Ask About New York’s Monuments

Dear Diary:

I was driving home from a trip to our old hometown, New York City, on a cold morning recently, when I noticed that the car in front of us had a window scraper perched on the trunk. At the next red light, when both our vehicles were stopped in a line of cars, I jumped out, snatched the scraper off of the trunk and walked up to the passenger door.

There was an elderly couple inside, the woman riding shotgun. I knocked on the glass and held up the scraper for them to see, expecting her to roll down the glass and take it. Instead, she waved her two hands dismissively, and both she and the driver shook their heads to say “No.”

Now I realize that as a 60-something Boomer, I do sport a somewhat scruffy gray beard, and, with my knitted cap and nondescript black coat, could pass for someone looking for a handout, but I didn’t expect to be perceived as a winter version of a squeegee guy!

(After some more hand signals, I did make them understand that it was their scraper, and was able to hand it in the window to them.)

Read all recent entries and our updated submissions guidelines. Reach us via email diary@nytimes.com or follow @NYTMetro on Twitter using the hashtag #MetDiary.

Ask About New York’s Monuments

Todd Heisler/The New York Times The Pleasant Plains Memorial on Staten Island honoring 13 fallen soldiers and many others from the Pleasant Plains neighborhood who served in World War I.

Some 800 monuments â€" like busts and statues of people and animals; memorial benches; and historic plaques â€" are sprinkled throughout the five boroughs, memorializing the household names of the past. But their fame may have faded with time. Lisa W. Foderaro of The Times has written a guide to some of the more obscure historical markers that dot the city.

Perhaps a monument you’ve encountered has seemed puzzling. Is there one you’ve always wondered about? Curious to know more about the person being honored, or why that person was chosen?

Jonathan Kuhn, the parks department’s director of art and antiquities, likely knows the answer, and he’s agreed to reply to reader questions about the city’s monuments on City Room. If you’re wondering about a memorial, ask your question in the comments section below. Mr. Kuhn will reply to selected questions and comments below. Or you can tell us why a monument you’ve seen is meaningful or intriguing to you.

Please include a description of the monument you are intrigued by and its approximate location. The park name would be helpful. If you have a photograph of the monument on Instagram, Flickr or elsewhere online, please include a link with your post. We look forward to reading your questions and observations.

When There Was a Mock Plantation in Brooklyn

An advertisement for “Black America.”

All up and down de whole creation
Sadly I roam,
Still longing for de old plantation,
And for de old folks at home.

The trajectory from those wistful antebellum lyrics by Stephen Foster (who died at Bellevue Hospital in 1864) to the Rev. Frederick A. Lucas Jr.’s fiery invocation of “the plantation called New York City” (at Mayor Bill de Blasio’s inauguration last week) spans more than a century. In that time, though, a plantation actually existed in Brooklyn.

To be sure, it was only a mock plantation and very much, like Foster’s, a romanticized version. It was also short-lived. But there it was, encamped in June 1895, in Ambrose Park in South Brooklyn, near Third Avenue and 37th Street, where today the Gowanus Expressway slices through, a native village erected by Nate Salsbury, the legendary producer of Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show.

“Fun for the Darkies,” proclaimed a New York Times headline, heralding the arrival of the “Black America” show and its cast of 500 “Southern colored people.” Another headline trumpeted a show featuring the “Fun-Loving Darky of Old Slavery Days.”

For several weeks, advertisements promised “home life, folk lore, pastimes of Dixie, more music, mirth, merriment for the masses; more fun, jollity, humor and character presented in marvellously massive lyric magnitude for the millions than since the days of Cleopatra.”

If there was any hint of disapproval at the display, it could not be found in any of the coverage of the exhibition by the news media.

“This was a period when ethnography was entertainment,” said Mike Wallace, an author of “Gotham,” a history of New York City, and a professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice and the City University of New York Graduate Center.

