: inside the well, igniting a media firestorm. It would become
Speaker 1: one of the earliest murder trials in the still new
Speaker 1: United States. You might not know the name Elma Sands,
Speaker 1: but here's the name. I'm betting you do know Hamilton,
Speaker 1: even if you're not a musical theater nerd to the
Speaker 1: degree that I am. Unless you've been living under a
Speaker 1: rock or down in a well. You know the ten
Speaker 1: dollars Founding Father, whom Lynn Manuel Miranda set to wrap
Speaker 1: on Broadway back in twenty fifteen. There's a song right
Speaker 1: before the second act where Hamilton sings during his tenure
Speaker 1: as a lawyer. He's addressing an invisible jury with pomp
Speaker 1: and bravado quote this is the first murder trial of
Speaker 1: our brand new nation, and continues on a bit before
Speaker 1: he's interrupted by his co counsul Aaron Burr, stepping in
Speaker 1: with a little less bravado, declaring our client, Levy Weeks,
Speaker 1: is innocent. Those lines are referencing something that did actually happen.
Speaker 1: Aaron Burr and Alexander Hamilton, future assassin and victim, did
Speaker 1: work together in eighteen hundred on the legal defense of
Speaker 1: Levy Weeks. It wasn't actually the first murder trial in
Speaker 1: the new United States, but it is the first one
Speaker 1: we have full transcripts of so close enough. Julielma Sands,
Speaker 1: known as Elma, lived at a boarding house in Manhattan
Speaker 1: owned by a relative, Catherine Ring and her husband. Now
Speaker 1: when I say Manhattan, that word probably connotes some degree
Speaker 1: of glamour or big city bustle in your mind. You're
Speaker 1: going to want to put that aside.
Speaker 4: We need to go back to the year seventeen ninety nine.
Speaker 4: You know, New York City is certainly not developed in
Speaker 4: any way, shape or form. We don't really even have
Speaker 4: like the old famous grid plan of avenues and streets.
Speaker 4: Most of New York was below today's Canal Street. So
Speaker 4: this is right just slightly above Canal Street, so completely undeveloped.
Speaker 4: It would be small shacks again, like a boarding house.
Speaker 1: On December twenty second, seventeen ninety nine, Elma went missing
Speaker 1: for almost two weeks. Nobody had any idea where she
Speaker 1: could be if she was even alive, And then her
Speaker 1: muff handwarmer was found in the well in the wildland
Speaker 1: known as Lispenard's Meadow. Soho wasn't so Ho. Then There
Speaker 1: were no designer stores or cute, overpriced coffee shops. It
Speaker 1: was a green space where hunting parties could occupy themselves
Speaker 1: and where a well stood to provide fresh water to
Speaker 1: the local area.
Speaker 4: This is an era before New York had a water system.
Speaker 4: In fact, it's a very fraught time between now and
Speaker 4: the eighteen forties, when we finally get this proper Croton
Speaker 4: aqueduct which brings in clean, clear water. So we didn't
Speaker 4: have that. You got your water from wells, and you
Speaker 4: got them from cisterns, and so what happened is these
Speaker 4: sort of community wells became the center of activity because
Speaker 4: it's where everyone's going.
Speaker 1: But on January tewod they weren't pulling water up from
Speaker 1: the well. Half a dozen men strained with a net
Speaker 1: to pull the body of a dead woman up from
Speaker 1: the depths below. There she was dark, hair strewn across
Speaker 1: her face, her pale skin, bruised and waxy. It was
Speaker 1: Alma Sands, and she was long dead. Eventually word spread
Speaker 1: and the constables heard the name Levy Weeks. Weeks was
Speaker 1: another border at the house where Alma lived. People said
Speaker 1: the two were romantically involved. There were rumors of a
Speaker 1: secret engagement. If anyone had murdered Alma Sands, and according
Speaker 1: to the verdict of the city coroner who examined her body,
Speaker 1: someone almost certainly had. It seemed likely it would have
Speaker 1: been Weeks. The public outcry came fast and intense. A beautiful,
Speaker 1: a young woman only twenty two years old, was found
Speaker 1: dead in the wintery, cold water of a well, how
Speaker 1: could the city not fall into frenzy? Fortunately for Levy,
Speaker 1: Weeks arrested and awaiting trial in Bridewell Jail. He had
Speaker 1: a powerful brother, Ezra.
