#487 The Knicks and the Knickerbockers: The Story of a Name

Episode 487 of the Bowry Boys, the Knicks, and the Knickerbockers. Hey, it's the Bowry Boys. Hey. Hi there, welcome to the Bowry Boys. This is Greg Young. And this is Tom Myers with an emergency, late breaking news podcast. Greg, New York history is being made right now. Yes, for the first time since 1999, the New York Knicks have made it to the NBA finals. And the city, trust me, has never been more energized. We're repainting subway stations, blue and orange. Everyone is so excited here, including many people who actually don't often follow basketball. You mean like yours truly? No, everybody, everybody right now, it seems, is wearing the colors of New Netherlands. Let's face it, even without even knowing it. I know. Except our listeners know, of course. Well, exactly. And on today's show, we are going to be looking at this important moment through a very Bowry Boys lens. Now, we have spoken before about how, you know, the names of New York's big sporting franchises have these historical roots, including the New York Yankees and the Metz or rather the Metropolitan's or the New York Jets football team, which got its name back in 1963 because its home stadium in Queens was located right near LaGuardia Airport. Even teams that are no longer in New York have ties to New York City history, like the Los Angeles Dodgers, which used to be the Brooklyn Dodgers, which got its name from the trolley Dodgers after the fans who literally dodged street trolleys in order to get to the stadium. But perhaps no sporting team has a more perfectly New York name than the New York Knicks, which that team was founded in 1946. Or should we say the New York knickerbockers? Now, the Knicks were born at Madison Square Garden, not the one that is sitting at top Penn station today, but in earlier MSG that was at 8,000 and 49th Street, because of course, there have been a few Madison Square Gardens. There have four or even five actually, depending on how you count them. And today, the Knicks are known for their wild home games at MSG with celebrities lining the court side like Spike Lee, Tracy Morgan, Ben Stiller, Timothy Shellamy. But if you look very closely, there is another celebrity standing and smiling over them all. And that is the ghost of Washington Irving. Now we know it's a little bit early to be getting in the ghost story mood everybody. And side note, the tickets for our upcoming ghost stories live at Jo's pub will be going on sale soon. But seriously, you are not talking, you're not talking about an actual ghost of Washington Irving here. Now, I guess I guess what I mean is the spirit of the great writer, Washington Irving, famous for his stories like the legend of sleepy hollow and rip van Winkle. And one of the first great American writers, believe it or not, we wouldn't have the New York Knicks without him. So yeah, as you can already hear so far in the show, if you came here for a day, I would like to talk about a deep dive in basketball history. You might want to check out ESPN or Sports Illustrated or the Bleacher Report because today we are going to be talking about it in terms of, well, literature and society. And we'll be talking about glamorous hotels and baggy, baggy knee, baggy knee, bridges, we can't even say it. Baggy knee breaches. We're talking breaches Greg. Breaches. And naming contest. We have a totally different take on the story. And we'll be doing so in a fashion that we are actually most familiar beginning our story in old Dutch New Amsterdam, the precursor settlement to New York City, which inhabited the island of Manhattan in the early 17th century. And the region of New Netherlands, which comprised areas along the Hudson River Valley, Long Island, Connecticut and New Jersey. So two years ago, the two of us, along with our producer, Karen Ganon, traveled to the Netherlands to trace New York's Dutch roots. And we recorded in the cities of Amsterdam, Liden, Harlem, Greg and other places as part of our four-part Amsterdam, New Amsterdam mini series. And we learned so much about America's Dutch roots and about some really significant names that have Dutch origins like stivocent, bleaker, beakman, biard, even Vanderbilt. And so it's pretty odd that the old Dutch New Amsterdam name that Americans are probably most familiar with today, the name Nicarbocker is a name that was not present or prominent in any way for most of the duration of New Amsterdam. So stop there. Are you saying then that there were no Nicarbockers in New Amsterdam? Well, the closest we have to an actual Dutch Nicarbocker is a man named Harmon Jansen van Hui, whose descendants would gradually adopt a surname Nicarbocker, which morphed into Nicarbocker. So he settled in the area of Albany in the late 17th century because even then, under English rule, they were still very, very, very Dutch around here. Yeah. As a reminder, even though the Dutch government had lost control of the entire colony in 1664, the Dutch settlers continued living here. They stayed put, including, of course, the last director general, Peter Stivocent. And there would be Dutch enclaves all over New York State for a very long time, even villages that predominantly spoke Dutch. And Dutch family names, of course, would continue to be prominent in the city of New York for centuries, really. So it makes sense that some Dutch settlers would still come to the area, you know, after this point, even though, you know, it was an English colony by this point. Right. Okay. So this family, you said, Harmon Jansen van Hui, Hui, his little family, whose name would somehow change to Nicarbocker. How did they come over? What's the story here? And where did that name come from? Well, now it is a bit of a mystery to the stay-tom, but here's one very charming theory that actually I found. It may come from the Dutch word Nicar, meaning a child's playing marble, right? So like a marble that children play with. Now back in 1903, a Dutch reader of the New York Times wrote into that newspaper explaining that in his youth, a cheap marble baked from common clay by a potter was called a potterbocker Nicar to set it apart from the more expensive marbles that were made. And so he wondered, quote, "may not one draw the conclusion from this that Harmon Jansen may have baked marbles, and therefore may