>> i think it was ohio -- >> there's a link on the resources page to my e-mail. if you look at the top of the resources page, you can send me an e-mail easily or go to info with remember the triangle fire colix, remember the triangle fire.org. >> i think we have to close. thank you for coming. >> thank you. [ applause ] you're watching american history tv. 48 hours of programming on american history every weekend on c spanned three. follow us on twitter for information on our schedule and to keep up with the latest history news. tonight on "the communicators" the technology fair on capitol hill looking at the latest on drone technology and new security features for mobile phones. >> we want them to see innovation happening that is happening in the u.s., it's happening clear, life changing intervegas whether it's health care, it's car navigation, in health and safety. so many other things. the decisions they make have real life consequences. >> watch "the communicators" tonight at 8:00 p.m. eastern on c-span 2. up next on american history tv, kevin fitzpatrick talks about world war i new york city. he's the author of "world war i new york" a guide to the city it's enduring ties of the great war. the new york historical society hosted this event. it's a little over an hour. >> focus on new york city's role in world war i before, during and after the war. our city played an important role and continues to. our guide on the journey will be kevin fitzpatrick who's writen the explorer's guide and the round table. his latest book is "world war i new york, a guide to our city's enduring tie to the great war." that book is for sale in our museum store and kevin will be in the great hall after the program to sign books and answer your questions. now besides being an author, he does an awful lot of stuff. kevin is a world war i reenaker and a new york city tour guide. he's also a member of the world war i centennial commission for new york city. please welcome kevin fitzpatri k fitzpatrick. [ applause ] >> thanks, kathleen. thank you so much. i want to thank the new york historical society for inviting me tonight and to congratulate you on the fantastic world war i beyond the trenches. thank you for attending tonight. of my seven books that are all tied into new york city in some way, this is if first one to challenged me explore all five boroug boroughs. i visited many neighborhoods for the first time and that was fun to do. how many people have been to lynn noel yumville. the book is in two parts. part one is locations and military training, recruiting, fund-raising or other places the war touched from 1914 to 1919. in the city, long island and new jersey. because one in ten, that's 10% dough boys of the bodoughboys tt went to france were from new york. and part two is notable to monuments in the five boroughs. there's close to 500. let's try out my clicker here. my book was connection to the city and world war i. and we're in one right now. this building that we're in right now. and for the upper west ciders, they created the central savings bank on broadway and 73rd street. in 1933 congress created the battle monuments commission to care for our war dead and the general was to oversee it. of the 116,000 men and women who died in world war i, more than 1,000 remain today. new york city got the job. this is another building. this isn't a vintage photo. my friend took the last week. he leads battlefield tours. the news cemetery a chapel is also a york building of more than 26,000 americans killed there, our bloodiest conflict in the war and 14,000 are interred there. it's the biggest u.s. cemetery in europe. as general pershing said, time will not dim the glory of their deeds. this is also a new york city tie. inside the chapel are two strained glass windows made in new york. these are army divisions with local ties. you can see the first, the fighting first on the left side, that's from governor's island. in the center is the yankee division, the 26th and the new york division, the 77th. if you want to see another hine ki and hit window you don't have to go far. the columbia university, same artist, same craftsman as commissioned. when i lead tours of the city and in my book i say the world is all around us in new york. new york avenue is not named for the duke of york. it's named for alvin york. and brooklyn avenue q, it's quinton road for quinton roosevelt and this month is the 99th anniversary of his death. and staten island, victory boulevard, it's that victory over germany and the central powers. so unlike the movie, i'm not going to drop you into everything. i'm going to tell you how we got to where we are. here's world war i 101. the assassination of ferdinand and his wife sophie started the first major european war in nearly 100 years. austria threatened war against serbia with support of germany. germany was mobilized to protect serbia. that led germany to war against russia. france then mobilized against germany because it had a treaty with russia to support it. when germany invaded belgium, this brought in brit inintervention. frankly overnight there was a world war. the central powers and all of their commonwealth and cool anies of france and england as well. this was the summer of 1914. by august the war was in full force. america sat it out. america was in a pass vis mode. up until american industry in april, many americans volunteered, to fly for france or great britain or to drive an ambulance. but it would take until 1917 for us to enter and there were three contributes factors. coming up on the 30th, july 30th, 1916 was the explosion of blam island. it's a mile long island on jersey city directly behind the pedestal of the statue kof liberty. on the evening of july 309, 1916, a mysterious explosion occurred. 