Preface

his book, New York Firefighting and the American Revolution, began modestly enough as a chapter in another book begun in 2004. That book was to be a companion to the film I was producing, Damrell's Fire. We planned to distribute the film through American Public Television. APT is one of the primary agencies for independent producers to place their work on the nationally-affiliated public television network PBS.

We received encouragement from APT for our project and from PBS-affiliate program directors when we screened portions of it at an APT Marketplace. Damrell's Fire told the compelling story of how a Boston Fire Chief played an influential role in stopping the conflagrations in 19th century America, or as we put it, "How John Damrell Stopped American Cities from Burning Down." It had stunning computer animations, extraordinary music from Andrew Willis, and one other salient feature that did not go unnoticed by the program directors - we were releasing the film in both standard and high-definition (HD).

PBS stations were starving for HD content for the new cable channels then being introduced. And, when they scheduled a program on the HD channel, it would also be shown on their broadcast channels, which in those days dwarfed the audience available on HD. The film garnered solid Nielsen ratings with their estimates of it being viewed by two to three million households nationwide in the first six months. Was Damrell's Fire so good or was it just the right thing at the right time? Perhaps both.

I had begun the book in 2004 and had written a few chapters. Not surprisingly, the film production did intrude on completing the book. However, in anticipation of the film being being embraced by public television, perhaps I might find a publisher. I thought the time was right to show the book, such as it was, to my agent.

The first time I met Ned Leavitt, 1984, he was an agent for William Morris, the well-known New York literary and media agency. He represented, MacroMind, a software development company from Chicago. MacroMind was apparently well-connected enough to have a serious agency and apparently highly-skilled enough to code one of the most extraordinary Mac software applications ever.

In the early days of PC software, we (software publishers) were all trying to find what the right business model for software publishing was. It was often confused with book publishing, which it superficially resembled. A few developers went to book agents to get the right deal from newly established software publishers, such as Hayden Software, which is where I came in. In early 1984, we had decided to focus Hayden resources into acquiring, developing, and licensing Macintosh software.

Hayden published twenty programs for the Mac in the innovative computer's first year. We had the best-selling game (Sargon III, a chess program), the best-selling Mac utility (Hayden Speller, spell checkers were separate products then), one of the best-selling educational products (Hayden SAT Score Improvement), and two best-selling Mac products that defined a new category, developed by MacroMind - MusicWorks and VideoWorks.

I was in Ned's office at the William Morris agency a few years later. It must have been on at least the 35th floor and it was filled with shelves of books he had gotten published, several best sellers. We celebrated MacroMind's success in establishing their own software company called "Macromedia", my role in selling Hayden Software to Spinnaker, and Ned's big news that the movie "Fletch" with Chevy Chase, based on books by Gregory MacDonald, represented by Ned, had just become a big hit. I was impressed. I whimsically asked Ned if he would represent me. He asked if I had a book. I replied, "No, but now that I have an agent, I will certainly write one."

Busy as I was for a couple of decades, I still kept in touch with Ned every five years or so. In 2005, with the film launch set for 2006, I called him up and arranged to visit him at his own agency, the Ned Leavitt Agency, in SoHo. I sent ahead the first few chapters of Damrell's Fire, the book. After pleasantries, we got to talking about the book. He characterized its content as interesting and its style as "workmanlike".

That reminded me of what my thesis adviser had said after reviewing my master's thesis (Measurement of the Transfer Characteristics of the Middle Ear using the Mossbauer Effect). He said, "I think I understand what you are trying to say." Then Ned asked me when I thought I would have the book done. I said it should be done in March, 2006 a couple of months before the film was to be launched. He frowned. Unfortunately, he explained, it took more than a couple of months...it had to be finished at least a year before, so that it could be submitted, acquired, edited, produced, marketed, etc.

