A short drive up the Hudson River from New York City lie the remnants of two Revolutionary War forts that guarded a chain across the Hudson River that could control passage via this strategic artery. Their names are Fort Clinton and Fort Montgomery. On October 6th, 1777, British troops led by Sir Henry Clinton attacked the forts, which were defended by two American brothers, George and James Clinton (unrelated to Henry, or Bill Clinton for that matter; George Clinton would later become the 4th Vice-President of the United States.) The British easily captured the two forts, and ultimately razed them and destroyed the chain. However, the British victory did not assist them in gaining control of the Hudson River, which ultimately they failed to do culminating in defeat to the Americans the next day at the 2nd Battle of Saratoga on October 7th.
Today the site of Fort Clinton can be visited in the Trailside Museum at Bear Mountain State Park, just off of the Bear Mountain Bridge, which has a small museum. Fort Montgomery is a State Historic Site just north of Fort Clinton and has a visitor center. Clockwise starting from the upper-left: A plaque marking the site of Fort Clinton in Bear Mountain State Park; A view of the Bear Mountain Bridge from the Trailside Museum at Fort Clinton; Remnants of Fort Clinton; An exhibit inside the Trailside Museum.
English journalist and sports-writer Henry Chadwick was born on October 5th, 1824 in Exeter England. He emigrated to the US at the age of 12 with his family and settled in Brooklyn. He found work as a journalist covering sports and was especially fond of cricket. He first saw a baseball game while covering cricket for the New York Times in 1856 and developed a life-long passion for the game. Working for various papers, he developed the box score, the terms ERA and Batting Average, and other scorekeeping tools still used today. When he died in 1908 he was credited as the ‘father of baseball’, though he is one of several persons who can credibly claim this title. His grave at Green-Wood Cemetery in Brooklyn is a must-see for baseball lovers.
Chadwick’s grave in Green-Wood Cemetery, with a baseball carved on the headstone.
England playing the United States in Hoboken The English team on a ship in Liverpool on their way across the Atlantic
On October 3rd, 1859, a team of 11 English cricketers and a team of 22 cricketers from New York began a 3-day cricket match at the Elysian Fields in Hoboken, New Jersey. The English team was on a tour of North America and played five matches in Canada and the US. It was the first ever overseas tour of the English cricket team, and 18 years before the first England-Australia test match in Melbourne. The English won all five matches, including the one in Hoboken.
The match in Hoboken was played at the home ground of the St. George’s Cricket Club, the most dominant cricket club in the New York area. Founded in 1838, they first started playing in Manhattan at various grounds before moving to Hoboken, using a site very near the field used by the Knickerbocker Baseball Club at the time. The team of 22 players (the American team was allowed to have two sets of the 11 players normally required to play cricket as an advantage) drawn from the St George club and other cricket clubs in the area, such as the New York Cricket Club or the Union Star club in Brooklyn. Players for the US team, many who were of English birth, included Sam Wright, his son and future baseball player and hall-of-famer Harry Wright, and glass-maker Henry E. Sharp. The English won the match easily, scoring 156 runs to the US’s 92. The English only had to bat for one innings to score more runs than the Americans did in two innings, equivalent to scoring more points in a single half of a basketball game than their opponent scored the whole game.
The poor result for US cricket during tour did not limit excitement around the matches. They were well attended and covered in the press, and the attention increased the interest in cricket which was then a strong rival to baseball in popularity in the US. A second English tour was planned. However, the Civil War put an end to this. After the war, baseball became the dominant sport in the US and cricket never recovered.
First issue of the New-York Daily Times, later the New York Times, on Sept. 18 1851. 113 Nassau St. Illustration from “Henry J Raymond and the New York Press for Thirty Years” by A.S. Hale and Company
On September 18th, 1851, an editorial appeared in a new New York newspaper that began as follows: “We publish today the first number of the New-York Daily Times, and we intend to issue it every morning (Sunday excepted) for an indefinite number of years to come.” The editorial was written by the newspaper’s co-founder, Henry Jarvis Raymond. The newspaper would later lose its hyphen and the word ‘daily’, and starting in 1861 it would publish on Sunday as well. But 166 years later, it has so far kept its promise, and remains, despite the struggles of the internet age, one of the most influential news sources in the world.
