The first board game: Before Monopoly, a whirlwind tour around America became the perfect Christmas gift

The 24 States: playing field for America's first board game

HOW NEW YORK SAVED CHRISTMAS My yearly roundup of little events in New York history that actually helped establish the standard Christmas traditions many Americans celebrate today. Not just New York-centric events like the Rockefeller Christmas Tree or the Rockettes, but actual components of the festivities that are practiced in people's homes. You can read past articles in this series here.

Board games are a staple of the holiday gift-giving season and one of the presents most easily guessed correctly by children when sitting wrapped under the tree. My young niece has already texted me strongly implying she would like to see the new UNO ROBOTO under the tree this year.What if I decided to be the weirdest uncle in the world and give her the first board game ever sold in America -- The Travellers Tour through the United States, first manufactured and sold in New York?

Contests played on wooden boards (like backgammon and chess) have been around for millenia, but they were mostly seen as an adult dalliance, often kingly, sometimes undignified, and almost never for children.

The concept of non-physical boxed games for adolescents developed, not surprisingly, for educational uses. Board games are actually the step-children of maps, with many 18th century European models focusing on geographic instruction. Considering the penchant of European countries to invade each other then, this may have been both useful for teachers and vexing for students.

Historians trace the first real children's board game to that party in a box called The Mansion of Happiness, indoctrinating Puritan values as children maneuvered pieces along a winding, multi-colored path. Although the game was invented in England in 1800, it took several decades to be reproduced in the United States. By this time, New York kids already had their own board game.

It debuted in 1822, courtesy the brother book publishers Frederick and Roe Lockwood. Their father, the spectacularly named Lambert Lockwood, owned a book store in Bridgeport, Connecticut. According to game historian Joseph Angiolillo, it's believed Lambert also sold 'linen games' which could be unfurled on the floor, folded and put away. (Think of Twister, but less shocking.) The Lockwood's fine home would not be far from that of the downtown Bridgeport residence of P.T. Barnum.

With father's help, the young brothers moved to New York in the late 1810s to start their own publishing business, setting up a small shop at 154 Broadway at Liberty Street (today, catty-corner Zuccotti Park). They appear to have specialized in 'foreign works' -- probably books in other languages -- but had a few startlingly devout titles in their collection, from  "Views on Theology: President Edward's Doctrine of Original Sin, the Doctrine of Physical Depravity" to "The Excellence and Influence of the Female Character." They even dabbled in game instruction with the 1821 guide "Instructive and Amusing Pastimes."

In 1822, they developed an educational tool for the purpose of learning American geography -- a topic not terribly complicated back then -- and called it The Travellers Tour through the United States. Essentially, it was a map of the states and territories, including the freshly unveiled states of Missouri and Maine and the blue lumpen-shaped Arkansas territory. The map was printed on some type of flexible wooden board that could be folded.

The object of Travellers was to give the names of cities and places, with players following a line around the board. Seems easy, right? In a more advanced version of the game, however, one also had to guess the population total. I cannot think of a more apt symbol of the pride for American expansion than this particular feature. The first player to get to New Orleans won.

There were no dice with The Travellers Tour through the United States, being associated with gambling and vice. Instead, players maneuvered around the terrain via a spinner, a far easier method of cross-country travelling than the one chosen by Lewis & Clark several years previous.

The game was clearly successful enough in their store that two expanded versions were created, The Traveller's Tour through Europe and The Traveller's Tour through the World.

The Lockwoods aimed their board games to holiday shoppers. In in the 1820s, however, many New Yorkers didn't celebrate on Christmas; in a Puritan throwback, many believed celebrating on Jesus's birthday itself was too unholy. New Years celebrations, however, were just as relevant, with families visiting the homes of friends and neighbors, often bearing gifts.

The brothers Lockwood were ready: "VALUABLE NEW-YEAR PRESENTS," according to one old newspaper."The works of Byron, Scott, Cowper, Moore....in elegant bindings." And among the books they sold backgammon and chess boards. With such games for adults, the Travellers series must have seemed a desirable purchase, lest they leave the children jealous.

The Lockwoods continued making books through the 1820s at this location, although it doesn't appear they were in business together after 1830. One source mentions Frederick Lockwood as a watchmaker later in life. His brother Roe, however, stayed in the book business, partnering with his son. It appears he even later published the extraordinary illustrations of John James Audubon.

I'm not sure what happened with the building at 154 Broadway, but if it was still standing in 1845, it was surely destroyed in the Great Explosion of 1845.

One final note -- in 1822, just as the Lockwoods were debuting their new board game, a wealthy gentleman uptown in his estate (the austere Chelsea manor) became inspired by the holiday season and wrote a festive poem. The following year, that man, Clement Clarke Moore, published it under the title "A Visit From St. Nicholas," aka 'Twas the Night Before Christmas."

