The local paper for the Upper East Side
WEEK OF JUNE WHAT IF? THE ‘CITY OF NEW MANHATTAN’ < P. 18
15-21 2017
EAST 93RD WAS ONCE MARXIST STRONGHOLD HISTORY Band of brothers that would find rew fame in vaudeville and film grew up amid Yorkville’s tenementssand and breweries BY RAANAN GEBERER BERER
The small, older apartment building at 179 East 93rd Streett is a stone’s throw from the fashionable nable Carnegie Hill neighborhood. But at the turn of the 20th century, itt was in the midst of a crowded immigrant grant tenement and brewery district. t. And from 1895 through 1909, 9, the building housed the family that gave rise to the world-famous Marx Brothers. A group of local seventh venth graders from the East Side Middle School recently discovered d the house and the Marx Brothers themselves, and have started a campaign to mark the house with a commemorative plaque. More about that later. The brothers’ life in their small apa r tment is ch ron icled in Groucho’s autobiography, “Groucho and Me,” and Harpo’s, “Harpo Speaks.” Their parents, Sam (‘Frenchie”) and Minnie, were German-Jewish immigrants. Groucho called his father, who had an inhouse tailor shop, “the most inept tailor that Yorkville ever produced — the idea that Pop was a tailor was an opinion held only by him.” Also living with the family were Minnie’s elderly parents. Minnie’s father was a former magician, and her mother played the harp. One of the brothers, Adolph, started exploring grandma’s harp and later mastered it, earning him the name Harpo. The oldest boy, Leonard (later Chi-
M Mayor Bill de Blasio with Chancellor Carmen Fariña at an event June 8 announcing new advanced placement courses. Photo: Ed Reed/Mayoral Photography Office Re
The Marx Brothers in 1931. Top to bottom: Chico, Harpo, Groucho and Zeppo. Photo: Library of Congress. co), was a problem child. He didn’t take school seriously and he was an incorrigible gambler his entire life. You could always find him at a pool hall or a card or dice game. Yorkville was full of warring youth gangs, most of them the children of immigrants, who jealously guarded their “turfs.” To avoid getting beat up when wandering onto the wrong block, Chico became an expert mimic of several accents — German, Yiddish, Irish and Italian. It was the Italian one that later defined his stage and screen character. Harpo, too, didn’t have much schooling. In his autobiography, he tells how, in second grade, two tough Irish kids would grab him and
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CITY’S SCHOOL DIVERSITY PLAN GETS MIXED REVIEWS SCHOOLS The Department of Education issues remedy for changing the racial balance of students BY MADELEINE THOMPSON
Students, parents, educators and politicians were less than impressed with the Department of Education’s plan to diversify New York City schools, which was released last week in response to a 2014 study that found the city’s schools to be one of the most segregated in the country. “Despite the fact that the overall metro share of enrollment is 35 percent white and
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22 percent black, the typical black student attended a school in 2010 with 12 percent white and 51 percent black classmates,” the study, conducted by UCLA’s Civil Rights Project, reported. The education department’s plan to remedy this starts with its goals to increase the number of children in a school with 50 to 90 percent black and Hispanic students by 50,000, lower the number of schools that are more than 10 percentage points above or below the city’s average on the Economic Need Index, and make more schools inclusive by serving English Language Learners and students with disabilities. Critics say these goals aren’t enough. “[This plan] doesn’t deal at all with K
to eighth grade, which is where the inequities begin,” said New York Times Magazine reporter Nikole HannahJones on NY1 last week. “Ninety-percent black and Latino is considered intensely segregated school, and most black kids in the system are already attending schools that are 90 percent black and Latino. So this is basically a
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