have been called the marble baker or the Nicar baker." May not draw the conclusion that perhaps this writer has lost his marbles. Possibly. But hold on. So according to this theory then, Nicar baker is a marble baker. That's just one theory, yes. Okay. And a theory that coincidentally, by the way, traces the origins of Nicarbocker back to a game that's played with little balls. It's right. It was right. It was right. Marbles back then and basketballs today. Okay. So however they did wind up with that name, the Nicarbocker Nicarbaker family was real and was quite small and they were not actually situated in New York City. No. The Nicarbocker family was actually centered in Shoggycoat in Rensselaer counties, north of Albany. And today you can even visit the Nicarbocker mansion there, which was built in the 1780s by Johannes Nicarbacher III. Now Johannes had a son named Hermann. And Hermann is the secret to this entire story. Hermann Nicarbocker. Yes. Or Hermann. Hermann or Hermann. Yes. Hermann. Okay. We'll remember that name. It would be known as the Prince of Shoggycoat, one of the town's most famous men. It comes to turnout. A gracious host, a town wit and even in fact a U.S. congressman representing the state of New York. Because he was a prominent federalist and lawyer of his day, he had many famous acquaintances. throughout New York, including a very young writer named Washington Irving. Here he is. Washington Irving, who was one of America's earliest best-selling authors, and really the man who is responsible for today's story. And unlike Hermann Nicarbacher, Irving was actually born in New York City. In fact, on April 3rd, 1783, a fortuitous time in our nation's history, Irving was, you know, as you could tell, named for George Washington. Well, now flash forward in the story to 1798 when he was 15 years old and when a devastating yellow fever epidemic swept over the city. So Washington was set up to live with his friend James Paul Ding in Terry Town on the Hudson River. According from Biographer Brian J. Jones, the young men, quote, explored the eastern shores of the Hudson and hunted squirrels in the woods, surrounding a nearby Dutch village called Sleepy Hollow. In the afternoons, Paul Ding's grandfather read aloud from his enormous Dutch Bible with gigantic silver clasps. It all appealed strongly to Irving, this throwback to quaint traditions and old styles. Unquote. He obviously fell in love with this part of the state because it became the setting of some of his greatest works, including the legend of Sleepy Hollow. And Irving would later live in Terry Town, New York in a gorgeous home that he called Sunnyside, which you can still visit today. Well, young Washington Irving became a bit of a racon tour almost immediately. And he began writing letters for a New York newspaper under the pen name Jonathan Old-style. So he was like, you know, into vintage things, like I guess we could say, an old soul. Yes. Then he went to Europe for a couple of years, which only made him even more sardonic and witty. You could just imagine matched, stir that into the pot a little bit. Well, so he returned then to New York where in 1807, in his early 20s, he began producing a satirical magazine called Selma Gandhi. Selma Gandhi. So today on Lower Fifth Avenue in Greenwich Village, there is a fine, fine arts social club named the Selma Gandhi Club, which pays tribute to this very publication and to Washington Irving and to his lasting influence over all things smart and satirical in American culture. So this Selma Gandhi magazine, it really was a slice attire of New York's, you know, politics scene and its social life. He parodied it all. Yeah. I mean, you might say that even then, he did not write directly at things. He wasn't a direct writer. He always wrote in a joky satirical manner in ways that you might see in, you know, like the New Yorker magazine today for one example, much of American comedy in any media. Maybe this is a big statement to make, but I think it can trace itself back to Irving and his friends here because it was the first real like solid example of major American comedy writing for Selma Gandhi. Well, in 1807, in its pages here in of this magazine, Irving even coined the word Gotham to mean New York City to quote from the book Gotham. I thought this was a good place to look for a quote by Mike Wallace and Edwin Burroughs quote, the original Gotham immortalized in proverb and nursery rhyme was of course that old English village whose inhabitants turned aside King John's wrath by pretending to be fools. I'm quote, which I think well describes Irving and his cohorts here, right? And explains his lighthearted and sardonic worldview maybe. And it's from this worldview here that our fictional nickerbocker is born for on December 6, 1809. Here comes the publication of Irving's long form satirical work called The History of New York from the beginning of the world to the end of the Dutch dynasty. This was a book allegedly written by a man named Dietrich and nickerbocker who would end up becoming the most famous nickerbocker of all despite not being a real person. Dietrich nickerbocker was the was the alleged author of this satirical work of fake history, which was really written by Washington Irving. Do you know if Dietrich was actually based on Irving's real nickerbocker friend, Herman or Hermann nickerbocker? It's very likely. I did find a wide variety of anecdotes characterizing this relationship because you know people have really given this a lot of thought because of the popularity of the name, this relationship between Herman and Washington Irving. Now some say that they may have just been mere acquaintances while others actually suggest that Washington visited the mansion and may have even written some of his greatest works at the mansion. And in an 1872 history by the great Elizabeth Fries Ellet, I also found another fun little anecdote she wrote of Irving being playfully introduced to the first lady, Dolly Madison quote Irving was presented to Mrs. Madison by Mr. Herman nickerbocker as his cousin germane, Dietrich nickerbocker, unquote. Presented no less to Dolly Madison. Dolly Madison as as Dietrich. Yes. Uh-huh. Right. He was presented as his fictional character. So he this character must have been pretty well known at the time. But was this book a history