Speaker 4: So Ezra Weeks is one of New York's great builders,
Speaker 4: a very well connected man. In fact, he helped build
Speaker 4: Gracie Mansion back when that was an actual mansion, which
Speaker 4: today is the Mayor's House, but it was a mansion
Speaker 4: up on the Upper east Side. He also assisted in
Speaker 4: the construction later well not to spoil it, of Hamilton Grange,
Speaker 4: which is the house of Alexander Hamilton.
Speaker 1: Ezra Weeks had also worked with Aaron Burr through Burr's
Speaker 1: association with something called the Manhattan Company. The Manhattan Company
Speaker 1: was really a tool for funding political candidates, but it
Speaker 1: ostensibly had the goal of establishing water infrastructure throughout the city.
Speaker 1: Ezra worked on laying wooden pipes to carry fresh water
Speaker 1: from wells doug in Lisbonard's Meadow, including incidentally, the Manhattan
Speaker 1: well where Alma Sands was found.
Speaker 3: So very well connected, a very wealthy man.
Speaker 4: His brother gets accused of murder, so what does he do?
Speaker 1: He made sure to get his brother the best legal
Speaker 1: minds in the City, Aaron Burr and Alexander Hamilton, the
Speaker 1: dream team.
Speaker 3: Of course, as we know it will end in the infamous.
Speaker 4: Duel of eighteen oh four where Burr murders Alexander Hamilton,
Speaker 4: But at this time they're just like kind of frenemies,
Speaker 4: and they also just happened to both be very well
Speaker 4: respected lawyers.
Speaker 1: There was also a third lawyer working on the case,
Speaker 1: h Brockholst Livingstone, who was known as a top lawyer,
Speaker 1: but who unfortunately wasn't famous or relevant enough to make
Speaker 1: it into the musical Hamilton. Maybe it was hard to
Speaker 1: find a rhyme with h. Brockholst Livingstone. The trio of
Speaker 1: lawyers got weeks out on bail and started working on
Speaker 1: his defense. Course during the trial, they methodically dismantled every
Speaker 1: seemingly damning piece of evidence against their client. He had
Speaker 1: an alibi that would have made actually pulling off the
Speaker 1: murder incredibly difficult. There was no evidence he and Alma
Speaker 1: actually were secret lovers. Maybe she was really involved in
Speaker 1: an affair with her relative's husband, her landlord, mister Ring.
Speaker 1: As a side note, there were plenty of the challenges
Speaker 1: to Alma's character that you might expect that a young,
Speaker 1: unmarried woman might have been involved in the sort of
Speaker 1: salacious sexual activity that turns public sentiment against you. People
Speaker 1: speculated Alma might have been suicidal. She could have taken
Speaker 1: her own life. There was one other fairly damning piece
Speaker 1: of evidence against Levy Weeks. Immediately after Alma's body had
Speaker 1: been pulled from the water, the police went to arrest him.
Speaker 1: He worked as a carpenter, and when the constable approached
Speaker 1: him in his workshop, Weeks immediately knew they had come
Speaker 1: because of Alma Sands. Is it the Manhattan well she
Speaker 1: was found in? He asked? It was. How could he
Speaker 1: possibly have known that if he hadn't been the one
Speaker 1: to kill her and deposit her body there. Turns out
Speaker 1: there was a perfectly reasonable explanation. A neighbor testified that
Speaker 1: she had run in two weeks at the grocery store
Speaker 1: early in the afternoon on January twod and shared with
Speaker 1: him that apparently they had found Alma's muff in a
Speaker 1: well near Bayard's Lane. He told his brother, Ezra, who said, oh,
Speaker 1: it was probably the Manhattan well. After all, Ezra had
Speaker 1: been working on the water project, and so when the
Speaker 1: police told Levy that they had found Elma's body. He
Speaker 1: was just making a reasonable guess as to where that
Speaker 1: probably was. Still, public opinion was vehemently against Weeks. Newspapers
Speaker 1: were calling for his execution. A beautiful young woman was
Speaker 1: found dead, her body pulled from a well. Somebody's head
Speaker 1: needed to roll. If you've learned anything from watching true
Speaker 1: crime documentaries on various streaming services, you know it's always
Speaker 1: the husband or in this case, the maybe possibly secret fiancee.
Speaker 1: But Alexander Hamilton, Aaron Burr and the third guy who
Speaker 1: doesn't factor into the musical were excellent lawyers, and when
Speaker 1: the judge sent the jury off to deliberate, the judge
Speaker 1: made a frankly astonishing declaration informing the jurors that, in
Speaker 1: the opinion of the court quote, the proof was insufficient
Speaker 1: to warrant a verdict against the prisoner. Maybe that's why
Speaker 1: it's not surprising to hear that the verdict came back
Speaker 1: less than five minutes later, the jury declared Weeks not guilty.