50 tons of tnt exploded and 100,000 tons of ammunition exploded. it was so loud you could hear it in boston and maryland and it shook the city like an earthquake and it blue out windows in ellis island. no one was ever caught or prosecuted for the crime but it was widely believed that the germans. the zimmerman telegram, so that was a communication that went from berlin to mexico city that the british intercepted basically outlining that if mexico would join them and fight america on its border web after germany was victorious, they would give to mexico the states they captured, texas, california and new mexico. and the third being unrestricted german warfare. the drawning of many innocent men, women and children who were americans. so we did declare war on germ y germany. i love this picture because this is new york in 1916 next to grand central terminal. and i used to take photos in the marine corps and this is the kind of photo that i would be asked to take. you don't know what he's saying but it must be very funny, right? who here has not been to governor's island? are you waiting for a bridge? it's been open for 13 years. governor's aland has more world war i ties aeng memorials than any other place in new york state. and now that it's the centennial this year, there's many many activities happening on governor's island. i like to give it a shoutout. on april 6, 1917 shortly after the united states declared war on germany, within minutes soldiered stationed at ft. j, waiting on their packs with their rifles and they got on to army and navy tug boats in this peer, peier 101. that's the entry point to the tunnel. they boarded the boats andharbo. and within minutes they seized the german ships. without firing a shot they captured the ships, imprisoned the people and then turned the ships over. the navy used the ships to transport the dough boy to fight the war. may 1917, general pershing traveled from d.c. to new york with 200 men, in civilian clothes, and he also came here to this pier. he met with general bell and he boarded a tug boat that took him to brooklyn. he boarded the baltic and that took him to the war in france. that also happened in this place too. rhett let me see if my pointer works. this is ft. j after the war but this is what it was doing during the war. all of these warehouses -- all of this part of governor's island. this is part of the landfill. they added 100 acres here in 1901. this was flat as a pancake. they've already torn down some of the warehouses. this is ten years after the war. but this whole side -- this is the east riverside. so this whole side was all warehouses and this was all warehouses and right here is a railroads terminal. there were railroad tracks that went up and down the island to use for war material and they were shipping out a million's worth every day. so this would hook up to ships and the ships take it across the flick. and of course this is the housing over highwere. governor's island is an important part of the war effort. this was just recently discovered. this is the last trace of the railroad. they found a set of boxcar trucks when they were doing some excavation. if you're over on the south end, you can see this little piece of the railroad. i love this photo too, because you know the photographer from probably the daily news or something said, okay, give me an irish man, give me a jew, give me an all-american guy and give me his friend and jump up and down. so let's talk about camp upton. it is also having a centennial this year as well. the u.s. army built a large training of the war. 10,000 acres. in june 1917 colonel frank lawson went out from governor's island and met with ralph peters and made an inspection of the property. the lirr choose the low case of the camp because it would suit the railroad. the location of the camp was approved. thompson was a very important builder. they built the hotel. work during that summer was brutal. rates paid to laborers imported to new york city were 37.5 cents an hour, $7 today, for laborers and 62.5 cents, about $12 for carpenters. the largest number of men employed at any one time was 15,000. the lirr extended the railroad more than two miles to reach the new camp. workers erected freight yards, coal trestles and ten ware white houses -- warehouses. the first men arrived and were put to work to finish the camp. by the end of october, 30,000 men had arrived closing in on the capacity of 37,000. allowed to come to the camp and thousands made the trip. so the trip was penn station to camp uptoni was a big thing. so the soldiers that were training there were training in trench warfare. son some of the instructors were french or englishmen who had been wound ord gassed who came over and taught the soldiers how to fight. they're wearing their campaign hats. the army and marines were not issued the steel helmets and the gas masks until they got to france. among the people who trained here were the 77th division. after the war ended the camp was transitioned to a demobilization camp as the men who returned from overseas were discharged. this is another wintertime scene. back to new york. union square was a keypoint in recruitment and they built the uss recruit for memorial day 1917. a commissioned battleship in the navy, made out of wood. they followed the plans of the uss maine. they had a crew of sailors and marines. if you went down there you could see the sailors scrubbing the deck, doing the laundry. it was memorial day 1917, a parade of 40,000 school children and civil war veterans rode in convert nls ibles to open it up. it had its own band. mayor wanted 2,000 to enlist in the war. the city got 25,000 to sign up. after the war this was taken to coney island where it became an attraction and had dances on it as well. here are the men signing up. they would do anything to attract attention to the ship. they would have vaudeville performers, broadway