of New York? Was it completely satire? Was there any actual history in it? A lot of both actually. It is a partial parody of a now long forgotten book called The Picture of New York by Samuel L. A. S. Mitchell, which Irving, as you can imagine, found quite stuffy and pretentious and decided to parody it. In Irving's book, real history and cheeky commentary are kind of woven together into this very entertaining hilarious and actually classic narrative by this point. Writers from Charles Dickens to Mark Twain all loved this book. It was on all of their bookshelves. They thought it was the funniest book ever written. Well, and actually when he wrote it, leading up to its publication in 1809, Irving had to fill in some of the factual blanks himself. Uh-huh. Right. Especially concerning stories regarding the city's Dutch roots and Dutch heritage because so much of the actual historical record had been erased by the British. It's kind of amazing to think how many New Yorkers at the time, like with Dutch family names, actually knew very little about their new Amsterdam heritage. On top of, you know, just all of the difficulties of preserving history in any fashion at this particular time. In fact, it's why the New York Historical Society had been founded in 1804, just a few years before. And Tom, did you know that Irving's book, this book here was even dedicated to the New York Historical Society. Wow. So, so despite its satirical tone, it actually did have some real history to it. Yeah. Even though it was purportedly written by Dietrich Nicarbacher. Why do you think that this character, this supposed author, this fake author? Why do you think he resonated so strongly with readers? Well, one big reason was actually how the book was promoted, the kind of a long, interesting creative rollout. For a month before the book was released, notices in the newspapers reported that a mysterious man had swept into town and then had promptly disappeared, leaving behind a manuscript in his hotel room. He was described in the New York evening post as quote, a small elderly gentleman dressed in an old black coat and cocked hat by the name of Nicarbacher. I mean, it sounds very modern. It sounds like a modern publicity stunt, right? And Irving, he hatched this plan himself and he financed it too. So by the time that the book came out, people were already, you know, wondering about this mysterious manuscript and this vanished, supposedly vanished elderly author with his old funny Dutch name. Bryant. I mean, an author, I guess really a character who would outlast the memory of the very book from which he emerged, right? I mean, as Charles Dudley Warner would much later write, quote, this little man in knee-bridges and cocked hat was the germ of the whole Nicarbacher legend, a fantastic creation which in a manner took the place of history and stamped upon the metropolis of the New World, the indelible Nicarbacher name and character. And even now in the city, it is an undefined patent of distinction to have descent from an old nickerbocker family. Well, we'll watch nickerbocker take on errors right after this. So in the decades following the book's 1809 release, I think it's safe to say that the term nickerbocker derived from deedric nickerbocker went mainstream. I mean, that word is a little ridiculous. It's absurd. It's even a mouthful. As we have to say it a million times in the show. Which one? Deedric or nickerbocker? Nickerbocker. But it also probably helped that this book when it came out was a hit. Yeah, it was widely read at home and abroad. It went through many, many printings, including in England in 1836 with illustrations by the artist George Crookshank, who drew the author deedric nickerbocker as a craggy old Dutchman wearing loose knee breeches. Velvet breeches. We're going to get back to those breeches in a second, but continue. Oh, yes, we will. But the point here is that Irving describes nickerbocker as a kind of old-fashioned eccentric, right? A kind of absent-minded Dutch history professor. Really, somebody who is dressed from another era. But as the years passed, something really funny happened. That nickerbocker name started to mean something. Now, in his preface to the book's 1848 printing, Washington Irving marveled about the book's enduring popularity. He wrote, quote, "When I find, after a lapse of nearly 40 years, this haphazard production of my youth still cherished, when I find it's very name, become a household word and used to give the home stamp to everything recommended for popular acceptation, such as nickerbocker societies, nickerbocker insurance companies, nickerbocker steamboats, nickerbocker omnibuses, nickerbocker bread, and nickerbocker ice. When I find New Yorkers of Dutch descent, priding themselves upon being genuine nickerbockers, I please myself with the persuasion that I have struck the right cord, and that though other histories of New York may take their dignified and appropriate rank in the family library, nickerbocker's history will still be received with good humored indulgence and be thumbed and chuckled over by the family fireside." So what exactly happened here? I mean, we know that this was a character, so how did nickerbocker become mainstream? Wait, did you say nickerbocker omnibuses bread? Nickerbocker ice. Yes. How did this happen? So I think that as the decades passed, the the farce that was surrounding, didrick nickerbocker seems to have faded a little bit, right? And instead, his family name, nickerbocker, started to represent something different. It still had a little funny, dutty, you know, an old-fashioned ring to it. But more importantly, the name started to represent the old world and a Dutch lineage. It could even carry a claim to a sort of, you know, New York, New Amsterdam, New Netherlands, aristocracy. So now in just like a few decades and the first half of the 19th century, so really not that long of a period, nickerbocker was representing status as in like descended from the very first Dutch settlers. Hello, skirmher horns and skylers and stivocents. Then Rensseliers Greg, yes, these became known as the old nickerbocker families. Rusevelt's Van Cortland's on all the rest of them. Yes, yes. But the thing is, then it kept evolving because soon, its definition was sort of widened to also allowing New Yorkers of English extraction, the wealthy ones, at least. So now anyone with money who had Anglo-Dutch heritage could call themselves part of nickerbocker in New York. Right. And they formed nickerbocker societies and clubs and businesses took on the moniker of nickerbocker in order to give themselves a sense of permanence, right? And history and length themselves to the city's Anglo-Dutch heritage. And I think that this is what Washington Irving was referring to in that preface in the 1840s. Obviously, I jumped into newspapers.com and searched around and found plenty of examples from the 1840s from the newspapers. In the Baltimore Sun, there were ads throughout the 1840s for the nickerbocker bread and fancy cake bakery from New York, but operating in Baltimore. It was the quote, "largest bread ever offered to the public." 