Speaker 1: Even still, the sting of public opinion and the damage
Speaker 1: to his reputation made it difficult for Weeks to remain
Speaker 1: in New York. He left the city a few years
Speaker 1: later and settled in Natchez, the capital of the Mississippi Territory,
Speaker 1: where he was able to reinvent himself and begin a
Speaker 1: new life as a very successful architect, building a mansion
Speaker 1: that's now on the National Registry of Historic Places, and
Speaker 1: getting married and having four kids. We don't know how
Speaker 1: Alma Sans died. We likely never will. One researcher and
Speaker 1: writer Paul Collins has put forward the theory that a
Speaker 1: man named Richard Croucher was actually to blame. Croucher was
Speaker 1: another resident at the boarding house where Weeks and Elma lived,
Speaker 1: and in the aftermath of Alma's disappearance, he had been
Speaker 1: one of the loudest voices against Weeks. As it turns out,
Speaker 1: Croucher had a pretty flimsy alibi and a notorious history
Speaker 1: of legal trouble and erratic violence, especially when he was drinking.
Speaker 1: Just three weeks after the Manhattan Well trial, Croucher would
Speaker 1: brutally rape his thirteen year old stepdaughter. He was eventually
Speaker 1: convicted and sentenced to hard labor, though he would get
Speaker 1: out after only three years on a pardon from the governor,
Speaker 1: but more crimes were to follow. He would break the
Speaker 1: terms of his parole and eventually be convicted of a
Speaker 1: crime that led to his hanging. All of this evidence
Speaker 1: is circumstantial, but it's pretty convincing circumstances in my personal opinion.
Speaker 1: Over the decades, Manhattan changed. Lis Bnard's meadow gave way
Speaker 1: to gritted streets and blocks with restaurants and artisanal coffee shops.
Speaker 4: That's the thing about Soho in particular, it's always been
Speaker 4: associated with modernity. All the buildings are cast iron. You know,
Speaker 4: in the seventies and eighties and nineties it was super chic,
Speaker 4: and today it's all boutiques.
Speaker 1: But somehow the walls of the Manhattan Well remained upright
Speaker 1: preserved in Soho, even as the city around it became unrecognizable.
Speaker 4: Since the nineteen seventies that people who owned that building
Speaker 4: have associated their will and their address with this particular story,
Speaker 4: by which I mean they claim that it is haunted,
Speaker 4: and they claim that this building has been haunted for
Speaker 4: decades and decades. And so it makes for a great
Speaker 4: spooky time in a clothing store because we rarely get
Speaker 4: to see architecture, like most people don't see wells, But
Speaker 4: to see something so old in a clothing store is
Speaker 4: really fascinating.
Speaker 1: All of the parties involved in the notorious trial are
Speaker 1: long dead, and the truth is gone, known only to
Speaker 1: the ancient bricks of the Manhattan Well, still standing in
Speaker 1: the basement of a clothing store in Soho, where shoppers
Speaker 1: can browse wrecks of trousers and jackets without knowing the tragic,
Speaker 1: dramatic history that had once unfolded right where they're standing
Speaker 1: wondering what a stone well is doing in the middle
Speaker 1: of a stow hoose store. New York City is full
Speaker 1: of hidden history, centuries of stories stacked up like the
Speaker 1: floors of downtown skyscrapers. But Greg brought my attention to
Speaker 1: another piece of New York City's past. I didn't know
Speaker 1: about history. That's quite literally underfoot if you know where
Speaker 1: to look.
Speaker 4: All right, So head down to Lower Manhattan and to
Speaker 4: Pearl Street. So this is the Financial district. It's like
Speaker 4: the oldest district. In fact, across the street is another
Speaker 4: very famous tavern named France's Tavern, which was a landmark
Speaker 4: to the Revolutionary War. Like George Washington from this tavern
Speaker 4: gave his farewell address.
Speaker 1: I've actually eaten there, not bad.
Speaker 4: However, across the street are the remains of tavern that
Speaker 4: is almost one hundred years older than that. So back
Speaker 4: in the sixteen sixties, back when New York was in
Speaker 4: fact a Dutch settlement called New Amsterdam, their city hall
Speaker 4: was actually a tavern because back then there weren't that
Speaker 4: many buildings. You needed a place where people could gather
Speaker 4: and it was kind of sizable, so naturally it was
Speaker 4: a tavern. So that lasted then into of course, the
Speaker 4: handover from the Dutch to the English, and it was
Speaker 4: you know, it was a British stronghold for forever. And
Speaker 4: then the New York governor, a man named Lovelace, decided
Speaker 4: to expand it because it was getting a little rickety
Speaker 4: by that time, it's already a couple decades old. He
Speaker 4: built what is called today the Lovelace Tavern right next
Speaker 4: to it, and they were connected. These were the official
Speaker 4: city buildings, but they were taverns. They were in fact
Speaker 4: places where you drank and you know, you had a meal.
