{"id":340891,"date":"2026-09-08T17:28:13","date_gmt":"2026-09-08T17:28:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/340891\/"},"modified":"2026-09-08T17:28:13","modified_gmt":"2026-09-08T17:28:13","slug":"uws-historical-photo-challenge-no-35","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/340891\/","title":{"rendered":"UWS Historical Photo Challenge No. 35"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>By Rob Garber for the Bloomingdale Neighborhood History Group<\/p>\n

Welcome to another installment in the Rag\u2019s Historical Photo Challenge. The image above was taken somewhere on the Upper West Side, sometime in the past. Can you figure out where, when, and what it shows? Look closely; this week\u2019s challenge photo, like the\u00a0others in the series<\/a>, includes clues that will help you identify the scene, if you\u2019re a dedicated UWS history sleuth. And even if you don\u2019t recognize the picture\u2014not to worry! Come back in two weeks and I\u2019ll decode it, show you the clues that help identify it, and\u2014best of all\u2014tell you a story the image unlocks, because this column isn\u2019t just a test of your neighborhood knowledge; it\u2019s also a rolling celebration of the people, buildings and events that wove the tapestry of the Upper West Side.<\/p>\n

Ready? If you think you know where and when the photo was taken and what it shows, post your answer as a comment on this column.<\/p>\n

Solution to History Photo Challenge No. 34<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Top: Photo Challenge No. 34. Middle: Aerial view of Columbus Circle in 1928. Field of view and photographer\u2019s approximate location for top image are shown in yellow. Bottom: View of Columbus Circle circa 1915.<\/p>\n

Location: Southeast corner of Columbus Circle
Date: November 1918
Image Source: New York Transit Museum
Clues: The only building in the photo that is still standing is the one right in the middle, in the background. It\u2019s clearly labeled \u201cGainsborough Studios,\u201d the splendid artists\u2019 co-op at 222 Central Park South. This tells us we\u2019re looking east across the open southern expanse of Columbus Circle. The trees to the left are at the edge of Central Park. The car, truck and tire signs on the two-story structure in the middle of the photo also hint that this is part of Automobile Row, which ran up Broadway from around Times Square to the low 70s. There\u2019s a bit of a red herring visible in a window of the building to the far right, which occupied the lot where the Museum of Arts & Design now stands at 2 Columbus Circle: it says \u201cNew York Evening Journal.\u201d The Evening Journal was a William Randolph Hearst rag. But starting in the late 1910s, his main newspaper offices were in the American Circle building on the north side of the Circle, not here on the south side. So technically, most of what the photo depicts is a couple of hundred feet beyond the edge of the Upper West Side. [Side note: Hearst tried to buy up much of the property around Columbus Circle and even hoped the city would name it after him, a la Times Square and Herald Square. He led the campaign to build the Maine Monument in the corner of Central Park (thus Hearst\u2019s probably apocryphal line to artist Frederic Remington: \u201cYou furnish the pictures, I\u2019ll furnish the war\u201d?]. Anyhoo, what was the giant ski jump in the center of the image all about?<\/p>\n

The rest of the story: Remember Looney Tunes cartoons where someone would high dive into a bucket of water? There was a version of that stunt which actually took place! On November 27, 1918 one Augustus Schreyer Meixell\u2014better known as Daredevil Schreyer\u2014rode his bicycle down a ski jump-style ramp built on a roof at the southeastern corner of Columbus Circle, pushed his bike aside as he lifted off from the foot of the ramp, soared more than 100 feet through the air, and landed in a shallow tank of water. Though the stunt only lasted a few seconds, it was stupendous and dangerous. Schreyer performed the act over and over\u2014he claimed to have done it more than 2,000 times!\u2014around the US and in Europe, each time building a custom version of his ramp.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>A number of photographs exist of Schreyer\u2019s ramps, but his 1918 Columbus Circle leap appears to be the only one constructed on the top of a building. His act was unique among the stunt performances of his era, and Schreyer was well paid for it\u2014but at Columbus Circle he donated his services to help raise money for the war effort.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Top: side view of Schreyer\u2019s ramp at Columbus Circle. Lower left: Schreyer\u2019s landing tank. Bottom right: Schreyer and bicycle in mid-flight.<\/p>\n