David Fiske, a retired librarian and the author of “Solomon Northrup: The Complete Story of the Author of ‘Twelve Years a Slave,’” wrote on The New York History Blog that Salsbury hired Billy McClain, a black entertainer, “to show the people of the North the better side of the colored man and woman of the South.”

What was billed as “a typical plantation village of 150 cabins” promised to depict “with a fidelity of detail” the “labors that the Negroes of slavery days engaged in, and the happy, careless life that they lived in their cabins after work hours were over.”

The “plantation” also included a full-acre cotton field, a working cotton gin and demonstrations and performances by a choir 300 strong.

Salsbury billed the performances as largely educational and, indeed, The Times reported that it presented “an opportunity to become familiar with plantation life to those of the North who belong to a generation to which the word slavery has but an indefinite and hazy meaning.” (In New York, the great majority of slaves were freed by 1827.)

The Brooklyn Eagle concluded after one performance that the audience was “fully satisfied of the versatility of the Southern Negro.”

After touring other cities, the exhibition returned to New York and Madison Square Garden.

The June 1895 Times Article:

The June 2, 1985, New York Times Article (PDF)

The June 2, 1985, New York Times Article (Text)

New York Today: Shed a Layer

Suzanne DeChillo/The New York Times The weather outside is not frightful.

Updated 10:00 a.m.

Good Thursday morning. We awake to a relatively balmy day, with a high of 30 and temperatures climbing through Saturday, and a scandal involving Gov. Chris Christie.

Things change so fast: Polar Vortex 2014, we hardly knew ye.

After two days of cold-related problems, mass transit is expected to run normally today. Schools around the region will open on time.

Temperatures may still fall short of the 40-degree average for this time of year, but we’re likely to see people celebrating anyway.

Here are some other things we suspect New Yorkers are looking forward to:

- Exercising outdoors. Yet fear of frostbite didn’t stop 6,669 people from getting on Citi Bikes during the cold spell.

- Eating out, drinking out, leaving the house, period. Especially those with children. As an expert on confinement once said, “I consider being snowed in with kids an extreme environment.”

- A usable toilet. A transit worker told 1010 WINS on Wednesday that the toilet in her subway station had frozen.

- Going out with the dog. “I’ll take the dog for a walk that lasts longer than 15 minutes!” a reader, Jayna Wallace, told us on Twitter.

- Gloveless phone use. No need to wear special gloves or chew a hole in your mitten to text outside.

- And lastly, an end to weather dithering. That includes complaining about the weather, global warming debates and defending your cold snap to relatives in Michigan.

How are you planning to take advantage of a warmer day? Let us know in the comments or on Twitter, using #NYToday.

Here’s what else you need to know for Thursday.

THIS JUST IN

Governor Christie has scheduled a news conference for 11 a.m. in Trenton.

He is expected to speak publicly for the first time about emails and texts that link his office to traffic jams at the George Washington Bridge. Watch the livestream here.

Our live blog with the latest developments is here.

WEATHER

Freezing never felt so good: sunny today, with a high of 30.

Overcast later, turning grim tomorrow. Not cold, but flurried, with a chance of light snow and freezing rain.

The weekend will be wet and warm, with highs Saturday in the mid-50s and rain a near certainty.

COMMUTE

Subways: Check latest status.

Rails: Check L.I.R.R., Metro-North or New Jersey Transit status.

Roads: Check traffic map or radio report on the 1s or the 8s.

Alternate-side parking is in effect today and Friday.

DE BLASIO WATCH

From Javier C. Hernández of the City Hall bureau of The Times:

- The mayor will detail his plan to expand after-school programs at 4 p.m. in the Bronx, a key part of his proposal to raise taxes on wealthy New Yorkers.

- Mr. de Blasio will swear in a new class of police recruits and the Queens borough president.

- Eric Cantor, the House Republican leader, took an unusual swipe at Mr. de Blasio for his criticism of charter schools.

- The mayor brought “ciao bella” to Albany. And those everyman suits? He gets them at Rothmans.