stars sing, boxing matches, anything to draw a crowd. i love this guy. mayor mitchell, graduate of columbia elected in 1914 when he was 34. he was always called the boy mayor. he ran on a platform of getting into the war. he lost the election in 1917 and promptly enlisted in the army the following day on january 1st, 1918. he went to louisiana to train as an airplane pilot and on his last day of training, july 6, 1918, he fell out of his plane and was killed in a crash. his wife was watching this too. they brought his remains back to the city, and today this beautiful memorial is on central park on east 90th street right on the reservoir. central park, what i like about this picture is -- anybody here from the central park conservat conservatory. here they are parking a u boat right in the middle of it. so the second liberty loan parade was in october 1917. this was an actual u boat that's captured by the british. and it was brought to new york and kput into three pieces and they hauled it from a parade all the way from hell's kitchen across the city and parked it in central park. so if you bought a bond, you could go inside and take a tour. you know, this is long before selfies. but this would be a really great place to take a selfie. they were doing this things like this to attract attention to sell bonds. where are my upper west siders. west 67th between central park west and columbus were all artist studios built after the turn of the century. and this was james montgomery flag's and this building is still standing. so james mountain gomry flag and howard christie were two artists of the era. they're a member of the lams. they have a lot of the original artwork in there. i'm proud of them. christie on the left was known for painting very fletching women and flag had a fantastic sense, a keen eye for detail. and another thing about flag is he wrote his own copy too. here's flag in the studio. unless he was working somewhere else, he did do his uncle sam i want you painting on west 67th street. and right next door at 1 67th, christie moved there later. so christie had done this illustration earlier and the war department asked him for it and so he turned over the copy wright and flag claimed they printed more than 4 million of those posters. okay? christie had a thing for painting really lovely women and his schick was he would put them in uniforms. they both married their models. they both had an eye for the ladies. these were very important. i can't under estimate that numb. pushing poster bond drives were very important. and as you see here, how iconic they are 100 years later. part two. so this second half of the book is about monuments and memorials and there is close to 200 in the city. about 1000 them are in the domain of the u.s. parkss department. they've done a wonderful job of maintaining and restoring them. this is the bronx war memorial and on one side you have the dough boys marching off to war in the other way they're coming back from the war. a very powerful image. there are more world war i monuments than to any other conflict in the city. tin de indeed in the whole nation. world war i has better representation than any other conflict we're involved in. enin new york that is laid at the feet of robert moses, of course, who takes the blame for a lot of things. but when moses was the parks commissioner during word war ii, he did not permit any of the small kmuntd based memorials that had been erected 20 years before that he put his foot down and they were not permitted in the parks for word war ii monuments. we preferred one large word war ii memorial for the city. and of course that was never built. brooklyn has a beautiful world war ii memorial that's being restore right now. that's why there are more world war i memorials than anything else in the city. i started passing this monument 10 years ago. i would see this ten times a week going to work and coming home from work. so what i did is i wrote down the names of the 35 men and then i went to the national archives and went through the records to find out their stories. this was created on the the 28th anniversary of arm cyst. and every man on here are irt workers. on the -- oops. let me go back. so here's the sword for victory. and it has the banner here for peace. on the side are these oak leaves for strength. down here are the wheels, subway wheels and this is the imboll of the irt vfw post and here's their symbol over here. these are the dough boys and these square things are gas masks np is a louis machine gun. he's holding a springfield rifle with a baiyonebayonet. of course the eagle is the symbol of the united states. let's talk about a few of the people on here. that is a beautiful monument and it is virtually hidden -- it's down where you catch the 4, 5 and 6 as you're going to lexington avenue. originally when it day bebuted was upstairs and at some point it was moved downstairs in a dark corner. hopefully you'll go and see it. this boor guy. this is robert mccray. mccray was from south carolina. he worked for the mta. the navy was so short of ships when the war entered -- when the u.s. entered the war that rich people are donating their yacht to the navy. this is a steam yoth that had been donated. it was impressed in the service. he was a seaman second class this is the first ship sunk by a german torpedo very early on in 1917. his name is on the -- of course he was never found. his name is on the tablet of the missing in brookwood, england, outside of london. wales bradley. all i know about him is he worked for the irt, left, joined the navy then the army and he was sent to texas where he trained on the jenny. i keep doing that instead of my pointer. so the general my was manufactured upstate by glen curtis. he died in an airplane crash. he died -- he burned to death in february 1918. he was from