Weegee Daily

PM Daily, July 28, 1941
After the Flood, workmen stood up to their eyebrows repairing this crater at 125th and Lexington Ave.
PM Photo by Weegee

Weegee Daily, July 2013
WD Photo by Google Street View

The Daily News gave extensive coverage of the flood, with several photos:

The New York Herald Tribune gave extensive coverage to the flood, with a few photos:

The New York Times gave extensive coverage of the flood, with no photos:

The New York Post barely mentioned the flood:

Weegee Daily… July 27, 1941… “East Side Fire…”

July 28, 2013

1941, Weegee Daily

PM Daily, July 28, 1941, p. 18
“East Side Fire: Landlord Weeps As Porter Burns to Death”
PM Photos by Weegee

Weegee Daily, July 28, 2013
East Side Tenement Still Stands
WD Photos by Ceegee

PM Daily, July 28, 1941, pp. 18-19
As previously mentioned, this is one of the greatest page spreads in the history of newspapers, if not the history of the printed word (or the not-oral history of the world)… One page (page 18) with six Weegee photos and the facing page (page 19) with five photos of real, honest-to-Greenwich Village poets, including the effervescent, if not immortal, Joe Gould…

Geller and Fuhrer had telephones:

A few of the other NYC newspapers, The New York Times and The New York Herald Tribune, didn’t cover this story at all. Perhaps the editors thought this story, and the tenement dwellers in the lower East Side, were not significant enough to be covered. (Or perhaps they were to busy covering the halva crisis in Turkey:-)

The Daily News covered the fire, with a single small uncredited photo and three paragraphs.
Here are a few of the ways the story appeared in different editions of The Daily News:

New York Daily News, July 28, 1941

A quick comparison:
PM Daily: “… the body of Negro superintendent, Joseph Devine, who suffocated in the basement.” “Shirley”
Daily News: “… Joseph Devine, colored janitor, was trapped in his bedroom and burned to death.” “Shirlee”

This story, more than most, shows the collaboration and symbiotic relationship between Weegee and PM. It was one of a many fires in 1941, and except for the death of Mr. Devine, unexceptional, but Weegee’s six photos that fill an entire page…
There was no other publication and no other photographer that could produce and document a story like this, with words and images…

Google Street View of 321 Houston St.

According to a popular (un)real estate website a three bedroom apartment (or, “full floor loft”) at 321 East Houston St. (built in 1930), rented for $4340, in June 2013…

July 27th was a busy day for Weegee, at around 5:30 AM, Weegee covered a fire on the Lower East Side, (only about 15 blocks from his home).
And 12 hours later, around 5 PM, a 36 inch water main break on 125th St. caused significant flooding, a fire, and traffic tie ups…

To be continued…

Weegee Daily… July 28, 1940… Weegee, the Wag…

July 28, 2013

1940, Weegee Daily

PM Daily, July 28, 1940
“They’d Sooner Be at the Beach But, Heat or No Heat, Jobs Are Scarce”

Weegee Daily, July 28, 2013
Where in the world was Weegee’s darkroom in 1940? Don’t think he was still using the NY Post darkroom… I could be wrong, but I think it’s here (5 Centre Market Place).
The above is one of the funniest fotos ever published in PM. An entire page spread, an entire centerfold occupied with ten photos of workers sweating while they work, of hard working WPA construction workers, a coal shoveler, a cook, a baker, PM’s stereotypist, even the Mayor (with “coat off, tie loose, hair scraggly… looks pretty wilted”) concludes with “Weegee, the wag, finished up the day by taking his own picture in the darkroom…”

Weegee Daily… Yesterday at Coney Island… Temperature 89… They Came Early, Stayed Late… July 22, 1940

July 22, 2013

1940, Weegee Daily

PM Daily, July 22, 1940, pp. 16-17
Yesterday at Coney Island… Temperature 89… They Came Early, Stayed Late

Yesterday at Coney Island… Temperature 88… They Came Early, Saw the Amazing Freak Show

(One year of Weegee Daily! This post is almost better than the one last year…)

(To be continued…)

Weegee Daily… June 16, 1943… 40 Saved From Blazing Street Car After Bowery Collision…