23 ounces for six and a half cents, Greg. That was a nickerbocker bakery that was at 55 North Gay Street. Lots of carbs, quite a claim. Actually, we see this today. You'll have a New York style bakery in another place, but this one here is calling itself the nickerbocker. That's right. And there was a nickerbocker steamship. I find a piece of breaking news, actually, in the Brooklyn evening star on April 16, 1847, when the steamer Oregon pulled ahead of the steamer nickerbocker while they were both passing through the hellgates and actually the Oregon ran into it and ran into the nickerbocker. And quote, "For a few minutes, the nickerbocker was in very great peril. The anchor of the Oregon passing very near one of her boilers." Unquote. Fortunately, nobody was hurt. Don't worry. It's not the fault of the nickerbocker, nor of her captain, Greg, John Van Peltz. Van Peltz, so like an old nickerbocker himself, and perhaps his siblings, Linus and Lucy, were aboard as well. All here at the helm of the nickerbocker steamship. Exactly. And these examples go on and on, as you mentioned, yet service. A horse drawn omnibus called the nickerbocker and it goes on and on. But the steamship and the horse drawn omnibus, well, these don't really sound like exclusive conveyances, right? I mean, this is just kind of sounding like an old-timey New York brand name by this point. Yes, exactly. And I think that that was also Irving's point that already by the late 1840s, nickerbocker was starting to just mean old-time New York, right? And in time, it would actually just come to represent New York itself. But it is a confusing, maybe even contradictory here because, you know, despite those nickerbocker bakeries and omnibus, then the name would still hold some kind of social cachet throughout the whole 19th century, especially near the end of the century, as many more money types begin flooding into the city. These new varieche. Well, and that is a dynamic that we have watched play out for three seasons on HBO's The Guild of Age. It is that old nickerbocker New York society versus the new money. Although let's face it, even that is a little bit confusing because, you know, the big drama in the early 1880s was whether Caroline Astre would permit Alba Vanderbilt into society. But you might be wondering, hold on. If we're just looking at names, Vanderbilt, right? Shouldn't that have been an automatic entry? That's an old nickerbocker name. But of course, in their case, Mrs. Astre and her friend Ward McAllister considered the Vanderbilt's not really far enough removed generationally from the man who built their fortune. I just want to pause for a second and observe that this is a show about the New York Knicks, but we're up here with the Ward McAllister, a bit far from the basketball court so far. And our usual fashion, of course. We're getting there. We're getting there. This is our special spin on the Knicks. And this new money versus old money tension is important to the story because among other things, it led to the formation of the ultra-exclusive nickerbocker club in 1871. That was formed by members of the Union Club who felt that their club was starting to just let in any old rich person or ultra-rich person. So they wanted to keep membership more restricted and to notable descendants of Dutch and English settlers. So here in 1871, despite the widespread use of the name on all sorts of different things, the nickerbocker club leaned into this hot-ier meeting, perhaps, this earlier meeting, which represented this idea of prestigious Anglo-Dutch lineage. Right. And at the same time that all of this is happening, a new persona emerges, right? A new character called Father Nickerbacher. Sometime, emerging sometime in the 1870s. Father Nickerbacher was a kind of New York mascot. The same way that Uncle Sam is a mascot for the United States. - And Father Nickerbacher was not in Washington Irving's book? - No, no, he's just an evolution of this Nickerbacher idea and concept, right? Now, the New York history detective, Barry Poppick, published a post on his remarkable blog, BarryPoppick.com, that tracked down Father Nickerbacher's first appearances. - Oh. - Barry found them as early as 1873 by going through the non-digitalized archives of the New York Daily Graphic. When I searched the newspapers.com archive, which doesn't include the Daily Graphic, I found cartoons featuring Father Nickerbacher in the late 1880s. So Kudos to Barry. But by the 1880s, the ones I saw, he was depicted as this decidedly old-fashioned, but I thought rather dashing Dutchman. He was wearing this long coat, fairly vast buckles on his shoes. And of course, knee breaches. - Oh, well, so Father Nickerbacher has a look. He's got some sass, maybe even like a, recalling a bit of Peter Stivacent in his look, Irving. - Yeah, yeah, just much, much later, right? And that was us at the point that he was like outmoded. All the today we look at him and we're like, he's got a look, yeah. (laughing) So by however, by the late 1850s references to those knee breaches, those short pants, started to appear calling them nickerbockers. And you know, boys would regularly wear their nickerbockers until they graduated to long pants. So they became very common. Everybody talked about young boys in their nickerbockers. And that term, because it's a chameleon, would gradually, rather quickly, be shortened down to. - Jump to the nickers. Where are my nickers? - No heaven and a horn around that one. (laughing) - Wow, so by the late 1800s, the word a nickerbacher