Celebrating Frida Kahlo’s Birthday

Today is the anniversary of the birth of the great Mexican painter Frida Kahlo, who gets extensive coverage in my upcoming book Williamsburg Transformed. One of the characters in my book, Ella Wolfe, became close friends with Frida during Wolfe’s time teaching in Mexico City. Bert and Ella Wolfe arrived in Mexico City as refugees,

The Novelty Theater and Its Contribution to American Drama

Today there is an apartment house at 778 Driggs Avenue, but the site has a long and fascinating history. In 1971, Officer Frank Serpico was shot in the building attempting to make a narcotics arrest. His life was made into a film starring Al Pacino. However, before that it was the site of the Novelty

A Williamsburger at the Battle of Gettysburg

A hundred and fifty-seven years ago the first day of the battle of Gettysburg happened. The number of Union casualties at Gettysburg has been estimated at 23,000, including over 3,100 killed, while the number of Confederate casualties may have been as high as 28,000, including over 4,500 killed. It was the bloodiest battle of the entire

Theobold Engelhardt: Iconic Williamsburg  Architect You certainly know his buildings, but probably do not know his name. Theobold Engelhardt played a huge role in shaping our local architectural heritage. His buildings are local landmarks and some of our most gorgeous buildings are his handiwork, yet few people today realize his important local legacy. Timing can mean

Williamsburgers in the Spanish Civil War

In the mid 1930s, Williamsburg’s Jewish community was not only focused on the economic hardships that they were suffering during the Great Depression. They were also keenly aware of the rising fascist tide sweeping across Europe. They saw that Fascists scapegoated Jews for the economic crisis engulfing the world. In January 1933 Adolph Hitler came

Walt Whitman in Williamsburg

For most of us when we think about Brooklyn’s greatest poet Walt Whitman we think about his poetry and not about his prose. However, Whitman like manycreative people today in Brooklyn, had to pay the bills and to make ends meet from 1856 or 1857 to 1859 he edited a Williamsburg newspaper called the BrooklynDaily

Daniel Fuchs- Novelist Who Captured Jewish Williamsburg

Perhaps no writer during the Great Depression captured the despair and frustration of the urban poor than Williamsburg’s Daniel Fuchs. His novels Summer in Williamsburg and Homage to Bienholt capture the zeitgeist of the Depression amongst Williamsburg’s Jews. Like many of the great Jewish artists who came out of Williamsburg, Daniel Fuchs was not born

Williamsburg Childhoods in literature

Chapter Six: Literary Childhoods Williamsburg is an area with a unique literary heritage. It was the home of not one, but two, great German American writers who captured the rough streets of their childhoods in the early twentieth century. Both Henry Miller (1891-1980) and Betty Smith (1896-1972) wrote about their Williamsburg childhoods and Miller’s Williamsburg

O’Donovan Rossa and His Williamsburg Connections

O’Donovan Rossa was the personification of the Irish rebel before Ireland finally gained its independence in 1922. Rossa’s great- grandson is Williamsburg film maker Williams Cole, who has made a documentary about his famous ancestor entitled Rebel Rossa. https://www.williamscole.net/new-page-1 No one better embodied the Fenian, or Irish rebel than O’ Donovan Rossa. Rossa holds a

How Paris Made Henry Miller A Great Writer

Henry Miller, one of the greatest writers New York ever produced, came to Paris hoping to find his voice as a writer. Suffering hardships that might have broken a less resolute spirit, Miller experienced real poverty in Paris, but also found his voice as a writer. He left the city finally realizing his talent as