June 16, 2013

1943, Weegee Daily

PM Daily, June 16, 1943
40 Saved From Blazing Street Car After Bowery Collision…
“Apparently trying to cut in ahead of the street car, Woodrow Rivers, the truck driver, was crushed to death behind his steering wheel as the truck was wedged between the trolley and an elevated pillar. This picture was made after fire had swept through the truck.”
Photos by Weegee

Weegee Daily, June 16, 2013
Amazing (and perhaps slightly lesser-known) late, early period fire and car-truck-extinct-public-transportation crash photos… In front of the Gotham Hotel, at 356 Bowery…
Photo by Ceegee

Google Street View’s view of 356 Bowery (not my 344 Bowery)…

And it’s unusual to see an AF number in printed photographs; (1943 is when this is prevalent)…

Weegee Daily… June 14, 1943… Cooling Off on the East Side…

June 14, 2013

1943, Weegee Daily

PM Daily, June 14, 1943
Cooling Off on the East Side
With tenements in the background East Siders enjoy splashing around in the park pool at E. Houston and Pitt Sts. Youngsters get in for nine cents.
Photo by Weegee, PM

Weegee Daily, June 15, 2013
Drying Off on the East Side
With public housing in the background no one is splashing around in the Hamilton Fish Play Center. (“The outdoor pool season begins on June 28.“) Youngsters get in for free!

Weegee Daily… June 24, 1943… No. 17 Is on Its Last Legs…

June 14, 2013

1943, Weegee Daily

PM Daily, June 24, 1943
No. 17 Is on Its Last Legs
With the all-important No, 17 coupon expiring on Thursday, New York shoe stores were jammed even on Sunday. These young ladies are trying on same white models at a shoe store on Delancey St., on the lower East side.
Photos by Weegee

Weegee Daily, June 15, 2013
With the all-important fiscal year ending on Sunday, New York shoe stores on Delancey St., on the lower East Side, were not jammed even on Saturday…

The stores were so uncrowded that the doors were open and potential alligator shoe and fine exotic footwear customers closed their eyes and walked right on by…
Photos by Ceegee

Weegee Daily… June 14, 1942… It Was Hot…

June 14, 2013

1942, Weegee Daily

PM Daily, June 14, 1942
“It Was Hot
Helen George had been watching the parade for six hours when the heat got her. She fainted on the corner of Fifth Ave. and 50th St. Cops revived her quickly and sent her home.”
PM Photo by Weegee

Weegee Daily. June 14, 2013
It Was Wet
WD Photo by Ceegee

Weegee Daily… June 8, 1941… The Cumfort Hotel…

June 8, 2013

1941, Bowery, fire, Weegee Daily

PM Daily, June 8, 1941
“The Cumfort Hotel, an unoccupied flop house at 21 Bowery, was swept by fire yesterday. Battalion Chief Patrick Carey and Fireman Thomas Deady fell from a ladder while climbing to the roof. Here is Deady being taken to a hospital where he was found to be suffering from concussion of the brain. Chief Carey suffered only bruises.
PM Photo by Weegee

Weegee Daily, June 8, 2013
The Cumfort Hotel is now the Confucius Florist…

WD Photo by Google Street View (There should be Google Street View at night.)

To be continued…

Weegee Daily… June 2, 1944… A Weegee Gets Attention at Museum of Modern Art…

June 2, 2013

1944, Weegee Daily

PM Daily, June 2, 1944
A Weegee Gets Attention At Museum of Modern Art
The big picture at lower right is the center of attraction in Weegee’s section of the Art in Progress photo exhibition now on view at the Museum of Modern Art…

Weegee Daily, June 2, 2013
A Weegee Gets No Attention At Museum of Modern Art
Deservedly Dieter Roth did… And Claes and Andy and…
(When was the last time photographs, in a museum, received such physical and comical attention, with or without a “No Photography” sign…)

Maybe, for a few brief moments we can not be as myopic as we usually are; we can lift a our Weegee blinders, our Weegee colored glasses, for a few seconds… What else was going on in the world on June 2, 1944?

Locally, a chlorine “heavy greenish-yellow” gas leak effected hundreds in Brooklyn… And more importantly:

And most importantly, a roller-skating extravaganza!