meant a lot of different things. A many of which linked New Yorkers together in some way. - That's right. It could mean high end like the hotel nickerbacher, which was built by the Astros, an open and time square in 1906. The hotel nickerbacher was the original home to Maxfield Parish's 30-foot mural, Old King Cole, for its bar, which now adorns to St. Regis. And the hotel nickerbacher is the rumored birthplace of the Martini. So classy. - But it could also be more every man sticking here with the alcohol experience here. Like nickerbacher beer. Quote the beer that satisfies and was produced by the Jacob Rupert Brewery in Yorkville, in Manhattan. A brewery that was owned in the early 20th century by the Colonel Jacob Rupert Jr., who would purchase the Yankees. He would build Yankee Stadium and would even bring Babe Ruth to New York, all with this backing of nickerbacher beer. So pretty important. And I think it's safe to say that all of these terms, in all of these cases, nickerbacher means New York. In her 2009 book, nickerbacher, the myth behind New York, the author Elizabeth Bradley writes that quote, "It was nickerbacher, not Irving, who was repurposed throughout the 19th century for a host of political, commercial, and social agendas. And it was nickerbacher's name that was soon in near continuous use as shorthand for all things New York. Nickerbacher was the common link between a strange, sometimes unholy assemblage of New Yorkers, one that came to include nativists, patriots, and pulp fiction writers, hat makers, spice merchants, and hoteliers, gossip columnists, society matrons, and sports fans." All linked by nickerbacher. And by the way, speaking of sports fans, the Rupert Yankees connection here, isn't even the only nickerbacher baseball connection. - No, there's actually, we skipped over an even more obvious one, then nickerbacher baseball club had been founded way back in September 1845 by a man named Alexander Joy Cartwright and others. And it was likely named after Cartwright's volunteer fire department, which was the nickerbacher engine company 12. - And we talked about this in a fairly recent show on baseball history. They played their first game in Hoboken, at Elysian Fields, on June 19th, 1846. So that is like, that's an anniversary that's coming up 180 years ago. - And those New York nickerbachers, the baseball team would remain an active team into the 1870s when the team folded. And the name became available. - Oh, isn't that convenient? We'll get to those other New York nickerbachers right after this half time show. (laughing) - Now in the last section, you mentioned the nickerbacher baseball club, which was founded in 1845, so they can already say the nickerbachers of some sort have been playing some kind of sport for almost 180 years. - Nickerbachers have been playing since before, actually, the very invention of basketball. - By several decades, in fact, basketball was invented in 1891 by James Nase Smith in Springfield, Massachusetts. Now, of course, baseball and football are far older. I would call them wild sports because they were formed in communities and were played mostly by young men with a huge array of evolving rules. It would take many, many decades to kind of get to the more standardized rules of those sports. But basketball, on the other hand, I might call a tame sport. And is that because it takes place on a relatively smaller plane surface with fewer players? - Partially, yes. It is a more contained sport in many ways, kind of like tennis, if you think about it. But also, I say that due to the man who invented it, this man, James Nase Smith, a Canadian with a degree in theology who worked for the YMCA, or the Young Men's Christian Association. That does sound tamer. Yes. - Yes. - Of course, it's terrible, but you said YMCA and I started thinking of the village people. They did not, we should add, have a basketball player, right? In the middle. - No, no. No, they had a construction worker. I think there was a cop that was a leather man even. - He might have played basketball. - Oh, maybe. And other sports. But no basketball player. So Nase Smith invented the game to keep his athletes in shape during the winter. And so the first game, I love that we know the first game, a date. And the first game was played on December 21st, 1891 with peach baskets standing in for the modern net baskets that we have today. Isn't that quaint? The rules were different, but there were rules. You know, it was organized and supervised. - And you say standing in, the peach basket stood in, but I mean, it does make sense, right? It's called basket ball. - A bounce storm. - Basket ball normally have a hole on the end of them. - That's true. - You were quite. - Throwing the ball up and, you know, I think the janitor had to come out and put a ladder up to it and take it out of the basket after every time somebody scored. So this was always meant as a sport for children, right? Or for young people? - Yes, for boys and young men and girls for the very first girls game was played on March 22nd, 1893, over at Smith College. And like this is so eye opening, did you realize that basket ball was a gilded age invention? - No, but however judging from the millionaires and billionaires who said, "Cortside today, it tracks." But I then imagined, so it became a popular sport in schools, right? - Today we know it as both a street sport and one that was played in school gymnasiums. It is so versatile. But it got its start here as something distinctly amateur. - Yeah. So it was popularized then by public schools, but also by the military. You know, you could play this, you know, if you had a cafeteria or a gym sitting around, you could have a game of basket ball. It was competitive, it was athletic, but it wasn't overly. chaotic, if you know what I mean, like, you know, like early baseball could be. By 1897, there was a professional organization which linked these YMCA teams. It was called the National Basketball League or the NBL that was composed of several teams all in the Northeast. And the most famous one being the New York wanderers who had originally formed out of the 23rd Street YMCA at West 23rd Street in Chelsea. And why were they called the wanderers? Well, they did indeed wander wander around or barnstorm as it's called today, playing exhibition matches in small