What were major holidays (Thanksgiving, Christmas) at the DSLH like?
Large dinners were provided free to the newsboys at these holidays. Boys were encouraged
to invite their friends (provided they were also boys); a boy did not have to lodge at the
LH in order to participate in a holiday dinner.
By the time Christmas 1899 rolled around, William M. Fleiss had sponsored
thirty of these annual Christmas dinners at the Newsboys' LH (note the first handful
of dinners must have been at the LH's earlier location, as the DSLH had not
yet been around for thirty years at this point). Six hundred newsboys were
served that day, beginning at 5 p.m. They had to eat in shifts of 165, as
the dining room could only seat that many.
Their menu consisted of turkey, boiled ham, celery, mashed potatoes, turnips,
tea, bread and butter, and pies. The boys, at dinners like these, were apparently
almost as fond of throwing pie as they were of eating it, although on this
particular Christmas they behaved themselves. Didn't stop one boy from smuggling
out a large apple pie in his jacket, however.
Afterwards, a crowd of about 150 homeless men finished off the leftovers.
Four hundred boys were staying at the DSLH that Christmas.
At the 1897 Christmas dinner, the school room was described as being abundantly decorated
with evergreens. White linen covered the dining tables. Dinner itself was served by three
servants (all women) and the LH's cook, assisted by several of the larger newsboys.
Other LHs had their own sponsers and their own dinners. Over six hundred
up-town newsboys were served Xmas dinner at Lyric Hall (Sixth Ave. near Forty-second
St.) that year, sponsored by Frank Tilford, President of the Bank of New
Amsterdam.
On Thanksgiving 1900, 1500 boys were served the annual Thanksgiving dinner
at the DSLH, sponsored by a fund left by Mrs. William Waldorf Astor.
What is the Roosevelt connection to the lodging houses?
Unlike in Newsies, Teddy Roosevelt did not take part in the 1899
strike.
His family, however, had a history with the CAS's lodging-houses.
His father, the elder Theodore Roosevelt, was a big supporter of
Rev. Brace and the CAS, and in fact helped found the Society.
In the early years (not sure when he began), he went
to visit the Newsboys' LH every Sunday night, sometimes sponsoring
their dinners.
Teddy Roosevelt beginning November 14, 1880 took over this task from
his father
for some time.
At the opening ceremonies of the West Side LH in 1884, Brace warmly
described the late elder Roosevelt as "a man of chivalric nature and
manly tenderness, and one whom to know was to love."
Teddy's uncle, James A. Roosevelt,
was also involved with the CAS, and paid for the rent of the CAS's
Beach
Street Italian School until he passed away (in 1898).
[In an earlier version of this page I said that J.A. Roosevelt was
FDR's father, but that is not so. While it's true that FDR's father was
named James, and that FDR was a cousin of Teddy, it is not the same James (there were at least two in the extended family), and FDR and Teddy were only distant cousins.]
When Teddy Roosevelt (already a war hero by then and easily
recognized by
the children) paid a visit to the CAS's West Side Italian
School in Feb. 1899, two pictures of his father and his uncle
sat on
the teacher's desk.
So well-known was Teddy Roosevelt even before his celebrity as a Rough
Rider that he (indirectly) sparked an incident at one of the DSLH
Christmas dinners (most likely 1896, judging by the publishing date).
As Riis tells it:
As the file of
eagle-eyed youngsters passes down the long
tables, there are swift movements of grimy
hands, and shirt-waists bulge, ragged coats
sag at the pockets. Hardly is the file seated
when the plaint rises: "I ain't got no pie! It
got swiped on me." Seven despoiled ones hold
up their hands.
The superintendent laughs--it is Christmas eve. He taps one tentatively on the bulging shirt. "What have you here, my lad?"
"Me pie," responds he, with an innocent
look; "I wuz scart it would get stole."
A little fellow who has been eying one of
the visitors attentively takes his knife out
of his mouth, and points it at him with conviction.
"I know you," he pipes. "You're a p'lice
commissioner. I seen yer picter in the papers.
You're Teddy Roosevelt!"
