Tag: Alienist Locations

Two More Maps, Newsletter Release, & Author Article

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I am pleased to report that two maps of key locations featured in The Angel of Darkness have now been added to the Alienist maps section of the site. As with the maps of key locations featured in The Alienist that I released late last week, the first Angel of Darkness map includes 26 key locations around New York City while the second map includes 15 key locations outside the city. As with the preceding maps, full lists of all the locations marked on the maps can be found below each map, and these can be ordered according to location name, location category, address, or description by clicking on the appropriate column heading. You can also search the list of locations via the search field included immediately below the maps.

In addition, the first 17th Street newsletter has been sent out to subscribers. For those who haven’t signed up and may be interested, the newsletter will be released on a monthly basis to provide a summary of the preceding month’s book and website news, a summary of the topics covered during the preceding month’s history blogs, and an author spotlight section containing an excerpt from an author interview/article that might be of interest to visitors. You can view the July newsletter here. If you think you would be interested in receiving the monthly newsletter, you can sign up via the site’s side menu. Your email address will not be shared with any third parties and you can unsubscribe at any time.

Finally, I thought it might be of interest to visitors that Caleb Carr was recently asked to comment on a long and elaborate New York Times piece from 1852 about a heatwave that hit the city during July of that year. The piece’s unusual length, subject matter, and purplish prose drew varying interpretations from the other eminent historians and writers who were asked to comment on the piece, with Mr. Carr focusing his comments on the attitude expressed by the journalist in the piece.

“The more dramatic he makes it sound, the more he makes himself and his readers feel that they are surviving a great struggle,” Mr. Carr said, “that just by getting through the average day in New York, they are validating what in nearly all cases are anonymous — and all too often, in their own minds, meaningless or at least futile — existences.”

“Maybe life in New York now,” he added, “so clean, so crime-free, so law abiding and safe, is a better place. I don’t know. But personally, I preferred the town that made each citizen feel that kind of validation in mere survival.”

The full article can be read at the New York Times website.

Two New Alienist Maps

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In recognition of our author’s birthday today, I have decided to release two new Alienist maps that I have been working on to replace 17th Street’s previous maps. These two new maps are specially customised interactive Google maps of every location featured in The Alienist. One map features The Alienist‘s 31 key locations around New York City while the other features The Alienist‘s 7 key locations outside of New York City. Full lists of all the locations marked on the maps can be found below each map. These can be ordered according to location name, location category, address, or description by clicking on the appropriate column heading, and the list of locations are also fully searchable via the appropriate field included immediately below the maps. I’m really excited about these new maps and will be releasing two further maps for key locations in The Angel of Darkness over the coming days.

Many happy returns, Mr. Carr!

Did Dr. Kreizler really live at 283 East 17th Street? Part Four

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View Part One, Part Two, Part Three, and Part Four of the Did Dr. Kreizler really live at 283 East 17th Street? series.

Welcome to the fourth and final part of the “Did Dr. Kreizler really live at 283 East 17th Street?” series. Over the course of this series, we’ve overviewed the origins of Stuyvesant Square from its earliest days through to the 1840s (Part One), read about the district’s most active period of development in the 1850s through to the early 1880s (Part Two), and learnt more about the enormous influence one reforming rector at St. George’s Church had on the district in the late 1880s and 1890s (Part Three). In this final blog of the series, we will be discussing why Caleb Carr might have selected the location as the home for his protagonist before briefly touching on how the district continued to develop in the early 20th century.

Why might Caleb Carr have chosen 283 East 17th Street as Dr. Kreizler’s residence?

1891-west

I feel it’s important to start this blog by stating the obvious: as I am not the author, I can only hypothesize as to why he may have chosen the fictional address of 283 East 17th Street as the home for his protagonist–and, yes, it is a fictional address. As can be seen in the 1891 maps of the district to the right and below, the section of 17th Street overlooking the park that was described as the location for Doctor’s home is bisected by Second Avenue. On the western side of Second Avenue, lot numbers ended at No. 251 (originally the Hamilton Fish mansion, later turned New York Lying-In Hospital; see below), while on the eastern side of Second Avenue, lot numbers started again at No. 301. Nevertheless, by examining the district’s composition in the 1890s, as well as overviewing the proximity of the neighborhood to other locations of importance in the Alienist books, we can start to theorize about why Caleb Carr might have selected the location. In addition, as Mr. Carr had his own connections to the district in his youth, it seems likely that this may have also played a role in his choice of Stuyvesant Square as the Doctor’s home.

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Did Dr. Kreizler really live at 283 East 17th Street? Part Three

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View Part One, Part Two, Part Three, and Part Four of the Did Dr. Kreizler really live at 283 East 17th Street? series.

Welcome to Part Three of the “Did Dr. Kreizler really live at 283 East 17th Street?” series. In Part One, we overviewed the early development of Stuyvesant Square from its rural origins to the start of construction in the district in the 1840s. In Part Two, we overviewed the greatest periods of growth in the district, the 1850s to early 1880s, and learnt about the first owner-occupants of the houses in the neighborhood, many of whom were successful merchants, along with the tenants of the district’s first apartment houses who were predominantly writers and theater people. In Part Three, we will learn more about Stuyvesant Square as it was during the critical periods for Alienist books, the 1880s and 1890s, and will focus our attention on some of the most prominent characters that contributed to the shaping of the district’s character during this period.

Stuyvesant Square’s fall from grace in the early 1880s

Even though the architectural charm of Stuyvesant Square had been established thirty years earlier with the building of handsome residential and religious buildings around the district’s attractively landscaped public park, by the early 1880s the district was becoming a shadow of its former self. Tenement populations were now encroaching on the neighborhood, and the district’s wealthier residents had begun to move further uptown in response. Although the park itself was still frequented by neighborhood children, the neglected park’s grass was no longer receiving any maintenance, its flowers had all but disappeared, and its two large fountains were filled with rubbish from the streets rather than water. One contemporary even recalled seeing “dead cats and empty tomato cans” piled in the fountain basins.

At the same time, the district’s iconic St. George’s Episcopal Church that had once drawn some of the largest congregation numbers of any religious institution in New York was also in the process of an equally sharp decline. Congregation numbers had started to fall while under the pastorship of the aging Rev. Dr. Tying in the early 1870s, and numbers had dropped still further following his death. During this period, St. George’s was funded by pew holders, of which there were few remaining due to the wealthy parishioners migrating uptown, and had accumulated $35,000 in floating debt. The financial situation had reached such a precarious point by the late 1870s that there were even reports that the Roman Catholic Church had been approached by members of the vestry to take the church over as a mission. Although members of St. George’s had tried on several occasions to build their numbers up through outreach to the poor, all attempts had been unsuccessful and were eventually abandoned.

When St. George’s attendance numbers reached their bleakest point in the early 1880s, the extremely conservative wardens and vestrymen of the church made a radical decision to approach the passionate reformer, the Rev. Dr. William S. Rainsford, to take over pastorship of the church. Although a surprising choice for an old-fashioned church, this decision would prove to not only turn around the fortune of the failing church but would help to shape the character of the district as a whole in the years to come.

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