Frank Beacham's Journal

On this day in 1762 — 260 years ago — an innkeeper named Samuel Fraunces bought a brick house near the southern tip of Manhattan. He opened the Queen’s Head tavern there. The inn is still open

On this day in 1762 — 260 years ago — an innkeeper named Samuel Fraunces bought a brick house near the southern tip of Manhattan. He opened the Queen’s Head tavern there. The inn is still open.

But nowadays it is known as Fraunces Tavern, former headquarters of George Washington and one of the city’s preeminent landmarks. Over the centuries, the tavern endured fires, periodic closings and two bombings — one by the British in 1775 and one by Puerto Rican nationalists 200 years later.

Little of the original 1719 structure remains, following a 1907 reconstruction, but a few fragments can still be seen.

The tavern, at 54 Pearl Street, also houses a historical museum whose relics include a piece of one of Washington’s teeth.

Thanks New York Times!

On this day in 1943 — 79 years ago — Franklin Roosevelt became the first U.S. president to travel on official business by airplane

On this day in 1943 — 79 years ago — Franklin Roosevelt became the first U.S. president to travel on official business by airplane.

Crossing the Atlantic by air, Roosevelt flew in a Boeing 314 Flying Boat dubbed the Dixie Clipper to a World War II strategy meeting with Winston Churchill at Casablanca in North Africa.

With German U-boats taking a heavy toll on American marine traffic in the Atlantic, Roosevelt's advisors reluctantly agreed to send him via airplane. Roosevelt, at a frail 60 years old, gamely made the arduous 17,000-mile round trip.

The secret and circuitous journey began on January 11, with the plane stopping several times over four days to refuel and for its passengers to rest.

Roosevelt and his entourage left Florida, touched down in the Caribbean, continued down the southern coast of South America to Brazil and then flew across the Atlantic to Gambia. They reached Casablanca on January 14.

After a successful meeting with Churchill, as well as some sightseeing and visits to the troops, Roosevelt retraced the route back to the United States, celebrating his 61st birthday somewhere over Haiti.

Thanks History.com

Evelyn Nesbit was a popular chorus girl and artists’ model whose liaison with renowned architect Stanford White immortalized her as "The Girl in the Red Velvet Swing"

Evelyn Nesbit was a popular chorus girl and artists’ model whose liaison with renowned architect Stanford White immortalized her as "The Girl in the Red Velvet Swing."

In the early part of the 20th century, the figure and face of Evelyn Nesbit was everywhere, appearing in mass circulation newspaper and magazine advertisements and on souvenir items and calendars. It made her a cultural celebrity.

Her career began in her early teens in Philadelphia and continued in New York, where she posed for a cadre of respected artists of the era, including James Carroll Beckwith, Frederick S. Church and notably, Charles Dana Gibson, who idealized her as a “Gibson Girl.”

She had the distinction of being an early “live model” in an era when fashion photography as an advertising medium was just beginning its ascendancy. As a stage performer, and while still a teenager, she attracted the attention of the then 47-year-old architect and New York socialite, Stanford White, who became her lover and dedicated benefactor.

Nesbit achieved world-wide notoriety when her jealous husband, multi-millionaire Harry Kendall Thaw, shot and murdered Stanford White on the rooftop theatre of Madison Square Garden on the evening of June 25, 1906, leading to what the press would call “The Trial of the Century.”

Nesbit died at age 82 in 1967.

Above, Nesbit in a 1903 portrait.

Photo by Gertrude Käsebier

(Käsebier was one of the most influential American woman photographers of the early 20th century.)

“Stagecoach” Mary Fields (1832-1914) was born a slave in Tennessee and following the Civil War, she became first African American carrier for the U.S. Postal Service

“Stagecoach” Mary Fields (1832-1914) was born a slave in Tennessee and following the Civil War, she moved to the pioneer community of Cascade, Montana.

In 1895, when she was around 60 years old, Fields became the second woman and first African American carrier for the U.S. Postal Service.

Despite her age, she never missed a day of work in the ten years she carried the mail and earned the nickname “Stagecoach” for her reliability.

Fields loved the job, despite the many dangers and difficulties such as wolves and thieves (she was an excellent marksman, defending her route with a revolver and a rifle).