From the available photos, I estimate that Schreyer\u2019s landing tank was perhaps 30 feet long and 10 feet wide\u2013large enough to give him a bit of a margin of error\u2014he said from the comfort of his armchair. But it looks awfully shallow! Newspaper accounts said the tank was 3 or 4 feet deep. I asked Google\u2019s Gemini AI to review all known descriptions and images of Schreyer\u2019s apparatus and estimate the height from which he free fell into the water. The answer was 45 to 60 feet. I then asked how deep an adult male would plunge into water from those heights in three landing modes: swan dive, cannonball, or bellyflop. With an impact velocity estimated at 41 mph, the swan dive was out of the question; a diver would penetrate 33 to 50 feet in that position. A cannonball was possible\u2014penetration of 3 to 4 feet\u2014and likely to cause injury (\u201cbruising, spinal compression, severe shock\u201d). A bellyflop, as we all know, stops you immediately (1 to 2 feet penetration even from 45 to 60 feet) but would result in \u201csevere trauma.\u201d So how did Daredevil Schreyer do it?<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Newspaper articles about his act are vague on exactly how he entered the water (\u201chead first\u201d was one description), but the Philadelphia Times noted a mishap in 1902 with Schreyer \u201clanding on his stomach and losing his wind,\u201d requiring a quick rescue to prevent him from drowning. Photos of Schreyer in mid-jump show pretty clearly that he wasn\u2019t wearing protective or padded clothing. So he must have used an entry posture that stopped him abruptly without causing too much damage, and worked many hundreds of times\u2014any divers out there with ideas?<\/p>\n

As impressive as Schreyer\u2019s stunt itself was the fact that he was still doing it when he was nearly 50 years old. On May 25, 1919, he performed it at Van Cortlandt Park in the Bronx before an estimated 20,000 spectators including his wife and infant son. Schreyer hit the side of the water tank, sustained a fractured skull and other injuries, and died five days later. It was presumed to be a miscalculation in his trajectory, because \u201cOnly the tips of his fingers reached the water in the tank. His body struck its rim,\u201d according to an article in The New York Tribune on May 31, 1919. But a year later, a trial in a New Jersey court over bank fraud suggested that Schreyer was implicated in the embezzlement and may have deliberately hit the tank as a form of suicide (\u201cSay Bank Thefts Drove Schreyer To Kill Self\u201d\u2014The Jersey Journal, 27 Oct 1920).<\/p>\n

\u2026and that\u2019s the story behind the image in the last challenge.\u00a0 Now scroll back to the top of the column and take on your next one, Sherlockians!\u00a0 If you\u2019ve missed any pictures in this series, you can find the complete set on my author page<\/a>.\u00a0 All photos in the Upper West Side Historical Photo Challenges used with permission.<\/p>\n

About the author:\u00a0 Rob Garber<\/a> has lived on the Upper West Side since the late 20th century and is a member of the Bloomingdale Neighborhood History Group. To learn more, visit their website at upperwestsidehistory.org<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Subscribe to West Side Rag\u2019s FREE email newsletter\u00a0here<\/a>. And you can Support the Rag\u00a0here.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"By Rob Garber for the Bloomingdale Neighborhood History Group Welcome to another installment in the Rag\u2019s Historical Photo…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":340892,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[37],"tags":[9,24,63,122,124,123],"class_list":["post-340891","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-queens","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-nyc","tag-queens","tag-queens-headlines","tag-queens-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/340891","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=340891"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/340891\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/340892"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=340891"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=340891"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=340891"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}