When New York Was Deutsche

Posted inThe Daily Heller
Thumbnail for When New York Was Deutsche

During the 19th century, the Dutch, who had originally settled New York two centuries earlier and began using it as their business portal, saw the city ultimately become referred to as Deutsche, which actually means German. Yet it does sound like Dutch, right?

New York had its share of old Dutch families, but the newer wave of mid-19th century immigrants were German: Jewish Germans and gentile ones. The latter settled the area known as Yorkville, opening up restaurants and other shops that harkened back to the fatherland. Before the turn of the century, they also maintained a fair number of newspapers, including the original PUCK, a satire journal, and papers on technology, science and more. Here is a small sampling of when the upper East Side centered around 86th Street was a little swath of the Fatherland.

Included are issues of PUCK, which was also famously published in an English edition; the Turn-Halle Zeitung, a local sports club gazette; an article on the engineering of the Brooklyn Bridge in Der Teckniker, and advertisements from that journal.

bridge005
bridge006
bridge004
bridge003
us slab002s
bridge007

Print’s Regional Design Annual 2015: Enter TodayThe 2015 Regional Design Annual is now open. Don’t miss your chance to have your work reviewed by the best minds in design today and to be spotlighted in our most popular issue of the year—the industry’s most prestigious and well-respected annual.

RDA2015_EB_468x60