mount vernon. and this is interesting. i was talking about this on a podcast and it was on my website and the great grandson of walter o'connell reached out to me and said, how do you know that walter worked for the mta? and i said, well his name is on a memorial at grand central terminal. so the family went over to see it. so he was on this tug boat and the tug boat crashed a few weeks after the war ended. he was from -- he was also from brooklyn and he died -- he died with 15 crew members. i could do a whole talk just on cemeteries but i won't. but i will talk about this one in trinity. this is the one uptown 155th street and broadway. i was there ten years ago visiting and i noticed this sin that testify. and it really struck me how big it is. it's by far the biggest sen that tet in manhattan. i've never seen one bigger than this. it's more than 65 feet tall. it's topped by columbia. columbia used to be the female symbol of the united states before the statue of liberty became famous. i knew it had a national meaning. but as i got close to it i thought who is this person. they must be rich or famous. i knew it was a marine and then i saw the date and i knew it was 1918. so then i started doing research into this. here's a tip for someone doing genealogy. if this is your target, if you're looking at the tombstone, you want to look at the parents and the widow. so then you get all of their names and you can build his story. let me tell you about stephen h.tang jr. a guy in a real estate family. his father owned a block of 5th avenue. his mother game came from a family of clergymen. he was married and at 21 he enlisted in the u.s. marines. his wife and mother said good-bye to him and he boarded a shi at n the city of athenss. on april 30th, 1918 the ship was struck, hit by an armored french cruiser. the ship went to the bottom in under 4 minutes and 69 men, women and children were lost. 24 marine recruits were on their way to parris island. tang was last scene evacuating passengers. his mother never found his body so she created this fantastic monument and she established a scholarship fund in his name at williams, which is still given today. his widow never remarried. she died in the 1970s. okay. there's two cemeteries that i talk about in length in my book. the first is cypress hills cemetery, new york's only national cemetery. cypress hills was dedicated during the civil ward as one of the first ten created by president lincoln. many wounded came here during the civil war and many p.o.w.s died in new york. so that's how it got its start. and i started researching cypress hills 30 years ago and whenever i'm out there, i am the only one in the cemetery. there's 18,000 people interred them. so it's usually me and the grounds people. and i think it's probably because they closed interments 70 years ago. and so the children and grandchildren aren't visiting anymore. it's beautiful place. 24 medal of honor. the other is woodland. i decided to go to woodland. i really do believe that wood lawn is the most beautiful cemetery in the united states but i wanted to go there to find a doctor, aviator, infantry men and women volunteers. wood lawn has all of those. these stars have an interesting story. world war i was the beginning of the monument memorial business for veterans and for casualties of the war. so these were created by the detroit mausoleum company and families could customize these for their loved ones. there's many of the bronze stars scattered in wood lawn. and as you're walking around you can see the two or three sections that wood lawn was selling in 1921 and 1922 when they're repatriating. you can see the grave stones. travis. so travis is on -- a very very small little town on victory boulevard in statten island. travis has this monument for 75 residents in served in the war and nine who did not come back. a local belief is no american town of its size has less than 1,000 people gave or lost a number like this. travis lays claim to having the oldest july 4th parade and it begins right here at the memorial. if u you're driving past quickly you eastern going to mess what's on the back of the monument, the names of the honored war dead, all local boys. so they all had gone to school together as well. so now it's time to talking aboutsculptures. these are the sculpturesculptur. father duffy in times square, m. probably the most well known is one in hell's kitchen, the flanders field. there's one more coming out of storm from the bronx, it's being restored from highbridge. hopefully that will be back before the centennial is over. new york has more doughboy sculptures than any other city in the united states. and they all share a common element to abdoboy sculpture. so you need to have at least four of these things to be a doughboy sculpture. a keel brody helmet, that was adopted from the british design. in 19 american expeditionaries uniform. the wool puttys, those are the leg wraps that go around the bottom of the legs. and the springfield or enfield rifle with bayonet. this is not in new york this sculpture is in green port, long island, suffolk county. it's from a monument company that was making copies of the sculpture. there was a time in the teens and 20s and into the 1930s where if your community wanted a sculpture you could just go to a catalog and order one of these. and they would ship to it you and then you would come up with the pedestal and the base. ask so you see thesabe ablcross country. there's one called the spirit of the american doughboy that's very common, there's none in new york city but some in west chester. that's notable because he has a rifle in one hand and a grenade in the other. there's more tan 100 of those around the country. there's a facebook page where you can track them down. knock did not want to have this over the top, that's what this is called, over the top kind of pose. they went with a more refined sculpture like this one. so this is the returning soldier by burke johnson. so this is in woodside. it's called the returning soldier and he also created the flanders field doughboy in hell's kitchen sic years later. it was dedicated on memorial day 1923. 