When one looks at the New York Times’ current headquarters, a 52-floor skyscraper built in 2007 just off of Times Square, it’s hard to imagine the much more humble origins of this institution nicknamed ‘The Grey Lady’. It was first published in a loft in a brownstone at 113 Nassau Street between Ann and Beekman streets. The building was then half-finished and the windows lacked glass. The writers and editors worked by candlelight. Times writer Augustus Maverick called the conditions ‘raw and dismal.’ The first issue was four pages and cost a penny.
“We do not mean to write as if we were in a passion, unless that shall really be the case; and we shall make it a point to get into a passion as rarely as possible. There are very few things in this world which it is worth while to get angry about; and they are just the things that anger will not improve.”
— Henry Jarvis Raymond, from the first issue of the New-York Daily Times on Sept. 18, 1851
The New York Times was founded in an already crowded newspaper environment by two men–Henry J. Raymond and George Jones. New York was then teeming with dailies and weeklies, mostly published within a few blocks of City Hall. In the early 1850s, two papers stood above the others: Horace Greeley’s New York Tribune and James Gordon Bennett’s New York Herald. The Times was founded as an alternative to these and other papers of the era–less focused on the scandal and sensationalism of the Herald and others in the ‘penny press’, but also lacking what for some was the moral righteousness and partisanship of Greeley’s Tribune. Raymond founded the Times with the hope of creating a more moderate, trustworthy news source, though like the Tribune it was pro-Republican once the party was founded in 1854. Raymond himself held many political positions as a Republican and once became chairman of the Republican National Committee. During his presidency the paper was a staunch defender of Abraham Lincoln.
Raymond and Jones first met while working for Horace Greeley at the New York Tribune in the 1840s. Both men were from up north. Raymond was born in Lima in upstate New York and studied in Vermont. Jones was born that state. Both worked at various newspapers in the region and Jones also worked as a banker. Before founding the Times, the two had together tried to takeover the Albany Evening Courier, then a powerful newspaper in New York State edited by Albany political giant Thurlow Weed, also a friend and ally of Raymond. In 1848 Weed offered to sell the paper to Raymond and Jones, but the deal was blocked by one part-owner who refused to sell, William White. Had this deal happened the New York Times would have never been born.
After starting at 113 Nassau Street, the Times moved up to 138 Nassau Street in 1854. Then in 1858 the Times arrived at its address for nearly 50 years–41 Park Row. This street become known as ‘Newspaper Row’ and was home to several of the most powerful newspapers in the country. The first Times building on Park Row was a 5-story Romanesque building designed by Thomas Jackson, the first building ever to be entirely devoted to one newspaper. It was from here that Raymond and Times part-owner Leonard Jerome defended the newspaper during the 1863 Draft Riots with gatling guns mounted on the roof.
Raymond’s grave at Green-Wood Cemetery in Brooklyn
Raymond died in 1869, at only 49 years of age. The paper was taken over by Jones who was the publisher until his death in 1891. Under Jones, the Times led the attacks on Boss Tweed, one of the most corrupt politicians in New York’s history, a man who nonetheless had a great deal of power after the Civil War. However, the Times’ reporting and cartoons by Thomas Nast helped bring his downfall and eventual arrest. Tweed once offered the Times $5 million to not publish an article on him, but he was rebuffed. In 1869, the Times also hired its first female reporter Maria ‘Middy’ Morgan, who covered livestock, equestrian events and horse racing.
