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🏘️ Croton Local History
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window) Pinterest Share on Tumblr (Opens in new window) Tumblr Share on LinkedIn (Opens in new window) LinkedIn Like Loading... Related Published April 7, 2013
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Oscar Levant, the quick-witted pianist, composer, actor, author and quiz-show panelist, had his first "extended engagement" at the Mikado Inn in 1922. In his 1965 book, The Memoirs of an Amnesiac , Levant wrote about those days, which must have been
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quite an experience for a young man who was then just 16 years old. Oscar Levant at 17 (right), with his brother Howard on the boardwalk in Atlantic City. "During my second year in New York I played the piano in a Japanese roadhouse in the town of
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Harmon-on-the-Hudson, where I shared sleeping quarters with twenty or thirty Japanese waiters in the cellar. . . . A three-piece orchestra played on weekends but during the week there was just the piano and violin. We alternated between classical and
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popular music. The place was called Mikado Inn. The rival restaurant . . . was the Nikko Inn. Japanese restaurants were comparatively scarce, so it was ironic that the leading proponents of Japanese cuisine should have been within such a short
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distance of each other. Consequently, the rivalry was keen. The upright piano on which I played had a horizontal string across it, on which hung a one-dollar bill—a not too subtle hint for tips, which were mostly forthcoming as the evening progressed
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and the clientele grew boisterous and drunk. The most popular request was that great American spiritual "Show Me the Way to Go Home." Almost as popular were "Charlie My Boy," and "Yes, We Have No Bananas." For dinner we played concert music. The
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proprietor, a rotund, jovial Japanese whom we addressed as Admiral Moto, was completely dominated by his forbidding Irish wife, a tall, dictatorial and quite respectable woman. Every Saturday night Admiral Moto would get loaded . . . There was great
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activity in the vast kitchen where the chef was a twenty-year-old Italian boy from nearby Croton. He had achieved his Oriental culinary skill under the tutelage of his predecessor, a Japanese chef who had left after a fight with Admiral Moto. This
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was an interesting anomaly: an Italian chef running a kitchen which served only sukiyaki.” Coming soon: Admiral Moto’s “forbidding” wife saves his life—”grapples with attempted murderer [and] . . . chokes him into unconsciousness.” Years later she’s
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named in a New York Times article on the case against an ex-detective who is “vague on $99,240 in deposits” collected from “speakeasies” when he was a “plain-clothes man in the Eighth Inspection District in the Bronx.” Share this: Print (Opens in new
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Share on LinkedIn (Opens in new window) LinkedIn Like Loading... Related Tagged Mikado Inn speakeasies Published April 17, 2013 August 12, 2014
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"Something New!" proclaimed this ad from the May 30, 1908 issue of the Peekskill Highland Democrat . "Right on the Beautiful Croton River, where Cool Breezes blow even on the warmest days." This ad must have been the beginning of a publicity
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campaign, because about a month later the New York Times 1 published a short article about the Nikko Tea House. "One of the novel features of the big development at Harmon, Westchester County," wrote the Times , “is the Nikko Tea House perched on the
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precipitous bank of the Croton River . . . The tea house is of rustic construction, and is surrounded by a dense grove of pines and cedars, in which are many picturesque summer houses. . . ." June 21, 1908 ↩ Share this: Print (Opens in new window)
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LinkedIn (Opens in new window) LinkedIn Like Loading... Related Tagged Nikko Inn speakeasies Published April 22, 2013 August 12, 2014
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An advertisement from the 1865 Brooklyn Directory. "Among all the rich and luscious terrestrial fruits which gladden the heart of man and delight his taste and renovate his health," wrote the Eclectic Magazine in April, 1864, "none surpass in variety
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and value the fruit of the vine. . . . In all ages and in all countries, where the soil and climate admit, the grape . . . has been the favorite fruit, and often the food and drink of man. Among grape growers and vine dressers, Dr. Underhill has
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become a patriarch and a man of renown. The grapes of Croton Point have long ago become celebrated for their richness and lusciousness, as many tongues can testify which have tasted their sweetness. Dr. Underhill is a benefactor of his age and race,
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for he puts more pleasant fruits and wine also into the lips of his fellow men than any man we know of. His Croton Point vineyards will be a lasting monument to his fame so long as his grapes grow and flourish. Think of fifty acres of the choicest
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grapes and of floods of wine made from the juice thereof. Thousands of baskets of rich grapes find their way into the mansions of our citizens and into their mouths also every year, followed, when the grape season is over, by thousands of casks of
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wine, which in all its varieties and pureness is for sale and can be had at No. 7 Clinton Hall, Astor Place, New-York. For all medicinal purposes and communion occasions, as well as to renovate impaired health, Dr. Underhill's varieties of wine is
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unsurpassed. All this and more also is due to his enterprise and skill in planting and cultivating vineyards so extensive." Share this: Print (Opens in new window) Print Email a link to a friend (Opens in new window) Email Share on Facebook (Opens in
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Published April 28, 2013 April 28, 2013
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These beautiful glass lantern slides show the gardens of Van Cortlandt Manor in 1930, when the property was still owned by Van Cortlandt descendents. 1 The photographs are from the Garden Club of America collection in the Archives of American Gardens
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at the Smithsonian Institution. The Smithsonian's website states that "the Garden Club of America was established in 1913 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania . . . Its purpose is to foster the knowledge and love of gardening and to restore and protect the
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quality of the environment through educational programs and gardening and conservation efforts. . . . The GCA's glass lantern slides were used by the GCA for presentations and lectures about notable gardens throughout the United States dating back to