This photograph was taken by the City of New York to document construction along Seventh Avenue. The date is Tuesday, August 29 ,1916. The high temperature for the day was a comfortable 71 degrees.

The extension of the subway from Times Square south of Seventh Avenue to the Battery would necessitate ripping up the street along the route. The “cut and cover” method was the primary construction method in use. This involves digging a trench to construct the subway and temporarily covering it, until a permanent street surface would be laid.

Under New York – Electrical Age Oct 1 1916

While this was going on commerce would continue. Timbering covers much of the street. Trolley tracks are visible and in use and shops along the route open.

Also public utility, telephone, telegraph, gas, steam and electrical lines, pneumatic mail tubes, water and sewer pipes would need to exposed, protected, sometimes moved and kept intact.

When the street was opened it could look like this.

This work was all done without environmental impact review. The objective – get the job done quickly and at the lowest possible cost.

So people go about their business, crossing the street as horse drawn delivery wagons make their way to their destinations.

Safety was the responsibility of the pedestrian, not the construction crew.  If you got hurt tripping over an obstacle, it was not the city’s fault, it was yours.

Pay attention to all the debris strewn about the streets and sidewalks.

A man in a straw hat decides it is safe to cross Seventh Avenue. The workers gathering around some wood beams figure out their next move. Another man with a suitcase makes his way up Seventh Avenue, as a woman on the sidewalk waits for the lone automobile to pass heading west along 23rd Street.

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And A Rare Interview About Playing A Part

37-year-old William Powell looks very tan in this 1929 Paramount Pictures publicity photograph. Powell also looks like he has a case of the mumps.

Powell is best known to classic movie fans for author Dashiell Hammett’s creation; Nick Charles, a former private detective, in a series of hugely popular Thin Man films with Myrna Loy made in the nineteen thirties and forties.

But, in 1929 Powell was playing another amateur sleuth, Philo Vance. Author Willard Huntington Wright, better known as S.S. Van Dine, wrote a dozen Philo Vance mystery novels.

Powell made several films playing Vance including The Canary Murder Case (1929) The Greene Murder Case (1929) The Benson Murder Case (1930) and The Kennel Murder Case (1933).

On Acting

Powell’s approach to acting was naturalistic. In a five decade stage and film career Powell rarely granted interviews. Discussing Shadow of the Law (1930) with The Baltimore Sun, Powell gave insight into his approach to playing Jim Montgomery, a fugitive who kills a man in self-defense.

Powell explained, “The fugitive from justice is a fear hunted individual who lives in constant dread. The sound of a door opening or a mere footfall puts him on his guard. He is furtive and wary, always expecting his past to catch up with him.

It is relatively easy to simulate anger, surprise or even sudden terror. To simulate the ever-present fear of the hunted is far more difficult. to do so, one must live with the dread of the character he is playing. I had to make Montgomery’s dread of detection my own. And while I seldom carry my roles home with me, I did this one. I’ll admit I was a very nervous individual during the time certain of the sequences were being filmed. There is something terribly contagious and destructive about fear. It actually eats right into one.”

William Powell retired from show business after his 1955 role as Doc in Mister Roberts. Powell died in Palm Springs, CA on March 5, 1984 at the age of 91.

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We don’t know who took this publicity photograph of Clara Bow. We do know it was one of a series about Clara being a helper to Santa that appeared in Photoplay Magazine in 1927. The igloo and the wreath put the setting at the North Pole as Clara is working on toys, even though her outfit is not weather appropriate.

This photograph is evidence that Clara’s face and features were strikingly modern. Her pose and natural beauty leap off the page.

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On February 3, 2026 Lamonte McLemore one fifth of the great singing group The Fifth Dimension passed away at the age of 90.

Amazingly, The New York Times did cover McLemore’s death with a well deserved obituary a week after his passing . McLemore, while not a rock star per se, was definitely part of the sixties pop rock identity.

We use the term “amazingly” because of the paper’s continued willful denial of printing obituaries involving certain musicians. This is something we have pointed out previously.

Here are all five original Fifth Dimension members reuniting in 1991 on The Arsenio Hall Show sounding as great as ever with a performance of Aquarius  / Let The Sun Shine In.