towns. According to Sports Historian Robert Peterson, quote, "The wanderers scheduled midweek games and towns with easy railroad travel of New York so that they could return home after a game for their regular jobs or studies. The wanderers were sufficiently well known by 1901 that they were asked to endorse a spring tonic manufactured by Hood's Laboratories and Lowell Massachusetts. Each player got $5 and a complimentary bottle. They came to regret this as they were subjected to endless kidding by other teams who had seen their endorsement in the company's advertisements." I mean, it was a team who had formed at the YMCA after all. I'm sure that, you know, going pro here and getting paid to, you know, push tonics. Yes. Was probably going to cost your reputation a little bit. Yes. In fact, Luther Halsey Guleck, who is the superintendent from that YMCA in Springfield, Massachusetts, the one I mentioned earlier, he was once quoted as saying, "When men commence to make money out of sport, it degenerates with most tremendous speed. It has in the past inevitably resulted in men of lower character going into the game." Unquote. Yikes. Well, that seems like a rather untenable position to keep as basketball becomes increasingly popular here. Yeah. And also, as its athletes become more skilled at the game. I mean, there are certainly echoes of this argument even today in regards to college sports. Eventually, teams would discover that this barnstorming way was actually a pretty great way to make money. The barnstorming circuit also gave rise to teams of black players who couldn't even play in YMCA's originally because they were segregated. In 1910, there would eventually be YMCA's constructed specifically for African-American members, but the organization would hold on to a policy of segregation until 1946. But on the barnstorming circuit, this gave teams the ability to create an unofficial league. In 1923, a team was formed in Harlem called the New York Renaissance, named for the Renaissance Ballroom, which was an actual ballroom in Harlem where jazz legends often played, you know, a lot of things went on at the Renaissance Ballroom, but it was also a basketball arena. Yeah. Again, demonstrating the versatility of this sport, right? And why it was so easy for teams to travel around because they could play in almost any room. Just had to put up some baskets. But I just want to like a little side note here because there is another team which formed in the 1920s that still performs today. And that team is called the Harlem Globe Trotters, an exhibition team which was actually founded a hundred years ago in 1926. And let's face it, they were all the rage when we were kids. I saw them playing Cleveland. I don't know. But you did. Wow. I mean, they also appeared on Saturday morning cartoons. They even teamed up with Scooby-Doo. I mean, if you've not watched that, I suggest you go find that cartoon, just magical. It seemed to me like they were on for a long time, right? It was a whole spin-off. I think it was just not a lot of shows, but like they just had it was on all the time when we were kids. It was like Arnold going over to the facts of life. Yes. But were the Globe Trotters founded in Harlem? No, they were actually founded in Chicago. But by the year 1926, Harlem had become so synonymous as the mecca of black culture in the United States that they just added Harlem to the name, you know, because it was a popular name. But here in New York, back to New York, the most famous team of the 1920s and 30s, all the way downtown, was a team called the original Celtics, due to the original members of that team, all being Irish Americans. And they were so dominant in this sport, in this early 20th century period, that according to author Stephen A. Reese, quote, "they often played more than 100 games a season and one 90% of the time." As many as 10,000 fans attended Celtics games, often breaking arena attendance records, unquote. And to be clear here, you're talking about non-collegiate basketball because I'm dead to in a second here. College basketball was where all the action was. Right. This is an important distinction. And by the 1920s, these early professional basketball teams were becoming too big to ignore. Now at the same time in the 1920s, baseball teams, you know, they all had venues of their own, like the polo grounds, and of course Yankee Stadium. So could these Celtics find themselves, you know, a big venue of their own? They would, in fact, and that venue would be named Madison Square Garden. Now of course, this legendary place comes up all the time in our show. We reference Madison Square Garden all the time. Now I direct our listeners back to our Madison Square Park episode that we did just a couple of years ago for a capsule history on the original Madison Square Garden. Yes. The one that actually sat next to Madison Square Park across from the northeast corner of the park. Yeah. Now it had once been an old train shed that in the year 1874 was adapted to become a general entertainment venue called Gilmore's Garden. We would hear a lot of light orchestral music and things like that. So five years later in 1879, the Vanderbilts, who we've already mentioned on the show, and they owned the land, they built a proper venue which introduced indoor sporting events to the spot. And then of course, that became so popular that in 1890, an even more lavish arena was created here designed by the one and only Stanford White. And so this was the center of popular entertainment in New York City for over 35 years. It hosted, oh my goodness, what didn't host, horse shows, political conventions, of course dog shows, operas, circuses, circuses, circuses. Oh yeah, famously boxing, football, bike racing, all kinds of things. Basically, you know, the same thing that your modern general purpose arena would host today. Oh yeah, I mean, how'd it been like the year 2024 and it had it still been there? Taylor Swift probably would have brought her era tour to the northeast corner of Madison Square Park. It was a different era. Yes, yes. So did the original Celtics and play basketball there at Madison Square Park? No, they actually helped inaugurate a new Madison Square Garden away from Madison Square up on eighth Avenue in the neighborhood of Hell's Kitchen today, operated by boxing promoter, techs, record