at night, Spring Street will be filled with sailors and stevedores
The Ear Inn • SoHo • Manhattan
On January 1, an officer in the Imperial Russian Navy espies a blip of green on the water and becomes the first European person to step onto the white-sand shores of Mejit, a tiny dot about halfway between Hawaiʻi and Papua New Guinea. He decides he must give the place a new name—he names it New Year Island. The name does not stick. The world has at least five other New Year Islands.
Chile’s Army of the Andes defeats the Spanish outside Santiago. City-funded gas streetlights flare to life in Baltimore. Hundreds of Englishmen employed to make stockings, cut stone, and smelt iron take up their pikes and lead the Pentrich Rising, considered the last gasping act of Luddism.
In Lower Manhattan, a certain James Brown decides to build a house by the water. Brown is possibly a veteran of the Revolutionary Army, possibly formerly enslaved, possibly a close aide of George Washington. Whatever his true past, it’s been decades since his alleged soldiering days—he’s a tobacco merchant now, and rich. He opens a shop on the ground floor, maybe sells some booze from time to time. (In 34 years, a man will paint Washington crossing the Delaware, and some people will say James Brown is pictured on the boat, third from the left.) (In 172 years, his house will be pinned with a historical marker: This Federal structure features the high gambrel roof characteristic of many small commercial buildings of the period. The brick facade is laid up in Flemish bond. The splayed lintels and double flared keystones are reminiscent of an earlier Georgian style.)
James Monroe becomes president of the United States, having beaten out a man named Rufus, and tours the country, ushering in the so-called Era of Good Feelings, which it was not.
Emperor Kōkaku abdicates, leaving his son, Emperor Ninkō, to take the Japanese throne. German inventor Karl Drais conducts a test drive of his “dandy horse,” the precursor to the modern bicycle. A royal decree from King Ferdinand VII ends the Spanish crown’s monopoly on Cuban-grown tobacco, thus laying the groundwork for the island’s cigar industry. (In about 13 years, James Brown will sell his house.)
(The retail space will become an apothecary, a grocery, a tableware store. A succession of people will rent the rooms upstairs, and in 20 years, the west side will be landfilled, the river’s edge moved over a block or so. Someone will buy the house and open a bar. In 75 years, two Irish brothers will brew beer downstairs, bottle the stronger stuff, and at night, Spring Street will be filled with sailors and stevedores.)
A worker from who knows where puts a shovel into the ground upstate and starts digging the Erie Canal, and DeWitt Clinton, president of the Canal Commission, rides that guy’s coattails to Albany. Sir David Brewster, an expert in wave optics and the polarization of light, patents an odd cylindrical instrument containing tilted glass plates and glass beads in several colors, giving it a Greek-ish name of his own invention.
(In 102 years, the Irish brothers will get spooked by looming Prohibition and sell the James Brown house. A northern Italian guy will open a “restaurant” in the former tavern, and in 103 years, when other businesses close up shop due to all the construction for the new Holland Tunnel, he will have no problem staying afloat. When the bar reopens for real, in 117 years, it won’t have a name, just a new sign that says BAR. The upper floors will house a brothel, a doctor’s office, some broke college kids.)
A boy is born in Tehran who will lead a religion called Baháʼí and a boy is born in Massachusetts who will write a book called Walden. U.S. Army troops seize the Miccosukee settlement of Fowltown, the first military action of the Seminole Wars.
(Eventually, in 160 years or so, a guy who once lived upstairs during his student years will rustle up some money to buy the place and cover one edge of the BAR sign with black paint, so it looks like EAR.)
The New York Stock Exchange is established. The Staten Island Ferry is established.
Simón Bolívar returns from exile and establishes the Third Republic of Venezuela.
(In 206 years, on the first truly cold day of winter, a woman in a bright-green balaclava will be trudging along Spring Street wishing she had worn long underwear. She will spot her friend through the window under the EAR sign and be glad he’s already there and asking for a table, and they will remove their puffy layers and stack them on a chair. They will have no choice but to order chicken pot pie, what with the weather. Her knees and shins will sting as they thaw, and she and her friend will celebrate their successful thawing of the waitress, who will have been saving her friendliness until they order something with alcohol, not just chicken pot pie. The brown wood lintel above the bar will be covered in patches, like a crowded Girl Scout vest. The ceiling will be hung with paintings of ears. The woman with the cold knees will try to parse the many framed clippings, portraits, and signs that be-scale the walls around her table: a picture of a sailboat captioned “Little Dipper,” a wooden plank that reads “Do not tie up at this pier.”)
Mississippi becomes the 20th U.S. state. The word “Australia” appears in official documents for the first time.
On December 31, James Brown, having finally settled into his new home, raises a glass to New Year’s Eve, 1817.
(In 206 years, 11 months, 14 days, 13 hours, and 19 minutes, the chicken pot pies will arrive blazing in their miniature casseroles, gravy just off-burnt leaking out the edges.)
note: for some more fun history and general ramblings, I recommend poking around jamesbrownhouse.com
would order again: chicken pot pie and an English cider