did when they came to New York in those days. I promised to take them to the Museum of Natural History on Monday. We had dinner at Tavern on the Green, beautiful lights all around, then a cab ride back to the ‘Gonk,’ the kids exhausted. I was worried that without TV, it would take some doing to keep them from getting bored.
WALL STREET
Monday morning, we got up early because I wanted to show them Wall Street in action. Besides, I had a plan to make some money in the market. We walked the short distance to Grand Central Station after a quick breakfast. It was, of course busier than Philly was, mobs of people streaming out of the station, heading for taxis and the subway. Eight o’clock and the height of rush hour. Instead of the subway, we would take the elevated train.
We walked past Grand Central two short blocks to the 3rd Avenue El. The old steel viaduct was built in 1878 and modernized in 1913 and it stretched for miles. It was eventually torn down in 1955. The beautiful Chrysler Building next to the station was not yet built, but they were tearing down some old buildings to begin its construction. A train was just pulling in and making a terrible noise, the kids held their ears and grinned.
We walked up the wooden stairway to the ancient two-level 42nd Street station with its stained glass windows. We had to buy tickets, not tokens, only a nickel. A guard ‘chopped’ our tickets to let us in onto the downtown local platform, the express platform above us.
We walked upstairs to catch a downtown express. I explained that the center track was a one-way express line with limited stops. The El was so narrow that the express stops had to be raised above the local platforms.
“Hey, this is like a roller coaster!” Jonathan said.
“Yeah, isn’t it? Not as much fun but a nice ride anyway,” I said.
A downtown express rolled up the ramp to our platform, old wooden open-platform cars like a train in a Western movie. The ‘gatemen’ slid open the gates, no doors, as a rush hour crowd got off. We got on the first car, and pushed our way through the crowd to the front door. A pretty woman sitting in front in a natty woolen rather man-like suit gave the kids a big smile, Jonathan smiled back.
This express was going all the way to South Ferry. We took off, the old traction motors groaning as we rolled down the ramp, bouncing and rocking on the center track, passing 34th then 28th Streets at a fast clip, briefly playing tag with a local as it accelerated between stops.
The local was making bright blue sparks as its pickup ‘shoes’ tapped the unprotected ‘third rail’ along its track. The kids asked me if that was what made it run?
“Yep,” I told them. “Each track has a third rail raised up on insulators along side with 600 volts of electricity and, look, it is not protected in any way so track workers have to be very careful not to touch it.”
We climbed the ramp to a stop at 23rd Street station, then down again, the kids enjoying the bouncing ride, making a few more stops, rolling above the Bowery, a seedy street even then, to the dizzy heights of Chatham Square station complex, gateway to Little Italy and Chinatown, where the 2nd Avenue El passes under us, our train staying on the upper level. We could change there for City Hall but we were headed for Wall Street.
Our train rolled on, screeching around the tight curves of lower Manhattan, the line tracing the old narrow colonial-era streets. It felt like it would jump the track, the kids laughed in delight. We rode all the way to South Ferry and its big El terminal also called The Battery, the big green space on the tip of Manhattan, and enjoyed the vista of the harbor and the skyscrapers of the financial district, along with the Statue of Liberty. Only New York enjoys this intimacy with the sea. The harbor was alive with ships and seemingly countless ferries busily thrashing across the Hudson connecting the many rail stations in New Jersey with the financial district.
We walked up Broadway to Wall Street, old Trinity Church looking small among the towering buildings with its ancient graveyard. I thanked God that this was still 74 years before the obscenity of the attack on the World Trade Center. Twin towers did indeed occupy that site, but they were the very modest Hudson Terminal buildings. I pointed out the Woolworth Building, which was now the tallest building in the world at 792 feet. Only the Eiffel Tower was taller.
We walked down Wall Street’s narrow canyon. The kids posed by George Washington’s statue at the Sub Treasury building, where he took the oath of office as America’s first president. The Stock Market fronted Broad Street, The House of Morgan was the most prominent stockbrokerage on Wall Street, and nearby Mike Meehan & Company, a more modest brokerage, was our destination.
We entered the busy offices, with its ceiling fans and opaque glass office windows, above which the chatter of the ticker-tapes and men posting stock results on a big black board could be heard. Many brokers and secretaries sat at their wooden desks, using old-fashioned phones and tall manual typewriters.
I sat with one of the brokers and opened an account, giving my actual Minnesota address that didn’t exist yet and my ‘temporary’ address at the Algonquin, which seemed to impress him. I opened a ‘margin account,’ that is I could buy stock in a company on credit with as little as 10% down, like everyone seemed to be doing, but not on the initial transaction until my credit would be firmly established.
Mainly as an object lesson I bought 400 shares of Packard Automobile at about $41 with an order to sell it if it reached $44, which I knew it would by Friday thanks to the old newspapers I researched. This would make me about $1000 after expenses as I shed my expensive 1921-issued 500 dollar bills, paying full price, still a nice return on my investment. I had a plan for that money that would benefit my grandchildren too, more on that later.
I told the kids that buying stock like this ‘on the margin’ allowed ordinary people to buy stock on credit, which made stock prices soar amazingly high, but their real value was much lower, and that two years from now, in 1929, people would start a wave of selling. The market would collapse and the paper fortunes would vanish overnight, plunging America and later the world in a terrible depression that threw millions out of work, eventually leading to the Second World War.
I said I’d be back on Saturday morning to collect my profit. The broker wished me luck. We walked up to City Hall and Park Row, the old Victorian post office at the bottom of the park, no longer there in my time, the Woolworth Building towering over it.
We took a walk on the Brooklyn Bridge, beautiful, very familiar except that the elevated trains to Brooklyn used the upper deck, which is open in our time. We walked halfway across then turned back. We then took the original subway riding the express train back to Grand Central, Lauren brave enough to stand on the platform, one foot in each car despite anxious looks from fellow passengers.
The heavy steel olive-green subway cars roared through the tunnel taking the many curves in stride at seeming breath-taking speed, the cars bouncing and swaying, safety chains swinging in rhythm bringing fond memories back to me.
We then caught a taxi to the Museum of Natural History fronting Central Park. It was still impressive as we walked through the Dinosaur exhibit, the dramatic T-Rex skeleton put up in 1913 and the dinosaur eggs ‘fresh’ from the Gobi Desert in Mongolia, as I explained to the kids. They loved it, the museum familiar as an old friend as we walked its cavernous halls. Memories flooded back of my father taking me for the first time to see the dinosaur bones as well, and the deep impression it had on me, but that was years in the future. Back to the hotel for an early dinner and a much-needed sleep, the kids yawning, eager to go to bed.
A note was waiting under the door of our room. I opened it eagerly, the kids peering over my shoulder. It was an invitation from ‘Dottie’ to a Matinee for me and the kids Wednesday to see ‘Good News’ at the 46th Street Theater, a real 1920’s-style musical comedy that she was going to review for the New Yorker.
The show, a true classic of the ‘20’s, was about a fictional college, with all the stock characters of the era: ‘Joe College’ in Raccoon coats, Flappers, songs like ‘Varsity Drag.’ Nothing so grabbed the spirit of the times like this show would. (I’d seen the later movie version.) Still, what an honor to be invited by the legendary Dorothy Parker.
Her note stated:
