Scenes shot on a Wednesday afternoon in the South Bronx, New York City. View from car driving slowly uphill on Eagle Avenue heading towards 149th Street in the South Bronx, New York City. Among cars parked at the left side of a one-way street, is a 1957 Chevy that has been stripped of its tires and wheels. Apartment buildings line the street. Residents are out and about walking on the sidewalks. One man has the hood up on his big-fin 1960 Plymouth Fury automobile. Closeups as the camera car drives past some residents. Closed business establishments have heavy steel gates locked across their doors and windows. A sign advertising Ballantine beer is mounted on a building. Below it someone has painted message with partial words:"...Jtch Unknown Sinners." Small glass blocks have been broken out of an adjoining building. Camera pans down an apartment building on Crimmins Avenue, following path of external fire escape ladders. A number of people are gathered socially on the apartment house steps. A group of mixed age men play a game of stick ball in the street. A car turns into the street hugging the left side of the road to avoid interfering with the ballgame. Closeups of some players, as one (unseen) is recorded speaking about the game. (The narrator notes that this is filmed on a Wednesday afternoon in the middle of a "work week.") Camera pans people "hanging out," in the vicinity. Two men walk along the edge of an apartment building roof. A dog walks past a man tearing up a cardboard box. Men seated alone, on a fire escape; on a park bench; in a doorway; and on a box in front of a store. Boys playing frisbee and two with baseball gloves, playing catch. Police cars: one parked at a curb and one driving along the street. A young man wearing a sweatshirt with "Latin Crowns" written on it, goes into a building. Outside, another youth, in similar sweatshirt, does pull-ups on a bar at the bottom of a fire escape. A boy swings on the bar. Juvenile delinquency: Several boys start fighting and an older one steps in to break it up. A boy inhaling illegal drugs or chemicals from a paper bag, or using it to hyperventilate.
United States President Woodrow Wilson and his party enter a car and leaves the White House in Washington DC for his Summer White House (or "Summer Capitol"), Shadow Lawn, in Long Branch New Jersey. Well-wishers at the White House stand and wave as the car departs the dirt road driveway of the White House, and a 2nd car with a security detail follows. View of Shadow Lawn, the estate of Joseph Benedict Greenhut. (The estate shown here was originally built in 1903 by John A. McCall of New York Life Insurance Company. He sold it to Greenhut. It was later destroyed by fire, and a mansion belonging to F.W. Woolworth President Hubert T. Parsons was built on the site. That estate is now part of Monmouth College). Large group of people gathered on the front lawn of Shadow Lawn to hear President Wilson speak at a 1916 campaign event. He is introduced and then approaches the podium as people cheer. The estate and podium area at the front of a soaring exterior portico is decorated with many American flags and swags.
The Bellevue Hospital in New York City. Military leader General Douglas MacArthur is welcomed by the City of New York when he arrives there after being relieved of Command by President Harry S. Truman. Views of the parade from viewpoint of newsreel cameramen surrounding the general's open car. Fireboats in the harbor create a huge fountain with their pumps. Trees are inundated with ticker tape.
Scene opens shows spectators looking at a U.S. Army Redstone missile lying in its side in Grand Central Station, New York City (89 E 42nd St, New York, NY 10017, United States). The Ordnance Corps logo is painted on the missile side. Some workmen use a manual hoist to raise the 5-ton missile upright. View from above of the missile being slowly tilted upright. Closeup of spectators looking upward as it moves. Another view from above as the missile is about half-way raised. Exhibit is a salute to the International Geophysical Year. Closeup of more people watching the missile being pulled up. Among others, they include a woman with two small girls, and a U.S. Airman in khaki uniform. View from above of the missile finally standing completely upright on the station floor with a large American flag displayed on the wall behind it.
View of the Statue of Liberty. View of New York City and the Statue of Liberty. Sign saying “Camp Kilmer named in honor of Sgt. Joyce Kilmer Soldier Poet. Born December 6, 1886, New Brunswick, N.J. Killed in action World War I in France June 30, 1918”. A United States military jeep approaches the entrance of Camp Kilmer. Soldier at Camp Kilmer entrance allows Jeep to enter. Soldiers march and then sprint inside Camp Kilmer. Using crane attached to truck, soldiers unload crates containing furniture for incoming Hungarian refugees who will stay in Camp Kilmer. Soldiers carry mattresses into the barracks. Two soldiers carry a crate to a barrack. Soldiers carry a cabinet to the barracks. Inside the Camp Kilmer paint shop, soldiers prepare signs in Hungarian such as “Varás és asztalos munka (sic.)” (“Sewing and Carpentry”) and “fö üzlet” (“main shop”). Camp Kilmer dentists disinfect clinic. Camp Kilmer pharmacists prepare medicine for incoming refugees. An army pharmacist pour medicine into a bottle using a funnel. An army pharmacist grounds with using mortar and pestle. Pharmacists stack medicine such as aspirin in shelves. Army nurse making hospital bed with freshly laundered white bed sheets. Red cross volunteers filling comfort bags containing toiletries for refugees. Soldiers unload piles of second-hand clothes donated by Americans through the Red Cross. Red Cross volunteers organize second-hand clothes by type and size. African American woman Camp Kilmer staff enter the Recreation Center, with sign in English and Hungarian. African American staff at Camp Kilmer hang paintings and arrange furniture in the Recreation Center.
Frido W. Kessler and his rocket-propelled mail plane. (Allegedly, the first scheduled mail-delivery rocket flight) Kessler is seen in his workshop with his test stand and apparatus. Launch of Kessler's first winged liquid-fueled (liquid oxygen and Kerosene) mail rocket plane on frozen Greenwood Lake, New York, February 23,1936. Launch team opens the nose to insert mail into the rocket-propelled glider plane (reportedly designed by German rocket pioneer Dr. Willy Ley). Kessler poses with a little girl, Gloria Schleich Quackenbush, for whom the plane is named. She holds a silver cup of snow. They are surrounded by a cluster of men. Photographic equipment is set up next to them. The girl, Gloria, empties the cup of snow onto the tail of the rocket plane, to Christen it "Gloria (I)." Launch team fueling the rocket from containers. A technician in fireproof protective suit lights fuel at tail of the plane. It flares up in flames and then settles down with normal rocket burn, and leaves the launch stand. (A second rocket plane is seen sitting on the ice near the launch stand.) The rocket glider only goes about 20 feet before falling onto the ice. Team members look over the stand and prepare to try again with Kessler's second plane, the "Gloria (II)." They load the mail (6000 letters and postcards) into the nose and set the plane on the launch stand. It launches very nose high, and strikes the ice near the stand. But the rocket motor continues to propel it across the ice until it takes off again and continues, a way in the air until flipping over and crashing on the ice. View of people surrounding the broken plane on the ice. (Note: The second attempt carried the Gloria II and its mail, about 2000 feet, far enough to cross the border from New York into New Jersey, constituting an interstate mail delivery, and making the letters and post cards worthy mementos of the event.)
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