COMING UP TODAY

- Elected officials from Brooklyn call on the N.Y.P.D. to close homicide cases in other boroughs at the same rate as in Manhattan. City Hall steps. 11 a.m.

- Mets fans: give blood in exchange for tickets to an April game at Citi Field. 10 to 5 p.m.

- An exhibition of the New York street photographer Harvey Stein’s portraits of Coney Island and Harlem opens at the Leica Gallery in NoHo. 6 p.m. [Free]

- A talk about U.S. government surveillance with Heidi Boghosian and Lewis Lapham at the Mid-Manhattan Library. 6:30 p.m. [Free]

- Adelle Waldman reads from “The Love Affairs of Nathaniel P” at KGB Bar in the East Village along with the novelists Kate Manning and Jonathan Miles. 7 p.m. [Free]

- The Close Guantánamo Now Tour kicks off with a screening of the documentary “Doctors of the Dark Side,” at All Souls Church on the Upper East Side. 7 p.m. [Free]

- For more events, see The New York Times Arts & Entertainment guide.

IN THE NEWS

- The New York City Council elected a fiercely liberal Democrat from East Harlem as its speaker: Melissa Mark-Viverito. [New York Times]

- The extreme cold can kill off invasive species that threaten New York’s plants and trees, like the woolly adelgid. [New York Times]

- A man was arrested at J.F.K. in connection with the killing of a Brooklyn landlord. He was the victim’s tenant. [New York Times]

- A new report from the CUNY Graduate Center shows the gap between rich and poor is growing. [WNYC]

- Con Edison’s customers set a one-day record for winter gas and electricity use. [CBS New York]

- Scoreboard: In a four-game streak, Nets corral Warriors, 102-98. Rangers shoot down Blackhawks, 3-2.

AND FINALLY…

Not only is there ice in the Hudson, but the Symmes Hole of Brooklyn has been shrinking.

The Symmes Hole, as a blogger and self-made naturalist, Matthew Wills, calls it, is a curious, circular hole in the middle of the otherwise frozen pool of water at Pier 1 on the Brooklyn waterfront.

“The bubbler, keeping oxygen in the pool after Sandy ravaged the park’s whole watering system, is maintaining it against the freeze,” Mr. Wills explains.

That’s been good for local animals.

But why Symmes? John C. Symmes expounded a theory, around 200 years ago, that the earth was “hollow and habitable within,” and that the entrances were at the poles.

Joseph Burgess and Andy Newman contributed reporting.

New York Today is a morning roundup that stays live from 6 a.m. till late morning.

What would you like to see here to start your day? Post a comment, email us at nytoday@nytimes.com or reach us via Twitter using #NYToday.

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Mistaken for a Squeegee Guy

Dear Diary:

I was driving home from a trip to our old hometown, New York City, on a cold morning recently, when I noticed that the car in front of us had a window scraper perched on the trunk. At the next red light, when both our vehicles were stopped in a line of cars, I jumped out, snatched the scraper off of the trunk and walked up to the passenger door.

There was an elderly couple inside, the woman riding shotgun. I knocked on the glass and held up the scraper for them to see, expecting her to roll down the glass and take it. Instead, she waved her two hands dismissively, and both she and the driver shook their heads to say “No.”

Now I realize that as a 60-something Boomer, I do sport a somewhat scruffy gray beard, and, with my knitted cap and nondescript black coat, could pass for someone looking for a handout, but I didn’t expect to be perceived as a winter version of a squeegee guy!

(After some more hand signals, I did make them understand that it was their scraper, and was able to hand it in the window to them.)

Read all recent entries and our updated submissions guidelines. Reach us via email diary@nytimes.com or follow @NYTMetro on Twitter using the hashtag #MetDiary.

Cuomo Delivers the State of the State Address

Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo delivered his annual State of the State address on Wednesday to a mostly supportive crowd, saying that the upstate economy had improved, unemployment had fallen in every region and taxes for every New Yorker were down. Bill de Blasio, the mayor of New York City, was in the audience in Albany on the first official visit of his administration.