RPI

With over 500 miles of shoreline, the fireboats of the FDNY have protected the city of New York for the last century and a half. Utilizing historic images, David Rocco showcases their fascinating evolution from wooden-hull tugboats to modern-day specialized watercraft.

The Fire Department of the City of York (FDNY), first utilized the New York Police Department’s steam powered vessel, Seneca in 1862. In 1875, the FDNY purchased their first fireboat, the Havemeyer, a wooden-hulled steam powered vessel retrofitted with basic firefighting equipment. By the beginning of the 20th century, the FDNY averaged ten fireboats in their fleet.

David Rocco has been involved as a volunteer for many cultural and environmental initiatives in the Hudson Valley and NYC. He played a seminal role in the successful development of the Walkway Over the Hudson project. David is also the co-author of The Indestructible Man, a book about Navy legend Dixie Kiefer. 

From the Roaring Twenties to a Rock 'N' Roll Landmark

Since it opened in 1925, the Gramercy Park Hotel has always been one of New York’s premiere cultural hotspots. Early in its history it served as the backdrop to Humphrey Bogart’s first marriage and housed a young John F. Kennedy. Soon Babe Ruth was a regular at the bar, and Joe DiMaggio was feted there. Most famous, perhaps, was the period in the 1970s, when rock ’n’ roll royalty dubbed the hotel “the Glamercy,” and acts such as the Clash, David Bowie, Bob Dylan, Lou Reed, Madonna, and more stayed “on the way up or on the way down.” The hotel’s history also includes the harrowing personal story of the Weissberg family who owned it for many years and lived there. Author Max Weissberg reveals an inside look at the hotel’s storied past as a rock ’n’ roll muse and a New York icon. 

Possessed with a spirit of optimism and an innate gift for retailing savvy, entrepreneur William T. Grant revolutionized the nation’s retailing industry with the 1906 debut of his W.T. Grant Company department store in Lynn, Massachusetts. Taking aim at the lucrative yet untapped middle ground between the discount five-and-dime variety stores and traditional department stores of the era, he built a well-deserved reputation as the store “Known for Values.” Grants quickly became one of the nation’s fastest-growing and most beloved department store chains, encompassing 1,238 stores in forty-six states at its height in 1972. While the Grants stores are now just a fond memory, the legacy of William T. Grant continues to be remembered today, along with the vibrant philanthropic nonprofit William T. Grant Foundation, which he started in 1936.

Historic schoolhouses preserve Long Island’s story: its generations of people, their settlement patterns, and the growth of their country towns and villages into today’s suburban sprawl and legendary resort destinations.

Celebrated for their simple form and association with early American values, no other historic building type evokes such strong emotions as the schoolhouse. Hundreds were built across Long Island and many survive, either adapted to new uses or restored and open for public access. From the simplest, pre–Revolutionary War period “Town House” in East Hampton to the trendy, octagonal schoolhouses constructed in Brentwood and Yaphank in the 1850s, Long Island saw the greatest variety of these distinctive structures built anywhere. Responding to an 1812 New York State law requiring towns to lay out school districts within walking distance of its younger residents, many early population centers received schoolhouses by the 1820s. Even a handful of Long Island’s schoolhouses are associated with the great American poet Walt Whitman, who taught school as a young man in the 1830s and later shared his concerns about the teaching methods then in vogue. But by the end of the 1800s, one-room schoolhouses became outdated and no longer accommodated the growing population. Many were saved, however, and repurposed as sheds, workshops, and even seasonal dwellings.

The history of New York is inseparable from the history of sailing on the Hudson River. Beginning with Henry Hudson in 1609 the Dutch and English extended their empires into the Hudson Valley and extracted its bounty via sail. 

Control of the Hudson River was a lynchpin for American victory in the Revolutionary War and New York City's 19th-century rise to global prominence was powered by the sailing vessels on its waterways. Upriver, sloops and schooners delivered goods from the nation's interior and international whaling businesses operated from Hudson and Poughkeepsie and Kingston and Newburgh became noted shipbuilding centers. Yacht racing and ice yachting emerged as popular sports among wealthy families like the Astors and Roosevelts. Sailing clubs preserved these traditions into the 20th century. Since the 1960s, activists including Pete Seeger have used sailboats to galvanize a movement to revive the river ecosystem. Today, the river is home to new generations of sailors continuing these traditions into a fifth century.

Steve Schwartz has sailed and captained numerous sailing and motor vessels on the Hudson River since the 1970s. He and James Malchow are both captains on the Hudson River ferry sloop Woody Guthrie. Images in this book, collected from local libraries, historical societies, the New York State Archives, Library of Congress, and private collections, capture the people, places, and ships that have made the Hudson River an important sailing center for over four centuries.