In 1889 the Times commissioned a new and larger building at the same location, a building which reflected the growing power of the city’s press. This 16-floor building (2 floors were added later) by architect George Post still stands today and is currently occupied by Pace University. However, the cost of the building helped contribute to a dire financial situation for the Times in the 1890s. The paper’s circulation dropped to 9000 and the paper was losing $1000 per day when it was bought in 1896 by Adolph Ochs, whose family still owns the paper today. Ochs would revive the Times and turn it largely into the newspaper we know today, in part by returning to Raymond’s vision of a paper with a moderate to progressive stance that was above tabloid sensationalism. Ochs would soon move the Times’ offices uptown to Longacre Square, which was promptly renamed Times Square. The Times remains near Times Square today.
Remarkably, the rather non-descript original home of New York Times at 113 Nassau survived until 2007 when the building was demolished to make way for a 30-floor apartment building, the Lara. The Times left the building after only three years in 1854. The building later served as the Leggats Brothers Bookstore, home to George Cram’s atlas company, an Italian restaurant, and lastly, a McDonald’s. A plaque honoring Raymond and the New York Times once graced the sidewalk. However, the building was never considered for landmark designation. Today, both the building and the plaque, and any other trace of the newspaper, are gone.
Clockwise from top left: 138 Nassau Street–the second office of the New York Times (1854-58), illustration from “Henry J Raymond” by A.S. Hale; New York Times Building (1858-1889) built in 1858 at 41 Park Row; Grave of George Jones, co-founder of the Times, at Sleepy Hollow Cemetery in Sleepy Hollow NY.; New York Times Building (1889-1904) also at 41 Park Row built by George Post, now occupied by Pace University.
The schooner America, designed by George Steers A replica of the original 1844 clubhouse of the New York Yacht Club at its original location in Hoboken, New Jersey
On August 22 1851 the schooner America defeated 14 British yachts in a race around the Isle of Wight. The race became the inaugural edition of the America’s Cup, the oldest sporting competition in the world. It was also one of the greatest upsets of sports history. Great Britain was considered the master of all things maritime with centuries of tradition in sailing, while the United States was still an upstart nation. The New York Yacht Club (NYYC), the challenger, was only seven years old. The NYYC would continue to hold the America’s Cup for 132 years. The Cup bears the name of the winning yacht of the first race.
The race was organized by the Royal Yacht Squadron (RYS), founded in 1815. The RYS invited the New York Yacht Club to challenge British vessels in conjunction with the Great Exhibition of 1851 (also known as the Crystal Palace Exhibition). The challenge was accepted by the NYYC Commodore and founding member John Cox Stevens. A trophy was made by London silversmith Robert Garrard. It was initially called the ‘£100 Cup’, and was a bottomless ewer than has come to be called the “Auld Mug”.
George Steers’ grave in Green-Wood Cemetery in Brooklyn
The yacht America was designed for the NYYC by George Steers, along with his brother James. It was built in Steers’ shipyard in Greenpoint, today a neighborhood in Brooklyn. Steers was asked by NYYC member George Schuyler to build a yacht of immense speed suitable for racing. It was named the America. Though built for speed it also contained many amenities including a washroom with a bathtub, at a time when most homes lacked such facilities.
The NYYC chose Richard ‘Dick’ Brown as a pilot, an experienced Sandy Hook pilot, a group of pilots specializing in guiding ships through the dangerous waters surrounding New York Harbor. He chose as his first mate a young pilot named Nelson Comstock.
The America sailed across the Atlantic to England with tremendous expectations on it shoulders. This was a ship that was expected to compete against the very best British ships. Even many Americans with doubtful that an American ship could outclass the best ships in the world. The New York Tribune publisher Horace Greeley, who was then in Europe, urged John Stevens to not race against the British, saying they would be beaten; Greeley also told them if they lost they should not return to the US. The arrival of the America did generate considerable interest in the British press and among local yachtsmen, which built up the excitement for the upcoming race.
The race started at Cowes Castle on the Isle of Wight where Royal Yacht Squadron was headquartered. 15 yachts started the race, including the America. The route was the Queen’s Course, a 53-nautical mile course (98 km) around the island. Observers included Queen Victoria and Prince Albert, who watched aboard the royal yachts. The race was started by gunfire from the batteries at 10:00 am on August 22nd.
