April 30: John Nicholas Genin, famous hatter on Broadway, opposite St. Paul’s Chapel, died on this date in 1878. It was Genin who proposed a pedestrian bridge to help customers get to his side of that busy thoroughfare (called Loew Bridge, it was built in 1866 and torn down two years later).
April 29: Green-Wood’s comptroller, Joseph Perry, reports on this date in 1842 that an agreement has been reached with the Schermerhorns to purchase 85 acres from them at $350 per acre. The Schermerhorns soon built their mausoleums on the land that they had owned and sold to Green-Wood.
April 28: On this date in 1837, John Britton was born. He would serve in the Civil War as major of the 18th Pennsylvania Cavalry, fighting in 48 battles and being severely wounded several times. Years later, he lost his eyesight as a result of one of those wounds; he died in 1897.
April 27: Imre Kiralfy, producer of theatrical spectaculars around the world, died on this date in 1919. Photo courtesy of the Owen Family.
April 26: Poet Alice Cary was born on a farm near Cincinnati, Ohio, on this date in 1820; she and her sister Phoebe came to New York City and became the center of a literary circle.
Hurricane Sandy, with intense winds across Green-Wood’s 478 acres a few months ago, toppled, snapped off, and broke into pieces about 300 of our 7,000 trees. Now, in order to make amends, and at the same time bring to fruition several long-anticipated tree-planting projects, Art Presson, Green-Wood’s superintendent of the grounds, has gotten to work … Read more
April 25: On this date in 1854, Firemen Henry Christman and Andrew Schenck, as well as 10 other firemen, were killed in a fire in Manhattan where the Woolworth Building now stands.
April 24: Henry Warner Slocum, who served as a major general during the Civil War, holding Culp’s Hill at Gettysburg and serving as General William Tecumseh Sherman’s right-hand-man on the March to the Sea, as well as serving as a Congressman from Brooklyn, died on this date in 1894.