as a more sports forward venue, you know, not, not meant for proper society. Let's just say, okay, it was more focused. It would be known as the house that techs built and to show that he was serious about making a big change away from, you know, the like, Gilded Age 19th century Madison Square Garden. On December 6th, 1925, he hosted a game here at the the new venue between the original Celtics and a DC based team called the Washington Palace Five. And were these teams really organized at this point? This wasn't just this kind of barnstorming that they had been doing. There was a professional league by this time called the American Basketball League. You don't need to remember all of these different leagues because this particular one crumbled in the 1930s, like so many other things during the Great Depression, and other attempts to revitalize this league failed to take off. So basically by the 1930s, professional basketball in New York City was at a bit of a crossroads. But fortunately, as I hinted out before, there was college basketball. Now in 1934, a sports writer and event promoter named Ned Irish was dreaming up ways to fill the garden on nights when there were neither boxing matches, norm, hockey games or anything else. And on December 29th, 1934, He organized a collegiate double header, a collegiate basketball double header featuring Westminster College versus St. John's and NYU versus Notre Dame, and more than 16,000 fans packed the arena. - Wow, I mean, suddenly here in the 30s, this college game seems to be where it's at. This seems to be the big business. - It was already huge. I mean, it was so popular that Ned Irish, when he had been reporting on games for the New York World Telegram, allegedly had torn his pants trying to squeeze through a window into a packed college auditorium, (laughing) and he realized just how popular they would and how he couldn't actually make more money promoting these basketball events in a much larger house, Madison Square Garden, which he knew sat quiet on some nights when there was nothing else going on there. This also being the depression. So nothing happening there, no revenue. What did they have to lose? - Well, I mean, this sounds like a pretty savvy decision. It kind of made him a very rich man. - It did, in 1934, it made him the gardens basketball director and he also got a cut of the ticket sales. And so the popularity of college basketball continued to grow, including within, with the introduction in 1938 of the National Invitation Tournament, which helped make New York the, quote, "Mecca of Basketball." - Oh wow. - So brought everybody to New York. And this just continued to grow so that by the early 1940s, hundreds of thousands of spectators were descending upon Madison Square Garden every season for college basketball games, with an average attendance of more than 15,000 spectators per game by 1944. - I love this fact too. We're going to be have college basketball here. The very first basketball game that was ever broadcast for television was a college game. And it was here at Madison Square Garden between Fordham and the University of Pittsburgh on February 28th, 1940, okay? - Wow. - 1940, it was on an experimental station, W2XBS, and was broadcast to approximately 400 television sets. Fortunately, very few were watching Fordham get destroyed by Pittsburgh that evening, 57 to 37. - I bet the ad rates were cheap for that one. But of course, that would change very quickly. So then when did the pro teams come to town? - Right, so it's about the same time. And here's the sort of ironic part of this story. Professional basketball wasn't actually conjured up by basketball people. It was actually dreamed up by a roomful of guys who owned hockey arenas. - Hockey arenas, huh? - Yeah. - Huh, okay. - Giant arenas in Boston and Providence, Rhode Island, Cleveland, Detroit. These places sat dark and empty on the nights when there were no hockey matches. There was no money being made then. So these owners thought, well, what if we put a basketball team in there to film those dark nights? It was a real estate play. - So a little bit like Ned Irish and his college basketball double headers, it was kind of a similar idea just to fill the empty building. - Exactly. Yeah. So on June 6th, 1946, a group of these arena owners gathered together at the Commodore Hotel located right next to Grand Central and founded a new professional basketball league called the Basketball Association of America, the BAA. - The ball, the BAA? - Yeah, not the NBA. - Not yet. I know we're throwing around a lot of team names, a lot of letters here, but the man that they put in charge of this new league was Maurice Potelhof, who was a lawyer, who was already running a pro hockey league. And now he was running a basketball league at the same time. - And so I am imagining that one of the arena owners in this room was our friend, Ned Irish. Yes, Mr. Irish is in the room. He's the one man there who actually knows basketball really well because he has been actually making a fortune off of the college games at the garden at this point for 12 years. And New York was the biggest prize in the entire league. But the question became, who gets to own the New York team? - Well, I mean, it's Irish, right? I mean, he's got the venue. - Well, there was another New Yorker who wanted to own the New York franchise, even more than Irish, one could argue. A sports writer named Max Case, who was reporting, who reported for the New York Journal American. And he had actually been promoting this idea of a professional basketball team for New York for many years. He had it all figured out. And he wanted them to play in Manhattan out of an old armory building. So Case, he's the dreamer. He's the one with like the big ideas and with the vision. But of course, he doesn't really have the space. - Exactly. And by 1946, the man who was now running the whole Madison Square Garden operation was our friend Ned Irish. He was now the president of the Madison Square Garden Corporation. It had been quite a climb from his days as the college basketball reporter. And he wanted that New York team to play at the garden. - And I don't think it's an exaggeration to say that he basically controlled the most important building in basketball, like the whole sport. - Right, because any professional team