the SS America

[franksolich]

I dunno where else to put this, as it seems pretty much a "general discussion" topic to me.

I've been going through more of my father's ancient photographs of New York City, dated from just before the second world war.

I came across this, probably from 1939 or 1940:

After deciphering the banner, I nadined SS America, finding that it was a reasonably new ship at the time, intended to be a luxury liner but events instead evolved it into a troop carrier.  It was a remarkably long-lived ship, lasting until it foundered off the Canary Islands in 1994, where it's still stuck, and remnants can apparently be seen.

So.....and I'm aware this is a one-in-ten-million shot.....anybody know the identity of that building (in New York City, circa 1939 or 1940), or any way one might found out?

Just thought I'd ask.

[libertybele]

Interesting.   Just some ideas for you to try. I did some genealogy into my Dad's family and found it to be very interesting, but it is time consuming and you have to keep digging; but I was fortunate and had a relative who was a retired librarian and had done extensive genealogy research.   Perhaps try the New York City Chamber of Commerce?  Or maybe the New York City historical society.

www.nyhistory.org

www.chamber.nyc

Also, I did a "google search" on famous building in New York City 1939 ... you may want to see if your picture matches.

Please let us know what you find.

[franksolich]

Interesting.   Just some ideas for you to try. I did some genealogy into my Dad's family and found it to be very interesting, but it is time consuming and you have to keep digging; but I was fortunate and had a relative who was a retired librarian and had done extensive genealogy research.   Perhaps try the New York City Chamber of Commerce?  Or maybe the New York City historical society.

www.nyhistory.org

www.chamber.nyc

Also, I did a "google search" on famous building in New York City 1939 ... you may want to see if your picture matches.

Please let us know what you find.

"New York City famous buildings 1939" too large of a search term, so I used "New York City famous hotels 1939" instead.

http://www.oscarwildeinamerica.org/quotations/fame-and-obscurity.html

I'm not saying this is it, the Brunswick Hotel; the details are too obscure for confirmation.  But apparently the Brunswick was located near the docks?

[franksolich]

I'm just dicking around, trying this nadin "images" thing; it'll probably be a while before I find anything for a certainty.  And I got tons of photographs of New York City circa 1937-1947.

The brooklynite primitive on Skins's island probably knows this stuff, but he's there not here.

^^^the bottom of Manhattan, from spring 1942.

[franksolich]

Man, there's just gobs of stuff here.

I just may make this into an "olde New Yorke" thread.

^^^nurses, back when they were real nurses.

My parents were graduates of the Bellevue Hospital School of Nursing; I dunno what they gave male nurses, but at some point female nurses were awarded caps.  Each nursing school I guess has a distinctive sort of cap.  The ones from Bellevue were like upside-down cupcake papers, nothing like it ever seen in Nebraska (where I was born and raised), although to me those were the only real nurse's caps.  My mother used to have to order about half a dozen of them a year.

The two photographs are not of anyone known to me; they were probably friends and co-workers of the parents during the late 1930s.....about twenty years before franksolich.

[libertybele]

I looked up the addresses of The Brunswick -- don't appear to be too close to the docks --  In your original picture posted of the building it appears that perhaps a water fountain is captured on the bottom left?


Looked up history of the SS America -- pictures of buildings in distance.

http://united-states-lines.org/history-2/

[franksolich]

I looked up the addresses of The Brunswick -- don't appear to be too close to the docks --  In your original picture posted of the building it appears that perhaps a water fountain is captured on the bottom left?


Looked up history of the SS America -- pictures of buildings in distance.

http://united-states-lines.org/history-2/

Wow.  Great link about the SS America.  Thank you!

I know nothing about addresses in New York City.  The parents lived there, and the older brothers and sisters were born and partly raised there.  My younger brother and I, both of us late children, were born and raised in Nebraska, many years later, after my father had become a hospital administrator.

In October 1981, I hired a taxi-driver of Italianate derivation to spend the day taking me around to show me the New York City of my parents and older siblings.  He wasn't cheap, but he was reasonable, and talkative.  And let me ride in the front seat with him.  And then at the end of the day, he took me home to meet his wife, who fed me.

I had a spiral notebook of addresses in New York City that had been important, or otherwise relevant, to the family circa 1937-1947.  The taxi-driver took me to all the places, but alas only Bellevue Hospital still existed.  My God, even Todd Shipyards, once the largest shipyards in the world, had evaporated.  The church where my parents were married had been moved away, a skyscraper put in its place.

The parents and older brothers and sisters lived in Woodside, near where the 1939-1940 and 1964-1965 World's Fairs were held.  The taxi-driver looked up and down, all over the place, and finally concluded the neighborhood didn't exist any more. 

[Ptarmigan]

Cool stuff.

Frank, I did not know your family lived in New York City.

[franksolich]

The main theme of the 1939-1940 New York City World's Fair (there was a second World's Fair going on at exactly the same time, out in San Francisco), the Trylon and Perisphere:

The Trylon and Perisphere were two modernistic structures, together known as the "Theme Center," at the center of the New York World's Fair of 1939-1940. Connected to the 610-foot (190 m) spire-shaped Trylon by what was at the time the world's longest escalator, the Perisphere was a tremendous sphere, 180 feet in diameter. The sphere housed a diorama called "Democracity" which, in keeping with the fair's theme "The World of Tomorrow", depicted a utopian city-of-the-future. Democracity was viewed from above on a moving sidewalk, while a multi-image slide presentation was projected on the interior surface of the sphere. After exiting the Perisphere, visitors descended to ground level on the third element of the Theme Center, the Helicline, a 950-foot-long (290 m) spiral ramp that partially encircled the Perisphere.

From photographs, letters, and diaries, it looks as if this was where the parents spent their honeymoon, and whenever family and friends from Pennsylvania came to visit, this was where they were taken.

The husband-hating (even though he's been dead quite a while now) elleng primitive, as a college co-ed, worked one of the pavilions, but I dunno if that was the 1939-1940 fair, or the 1964-1965 fair, held in the same place.  The elleng primitive's pretty old, so it could've been either one.

[franksolich]

if anybody knows dog breeds, illumination would be appreciated.

<<<knows dogs--of course!--but never paid attention to breeds, and in fact always preferred those of mixed lineages.

One can only speculate, as it's been years--this was circa 1937-1947--but does the family dog, "Snookie," appear to have been some sort of purebred, or a mixed breed?

This was w-a-a-a-a-a-y before my time, although the miniature dog appeared to have survived, even in old age, the move from New York City to Nebraska, and the family's acquisition of a mountainous St. Bernard, "Tiny."

"Snookie" was long deceased by the time franksolich came into the world, and "Tiny" survived until I was about three and a half years old--and so I should remember, at least foggily, "Tiny," but I don't.  According to old photographs (none scanned yet), "Tiny" was about the size of a small elephant.

During summer Sunday mornings in Bridgeport, Nebraska--I was in swaddling clothes at the time--"Tiny" had the habit of walking inside the local Catholic church during services, and sitting down in the aisle next to the family.

It was summer; this was a small town, and in a kinder and gentler age.

The priest, ever mindful about God's command to be nice to animals, would then immediately and without comment stop the service, and the congregation watched and waited as one of my older brothers quietly took "Tiny" back down the aisle, out the door, and home.

Probably nothing that ever would've been tolerated in New York City, even during that kinder, gentler, age.

[txradioguy]

I'm wondering if the building could be the home offices for the United States Lines...the company that originally owned the ship?

Might be able to find more on it if you look up it's war time name.  While under navy control it was known as the USS West Point AP-23