What do Napoleon’s privates have to do with New York? Unfortunately for him, more than you might guess.
The fate of the French leader’s “baguette” is far from glorious. It turns out Napoleon’s penis was owned by a famous New Yorker, Dr John K. Lattimer of Columbia University — and it was displayed here in 1927 at the now-defunct Museum of French Art.
Watch the video of his trek to New Jersey — yes, New Jersey — to have a peak at the goods.
The book has plenty of other NYC references, including a critical look at the report that J. Edgar Hoover was seen wandering the Plaza Hotel in drag in the 1950s. There’s also a clever “Easy-Reference Chart to the Robber Barons” of Wall Street.
Perrottet’s book tour will have him at the Half King in Chelsea on Monday at 7 p.m. He’s sent over a couple New York-related excerpts for your historical reading pleasure:
THINK NEW YORK IS TOUGH FOR TENANTS? TRY FINDING A DECENT ONE BEDROOM IN ANCIENT ROME
Those of us who complain about the extortionate rents in New York should draw comfort from the fact that the real estate market was even harsher in the city’s classical alter ego, ancient Rome.
From the first century AD, over a million low-income citizens were crowded into the world’s first great Imperial city, and Roman property developers made a killing: Landlords threw up hundreds of six-story tenements called insulae or “islands,” which were broken into apartments of barely one hundred square feet each. And much like today, rates were always being pushed to the limit: “Ever-rising rent was the subject of eternal lamentation in Roman literature,” notes the historian Jerome Carcopino.
In fact, ancient living conditions will sound touchingly familiar to modern New Yorkers: the dwellings were notorious, one historian says, for “the fragility of their construction, the scantiness of their furniture, insufficient light and heat, and the absence of sanitation.” Roman writers like Juvenal and Martial were constantly whining about claustrophobic spaces, which had no kitchens, bathrooms or running water, and often had no windows. “Where has the purse of greed yawned wider?” Juvenal asked, wondering why Romans had not set up an altar to Mammon, the god of wealth.
Rome even had the first professional real estate agents. Called (appropriately enough) extractores, they were notoriously skilled at hiding an apartment’s defects and avoiding costly building repairs: “The agents would prop up a tottering wall,” observes one historian, “or painted a huge (ceiling) rift over, and assure the occupants that they could sleep at their ease, all the time that their home was crumbling over their heads.” As Juvenal wailed, sounding like a tenant’s advocate today: “All low-income citizens should have marched out of Rome en masse years ago!”
And from another section of the book:
NEW YORK’S FIRST “POWER LUNCHES”
Americans began perfecting “fast food” in the 1870s, when long-distance trains required hundreds of passengers at a time to dash into station restaurants to shovel down food during ten-minute stops. But strangely, this high-speed refueling wasn’t limited to travel. Even in the finest restaurants of New York, velocity was considered a big plus in the Gilded Age. At the famous Union Square venue of Delmonico’s, the legendary chef Charles Ranhofer boasted
about his power lunches. Diners in a serious rush could choose to have an eight course meal in 64 minutes. While one course was being devoured, Ranhofer said proudly, another would already be coming from the kitchen, “so that the dinner can be served uninterruptedly and eaten while hot and palatable.” Although Ranhofer was French-born, this development distressed visiting Continentals, who had largely reverted to leisurely meals; some critics compared a meal at Delmonico’s to “the torture of Tantalus,” where the guest was faced with “a long stream of dishes which they never have time to touch.”