Put in perspective The Fifth Dimension are now a nostalgia act performing with only one original member, Florence LaRue. The fact that The Fifth Dimension hasn’t had a hit in five decades doesn’t diminish from the group’s immense talent.

We are not making this a competition or comparison.

Yet three major rock musicians passed away recently with none of them even getting a peep out of the Times high fallutin’ obit desk. Maybe it’s because all three were of the hard rock variety. The Times explains its capricious obituary practices here.

Notable Deaths

The Times made the decision that Francis Buchholz (February 19, 1954 – January 22, 2026) bass player of Scorpions from 1973 -1992 was not worthy of a mention. I guess being a longtime member of a band selling over 100 million records worldwide is an ordinary feat.

More stupefying was the silence from “the paper of record”  on the death of Phil Campbell (May 7, 1961 – March 13, 2026). Campbell was Motörhead’s guitarist from 1984 until the death of Motörhead founder and vocalist Ian “Lemmy” Kilmister in 2015.  Campbell played in Motörhead for longer than anyone except for Lemmy. He was co-writer of all of their music. Motörhead is definitely an acquired taste but their influence on rock is undeniable. Apparently Campbell was not “important”enough for coverage.

The recent death of a New York musical icon Ross “The Boss” Friedman (January 3, 1954 – March 26, 2026) is another mystifying omission.

(l-r) Joey DeMaio Scott Columbus Eric Adams Ross Friedman of Manowar in 1984. Fryderyk Gabowicz – Getty

For a newspaper that takes delight in gritty New York stories, Ross The Boss should be a no brainer.

Ross The Boss, born in the Bronx, lead guitarist and co-founder of the seminal punk band The Dictators should garner some eternal notoriety. But, after The Dictators, Ross The Boss would co-found an even  more successful band.

The  power pop metal quartet, Manowar would sell millions of albums and garner fans across the globe. As commercial and hokey as Manowar may appear to  many rock fans, the band has had an uncanny knack of writing memorable and catchy songs.

Donn Landee in studio photo via instagram user garbeaj

One additional passing that went unnoticed was that of Donn Landee at age 79. The exact date of Landee’s death from natural causes in April  was not released.  Landee’s name is unfamiliar to the casual music fan, but not to Van Halen fans.

Landee a music mixer and engineer extraordinaire would help design and build Eddie Van Halen’s 5150 studio. Landee was instrumental in capturing Eddie Van Halen’s unique guitar sound, working on every Van Halen album until 1988.

In his long career Landee worked for dozens of artists beginning in the 1960s. Besides Van Halen, Landee’s credit list includes: Van Morrison, Randy Newman, The Doobie Brothers, Carly Simon; Michael Jackson, Neil Young, James Taylor.

Maybe it is unfair to expect musical obituary notices from a publication like the Times which is now primarily an opinion dispenser, rather than an objective news reporting outlet,

We will continue and try and make up for that here every so often.

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There are no periodicals like Puck Magazine today.

The weekly political, satirical and humor magazine was in business from 1876-1918. A main feature of the magazine was a chromolithograph centerfold usually relating to events of the day.

Our illustration is from the February 25, 1904 issue and drawn by Udo Keppler (1872-1956). The clouds of war hover over the sky as Mars the God of War sits triumphant as the Angel representing Peace flees while cradling a dove.

The drawing contains several other symbols such as, the sunbeam casting light upon Mars,  the sword in Mars’ lap and broken olive branch on the ground at center.

After coming across this colorful picture, a typical reader in 1904 rather than quickly turning the page, would have taken the time to notice these and other details. They would also recognize what they refer to.

Mars foot rests on a torn page that reads, Hague Peace Conference.

The Hague Peace Convention of 1899 was an international meeting to establish laws and customs of war along with rules for treaties and peace between nations. There would be a second Hague Convention in 1907.

The illustration refers to the Russo-Japanese War which began in February 1904 and would last until September 5, 1905. It was the first major war of the century.

Throughout the twentieth and twenty-first century Mars remains triumphant.

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In these politically correct times even the smallest transgressions will be pointed out and removed by “cancel culture”.

Frequently in Warner Bros. cartoons the animators would superimpose whatever they wanted for a headline and visual in real newspapers. They would leave the rest of the page unaltered. The reason was that the audience would focus upon the mocked up headline which was on the screen for literally two or three seconds. On a theater movie screen, the audience would not be able to read the surrounding content in that brief amount of time.

