Thursday, December 19, 2019

Facebook Twitter Flipboard Email Copy Real Estate How ‘Night Before Christmas’ creator also spawned NYC’s Chelsea

From New York-

To keep the city from riding roughshod over his farm, he took the central orchard and donated it the Episcopal Church to build the General Theological Seminary, established in 1817. But that still left much of Moore’s land ripe for development. As the 1820s progressed and New Yorkers began moving uptown, Moore began to have second thoughts about the evils of real estate. Instead of visions of sugar plums, he saw dollar signs.

Around this same time, Moore wrote “A Visit from Saint Nicholas.” He was probably inspired by the traditions (and stout figure) of a groundskeeper who worked on the Chelsea farm and was a descendant of an old Dutch family. The poem kept alive the Dutch tradition of Saint Nicholas as the bringer of presents. Moore even gave the reindeer Dutch names: Donder and Blixem (better known as Donner and Blitzen) mean thunder and lightning. It was published anonymously in the Troy Sentinel in December 1823. For years, historians have questioned whether Moore is the poem’s true author, though he did publish a version of it under his own name in 1837.

More here-

https://nypost.com/2019/12/18/how-night-before-christmas-creator-also-spawned-nycs-chelsea/

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