The clatter of knives and forks ceases suddenly. Seven pies creep stealthily over the
edge of the table, and are replaced on as
many plates. The visitors laugh. It was a
case of mistaken identity.
--Jacob A. Riis, "Merry Christmas in the Tenements," The Century, Dec. 1, 1897
In his 1904 biography of TR (Theodore Roosevelt, the Citizen),
Riis told the story again (with slight re-phrasing), and revealed that
the visitor mistaken for TR was none other than himself.
At the 1900 Thanksgiving dinner at the West Side LH, Mrs. Gracie, the sister of TR (who was governor at the time), helped serve food to the boys (as did some other visitors that night).
What eventually became of the DSLH?
The LH continued to be used for homeless boys well into the 20th century.
It was still known as the Newsboys' Home (the word "Lodging" seems to have
been commonly dropped from its name sometime in the late 1910's) as late
as 1942.
The Coast Guard took over the building, whose address was now given as 244
William St., on Jan. 13, 1943. Soldiers and sailors in transit had sometimes
spent the night there alongside the boys as early as 1941.
The New York Law School then used it for classrooms
starting Oct. 14, 1947 until sometime after May 9, 1962.
The building was scheduled to be demolished soon after. It was roughly where
the present-day Police HQ stands.
What about the very first Newsboys' Lodging House?
The first Newsboys' Lodging House in Manhattan (or anywhere else) was established
by the CAS on March 18, 1854 at 128 Fulton St., in the old Sun building. Later,
it was moved to 49 and 51 Park Place, then to Duane.
Do any of the Lodging Houses still exist? (Question suggested by
maddykins)
I'm happy to say the answer to this is YES.
At the moment, I know of two. Obviously, neither of them still
function as lodging houses by this point, but though they have been
converted to other uses, their exteriors remain more or less the
same.
1. Tompkins Sq. LH
127 Avenue B, aka 295 E. 8th St., Manhattan
This stands at the northeast corner of Avenue B and 8th Street, directly
across the street from Tompkins Square Park. Nowadays, it is used as
apartments. There is also a yoga instruction place in the basement.
The CAS owned the building until 1925. The building was declared a landmark
in 2000.
A July 27, 2000 article in the New York Times mentions
that this is "the oldest surviving structure built for the homeless in
New York." If so, then this is the only one of the active-in-1899
Lodging Houses owned by the CAS that still stands, as this was the last
to be built of that group. (Other LHs were constructed for the CAS
later on, but they were post-1899.) See Tompkins Square LH page for more info.
2. The Brooklyn Newsboys' LH
55 Poplar St., Brooklyn
Known as 61 Poplar St. when it was a LH, the building was renovated
in 1987 and now contains high-end condos. See No. 61
Poplar Street for more info.
If the police were needed...
They would be at the Oak Street Station House, the nearest police station to the DSLH. It
was at No. 9 (or perhaps No. 11) Oak Street, about five irregularly-shaped blocks to the
the south-east of the DSLH. When
a box of dynamite was found at the DSLH's doorstep in 1892 (it had likely been grabbed by
a thief and
then abandoned at the DSLH when he realized exactly what he'd stolen!), it was taken to the
Oak Street Station. Police and detectives from the station were also involved in arresting
boys for fighting on Park Row and around the newspaper offices during the 1899 strike.
Right at the turn of the century (from at least 1897-1900; I don't have the exact start/end
dates), the man in charge of the Oak St. Station was a Capt. Vredenburgh.
If a hospital were needed...
It would be the Hudson Street Hospital, the nearest hospital to the DSLH. This five-story building stood at 67 and 69 Hudson Street, corner of Jay Street. Built to replace the Chambers Street Hospital, it was still new in 1899, having opened in November 1894. It contained (among other things) an emergency department, a dispensary, an operating room, stables and ambulances, and "a sort of open-air garden" on the roof (New York Times, Nov 8, 1894).
In late Jan. 1897, newsboy John Kelly (staying at the DSLH) complained of a sore throat and was sent to the Hudson Street Hospital by Supt. Heig. The doctor's early diagnosis was that the boy had diptheria, leading to the entire DSLH being fumigated (via carbolic acid and sulphur) as a precaution. Shortly afterwards--but too late for his fellow lodgers--it was discovered Kelly only had tonsilitis.