That all changed with the advent of VCR’s DVD’s, streaming and the ability for a viewer to freeze images on their television or device. Of course this was completely unimaginable when Warner Bros. animators were creating these cartoons beginning in the 1930s.

Also what might be considered inappropriate, racist, or indecent today was not considered so back then.

In Hurdy-Gurdy Hare (1950), Bugs Bunny is living in New York’s Central Park. Bugs decides he needs a job. He looks at the want ads in the newspaper.

Though Bugs is reading the fictional New York Gazette, the actual paper used for the mock up was a real local Florida newspaper including Jim Crow-type advertisements. Before tightening the shot onto the hurdy-gurdy business ad, the other ads are briefly visible.

Two of the ads specify the applicants should be white.

One says “Orange Pickers – 20 white wanted”. The other says “Man – White, upholsterer.”

In recent television showings of Hurdy-Gurdy Hare the “offensive” ads are no longer visible. Digital altering solves the problem of how a sensitive generation might react to seeing the reality of 1950s segregated America.

TCM is now showing Warner Bros. cartoons. Fortunately these airings retain the original image. Hiding history does not change it.

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The San Francisco Giants opened the 2026 baseball season playing the New York Yankees.

There was no interleague play between American and National League teams until 1997.

But had the Giants played the Yankees 117 years ago neither team would have had to travel as their home ballparks were both in upper Manhattan. The Yankees playing their games at Hilltop Park at 168th St. and Broadway, while the Giants home field was at The Polo Grounds,155th Street and 8th Avenue.

Unlike today where everybody has a camera in their phones, few fans brought cameras to baseball games in the early 1900s.

Postcard view of Polo Grounds after fire 1911 photo via: Jim Chapman & The Chapman Deadball Collection

These snapshot photos below were made by an amateur photographer sometime around 1909. The only labeling on the photos was “New York Giants.” No mention is made of the date or opposition.

We know these photos are pre-1911 as the Polo Grounds, built of wood suffered a devastating fire April 14, 1911. The new ballpark was rebuilt in a little over two months. Incredibly the Giants were playing again in their new concrete and steel stadium on June 28, 1911.

The first photograph is taken from the Ninth Avenue Elevated terminus at the Polo Grounds.

The next photo shows the baseball park with Coogan’s Bluff and the apartment buildings overlooking The Polo Grounds.

From the first base side of the field players are warming up before the game begins.

The final photo from the third base side of the field shows the stands filled with fans and the game in action.

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Exclusive Layout – 25 Years Of Movie Making – M-G-M – An interior shot in 1925: The antiquated “silent” camera shoots the first scene for “La Bohème” starring Lillian Gish, while director King Vidor (c) and the late Irving Thalberg, famous young M-G-M production chief, stand by. photo: M-G-M Photos, July 8, 1948 ( uncredited in photo behind the camera is cinematographer Hendrick Sartov)

In 1925, Lillian Gish was beginning a one million dollar contract to make six films in two years for Metro Goldwyn Mayer.

But, when Gish arrived at MGM no preparations were in place for her. No stories or even ideas, no directors, nothing.

Left to choose a vehicle her on own, Gish picked La Bohème. It is the story of a group of striving artists struggling to make good in 1830s Paris. Gish plays Mimi, a fragile waif who lives in an attic and barely ekes out a living as a seamstress. John Gilbert plays Rodolphe a young playwright who falls in love with Mimi.

Production head Irving Thalberg asked who Gish would like for her director? As Gish relates in her 1969 autobiography with Ann Pinchot, The Movies, Mr. Griffith and Me (Prentice-Hall):

“As I had been in Italy for two years I had seen few recent films, and he ran some of M.G.M.’s latest ones for me. Among them were two reels of an unfinished picture that I found so good that I asked Irving for its director and the entire cast. It was The Big Parade. Irving agreed. I wanted Hendrick Sartov as photographer, and Irving said that I could have him too. By then Sartov had invented the soft focus lens, which he named the ‘Lillian Gish lens.’ He never let it out of his sight; he used to carry it around in his pocket.”

