Author Topic: The Quest to Find a Photo of The East River Hotel - 1876 Joshua Beil NYC HDQ Panorama  (Read 1308 times)

Howard Brown

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Across the street and on the corner of Catherine Slip and South Street......27 Catherine Slip

The House on 92nd Street ( 1945 )
Smashing a Nazi spyring prior to and during WW2 in Manhattan

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=peQ7yK7jf4Y&t=219s&ab_channel=ChrisT






« Last Edit: January 15, 2023, 08:02:43 am by Howard Brown »

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The shadows show you the shape of the adjoined units.


The units were all about 20 feet so this would show 3 adjoining units with a passageway to the courtyard in 1876 that was filled in prior to 1891.
(Correction: The East River Hotel was 14 and 16 Catherine Slip so it would be the first two units as a "double decker" so you could say it was 2 units in the picture along with 18. 18 would be the one set back without the awning so we're looking at the whitish corner of the hotel in the image.)

The Hotel was around for only about the first 20 30 year period of photography before being demolished. As you said, Howard, no one was going to lug the heavy equipment up the four flights of stairs to photograph the murder scene. Neither that nor would they lug the camera equipment to Catherine Slip and Water St just to photograph the Hotel. So this is probably about as good as it's going to get. Thanks to the "Panorama" guy.

As soon as they said panorama I knew there had to be more too it. The photographer, Joshua Biel, wouldn't stop his panorama shots before the southernmost point of Manhattan and, keeping the Manhattan Tower of the Brooklyn bridge centered would mean there was more to the photo going the other way too.

Howard Brown

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The Hotel was around for only about the first 20 year period of photography before being demolished. As you said, Howard, no one was going to lug the heavy equipment up the four flights of stairs to photograph the murder scene. Neither that nor would they lug the camera equipment to Catherine Slip and Water St just to photograph the Hotel. So this is probably about as good as it's going to get. Thanks to the "Panorama" guy.

We're lucky that he had the foresight to capture the east coast of Manhattan, that's for sure.  On the other hand, I've never seen a panorama of the west side of Manhattan.
It's likely that the decision to not lug the equipment upstairs was based on the victim's class more so than the equipment's weight, IMO..  A frigging photo with a Kodak would have valuable.  It is also very possible since the NYPD weren't in a regular routine of using photography as a tool in their work in the early 1890s, that this is the reason it wasn't utilized.

I've posted a link to NYC photos from the 1870s to the 1910s in the Photograph section.

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Yungstreet:

This is the best sketch of the hotel out of all the sketches I've come across.



This one shows the hotel next door on Water Street as about the same elevation? Wouldn’t that be the one C Kniclo would have had to jump onto the roof of? Doable?

It’s not there in the 1876 picture which shows a shadow instead of a building there.

Howard Brown

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Jacob Berliner, proprietor of that building on Water Street, testified that the scuttle on his roof had been locked on the morning of the murder. It doesn't seem as if the next building over from Berliner's had its scuttle or roof disturbed or that the owner of that one was even questioned. Seems too far of a jump to attempt.

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I found a couple of more panorama shots from the same vantage point, this time done with film. So it's actually worse resolution. But I'll rack them up side by side for comparison.

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1876 Beil.....1897 G W "Billy" Bitzer Panorama....1903 Billy Bitzer

The Bitzer films are available on Youtube

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1876 Beil..........................................................1897 G W "Billy" Bitzer Panorama....................1903 Billy Bitzer

In the newer pictures, I see a new building that sticks out where the passage was. It blocks the corner of the hotel so we don't see it. And I see a telephone pole like the one in some of the sketches.

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Jacob Berliner, proprietor of that building on Water Street, testified that the scuttle on his roof had been locked on the morning of the murder. It doesn't seem as if the next building over from Berliner's had its scuttle or roof disturbed or that the owner of that one was even questioned. Seems too far of a jump to attempt.
All 3 pictures from 1876 to 1903 show a major drop off so I'd say the murderer would indeed have scurried back down the scuttle of the East River Hotel if he tried "Poeorangutanging" it.