Top pic courtesy NYPL

A Wretched Anniversary: The Brooklyn Theater Fire of 1876

It is difficult to discuss calmly the frightful disaster which happened in Brooklyn on Tuesday night. No such awful sacrifice of human life has ever been known in this country shipwreck and the casualties of war alone being excepted. -- New York Times editorial, Dec. 7, 1876 

  One hundred and thirty-five years this evening, nearly a thousand playgoers entered the Brooklyn Theater, at Washington and Johnson streets near City Hall, to enjoy the well-reviewed (and lengthy) production of N. Hart Jackson's 'The Two Orphans'. During the show's final act, stage hands discovered that a set piece backstage had caught fire. The actors onstage attempted gamely to stay in character, for fear of causing a panic, until fiery bits of wood and flaming parts of the set began raining down upon them.

As the audience leapt to the aisles in terror, the actors tried to calm people to prevent a stampede, to no avail. An usher forced open a rarely used exit door to free audience members, but the rush of December air only fed the flames, turning the once elegant auditorium, built only five years previous, into an inescapable trap of heat and asphyxiation.

Those in the upper tiers of the theater -- the 'family circle', or cheap seats, filled with men, women and children -- were trapped by smoke within darkened foyers and unnavigable stairwells. Some fell from balconies to their deaths. Dozens were crushed heading for doorways, and to some of those who survived, it seemed that all respectability had given way to base animal behavior. Most perished by suffocation or underfoot, while others were lost into the oblivion of belching smoke when weakened floors gave way.

Twenty five minutes after flames were first spotted backstage, one entire wall of the Brooklyn Theater caved backwards into the inferno, the once elegant ceiling fresco nothing but a crumbling scorch now. Flaming projectiles caught in the wind settled upon surrounding structures, and firefighters scrambled to soak the inferno, now in fear of scattering randomly through one of Brooklyn's oldest neighborhood. Most in danger was the hotel on the corner, where some audience members had found momentary safety.  

Since 1869, Brooklyn had a paid fire department, and many fought the fire from the streets. But the rudimentary firefighting implements of the day were unable to combat the inferno. The Brooklyn Theater burned for several hours more, dying out by early morning. Throughout the night, most could only watch -- what to do, plunge into darkness? -- and many did watch. Thousands flocked, some to help, others fascinated, horrified.

Inspectors found an unspeakably grisly sight the next morning, heaps of burned bodies in formless masses -- people choked or crushed, their remains almost unrecognizable amid blackened debris. In an eerie parallel to two later disasters (the General Slocum explosion of 1904 and the Triangle Factory Fire of 1911), a make-shift morgue was prepared on nearby Adams Street to accommodate the dozens of unidentifiable corpses.

Nobody is sure exactly how many died that evening -- some number between 275 to 300 people. It is certainly among the worst disasters in Brooklyn history and one of the most catastrophic fires in American history.

The place where the theater once stood is now occupied by Cadman Plaza, in the grove of trees just east of the Henry Ward Beecher statue. Many of the bodies (over a hundred) are buried together under a memorial at Green-Wood Cemetery.


Top picture courtesy NYPL


Below: the area of Cadman Plaza where the Brooklyn Theater once stood.

The Thermos Building, keeping it hot (and cool) in Chelsea

A charming family enjoys its insulated beverages -- just as they like it, just as they need it -- in an ad from 1909.

 The invention of the vacuum flask in 1892 (by Scottish chemist Sir James Dewar) does not rank high among mankind's most remarkable inventions, but its longevity relies on being a steady companion. The first gas-operated motor vehicle debuted in Massachusetts the following year. In an era before disposable containers, the vacuum flask came along at exactly the right time. Now, people could travel long distances of their own accord and drink a hot beverage along the way. In the 1890s, the road trip was born.

Believe it or not, Dewar was not a member of the family that produced the famed Scottish whiskey, although I suspect much of that intoxicant has been stored in Dewar's vacuum invention. Like many inventors, Dewar was not terribly business-savvy, and he failed to properly patent and profit from his own creation, unsuccessfully taking rivals to court.

One of those competitors, the German glass blowers Burger and Aschenbrenner, ran away with the industry. They loosely named their revised vacuum flask after the Greek word for 'heat' and began producing the Thermos for local use in 1904. Two years later, William B. Walker, an American visiting the Munich-based Thermos plant, became enamored of the magic container and obtained a license from the Thermos company to bring the product to America the following year.

Walker opened the American Thermos Bottle Company in 1907, producing the containers out of a small factory in Brooklyn, in the shadow of the Manhattan Bridge. (Today's DUMBO neighborhood, 31 Washington Street, to be precise. The building is all condos today, so that means one or more people are living in an old Thermos factory as you read this.)

His timing could not have been more divine. Auto dealerships began popping up around Times Square, driving a market for accessories. New York's continuing construction boom -- paired with less advantageous lunch-break privileges -- suggested new uses for the Thermos.

But most likely it was Walker's clever marketing strategies that made the Thermos a desirable product. As seen in the advertisement at top, the Thermos brought the family together. It was traditional. At the same time, it was a marvel of invention, at an affordable price. An ad (at right) that ran 100 years ago today, in the New York Tribune, heralds its appropriateness as a Christmas present. "It does just what everyone wants done -- it keeps coffee, tea, soup, etc., hot for 24 hours."