Gish’s Influence On Cinematography

Gish also made a suggestion to Thalberg for a change that would alter MGM’s method of shooting. She continues in her autobiography:

“When I suggested to Irving that we use panchromatic film, the new, highly sensitive stock that we had tried on the exteriors of The White Sister and had used exclusively on Romola, he hesitated.

“We can’t handle it in our laboratories,” Irving objected, “‘because we know nothing about it.”

‘It’s the film of the future,” I said. “You’ll have to use it eventually. Why not let the man whom we took to Italy handle it?”

He reluctantly agreed. When the company saw the results, they tore out all the old equipment and rebuilt their laboratory to handle only panchromatic film in the future. I also persuaded them to build better miniature sets, so that the cameraman and director could plan scenes and lighting before filming and thus save time and money.

The film debuted at the Embassy Theater in New York on February 24, 1926. Even though a silent film, as with many important silent films, there was accompanying original music orchestration for La Bohème.  The musical compositions were by William Axt and were synchronized by David Mendoza and William Axt.

La Bohème is considered by many to be Gish’s best performance in a film. La Bohème was a modest box office success and earned profits of nearly $400,000.

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Dodgers Have A Family Act
Miami, Fla – If the boys turn out to be chips off the old block, the Dodgers will be all set in the catching department, if, and when, catcher Roy Campanella hangs up his mask and gloves. Here is Campanella with his sons, David, 7, and Roy, Jr., 2, as he puts them through their paces at Miami Stadium. The Dodgers won their first game yesterday in the Grapefruit League by shading the Boston Braves, 10-9 in an error-spangled game. photo: Herb Scharfman International News,  March 12 1951

Roy Campanella, because of the color barrier with an Italian father and Black mother, did not enter the major leagues until 1948 when he was 26. He played 10 sterling seasons, all for the Dodgers, and would win three Most Valuable Player Awards. Baseball legend Ty Cobb was impressed enough to say “Campanella will be remembered longer than any catcher in baseball history.”

Campanella’s career came to a tragic end at the age of 36 on January 28, 1958, when his automobile hit a icy patch while driving home to Glen Cove, NY and slid into a telephone pole leaving him paralyzed. Roy Campanella died of a heart attack June 26, 1993 at the age of 71 in Woodland Hills, CA.

As far as our photograph goes, the Campanella boys were merely participating in a typical publicity photograph.

David Campanella was a step-son from Roy Campanella’s second marriage to wife Ruth.

Roy Jr., would eventually be joined by four other siblings; Tony and John and two sisters Joanie and Ruth.

None would play professional sports. David was in a doo-wop singing group for a while but later had problems with the law and drugs. He passed away at the age of 41. Roy Jr. would go onto to a career as a successful television director and producer.

The post Brooklyn Dodger Star Roy Campanella & Sons At Spring Training 1951 appeared first on Stuff Nobody Cares About.

The year is 1903 and two toy merchants are showing their products to passerby. The title of the photograph by the Detroit Publishing Co. is “Gutter Toy Merchant.” That is a term I have never heard applied to those who sell merchandise on the sidewalk.

But the method is similar to today, where vendors use the sidewalk to display their wares  which are usually knockoffs of trendy products.

Then, as now, Union Square is a high traffic area. As you can see, the perimeter of the park was frequented by many young people who might be interested in a toy. Nearest to the camera is a newsboy holding his stack of papers. It would be unlikely that a newsboy could spare any extra money to purchase a toy. If lucky a whole day’s work might net him a half dollar.

The location is not given, but the vendor is standing on Union Square West at about 15th Street based on the two distinctive buildings in the background along Broadway on the corners of 17th and 18th Streets.  The buildings have been modified but still exist.

The toys are tin key-wind mechanical figures. Yes, they move.

They are called penny toys because incredibly some of them sold for a penny. Generally the more complex toys would cost anywhere from two cents to a dime. Recognizable among the group of toys below are a pair of acrobats, a female bicyclist, a Black man tin toy, a pony cart,  a hansom carriage and a violinist.

Some of the younger boys are fascinated by the moving toys.

Another boy takes an interest in the Detroit Publishing photographer capturing this moment.

The one thing you may not notice, is that typical of the era, everyone is wearing a hat.

The post Old New York In Photos #193 – Street Toy Merchants 1903 appeared first on Stuff Nobody Cares About.