The people of Cascade so loved and respected Fields, that each year on her birthday they closed the schools to celebrate the occasion. They even built her a new house when she lost her home in a fire in 1912.

On January 5, 1933 — 89 years ago — construction began on the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco, as workers began excavating 3.25 million cubic feet of dirt for the structure’s huge anchorages

On January 5, 1933 — 89 years ago — construction began on the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco, as workers began excavating 3.25 million cubic feet of dirt for the structure’s huge anchorages.

Following the Gold Rush boom that began in 1849, speculators realized the land north of San Francisco Bay would increase in value in direct proportion to its accessibility to the city.

Soon, a plan was hatched to build a bridge that would span the Golden Gate, a narrow, 400-foot deep strait that serves as the mouth of the San Francisco Bay, connecting the San Francisco Peninsula with the southern end of Marin County.

Although the idea went back as far as 1869, the proposal took root in 1916.

A former engineering student, James Wilkins, working as a journalist with the San Francisco Bulletin, called for a suspension bridge with a center span of 3,000 feet, nearly twice the length of any in existence.

Wilkins’ idea was estimated to cost an astounding $100 million. So, San Francisco's city engineer, Michael M. O'Shaughnessy (he’s also credited with coming up with the name Golden Gate Bridge), began asking bridge engineers whether they could do it for less.

Engineer and poet Joseph Strauss, a five-foot tall Cincinnati-born Chicagoan, said he could. Eventually, O'Shaughnessy and Strauss concluded they could build a pure suspension bridge within a practical range of $25-30 million with a main span at least 4,000 feet. The construction plan still faced opposition, including litigation, from many sources.

By the time most of the obstacles were cleared, the Great Depression of 1929 had begun, limiting financing options, so officials convinced voters to support $35 million in bonded indebtedness, citing the jobs that would be created for the project.

However, the bonds couldn’t be sold until 1932, when San-Francisco based Bank of America agreed to buy the entire project in order to help the local economy.

The Golden Gate Bridge officially opened on May 27, 1937, the longest bridge span in the world at the time. The first public crossing had taken place the day before, when 200,000 people walked, ran and even roller skated over the new bridge.

With its tall towers and famous red paint job, the bridge quickly became a famous American landmark and a symbol of San Francisco.

Thanks History.com

Above photo from San Francisco Chronicle

On this day in 1968 — 53 years years ago — Apollo 8, the first manned mission to the moon, was successfully launched from Cape Canaveral, Florida, with astronauts Frank Borman, James Lovell, Jr. and William Anders on board

Earthrise, the iconic photograph taken from Apollo 8 by astronaut Bill Anders, was among the first images taken by humans of the whole Earth

On this day in 1968 — 53 years years ago — Apollo 8, the first manned mission to the moon, was successfully launched from Cape Canaveral, Florida, with astronauts Frank Borman, James Lovell, Jr. and William Anders on board.

On Christmas Eve, the astronauts entered into orbit around the moon, the first manned spacecraft ever to do so. During Apollo 8's ten lunar orbits, television images were sent back home, and spectacular photos were taken of Earth and the moon from the spacecraft.

In addition to being the first human beings to view firsthand their home world in its entirety, the three astronauts were also the first to see the dark side of the moon.

On Christmas morning, Apollo 8 left its lunar orbit and began its journey back to Earth, landing safely in the Pacific Ocean on December 27.

On July 20 of the next year, Neil A. Armstrong and Edwin "Buzz" Aldrin, astronauts of the Apollo 11 mission, became the first men to walk on the moon.

The crew of Apollo 8 were the first humans to witness Earthrise, the first view of the whole Earth from a spacecraft.

Thanks History.com

The Apollo 8 launch…

To commemorate Apollo 8's anniversary, NASA Goddard produced this video five years ago, on the 45th anniversary, explaining exactly how the seminal Earthrise image was taken.

On this day in 1970 — 51 years ago — a stretch limousine carrying Elvis Presley pulled up outside the White House in Washington, D.C.

On this day in 1970 — 51 years ago — a stretch limousine carrying Elvis Presley pulled up outside the White House in Washington, D.C.

The driver handed over a letter from Elvis addressed to President Nixon requesting a meeting to discuss how the King of Rock and Roll could help Nixon fight drugs. Nixon agreed to meet Elvis.