Speaker 4: But it was also a place where you conducted business.
Speaker 4: I believe that there was even like a jail, and
Speaker 4: they were courts were inside of this building.
Speaker 1: It actually sounds like we could learn a lot about
Speaker 1: efficiency in architecture, A real one stop shop.
Speaker 4: So anyway, lasted for several decades and its own right.
Speaker 4: But then what's interesting about New York in general is
Speaker 4: it gets constantly built up right and never stops to
Speaker 4: kind of honor its past. When you find the pass
Speaker 4: is even more amazing because so many things are gone.
Speaker 4: But what the city also starts expanding with landfill. So
Speaker 4: this used to be on the water. This faced in
Speaker 4: fact into the water onto the East River, but then
Speaker 4: several decades later they fill it up with landfill, so
Speaker 4: it's actually like a couple blocks away from the water,
Speaker 4: and the building is sort of useless by the start
Speaker 4: of the eighteenth century, and so it kind of falls
Speaker 4: into uselessness and then they go to pave it over
Speaker 4: because the streets are like kind of rising as more
Speaker 4: and more people are coming to the city.
Speaker 1: So now jump ahead to the nineteen sixties. Businesses aren't
Speaker 1: exactly booming. A lot of offices have jumped away from
Speaker 1: the financial district, moving to Midtown or even leaving New
Speaker 1: York City altogether.
Speaker 4: But there's this effort to try to revitalize Lower Manhattan.
Speaker 4: This will culminate, of course in the construction of the
Speaker 4: World Trade Center, which will bring business back to Lower Manhattan.
Speaker 3: But sort of in.
Speaker 4: This process they're like redeveloping for new glass skyscrapers.
Speaker 1: New building projects, mean there's going to be digging a
Speaker 1: lot of it.
Speaker 4: And then while they're digging this one particular skyscraper, they
Speaker 4: look and they find the ruins of this tavern kind
Speaker 4: of intact, with like tankards, plates, broken plates and everything.
Speaker 1: The question then is what do you do with the
Speaker 1: shockingly preserved historical tavern. The easy answer is, well, pave
Speaker 1: over it and make a parking lot, And unfortunately that's
Speaker 1: exactly what they did. But that's not the end of
Speaker 1: the story, because if you know Manhattan, you know that
Speaker 1: it's always changing. A meadow becomes a neighborhood, becomes a restaurant,
Speaker 1: becomes a clothing store, a parking lot becomes well, something else.
Speaker 4: A few years later they're building something else, they rediscover it,
Speaker 4: or rather they knew that it was there. They pull
Speaker 4: that out and they're like, oh, let's actually preserve this.
Speaker 4: And this is in the seventies now, and so what
Speaker 4: they do, which is amazing, instead of taking the whole
Speaker 4: thing out or like bringing the sidewalk down so that
Speaker 4: people could see the walls. In fact, by that point
Speaker 4: the street level is about at the top of the building,
Speaker 4: so they just put a glass sidewalk over the remains
Speaker 4: of this tavern.
Speaker 1: An actual glass sidewalk. You can go see it. The
Speaker 1: quote portal down to Old New York as it's identified
Speaker 1: on Google Maps around eighty five Broad Street. A literal
Speaker 1: window into the seventeenth century.
Speaker 3: That's a really cool secret.
Speaker 4: When you say things are literally hidden beneath your feet,
Speaker 4: this is the most literal answer I could possibly give you.
Speaker 3: Is this place? Okay?
Speaker 2: First of all, how cool is it that Greg Young
Speaker 2: of the Bowery Boys agreed to do this? That's a
Speaker 2: Hall of Fame podcast. If there's a podcast hall of Fame,
Speaker 2: I don't know if there is, but there should be.
Speaker 2: Total egg should be in it first ballot.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so so grateful to Greg. Was so sweet of
Speaker 1: him to spend his time talking with me. So interesting,
Speaker 1: so smart.
Speaker 3: Saren you know?
Speaker 2: This is a non typical one. This would be hard
Speaker 2: to get all this into one film. But did you
Speaker 2: have any fun putting on your casting hat here?
