February 16: ON THIS DAY IN HISTORY
ON THIS DAY IN 1902, the Brooklyn Daily Eagle reported, “Although a kind heaven has done its best to clean the streets of Brooklyn for the past three months by timely downpours of rain, it has failed in its effort. There is in the City Record, an annual budget of the great City of New York, a department known as Street Cleaning. It receives a large annual appropriation, pays fat salaries to its employees and has a branch office with a deputy commissioner in the Municipal Building, just behind Borough Hall, in Brooklyn. So far as is known the branch office in Brooklyn hibernated two months ago, and in the words of the old song, ‘It hasn’t done anything since.’ The streets of Brooklyn, which phrase is coming to have a familiar sound, are undoubtedly deeper in dirt today than at any time within the memory of man. The slush is gone. When Commissioner Woodbury drew off the street cleaners from Brooklyn to shovel snow into the North River for the benefit of Manhattan, Brooklyn howled and heaven heard. A two-days’ rain melted the slush. But there are things which rain cannot wash away, things like ashes and garbage, riff-raff from stores, old clothes and papers, boxes and barrels … Complaints have been coming into the Eagle from all sections of the borough for several weeks.”
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ON THIS DAY IN 1919, Eagle columnist Frederick Boyd Stevenson wrote, “There is a nice old hen out in Iowa who cackles nearly every one of these warm winter days we are having, and every time she cackles she lays an egg. And there is a nice old man over in Manhattan who every morning, Sundays and holidays excepted, gets on the telephone wire and says: ‘Central, please give me Rector-four-seven-four.’ And just as soon as the wire isn’t ‘busy’ — and it’s reported ‘busy’ 1,500 times a day — he gets his number. And the nice old man in Manhattan says: ‘Hello! Is this the Weather Bureau?’ And the chap at the other end of the wire says: ‘Yes.’ And the nice old man says: ‘What’s the outlook for tomorrow?’ And Mr. Weather Sharp says: ‘It’s going to be colder; likely to fall 10 or 15 degrees.’ And the nice old man in Manhattan says: ‘Thanks, goodbye.’ And then he goes over to his office and takes down a schedule which, among other things, contains the legend: ‘Fresh eggs, 65 cents a dozen,’ and he scratches out the ‘65’ and marks instead, ‘70 cents a dozen.’ And that is all because the weather chap told him it was going to be colder, and because the nice old man in Manhattan knows that the nice old hen out in Iowa which was cackling yesterday and, according to the regulations of a well-regulated hen, laid an egg, would not be cackling tomorrow, and, therefore, would not lay an egg tomorrow. And on this tale of the nice old man in Manhattan and the nice old hen in Iowa hangs the whole history of modern civilization.”
Brooklyn Boro
View MoreNew York City’s most populous borough, Brooklyn, is home to nearly 2.6 million residents. If Brooklyn were an independent city it would be the fourth largest city in the United States. While Brooklyn has become the epitome of ‘cool and hip’ in recent years, for those that were born here, raised families here and improved communities over the years, Brooklyn has never been ‘uncool’.