Excerpts

The great French tragedienne Sarah Bernhardt swore by Caswell-Massey's Cucumber Cold Cream to remove her heavy theatrical makeup, and placed a bulk order in 1877 for 30 jars. The historic company–"America's oldest chemist"–was already accustomed to what would now be called celebrity endorsements. In 1780 George Washington presented two cases of his favorite Number 6 Cologne to the Marquis de Lafayette; First Lady Dolley Madison popularized the scent White Rose; in 1876 General George Custer cleaned his teeth before the Battle of Little Bighorn with Caswell-Massey's bone-handled Tilbury toothbrush.

It didn't take New Yorkers long to acquire a taste for ice cream after first lady Dolley Madison popularized it early in the nineteenth century, when she served it at her husband's inauguration. By 1850, Italian vendors called "hokey-pokey" men made their way through the streets of the city selling the chilled sweet stuff from small wagons that were pulled by goats. And although ice cream parlors sprang up all around town–they were one of the few types of establishments at which unaccompanied women could be served–almost none of them have survived. Eddie's Sweet Shop in Forest Hills is an exception, preserved in near perfect turn-of-the-century condition. Nine original wood-topped revolving stools still face the mahogany counter with its cool-to-the-touch white marble top.

Macy, like his friend P. T. Barnum, was a colorful character and natural showman. He had joined the crew of a Nantucket whaling ship in 1837 when he was just 15 years old. Returning to dry land, he tried his hand at selling supplies in frontier California to gold rush prospectors, then to land-speculating in Wisconsin, among other things ... he made his way to New York, and in 1858 opened a small dry-goods emporium at Sixth Avenue near 14th Street. The tally for the first day: $11.06. From the beginning, Macy used a red star logo to promote his new enterprise, the inspiration a tattoo on this former seaman's hand.

Walt Whitman, who once thrilled to have caught sight of Abraham Lincoln on Broadway, described the grieving city the day after the president's assassination: "black, black, black." When the funeral train bearing Lincoln's body stopped in New York, the ships in the harbor and most buildings were draped in black muslin; businesses were shuttered; City Hall, where the body lay in state, was hung with a sign that simply proclaimed: "The Nation Mourns." Nearly a million New Yorkers solemnly watched the four-hour-long procession that escorted the coffin to the station for the remainder of the trip to Illinois. Among the many tributes placed on the train with the president's body was an empty chair fashioned entirely of flowers. The firm of Adolph Lemoult & Sons had been honored with the commission.

Most New Yorkers would not imagine that they could purchase a fine wedding present at this modest-looking cheese shop on the Lower East Side. But there among the frozen ravioli and tortellini, the olives and peppers, the prosciutto and salami, the pecorino romano and gorgonzola, the freshly made ricotta and mozzarella, are diminutive bottles of what has been called "black gold," hundred-year-old balsamic vinegars that sell for several hundred dollars. The DiPalos, fourth generation of their family in the business in Little Italy, are passionate about their store, their heritage, and the quality and meaning of the food they have shared with their neighbors since 1910. Balsamic vinegar, they will explain, is a metaphor for relationships between people: the longer it ages, the thicker and sweeter and more complex it becomes; in the old country it was often a part of a bride's dowry, and it remains the perfect gift to bestow on two people embarking on a new life together.

Before the days of bottling plants and corner grocers, New Yorkers either consumed beer in a saloon or lugged it home in a bucket. In order to expedite the takeout process, and keep bucketed beer from sloshing on people at the bar, some taverns installed a special window. The customer passed in an empty pail, got it back brimming with sudsy brew, and paid–all without entering the premises. Perhaps the last remaining beer window in town is the one through the wall of P.J. Clarke's, a bar that has preserved almost all of its old-time saloon trappings.

John Dillinger, Al Capone, and all the infamous gangsters of old New York passed through the ornate French Renaissance-style Police Headquarters at Grand and Centre Streets. After being booked, fingerprinted, interrogated, and having their mug shots taken, many detainees would be placed in a lineup. During the 1940s the photographer Weegee, chronicler of the vast New York underbelly, captured a particularly motley group being paraded from a paddy wagon into the building through a side entrance on Centre Market Place. This small cobblestone street was lined with gun dealers–John Jovins Distributor of Firearms and Police Equipment, established in 1911, still occupies an ancient brick building here–and was home to a saloon that was the watering hole of cops and newsmen on the crime beat. Teddy Roosevelt, the police commissioner before he was governor and president, often stepped across the street for a belt ... A tunnel that still connects the two structures made possible discreet visits by cops to the upstairs brothel and to the bar itself during Prohibition. The most striking feature of the saloon was–and is–its remarkable Viennese-imported ceiling, a mahogany tour-de-force of hand-carved devils' heads, which just may have made the fallen souls who gathered beneath it feel more at home.

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