The First Movie Theater
Picture originally published as an illustration to “Le Kinétoscope d'Edison” by Gaston Tissandier in La Nature, 1894.
Well, not quite a movie theater as we know them today, but the first commercial motion picture house opened in Manhattan on April 14, 1894. The location was the southeast corner of 27th Street and Broadway (1155 Broadway, which is the site of a modern hotel today). The venue had 10 Kinetoscope screens and you could watch 5 films for a quarter (the Kinetoscope was an early motion picture device, developed at Edison labs and designed for a single viewer to watch the movie through a peephole window.)
The Cure for Tuberculosis
Over a billion people have lost their lives to tuberculosis over the last couple of centuries. Staten Island can claim credit for stemming the tide. In 1951, Dr. Edward H. Robitzek began to give the antibiotic isoniazid to patients at the Sea View Tuberculosis Hospital. The results were miraculous, enough that within a decade the last patient had left (and the bulk of the compound fallen into decay).
Benihana
The international chain Benihana seems like it would have a Japanese origin, but it actually started off in New York City. The first location was on West 56th Street in midtown, where Hiroaki Aoki invested the proceeds from a Harlem ice cream route in 1964. The company now boasts more than 100 locations around the world.
Source: “Made In NYC,” by Ethan Wolff, March 2024, City Guide New York
Contributed by Bobbie Roggemann