Who's Who In Knickerbocker Village History, 1940 Census: Frank Hanley

hanley-illustrations.pdf
Frank Hanley was a frequent cover artist and illustrator for the satirical Judge Magazine and other humor publications in the 1930s, and later drew cartoons for the Brotherhood of Railroad Trainmen's Trainman News. Born in 1895, I haven't discovered yet when he passed away. Frank lived in the east court.

Comes Love: Artie Shaw's Version

Here writing credits go to Sam Stept, Charles Tobias and Lew Brown. Rumshinsky was often plagiarized. Sammy Cahn supposedly "borrowed" Bei-Mir-Mister-Schoen from him. Charles Tobias'
roots are within blocks of Knickerbocker Village

Joseph Rumshinsky: Comes Love

"Libes Shmertsn" [alternate transliteration Liebes Schmerzen] was written by Joseph Rumshinsky for the 1923 Yiddish musical "Shtarker fun Libe." Performed by  Metropolitan Klezmer.

Who's Who In Knickerbocker Village History, 1940 Census: Joseph Rumshinsky

Rumshinsky (often found spelled Rumshisky) actually lived at 14 Monroe. For many years KV addresses were grouped at either 10 Monroe or 40 Monroe Street depending upon which court residents lived in.
from part of his biography:

Among the significant composers and conductors associated with Second Avenue Yiddish musical theater at its zenith—a list that includes a great many once prominent names that are now no longer so widely remembered—Joseph Rumshinsky (1881 [1879?]–1956), along with Sholom Secunda, Alexander Olshanetsky, and Abraham Ellstein, is always considered one of the "big four" in aggregate achievement as well as undiminished fame. The beginning of his Second Avenue career, however, preceded the entrance of the other three in that group. He arrived in America as a young adult and an experienced musician before Ellstein was born, more than a decade before Olshanetsky immigrated from Europe, and only a few years before Secunda's bar mitzvah. (By the time Secunda first attempted to break into the Second Avenue arena, for example, Rumshinsky was already a major force within the entrenched establishment, whose hegemony posed an obstacle to the young newcomer that he could overcome only gradually and patiently—a situation Rumshinsky himself had faced upon his own arrival on the scene years earlier.) In terms of his formative role in the progress of the Yiddish musical, Rumshinsky's generic impact as a would-be reformer—independent of qualitative artistic or literary judgments of his ultimate products—was probably greater than that of the others who followed him. For it was he who first tried to edge Yiddish musical entertainments away from their earlier theatrical crudeness and lift them toward his theoretical ideal of a new American genre of Yiddish light operetta (or, as one critic later characterized Rumshinsky's admittedly unfulfilled aim, operetta in Yiddish). He succeeded, to a degree, in terms of form and structure, as well as with certain lasting innovations both in the pit and on the stage. But content remained little affected in the wake of his commercially driven recidivism. In many respects it may be said of Rumshinsky that his American career mirrored the chronological course of Second Avenue's development from the first decade of the 20th century until the 1950s.

106 East Broadway: The Silbowitz Family

Sam Silbowitz, Maggie Gyllenhaal's great, great uncle, on her mother's side, lived at 106 East Broadway in 1918. He was a cutter in the garment industry. The above was just a few buildings to the west of that address. It's between Pike Street and Forsyth.

Finding Your LES Roots: Maggie Gyllenhaal

From Maggie's bio:

Maggie's mother Naomi Gyllenhaal was born Naomi Achs in New York City, the daughter of doctors Ruth (née Silbowitz) and Samuel Achs. She was raised in a family of "high-achieving New York Jews". She attended Barnard College in New York City, graduating with a BA in English. She later earned an MA in Developmental Psychology from Columbia University. Her first ex-husband is historian and Columbia professor Eric Foner. Her second ex-husband is film director Stephen Gyllenhaal, to whom she was married for 32 years and has also collaborated professionally. The couple's two children are actors Maggie and Jake. They have one grandchild, born to their daughter in 2006.

Benjamin Silbowitz, Maggie's great grandfather, mentioned in  From PBS' "Finding Your Roots" lived for a while on the Lower East Side before moving to the Bronx.

Ida Goldberg: 68 Mott Street, 1893

Robert Downey's great grandmother. From PBS' "Finding Your Roots"

Finding Your LES Roots: Robert Downey Jr.

Robert Downey Jr.had roots on the Lower East Side, according to PBS' "Finding Your Roots" Downey's great-grandmother Ida Goldberg lived at 68 Mott Street in 1893

24 Henry Street: Historic House To Be Demolished

The four-story row house and its tinier townhouse twin at 22-24 Henry Street in Chinatown (or Two Bridges, if you prefer) are two of the oldest buildings in New York, dating back to the 1820's, blog Save the Lower East Side reports. They're also gone, suddenly demolished under some questionable circumstances. In a later update, the blog writes that the buildings were submitted to the Landmarks Preservation Commission for evaluation back in January. On February 4th, permits for construction sheds on both buildings were filed. Now the oldtimers look partially or totally razed without any sign of a demolition permit, steel girders for a mysterious new structure already rising. Self-certified permits were granted for interior demolition work in March 2009 with "no change in use and egress." Look a bit more than that, no? The owner of both buildings is listed as Siu Man Sat, and Save the LES suspects this is a typical destruction-before-landmarking case. Writes Save the LES: "The demolition of a town house in Greenwich Village would spark a protest, an outrage and an angry movement, but far to the east in Chinatown, no preservationists seem to notice or care. And yet, these two small buildings were probably older than anything in the Village, and in a neighborhood with a much longer and complex history."

Clay Aiken, Dee Snider and Penn Gillette Can't Take The KV Poop

The nerve of these guys dissing the sacred ground of Coleman Oval. All I can say is I wish Triumph, the Insult Comic Dog, was there to poop on them A h/t to Alexandra Petillo for finding this.

The Paintings Of Rachel Isadora

The multi-talented Rachel got her start in Knickerbocker Village. The show above extends to May 22nd

Rachel Isadora began dancing at the age of six. She trained at George Balanchine’s School of American Ballet under a Ford Foundation scholarship and she has danced professionally in New York City, Boston and London. Her oil paintings depict her love of dance. Ms. Isadora also lived in Africa for almost ten years and that experience, as well as living in New York City, has also become the focus of her paintings. Ms. Isadora has written and illustrated over 150 children’s books many of which have been set in the world of dance or set in Africa. These include Lili at Ballet, Max, Swan Lake, and At the Crossroads. In 2009, BalletRox, a Boston ballet company, created a ballet based upon her Caldecott Honor Award book Ben’s Trumpet. Other books of Ms. Isadora’s have been adapted to film, music and dance. Ms. Isadora’s oil paintings have been acquired by many private collectors.

Happy Mother's Day

Sometime in the spring of 1948 I would guess, on Norfolk, in front of Pollack's, just off of Delancey. My mother shouldered a load of responsibilities in her lifetime. She shielded me from a lot. Now I'm earning a "doctorate" in turn doing the same for others. She taught me well. I sure miss her.