Walker soon expanded the Thermos company. While his marketing and distribution team moved to a swank office near Madison Square (1171 Broadway), his production facilities moved to Chelsea in 1910, to 232 West 18th Street, with additional entrances on West 17th Street. "The building will hereafter be known as the Thermos Building," proclaimed the New York Times.

The product began popping up in truly odd places, all engineered for the maximum of publicity. Most of the 200,000 New Yorkers who lined Broadway for an "automobile carnival parade" in 1909 observed one prize-winning vehicle -- a car in the shape of a Thermos bottle. (The Thermos car below is from the 1909 Vanderbilt Cup races, in Long Island. I imagine it must be the same vehicle. Pic courtesy Vanderbilt Cup Races.)

The Thermos made a stout companion during the era of exploration. E. H. Shackleton had one during his 1909 voyage to the South Pole, as did Robert Peary on a his similar expedition north. The Wright Brothers allegedly had one on their early planes. Back on Earth, so did the President of the United States that year, William Howard Taft.

Christmas shoppers along Ladies Mile, not far from the Thermos Building, would have found a wide selection of sizes. According to Charles Panati, "A quart-size Thermos sold for $7.50; the pint size for $5.00." Those are appliance prices; according to the Inflation Calculator, a $5 Thermos in 1910 is equal to a $115 product today. (I don't know what that ad above is talking about with its $1.00 Thermos.)

Demand soon required larger facilities, and the Thermos company moved out of the Thermos Building. But not before a disaster that struck on May 1, 1913, a fire that quickly swept through the structure, rather unsettling in light of the Triangle Factory Fire that occurred just two years before. Luckily, most of the Thermos employees were out to lunch, and a hero, "Samuel Gumps, a negro elevator man" rescued employees from the top floors. Although "several girl employees" were forced to escape to the rooftop.

The Thermos company moved its headquarters to Norwich, Connecticut.  Today the building is a basic residential address, its Thermos Building name long forgotten. (As the building cuts through the block, it's known today as 245 West 17th Street.)  On the 18th Street side, it's just next door to Barney's Co-Op. Perhaps they sell Thermos there?

By the way, I love that in the early days of this product, it was sometimes marketed as 'Thermos, the Bottle."

Mark Twain was here: Mapping a trail of his misadventures

Last year at this time, I did a podcast on Mark Twain in New York and featured this map of notable places Twain worked, lectured, lived and played. Today is the author's birthday -- he was born 176 years ago -- so I thought I'd reprint the map in case you wanted to revisit a few places in his honor, with stops in Manhattan, Brooklyn and the Bronx. (And even places on Governors Island and Randall's Island!) The three key destinations are his two residences near Washington Square Park and his cliff-side respite up at Wave Hill in Riverdale, Bronx. But the boarding house where he first lived, as a teenager? It's on Duane Street, in today's TriBeCa.


View Mark Twain in New York in a larger map

He also seemed to have had an altercation on a streetcar in 1890 that rankled him most severely, according to a letter he wrote to the New York Sun. The author jumped on the streetcar at Sixth Avenue and 42nd Street. An excerpt:

 "Of course there was no seat -- there never is: New Yorkers do not require a seat, but only permission to stand up and look meek, and be thankful for such little rags of privilege as the good horse-car company may choose to allow them

...After a moment, the conductor, desiring to pass through and see the passengers, took me by the lappel and said to me with that winning courtesy and politeness which New Yorkers are so accustomed to: "Jesus Christ! what you want to load up the door for? Git back here out of the way!".....This conductor was a person about 30 years old, I should say, five feet nine, with blue eyes, a small, dim, unsuccessful moustache, and the general expression of a chicken thief -- you may probably have seen him.

I said I would report him, and asked him for his number. He said, in a tone which wounded me more than I can tell, "I'll give you a chew of tobacco."

 I went up to Sixth avenue and Forty-third street to report him, but there was nobody in the superintendent's office who seemed to want to converse with me. A man with "conductor" on his cap said it wouldn't be any use to try to see the President at that time of day, and intimated by his manner, not his words, that people with complaints were not popular there, any way.

 So I have been obliged to come to you, you see. What I wanted to say to the President of the road was this -- and through him say it to the President of the elevated roads -- that the conductors ought to be instructed never to swear at country people except when there are no city ones to swear at, and not even then except for practice. Because the country people are sensitive. Conductors need not make any mistakes; they can easily tell us from the city people. Could you use your influence to get this small and harmless distinction made in our favor?"

Oh, Samuel.

Courtesy Twain Quotes

Finally, the Bowery Boys look good on mobile devices!

Not sure why this took me forever to set up, but you can finally read our blog on your mobile devices without any awkward scrolling or squinting your eyes. Just visit www.boweryboyspodcast.com (www.theboweryboys.blogspot.com) on your phones to check it out!

I'm also in the planning stages of creating an actual mobile app, but until that makes an appearance, just find us on your favorite mobile search engine....