5,000 attended with gold star mothers in the front. in 1928 the american federation of arts named it the best war memorial of its kind. a different take on this than the other doughboy sculpture you saw is he has a head wound. and his helmet is removed. and you see the branches of peace around his helmet. okay, so that is more common to see in the new york city war memorials. if you know of the carl ilva statue, 107th infantry, fifth avenue by 69s street, those soldiers some of them have helmets removed. some are charging, some are wounded. that was very controversial at the time too because it wasn't really showing the gritty, gritty side of war. so this is probably my most favorite place to visit. what i tried to do before i would go to these places, i didn't want to look at them on internet, i just wanted to live the address. the parks department has a list. i just made a list of all the places i wanted to go. i wanted to experience, as you would as you walked up to it. the brooklyn war memorial is the name of it. it's by augustus lukeman. he also sculpted the strauss memorial on 108th and broadway for the "titanic" victims. so he was a very, very well known sculptor at the time. the architect with arthur pickering, and when the monument was -- the plans were submitted to the municipal art society, it was rejected because it wasn't grand enough. they said, make it bigger. so it was increased in size. it was unveiled on june 26th, 1921. the third anniversary of u.s. troops landing in france. 15,000 marched to prospect park led by 1,500 gold star mothers. let me show you the detail. so gold star mothers also are something that came out of world war i as well. originally, did you had a son serving, son or daughter, you would have a red star in your window. if they killed in action or died of disease, they were turned to a gold a star. that became the gold star mothers foundation which was launched in d.c. this is 1,500 gold star mothers. last week my friend lisa, who also lives in brooklyn not too far from here, saw a gold star family license plate. she was so moved she wrote about it on facebook. imagine if there were 1,500 mothers who had all lost a loved one in the war. now this room holds about 420. so this is 3 1/2 times the size of this room of people. and all the women wear white. you wear a white blouse us and a white skirt as a gold star mother, okay. that's who's leading the way. and they're followed by civil war veterans of brooklyn. and schoolchildren. there was 35,000 people attended the dedication of this monument. okay, there's 2,800 names on the memorial. and three women, daughters of brooklyn, who died during the influenza pandemic of 1918. it was commissioned by the parks department but it was not paid for by the parks department. the money was given to it by a man, a very patriotic man, a shipbuild shipbuilder. and the ship blelder was william h. todd from red hook. and so he's the one that raised the money as the patriotic benefactor. okay, the monument was covered with left arm american flags. when natalie may hatodd unveile it to the crowd. this is something i say. even when i'm at the world trade center, i look for my name now. to the younger generation who are present and to those who have no relatives named on the tablet, i say that it will do you no harm to read the names thereon and see if there is not someone there with the same first name as yours. then you'll know how much someone thought of that name and drop a flower once in a while. that is what i am going to do." thanks very much. i do want to just say one more thing. if you are interested in world war i, september 16th and 17th we are going to be on governor's island for world war i history weekend. it is the largest public display and exhibition for world war i on the east coast. we'll have 65 doughboys in uniform, have a 1917 tank, two ambulances, we'll have a horse and a red cross dog. it's going to be two days of author talks and living history as well. and that's the website address. we'll also be in the veterans day parade. if you're interested in asking me a question, i'll be outside signing books. if you buy a book, you can ask a question. [ laughter ] a $17 question. also, i'll be here tomorrow for day 11:00 to 4:00, living history. this is me right here. in my uniform. so you can ask me questions all day tomorrow. thank you very much, everybody. interested in american history tv? visit our website, cspan.org/history. view our tv schedule, preview upcoming programs, watch college lectures, museum tours, archival films and more. american history tv at cspan.org/history. american history tv is on c-span3 every weekend featuring museum tours, archival films, and programs on the presidency. the civil war and more. here's a clip from a recent program. >> the presidential vehicle behind me is undoubtedly the most famous presidential vehicle here in our collection at the henry ford innovation, arguably the best-known presidential aretial limousine. the 1961 lincoln continental used by president kennedy through all his years in office, it is the car in which he was riding when he was assassinated in 1963. the car looked very different when kennedy knew it than it does today. when we think to those pictures of kennedy it in, we think of it as being a deep blue color. of course it did not have this roof. it was a convertible originally. it had no armor of any kind on it. this was a time after world war ii when we did not think there could be that kind of risk or danger to the president's