A 1907 Brooklyn March: Other Music Time Forgot: Featured to Raise Funds for Promenade Gardens

Finally, after all these years, the 1907 Brooklyn Daily Eagle BridgeCrush March is heard live by a 21^st Century audience in Brooklyn Heights.

Written at the turn of the last century by William E. Slafer, bandmaster of Slafer’s Brooklyn Marine Band, the ominously-titled march could have been simply paying homage to the daily ‘crush’ of commuters who took the trolley over Brooklyn Bridge in the early 1900s.

Or, it could have been written to recall the memories of the fateful opening day panic on the Brooklyn Bridge. When that happened, on May 23, 1883, no structures except church spires were more than five stories tall.  Those first pedestrians to risk the Opening Day walk must have been apprehensive, even scared.

Popular mythology, expressed in newspaper articles, had even questioned whether the bridge would stand, as nothing of that scale had been attempted.  For a dramatic account of that panic, readers should go at once to David McCullough’s brilliant book, “BROOKLYN BRIDGE.”  Suffice it to say here that lives were lost and people were “crushed” in the panic.

Back to music: Slafer’s 1907 March was one of numerous pieces of music researched by NEIL CALET to produce a fanciful program for the annual fundraiser to benefit the Promenade Garden Conservancy. The program took place earlier this month, hosted by DR. JANNA COLLINS, and featured the voices of TOM STEWART, the well-known station announcer for Thirteen, and his wife, noted cabaret artist MAUREEN KELLEY STEWART.  A number of songs from the 1900s  had been researched, unearthed and copied for the duo to perform.

There were such memorable tunes as “The Rise of Rosie O’Reilly”, subtitled ‘Born and Bred in Brooklyn’. There was the “Brooklyn belle Barn Dance”, and a few others that Stewart had described in an earlier Eagle article as “fetching, catchy and delightfully-hokey Brooklyn-centric songs, dating from 1883 to 1948.”

But then, the day before the performance, Tom Stewart and Maureen Kelley experienced their own special panic: their accompanist called in the wee hours to report sadly a death in his family.  Stewart and Kelly were placed in a crush of their own—a time crush.

They called upon their neighbor and friend, a glorious accompanist who, as it happened, was none other than PAUL RICHARD OLSON, Organist and Choirmaster in his third decade of service to Grace Church. A superb sight-reader and quick study, OLSON came to the rescue and saved the Promenade Garden Conservancy fundraiser.

But many observers also felt that STEWART and KELLEY, both seasoned performers, could have survived a cappella. Their delivery was so delightful that the crowd would have enjoyed simple recitation of lyrics and Stewart’s skillful delivery of “back story” on the songs.

But no one present was more delighted to see Paul Olson than the publisher of the Brooklyn Daily Eagle. DOZIER HASTY smiled as his friends Stewart and Kelley stepped aside to let the accompanist play the wordless, strident  Brooklyn Daily Eagle Bridge Crush March.  Afterwards Hasty seemed relieved that no one walked out during the march. “When it was clear the singing was over,” said Hasty, “I feared the march rhythm would send our audience out into the streets, row by row…but everyone stayed and celebrated.”

Indeed, funds were raised for another year of new plantings and garden maintenance in one

of the city’s largest public attractions.  People forget that Promenade Gardens continue for one third of a mile along the famous Esplanade  with views of New York Harbor.  Among those honored and acknowledged were Brooklyn Parks Commissioner KEVIN JEFFREY  and  the hired professional gardener who leads the Promenade Conservancy, MATTHEW MORROW.