who was playing in New York would really have to play in the garden, and that would have to go through Irish. But according to the minutes of the meeting, which still exists, they couldn't decide what to do when they voted, quote, "action deferred on New York." - Right, I think we know what happened. (laughing) - Yeah. - I mean, right? - The franchise went to Irish and to Madison Square Garden. And Case, the dreamer got squeezed out. - It's too bad, but there is a little touch of irony here because just six years later, 'cause he's a journalist, and Case would actually go on to win a Pulitzer Prize for exposing a bribery scandal in basketball and at Madison Square Garden. So, I mean, I guess you could say he got the last word on this. - He scored. - But it's like a play-winner. - Yeah. So Irish got his New York team, but this is important. And it's really, we've been leading up to it in the whole show. This team doesn't have a name yet. - Right, yeah. - This is where the whole story comes full circle. Remember that other part of the show when we were talking about Nickerbocker, well. - And Ward McGalester. - McGalester. We're coming back to it. Irish and his staff, now with the franchise, under their control, sat down to name the team. And according to an oft-retold story, they each wrote a suggestion on a slip of paper and dropped it into a hat to vote. - Do we know what kind of hat? Was it like an old Dutch cocktail? - It was a long, a long stovepipe. - Don't know. - Don't know, but when they pulled out the slips and counted them, the winner by a wide margin was the Nickerbockers, named after Father Nickerbocker, the symbol of New York City. And derived from Deedrick Nickerbocker, plucked from Washington Irving's imagination. - And a name that of course would soon be shortened to the Knicks. - So of all the names that they could have chosen. - The Dead Rockets. - The Dead Rockets. - Yeah. - The Plug-Ugles. - I mean Tom, they could have chosen the Bowry Boys actually. I mean, that would have been there. - We probably wouldn't have been there to name this the Bowry Boys. That's out there at the time, so anyway. - No, they voted for the oldest, most New York name there was. The fake Dutchman that Washington Irving invented in 1809, sitting in a hotel room in his cocktail and knee breaches. And that's how Father Nickerbocker's name went onto those jerseys. - Well, and speaking of, the original Knicks logo back in 1946, literally was Father Nickerbocker. I would write with a little cartoon Dutchman in his actual knee breaches. Doing something which I don't think would be comfortable doing in breaches dribbling a basketball. I think it could have dried up, wouldn't you think? - And what colors Greg, did they choose for their logo and for their jerseys? Well, they chose the colors orange. blue and white, which were the colors of New York City. Which, of course, had taken those very colors from the flag of the Dutch Republic. So the team that's playing for the city right now is quite literally New Amsterdam proud. Although we should say that they're very first game on November 1st, 1946, was not even in New York. No. In the United States. No, played in Toronto at the Maple Leaf Gardens, the Nix against the Toronto Huskies. And it's the only game on the schedule that whole night, which is why the NBA, the subsequent basketball organization, today counts it as a very first game in NBA League history. The first NBA game ever was Nix Huskies in Canada. And actually, I mean, that's kind of a historic name for Toronto as well. Yeah. And the first basketball ever scored in the league was put up by a NIC, a guard from Queens, named Aussie Shectman. And by the way, New York won 68 to 66. But back home, the NICs turns out were kind of an afterthought in their own home building, right? Because when the college teams wanted to play at the garden, the NICs got bumped, sometimes all the way downtown to the dingy old 69th regimen armory on 25th Street. So kind of wrapping it up here, we can say that the NICs have come a long way, a very, very long way. Because here we are in June, 2026. And for the first time since 1999, the New York Nicarbockers are playing for an NBA championship. Against the San Antonio Spurs, the exact same team that beat the Dix in the finals back in 1999. So this is a rematch 27 years later. And how ever it turns out this time, we have our preference. But however it turns out, it is all a very long way from a certain fake Dutchman in knee breaches. We have come very far from the satirist who sat down in 1809 and invented an old man who never existed, right? Dietrich Nicarbocker invented him just a cello book. And two centuries later, that made up name is stitched across the chests of a team cheered on by more than 8 million New Yorkers. So to answer our question, why Nicarbocker? Because by 1946, the name was the New Yorkiest name there was. And probably still is actually. So when you're watching the finals, and there are close ups of the famous faces in the garden, Spike Lee, Timothy Shalamey, just look past them. Up at the rafters, because they'll be a little old man and knee breaches and a cut hat sitting there and smiling down at the whole thing. The spirit of Washington Irving, having a last laugh. So thank you for listening and for watching our show today. This episode is brought to you by our listeners. Our supporters on patreon.com/Barryboys. Every contribution made to Patreon goes straight into the production of this show, including the editing, some travel, distribution. And of course, you can watch us on YouTube as well. And that's thanks to our supporters on Patreon. That's right. Yes, our new YouTube channel over at youtube.com just search for Bowery Boys podcast. So for a small monthly contribution, when you join us at Patreon, you'll also get access to Bowery Boys classic podcasts. And you'll also have first dibs on tickets to our live events on top of our other show, which is called Side Streets, which is exclusive to those who support the show. And it is also available on video as well. So join the fun over at patreon.com/Barryboys. And thank you for supporting the Barrymore's podcast. Thank you so much. Yes. And thank you all for listening today. Today, have a great New York week whether you live here or not. See you real soon. And go Nippervoccaurs!