Strong's New York

Observations on life in New York City by George Templeton Strong. Also tweeting at @StrongsCivilWar, @ThoreausFlowers, @geoffwisner, and @AfricanLives.

[Caolan @CaolanReports]

Russia intentionally bombs libraries, they destroyed 9 million books in Kharkiv recently.

Burning books has nothing to do with ‘territory’. Nazis did exactly the same thing for the same reason. To erase history.

[Strong's New York @StrongsNewYork]

I've abandoned Thr*ads as well. Look for me where the sky is blue!

[Strong's New York @StrongsNewYork]

Okay, folks, I've had enough. This is my eXit. Look for me (geoffwisner) on Thr*ads, F*cebook, and Inst*gram.

[Strong's New York @StrongsNewYork]

Okay, folks, I've had enough. This is my eXit. Look for me (geoffwisner) on Thr*ads, F*cebook, and Inst*gram.

[Strong's New York @StrongsNewYork]

Just popping back in to let you know that George Templeton Strong: Civil War Diaries will be published in November. Edited by me, Geoff Wisner! https://t.co/WgyPRfaapm

[Strong's New York @StrongsNewYork]

Okay, folks, I've had enough. This is my eXit. Look for me (geoffwisner) on Thr*ads, F*cebook, and Inst*gram.

[Strong's New York @StrongsNewYork]

There were no phone books in Mr. Strong's day (and no phones) but there was Trow's New York City Directory.

[Strong's New York @StrongsNewYork]

More on Mr. Strong and Brooklyn's Green-Wood Cemetery! https://t.co/2mHKA1nttb

[Strong's New York @StrongsNewYork]

...and this place, when it is a little improved and cleared up, will exceed Mt. Auburn.

[Strong's New York @StrongsNewYork]

July 27, 1839, Saturday. After dinner, took the carriage and went with Mr. [Marshall Spring] Bidwell over to the “Greenwood” Cemetery — a most exceedingly beautiful place it is, and I sincerely hope it won’t turn out a bubble,

[Strong's New York @StrongsNewYork]

...for in this city of all cities some place is needed where a man may lay down to his last nap without the anticipation of being turned out of his bed in the course of a year or so to make way for a street or a big store or something of that kind,

[Strong's New York @StrongsNewYork]

I suppose it will be just ten times as ugly & barbaric as it’s predecessor, if that be conceivable.

[Strong's New York @StrongsNewYork]

March 21, 1864. Monday. Atmosphere like iced vinegar, as it has been for a week. Perhaps it’s because of the weather that this tyrannous cold has dominion over me so long....

[Strong's New York @StrongsNewYork]

The great hideous $100.000 Townsend-Sarsaparilla-Spingler house on the other side of XXXIV St. has just been bought by A.T. Stewart, who has razed it to the ground & tells W.A. he is going to lay out one million on a new white-marble Palazzo —

[Strong's New York @StrongsNewYork]

While looking for details on the life of Ellen Ruggles Strong, Mr. Strong's wife, I came upon these blog entries by an avid reader who discovered the diary around the same time I did. https://t.co/ckFAnjiK2f

[Strong's New York @StrongsNewYork]

Researching people who knew Mr. Strong, I find that his brother in law James Francis (Jem) Ruggles died in 1895 and was born in 1807, 1827, and 1834. 🙄

[Strong's New York @StrongsNewYork]

Mr. Strong visits Niagara Falls, 1844. https://t.co/t0ZGNkdunj

[Strong's New York @StrongsNewYork]

I own the 1952 four-volume edition of Mr. Strong's diary, but I don't have the box with the watercolor jacket that contained it. Beautiful! https://t.co/DQEDL66KoY

[Strong's New York @StrongsNewYork]

I own the 1952 four-volume edition of Mr. Strong's diary, but I don't have the box with the watercolor jacket that contained it. Beautiful! https://t.co/DQEDL66KoY

[Strong's New York @StrongsNewYork]

In 1865, with the Civil War finally over, Mr. Strong remembered when he began his Journal.

[Strong's New York @StrongsNewYork]

De Quincey, Bernal Diaz, lots of Dickens, Donne, Goethe, Grimm, Bret Harte, Irving, Samuel Johnson, Kant, Keats, Livingstone, Longfellow, Luther, Macaulay, Marco Polo, Marlowe, Cotton Mather, Melville (Typee and Omoo), Milton, Moliere, Pepys, Petrarch, and so on.

[Strong's New York @StrongsNewYork]

Just acquired a reprint of the auction catalogue for the books in Mr. Strong's library. A very impressive collection, including early German and Latin Bibles.

[Strong's New York @StrongsNewYork]

Some familiar authors in the collection include Aeschylus, Louis Agassiz, Aristophanes, Bacon, Balzac, Blake, Boccaccio, Boswell, Byron, Carlyle, Lewis Carroll, George Catlin, Cervantes, Chapman's Homer, Chaucer, Cicero, lots of Coleridge, Cuvier, Dante, Darwin, Defoe,