I put the book on hold and concentrated on the marketing materials for Damrell's Fire, the film. We put together trailers for the web and a "Bonus" DVD as an incentive for those who wanted a DVD of the film. DVDs, now obsolete, were once a convenient format to deliver films. They have been 'disintermediated', as the VCs say, by high-speed cable and streaming. However, if you are curious, you can watch a segment of that DVD (The Making of Damrell's Fire) on this Saving New York web site to be found by clicking here.

So a few years back, while looking for the next project, I stumbled over the seven file-boxes of Damrell Fire research and the file containing the unfinished book. Did it have any possibilities? APT had placed Broadside, our second film, on Amazon Prime and it seemed to be doing quite well. Maybe Damrell's Fire might also get new life on streaming media. Perhaps it was time to resurrect the book. However, while writing the chapter that compared firefighting in 18th and 19th century between Boston and New York, the New York story levitated Phoenix-like (the Bird, not the city in Arizona) from the ashes of its great fires.

Boston had its pains, of course, not surprising while growing into a City on a Hill. But New York had more than growing pains. It had the drama of being forcibly grafted by British imperialism onto the Dutch settlement of New Amsterdam. Boston had social discord, of course, requiring banishment (or the noose) for some early adopters of novel unpalatable theology. But New York had slave revolts that many believed could burn down the town. Both cities had radicalized patriots in the 1770s, but New York's were more demonstrably unsympathetic to the freedom of the press, burning Loyalist print shops years before the Revolution. The Revolutionary War may have started in Boston, but it soon moved to New York for the duration where the heroes of the Fire Department of New York saved it from destruction by fire many times.

A little more investigation into colonial firefighting in New York and I was hooked, or as my sister says, "before you know it, you've gone down the rabbit hole of a fascinating world." Although I was conversant about some of New York's colonial history, I was surprised by what I had no idea about---

• the scale of the trade with Native tribes, in a good year it brought in 60,000 to 80,000 beaver pelts.

• The wall of Wall Street was originally built to defend against an English invasion. It was not built with logs, making it a log palisade, but large planks to save money.

• The per cent of New York's colonial population, enslaved, was close to 20%.

• The city launched an extraordinary fleet of privateers in the 1750-60s, about 70 armed vessels. They picked-off French merchant cargoes worth an astounding 2 million pounds, equivalent to about $400,000,000 in the 21st century.

• The state of New York raised and equipped over 50,000 soldiers for militia and Washington's Continental army during the Revolution.

• The great New York fire of 1776, almost 500 buildings destroyed, was the largest in American colonial history.

These and other discoveries typified the things I hadn't known before. If I was intrigued by it all, maybe others interested in American colonial and Revolutionary history would be, too.

But the real value in this book is not the myriad of little-known facts or even the reconsideration of mistaken or misleading histories. Its significance lies in its portrayal of the life, the struggles, the small victories, the sometimes mean and often generous spirit of the average colonial New Yorker. Major figures play a role, of course, but for every Stuyvesant, there was a Stoutenburgh, contributing his energies to the colony for over fifty years; for every Royal governor, like Hunter, there is a Jacobus Turk, a gunsmith and the first Engineer of the fire department; for every John Jay there was a John Dash, the tinsmith who led the FDNY during the Revolution.

The first volunteer firefighters were not the well-known rich merchants or owners of county-sized estates but carpenters, barrel makers, blacksmiths, shoemakers, bakers, wagon drivers, and ropemakers. It was these ordinary heroes who kept the city from burning down for four decades before the Revolution, during the Revolution, and for the rest of the 18th century.

To ensure those who go down this rabbit-hole with me will discover as much of its fascinating world as possible, we (my website and graphics designer, Devan Calabrez) have created the website here "Saving New York" and populated the book, New York Firefighting and the American Revolution, with over fifty illustrations. Hopefully, these enhancements will elevate or clarify any "workmanlike" prose. And I truly hope that you will "think you understand what I'm trying to say."

- Bruce Twickler
   3/16/2022