Subway Emojis

At this point in the 21st century anyone with a cell phone is familiar with emojis, those tiny icons that convey a message and replace words. I don't know if there an official issuing agency, somewhat like the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) that creates and approves new ones, but I do know that someone is probably going to write an entire book using emojis, if they haven't already.

I always thought it was somewhat of a generational thing on who uses emojis, until someone I know who is past 60 used a jaunty thumbs up —nothing else—to reply to one of my emails. I was stunned. It is safe to say I don't use them, but then again I barely text. And when I do I use words, not pictures. It's enough that I have to change the cell phone screen to get an apostrophe in when I'm using a contraction than to have to go and find an emoji to add to the text.

Emojis remind of those children's puzzle books that every so often replaced words with pictures to see if the formative brain could get the message. How cute.

Emojis are not emoticons, which are defined in the OED as being that series of keystrokes that show a facial expression. e.g. :o). Another cute useless touch.

In fact, my edition of the OED is so old that the word "emoji" cannot be found. Google tells me it is a pictogram used in electronic messages to replace emotions that words cannot convey. Oh boy. Origin of the word is not given, but apparently it made its acceptance into the OED in 2015. I must have missed that story.

This whole posting that started with a discussion of emojis stared with reading a book review in the Wall Street Journal, Astor, by Anderson Cooper and Katherine Howe. Moira Hodgson wrote the review in yesterday's edition, and I felt the need to correct a misrepresentation made in the review.

Anderson Cooper, who some people might know is a CNN journalist who is the son of Gloria Vanderbilt who was a daughter of Reginald Claypoole Vanderbilt, a family that probably didn't take back the empties for the 5¢ deposit. Vanderbilt connotates wealth.

Reggie was the grandson of the family scion, Cornelius, famous for making a fortune with steamboats and railroads. Cornelius did not come from Europe, but was born in Staten Island in 1794. He was nicknamed The Commodore because of his shipping interests. 

As you approach Grand Central Terminal from the elevated roadway that is Park Avenue there is a statue of Cornelius. The Commodore Hotel occupied a spot right next to Grand Central Terminal. In the '70s a youthful real estate developer took over the Commodore and redid it with a glass facade and renamed it The Hyatt. The developer's name was Donald Trump. It was he first project that more or less put him on the map.

There was a Vanderbilt Hotel on Park Avenue at 33rd Street, with a famous Crypt Bar where my uncle Andy bartended for years. The ceiling was a beautiful setting of arches and mosaics that now houses a restaurant named Wolfgang's, a high-end steak house in the tradition of Peter Luger's, started by a pair of Luger's waiters. The rest of building was converted into apartments or condos decades ago. There are a lot of gargoyles on the setbacks of that building. I used to work right next door at 2 Park Avenue.

I mention all this because Ms. Moira Hodgson gives us a bit of background on John Jacob Astor and the co-author Anderson Cooper.

John Jacob Aster, another rich son-of-a gun before income taxes, made his money by selling beaver pelts from trapped beavers in Canada, New York City real estate, and selling opium in China. He was born in  Germany in 1763 and became the richest man in America. His great-great grandson John Jacob Astor IV died when the Titanic went down in 1912. 

The Vanderbilts and the Astors bought a lot of real estate in New York. Moira Hodgson makes mention of how the Astors were "old" money and the Vanderbilts "new" money. The Vanderbilts were shunned until there was an invitation to one of their galas.

The cohort "The Four Hundred" got its name because that was supposedly the number that could get an invitation to an Astor gala with 400 the number the ballroom could hold, There were some really big chateau mansions on Fifth Avenue at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th centuries.

Julian Fellowes in his miniseries The Gilded Age tried to do with an American setting what he did with Downton Abbey. There will be a second season, but I know for myself I lost interest in it early on in the first season. Rich people in turn-of-the-century New York just didn't seem appealing. He doesn't use the names Astor and Vanderbilt, but he depicts the invitation story mentioned in the book Astor and the book review that help defrost the feelings between the two families.

So, what does the book's reviewer misrepresent? Ms. Hodgson tells us the subway mosaic found on the wall of the No. 6 Train at Astor Place that depicts a beaver is "in tribute to John Jacob Astor" and his fur trade business.

Almost right. It is not a tribute, but rather a practice they did when they built these subway stops at the start of the 20th century to put a pictorial depiction (a mosaic emoji) that could be understood by the millions of non-speaking immigrants who were pouring into New York City. The beaver was a reference to Astor, and thus the stop Astor Place, but not placed there in tribute.

There are other subway mosaics that can still be found, but a lot of them have been lost. The locomotive for 42nd Street Grand Central Terminal on the same line was supposed to help tell those who might be able to yet read English that they were at the train terminal stop.

Likewise, the steamboat at Fulton Street was meant to tell those that they were at stop named to depict of the inventor of the steamboat, Robert Fulton. There is a link to a website that describes these extant mosaics.

The practice of installing mosaics has taken off in more modern times as subway infrastructure gets remodeled. The New York City subways don't yet look like Moscow's with Hermitage-type artwork, but the surroundings have been made more entertaining and pleasing to look at.

One of my favorites is what they did with the 28th street stop on the N and R line. I was often at this  stop in the single-bulb-dim lighting era in the '60s when I went to the wholesale flower district for the family's flower shop.

Never has a stop now looked so good.

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