According to Smithsonian.com, the story began in Memphis a few days earlier, when Elvis' father, Vernon, and wife, Priscilla, complained that he'd spent too much on Christmas presents — more than $100,000 for 32 handguns and ten Mercedes-Benzes.

Peeved, Elvis drove to the airport and caught the next available flight, which happened to be bound for Washington. He checked into a hotel, then got bored and decided to fly to Los Angeles.

"Elvis called and asked me to pick him up at the airport," recalled Jerry Schilling, Presley's longtime aide, who dutifully arrived at the Los Angeles airport at 3 a.m. to chauffeur the King to his mansion there.

Elvis was traveling with some guns and his collection of police badges, and he decided that what he really wanted was a badge from the Federal Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs back in Washington. "The narc badge represented some kind of ultimate power to him," Priscilla Presley would write in her memoir, Elvis and Me. "With the federal narcotics badge, he [believed he] could legally enter any country both wearing guns and carrying any drugs he wished."

After just one day in Los Angeles, Elvis asked Schilling to fly with him back to the nation’s Capitol. "He didn't say why," Schilling recalls, "but I thought the badge might be part of the reason." On the red-eye to Washington, Elvis scribbled a letter to President Nixon: "Sir, I can and will be of any service that I can to help the country out," he wrote.

All he wanted in return was a federal agent's badge. "I would love to meet you," he added, informing Nixon that he'd be staying at the Washington Hotel under the alias, Jon Burrows. "I will be here for as long as it takes to get the credentials of a federal agent."

After they landed, Elvis and Schilling took a limo to the White House, and Elvis dropped off his letter at an entrance gate at about 6:30 a.m. Once they checked in at their hotel, Elvis left for the offices of the Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs. He got a meeting with a deputy director, but not approval for a bureau badge.

Meanwhile, his letter was delivered to Nixon aide Egil "Bud" Krogh, who happened to be an Elvis fan. Krogh loved the idea of a Nixon-Presley summit and persuaded his bosses, including White House Chief of Staff Bob Haldeman, to make it happen.

Krogh called the Washington Hotel and set up a meeting through Schilling. Around noon, Elvis arrived at the White House with Schilling and bodyguard, Sonny West, who'd just arrived from Memphis. Arrayed in a purple velvet suit with a huge gold belt buckle and amber sunglasses, Elvis came bearing a gift — a Colt .45 pistol mounted in a display case that Elvis had plucked off the wall of his Los Angeles mansion.

The Secret Service confiscated the gun before Krogh escorted Elvis — without his entourage — to meet Nixon. "When he first walked into the Oval Office, he seemed a little awe-struck," Krogh recalls, "but he quickly warmed to the situation."

While White House photographer Ollie Atkins snapped photographs, the president and the King shook hands. Then Elvis showed off his police badges. Nixon's famous taping system had not yet been installed, so the conversation wasn't recorded.

But Krogh took notes: "Presley indicated that he thought the Beatles had been a real force for anti-American spirit. The President then indicated that those who use drugs are also those in the vanguard of anti-American protest."

"I'm on your side," Elvis told Nixon, adding that he'd been studying the drug culture and Communist brainwashing. Then he asked the president for a badge from the Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs.

"Can we get him a badge?" Nixon asked Krogh.

Krogh said he could, and Nixon ordered it done. Elvis was ecstatic. "In a surprising, spontaneous gesture," Krogh wrote, Elvis "put his left arm around the President and hugged him."

Before leaving, Elvis asked Nixon to say hello to Schilling and West, and the two men were escorted into the Oval Office. Nixon playfully punched Schilling on the shoulder and gave both men White House cuff links. "Mr. President, they have wives, too," Elvis said. So Nixon gave them each a White House brooch.

After Krogh took him to lunch at the White House mess, Elvis received his gift — the narc badge. At Elvis' request, the meeting was kept secret. A year later, columnist Jack Anderson broke the story — "Presley Gets Narcotics Bureau Badge" — but few people seemed to care.

In 1988, years after Nixon resigned and Elvis died of a drug overdose, a Chicago newspaper reported that the National Archives was selling photos of the meeting, and within a week, some 8,000 people requested copies, making the pictures the most requested photographs in Archives history.

These days, the Archives gift shop sells T-shirts, coffee mugs, refrigerator magnets and snow globes emblazoned with the image. And Chris DerDerian, the Archives' director of retail, is thinking of adding an Elvis-Nixon souvenir charm.