The America’s Cup, made by London Silversmith Robert Garrard
Piloted with precision and concentration by Brown, the America passed several yachts quickly and after about 30 minutes took the lead, which it would maintain throughout the race. Brown increased its lead by successfully maneuvering between the island and the Nabs Point lighthouse, a possible shortcut in the race. Soon the lead seemed so insurmountable that Victoria and Albert retired from viewing. But the small cutter Aurora did mount a late challenge. Rounding St Catherine’s point on the south of the Isle, the Aurora fell into a beam’s reach, a favorable point of sail. Behind a strong wind, the Aurora gained fast, largely unbeknownst to the crowd at the finish line that believed the America was winning easily. However, the America held off the challenger and crossed the finish line at 10 hours and 34 minutes, 8 minutes ahead of the Aurora. When informed that America had won, Queen Victoria asked who finished second. The response was, perhaps apocryphally, “Your Majesty, there is no second.”
The America crosses the finish line first. When Queen asked who finished second; the answer was, “Your Majesty, there is no second.”
The result was a shock for the sailing world and especially for British yachtsmen. But the British press and public showed tremendous sportsmanship in defeat. The crowd cheered America‘s victory. Queen Victoria personally congratulated John Cox Stevens. In later months the British press analyzed the race and wrote articles on how to improve yacht design to match Steers’ superior vessel. Back home, Americans were much less gracious in victory. News arrived by steamship in September. Newspapers declared the victory proof of US superiority over its former colonial master. The New York Herald declared, “We have beaten them on land and at sea.”
Exterior of the current clubhouse of the New York Yacht Club on 44th Street in Midtown Manhattan.
The New York Yacht Club was awarded the silver ewer as a trophy for the award. It was renamed the “America’s Cup”, after the winning ship. It was meant to be defended against legitimate challengers. The first such challenge happened in 1870, hosted by the NYYC in the US. Many later challenges followed, most held at the NYYC’s headquarters in Newport, RI. The trophy was only lost 132 years and 26 challenges later in 1983 to the Royal Perth Yacht Club and the ship Australia II. The NYYC has never regained the title, though other American clubs have.
3D model of Fort Clinton at the Trailside Museum
Clockwise starting from the upper-left: A plaque marking the site of Fort Clinton in Bear Mountain State Park; A view of the Bear Mountain Bridge from the Trailside Museum at Fort Clinton; Remnants of Fort Clinton; An exhibit inside the Trailside Museum.
Henry Chadwick
Chadwick’s grave in Green-Wood Cemetery, with a baseball carved on the headstone.
England playing the United States in Hoboken 
The English team on a ship in Liverpool on their way across the Atlantic
First issue of the New-York Daily Times, later the New York Times, on Sept. 18 1851. 
113 Nassau St. Illustration from “Henry J Raymond and the New York Press for Thirty Years” by A.S. Hale and Company
Raymond’s grave at Green-Wood Cemetery in Brooklyn
Clockwise from top left: 138 Nassau Street–the second office of the New York Times (1854-58), illustration from “Henry J Raymond” by A.S. Hale; New York Times Building (1858-1889) built in 1858 at 41 Park Row; Grave of George Jones, co-founder of the Times, at Sleepy Hollow Cemetery in Sleepy Hollow NY.; New York Times Building (1889-1904) also at 41 Park Row built by George Post, now occupied by Pace University.
The schooner America, designed by George Steers 
A replica of the original 1844 clubhouse of the New York Yacht Club at its original location in Hoboken, New Jersey
George Steers’ grave in Green-Wood Cemetery in Brooklyn
The America’s Cup, made by London Silversmith Robert Garrard
The America crosses the finish line first. When Queen asked who finished second; the answer was, “Your Majesty, there is no second.”
Exterior of the current clubhouse of the New York Yacht Club on 44th Street in Midtown Manhattan.