Jerry Seinfeld, Mae West and Henry Hudson now have at least one thing in common.
They all made The New York City 400, a list of New Yorkers who have made a difference since Hudson sailed into what became know as New York Harbor in 1609.
Created by the Museum of the City of New York to honor the city’s 400th birthday and announced Wednesday, the list is an egalitarian version of the lineup of 400 socially prominent New Yorkers that Ward Samuel McAllister created in the 1890s.
Mae West
For his efforts, McAllister makes the museum’s list. As The New York Times reports, no else on the original list survived the cut this time around.
Deciding had to be difficult, so much so that the museum actually honors a few more than 400 New Yorkers.
They swell the ranks slightly by counting the musical comedy duo of Adolph Green and Betty Comden as one.
Similarly, they pair Pablo Ortiz and Frank De Martini, heroic Port Authority workers who lost their lives in the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks upon New York City.
And the original Lehman brothers, Henry, Emanuel and Mayer, are likewise joined, getting a single credit for starting the brokerage that became Lehman Brothers, the investment bank.
There are some disgruntled investors who might boot the Lehmans off the list.
Similarly, there might be those who quarrel with inclusion of crime czar Meyer Lansky, if only because John Gotti, “The Dapper Don,” is curiously excluded.
Likewise, it’s nice to see Walt “Clyde” Frazier recognized for his role in leading basketball’s New York Knicks to an NBA Championship in 1970 and 1973. But surely, Frazier’s rock-solid teammate Willis Reed deserves at least co-billing.
And while it’s good to see the names of lots of New York writers, including Dorothy Parker, Pete Hamill and Tom Wolfe, a strong case could be made for Jimmy Breslin, a columnist who has New York City in his DNA.
Of course, as the Times notes, “Half the fun of lists like these is arguing about who is left off.”
Susan Henshaw Jones, the president of the Museum, agrees.
“New York City 400 is definitely not a definitive list,” she told the Times. “It is intended to be fun and provocative, stimulating New Yorkers and those who love New York City everywhere to think about others they believe should be on our next list of New York City 400.”
And to the museum’s credit, their list goes out of its way to do what the original list didn’t do - recognize people more for their achievements than for their place on the social register.
Hence we have photographers Berenice Abbott and Diane Arbus, rappers Sean “Diddy” Combs (the youngest living person on the list) and Grandmaster Flash, Supreme Court justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Sonia Sotomayor and comedians Mel Brooks and Woody Allen.
There are more than enough mayors, Fiorello H. LaGuardia, Ed Koch and Michael Bloomberg among them.
There are press lords, too, including Adolph Ochs, who bought the Times in the late 19th century and made it respectable, and Rupert Murdoch of today’s New York Post, Wall Street Journal and Fox News.
Then there’s Robert Moses, who changed the face of New York (city and state) by building highways, and Jane Jacobs who led the fight to save some of the city’s neighborhoods from Moses’ redevelopment.
While they may not have shared common ground when alive, there they are in the same room with the other 400, New Yorkers one and all.
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1 Comments
#1. Keith Stern 09.10.2009
At least 36 of the top 400 were LGBT — for that information visit “Gay News Daily” or click http://tinyurl.com/lqwa4q
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