The Man Who Made Paris…

The Man Who Made Paris…

One of the streets of Paris that was recently overtaken by violent demonstrations is the Boulevard Haussmann. Running through the city’s Eighth and Ninth Arrondissements, the boulevard is named for Georges-Eugène Haussmann, who defined the look of modern Paris.

In the mid-19th century, Baron Haussmann began a project to redesign the French capital under the direction of Emperor Napoleon III. The baron was given immense power by the emperor, the nephew of Napoleon Bonaparte, and his plan cleared away the overcrowded neighborhoods of central Paris, which had become a breeding ground for disease and social unrest.

The project, which also included new parks, a sewage system and other infrastructure, turned the city into an enormous construction site from the 1850s to the 1870s.

Met with increasing criticism, Baron Haussmann was dismissed in 1870 and died 21 years later. But his work wasn’t finished until 1927, when the boulevard that bears his name was completed.

Thanks New York Times!

Above, Baron Haussmann in the 1860s

Photo from Hulton Archive

The Road Island Diner, now located in Oakley, Utah, closed in the summer of 2021 due to staff shortages. Its future is unknown

The Road Island Diner, now located in Oakley, Utah, closed in the summer of 2021 due to staff shortages. Its future is unknown.

In 1939, the nation’s leading diner manufacturer, the Jerry O’Mahony Co. of Elizabeth, New Jersey, rolled out of its factory diner number #1107 which was touted as its largest deluxe model.

It was complete with chrome glass, green Italian marble countertops, Tiffany glass clerestory windows in a monitor style roof and hand laid quarry tiled flooring.
The company showed its creation in the 1939 New York World’s fair.

After the fair, diner aficionado Al McDermott purchased the streamlined-styled Art-Deco diner and had it towed to Fall River, Mass., where it operated with great success for 14 years. His moniker was “Justly Famous since 1939.”

In May, 2007, the diner was transported across the country weaving its way through designated back roads complete with state police escorts and pilot cars. It arrived in Oakley, Utah in mid-July and began its complete restoration.

Unlike the few remaining diners still operating on the east coast, thankfully little structural and cosmetic changes had occurred over the diner’s 80 plus year history.
Those that did were replicated from old photos. What you see now is what you would have seen in 1939 as this depression era pre-war diner was wheeled out of the factory.

Somebody buy and reopen this dinner!

Memories of the Lion’s Head in Greenwich Village

Memories of the Lion’s Head

Jessica Lange waitressed there before becoming a star. Norman Mailer planned his 1969 mayoral run at a backroom table. Legions of actors, novelists and newspaper reporters drank, schmoozed and drank some more — long into a thousand blurry nights.

The Lion's Head, a musty, time-worn tavern at 59 Christopher Street in the heart of Greenwich Village, shut down in October, 1996 after a 30 year run as a hangout for writers, politicians and regular folks from the neighborhood..

Mayors from John Lindsey to Ed Koch to David Dinkins liked to drop in over the years, along with William Hurt and Lou Reed and Jackie Mason. Rod Steiger used to get his mail delivered at the bar. Bob Dylan once played guitar in the bar's back room. Its wood-paneled walls were lined with framed covers of books and posters of plays authored by regulars like Pete Hamill and Lanford Wilson.

Beyond celebrities, though, the Lion's Head was a place for professors and philosophers, lawyers and stockbrokers and artists, regular people who lived around the corner or way uptown. While new bars feature big-screen TVs and plenty of chrome, the Lion's Head was a kind of throwback to a time when conversation was the draw.

"It's always been a place where you could talk. We provided our own entertainment; we didn't need the big TVs, any of that other nonsense," Michael Reardon told a reporter. He was a bartender at the Lion's Head for years before becoming part owner.

In it’s final couple of years, the Lion’s Head was my favorite bar. What great conversation...and a jukebox to die for. When all the furnishing were auctioned, I bought an old bar stool. I thought about buying that backroom table (it went for about $3,000) or the bar itself before sanity returned.

Anytime I'm in today’s “sports bars,” I think of the old Lion’s Head. It was a bar as it should have been.

(Thanks to Paul Schwartzman of the New York Daily News, whose old article I borrowed from. Above photo by Chang. W. Lee)