A fight between two boys at the DSLH in early June, 1900, resulted in one of the boys being sent to the Hudson Street Hospital after his opponent stabbed him in the back of the neck. Fortunately, the wound was not serious and the injured party was able to return to the LH after having his wound treated.
Newsies.
This 1992 movie musical released by Disney and directed by Kenny Ortega
centers on a ficionalized
account of the 1899 Newsboys' Strike. It stars a large cast headed by Christian Bale, David
Moscow, Robert Duvall, Ann Margaret, and Bill Pullman. One of Disney's biggest live-action
flops at the box office at the time of its release, the movie eventually gained popularity
and even cult status on home video. The opening scenes of the movie take place at the DSLH.
The strike as depicted in the movie, in which the boys strike because of a rate hike from 50 to 60 cents per hundred in 1899, is a conflation of two real-life newsboy strikes against the New York World and New York Journal. (It should also be noted that newsboy strikes were, though not common, not new either: by this time they had been occurring for years in New York and elsewhere in the US.) The first of these began May 9, 1898, when both World and Journal raised the price of papers sold to newsboys from 50 cents per hundred to 60 cents per hundred. It lasted until at least May 16 and gained the support of some other worker's unions along the way, such as the union of metal polishers, which agreed not to buy those two papers. The issue was raised at the May 15 meeting of the Central Labor Union, which declined to take up the matter because it was "too small." The second and larger strike occurred over a year later, beginning July 20, 1899, again against those two papers. There are at least two different accounts of the cause: An article in the Brooklyn Eagle later that day stated that the reasons were due to the prices being raised to 70 cents per hundred, but articles from the New York Times in following days explained that it was because the prices, having been raised in 1898 (the prompt for the first strike) at the onset of the Spanish-American War, had not gone back down despite the War's end.
See also:
IMDB entry and Newsiespedia.
The Newsboys' Lodging House or, The Confessions of William James.
2004 novel by Jon Boorstin. I have not read this book yet, but as far
as I know it's set in 1872, which would presumably set it in the Park
Place Lodging House.
Newsboys' Home.
1938 film starring Jackie Cooper as a newsboy who throws his loyalty behind one of two warring papers. According to the plot keywords on IMDB, it apparently is set in New York, possibly in the Lower East Side.
See also: IMDB entry, plot synopsis at TV Guide, and lobby card at Amazon.
The orphan trains.
New York City, at the time, was crowded with children who were either unwanted, orphaned, or could not be provided for. Farms out west, on the other hand, often needed workers. Rev. Brace pioneered the program of sending some of these children--both boys and girls--to foster homes out west, where they would be taken in, fed, housed, schooled, and would join in on the farm work. In actual practice, individual cases had varying degrees of success: some were well-treated in their new homes, others were exploited for labor; a few very fortunate ones were taken in but never required to work.
It was a common problem amongst children sent out in the early years that they were
unprepared for the demands of farm life, and the Farm School at Kensico (Westchester County, NY)
was set up by
the CAS in 1894 to introduce them to farming duties before they headed West. "A constant
effort is made by the Superintendent of these Lodging Houses to discover the reason of
the helplessness of these young people and to get them back to their homes whenever
possible, and if really found to be homeless, situations are found for them and the
younger ones are urged to try life at our Farm School, perpatory to home life in the
country." (CAS annual report, New York Times, Nov 29, 1899) The Farm School
appeared to be for boys only; it could accommodate up to 100, and a boy could
choose to attend or depart at any time. The proposed length of stay was three months.
The program was in operation from 1854 to 1929. Not all Lodging House residents were sent, nor did all those who were sent come from Lodging Houses.
The newsboys did not come up with the word "scab" themselves (it is
not even slang), nor did they mean it as a generalized insult. It has a very specific
meaning (when used by striking workers): that of a person who either continues to work or is hired
to work when a strike is taking place. The word, used in this sense, has been around
since the first decade of the 1800's.