CHASE- MANHATTAN - BURR?

Have you ever found yourself half-drunk and impatiently waiting for your cash to spew out of an ATM and wondered about this wacky little symbol here?? It's okay... Mulberry Bend has.


This story begins in 1799 amidst the bitter rivalry of Alexander Hamilton and Aaron Burr. Following a cholera outbreak in the then fledgling New York City, Burr won a crucial contract to drain fresh water ponds on Manhattan Island in order to supply fresh water to its inhabitants. This led him to found the Manhattan Company.


Hamilton had established the first corporate bank in New York, Bank of New York, in 1784 and enjoyed many years of fat profits without any competition. This irked Burr so much that he insisted that his newly established Manhattan Company obtain a clause in its charter that would allow it to become a bank, adding another layer to their fierce rivalry ... and we all know how that ended.

A. Burr - one hell of a model American !

Burr laid pipe all over Manhattan... literally. Always the cost-cutter, he hollowed out pine logs to carry the water to where it needed to go. Ultimately, Burr did a terrible job draining the water from Manhattan which led to awful public health and structural problems down the line but that's a different story. Have a look at his handy work:

See where this is headed?? Over the centuries the Manhattan Bank went thru several mergers and in 1930 John D. Rockefeller Jr. threw his hat in the ring and the bank became the largest in the nation. In the 1960's the bank decided that they needed a graphic logo - pretty revolutionary at the time - so they hired Chermayeff & Geismar Associates to whip something up.

They wanted something that would suggest security, organization, protection, equality, etc. but the designers also thought that they could make their clients happy by taking note of the venerated history of the bank which dated back to 1799. So they used Burr's old pine logs as the inspiration for the abstract image that would go on to become one of the most genre-defining corporate logos of the age.

To this day workers will occasionally unearth hollow pine logs during excavations like this one at Coenties Slip. It seems as though the ubiquity of the Burr's pine logs translates nicely to the evil corporate omnipresence of Chase logos in our fair city today.

Oh Burr, you always get the last laugh!

Weird...

~MB

HOME OF THE BEAR

Bear Mountain area, New York. As unlikely a place as ever to find landmark evidence of a big impact on menswear. But hark! This is no ordinary place. This is sacred ground of the Algonquin’s. Home of the Bear they called it after the great Sachem (chief) P’Tauk-Seet (the Bear) pronounced (Tuck-Seet). A village exists here that has held a legend in mens fashion for over a century.


But before this story unravels itself lets take a trip back to England in the 1880's. The Prince of Wales has commissioned Henry Poole & Co. to tailor a special smoking jacket hybrid for him that will allow him to attend semi-casual galas without going through the ritual ‘top & tails’ routine of high class dinner-wear. It is rumored that the then Prince (Edward VII) had his eye on a young Cora Potter from America. Cora was a beautiful southern girl born in New Orleans and married to one James Potter of New York (Cue J. K. Rowling fans). Although Potter was not a wizard, he was a successful coffee broker and a highly influential dinner club founder back in the states. Thus in 1886 he and his wife were invited to attend a ball at the Prince's Sandringham, Norfolk estate in the UK. When James Potter asked the Prince what would be appropriate to wear to such an event, the Prince referred him to his custom tailor to get fitted for his newly designed dinner-wear. A ploy to get time alone with Mrs. Potter?





Funnily enough, Cora did not return immediately to America. She stayed behind in England to pursue acting, while James returned to New York to continue his business and social presence. In New York, James Potter wore his new outfit from the UK all around town and at his private dinner club near Bear Mountain. Customers at the popular dinner spot Delmonico's were noted to constantly ask where the attractive new attire was from. Most of the time, Potter’s dinner club was sighted as the area of attraction for this mysterious and new garb. Consequently Potter’s dinner club which was located back northwest of New York City was given credit for the uprising of this trend. P'tauk-Seet-Tough (Tuck-Seet-Toe) or Home of the Bear by that time (1870's-1880's) was known as Tuxedo, New York. Rather by chance or by the winds of fate, Edward VII, Cora & James Potter, and Algonquin Sachem P'Tauk-Seet had all played a hand in inventing the American Tuxedo.

Barking Irons has pioneered what we call the Hester Polo combining elements of the American Tuxedo shirt with a fine jersey polo shirt for several seasons now.



Cora Potter died in 1936. Upon leaving England in the late 19th century Oscar Wilde is quoted to say "With regard to Mrs. Brown-Potter, as acting is no longer considered absolutely essential for success on the English stage, there is really no reason why the pretty bright-eyed lady who charmed us all last June by her merry laugh and her nonchalant ways, should not--to borrow an expression from her native language--make a big boom and paint the town red. We sincerely hope she will; for, on the whole, the American invasion has done English society a great deal of good. American women are bright, clever, and wonderfully cosmopolitan. "