Speaker 5: Actually? I this was an interesting one. You have like
Speaker 5: two actors to cast. And then also I threw in
Speaker 5: Shakespeare just because he got mentioned so often. So for
Speaker 5: Marilyn I went a couple of different ways because she's
Speaker 5: been portrayed recently on the screen and I was like,
Speaker 5: I want to know, come up with someone fresh. So
Speaker 5: I went with Leah se Do, the French actress. I
Speaker 5: thought she would be really interesting. And then if if
Speaker 5: she's unavailable, Florence Pugh, I thought she could also play
Speaker 5: it pretty well. For Joe DiMaggio, I thought he may
Speaker 5: be a little bit tall, but I think he's got
Speaker 5: the right like, you know energy.
Speaker 3: Is Adrian Brodie, Yes, he has the right energy.
Speaker 1: Maybe not for physique, but I think he could do.
Speaker 5: It, yes, exactly, and he's like lean enough. I think
Speaker 5: he can get it. And then John Wilkes Booth this
Speaker 5: was another difficult one. One of the actors I liked
Speaker 5: was too tall, and then the other one like, I
Speaker 5: think he may be two associated with other things, but
Speaker 5: if he wears his brown hair and you know, works
Speaker 5: on like a Van Dyke or some type of like
Speaker 5: nineteenth century appropriate facial hair, I think it could work.
Speaker 5: So Adam Driver and Orlando Bloom those are my two
Speaker 5: options ooh right, yeah, especially Orlando Blooms a surprise one
Speaker 5: for me. And then Adam Drivers is a little bit big,
Speaker 5: but I think he's got the like aggressiveness that I
Speaker 5: kind of picture from the ego of John Wilkes Booth.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, I'm reading Lena Dunham's memoir right now, and
Speaker 1: everything I'm learning about a Driver is he is definitely
Speaker 1: an actor's actor, so I think he could have that
Speaker 1: energy totally.
Speaker 2: He went to Juilliard, right, he's like a real actor.
Speaker 5: Properly trained. Oh and for the last one, William Shakespeare.
Speaker 5: I thought this because I was like imagining the images
Speaker 5: of a lot of like the very famous paintings Edward Norton.
Speaker 1: Yeah, let's get him a statue, right, Totally.
Speaker 2: I like the part where it was kind of a
Speaker 2: two fur It was not only history hiding in plain
Speaker 2: sight in the Soho store, but also in Hamilton. This
Speaker 2: is like this particulous historical play also has this tossed
Speaker 2: off line that you used as a jumping off point.
Speaker 1: So kudos to you, you know, kudos to in Manuel Miranda.
Speaker 5: All the musical theater references, so much fun.
Speaker 1: That's really the truth is that I got to New
Speaker 1: York City to squeeze in as many musicals as I can.
Speaker 2: M that's cool for very special character. I think we
Speaker 2: could easily give it to Greg for agreeing to do this.
Speaker 2: We could also easily give it to the iHeart Accounts
Speaker 2: payable team for approving the travel expenses and hopefully approving
Speaker 2: them in the futures. Saren, can we get you to
Speaker 2: give this treatment to another city of your choice? Oh?
Speaker 5: Yeah, I think San Francisco actually know a couple already,
Speaker 5: fun like hidden history sites. People walk past them all
Speaker 5: the time. They're on Market Street, Union Square, and they
Speaker 5: are connected to the San Francisco of the mind in
Speaker 5: terms of like what we think of as being San Francisco.
Speaker 5: But also it's like, oh, this place has always been
Speaker 5: kind of counterculture. So yes, definitely.
Speaker 2: Very Special Episodes is made by some very special people.
Speaker 2: This show is hosted by Danish Schwartz, Zarren Burnett, and
Speaker 2: Jason English. Our senior producer is Josh Fisher. Today's episode
Speaker 2: was written by Danish Swartz, Editing and sand designed by
Speaker 2: Jonathan Washington, Additional editing by Mary Doo, mixing and mastering
Speaker 2: by Josh Fisher. Original music by Elise McCoy show logo
Speaker 2: by Lucy Kintonia, Social clips by Yarberry Media. Our executive
Speaker 2: producer is Jason English. Special thanks to Greg Young and
Speaker 2: the Bowery Boys podcast. That was very cool. Go over
Speaker 2: and scroll through their archives. You'll get hooked on their
Speaker 2: show too. We just recorded a mailbag episode which is
Speaker 2: going to come out next Wednesday, but if you ever
Speaker 2: want to email the show, hit us up Very Special
Speaker 2: Episodes at gmail dot com. Very Special Episodes is a
Speaker 2: production of iHeart Podcasts.