Looking Back, Looking Forward: A NYC Visit 35 Years Later

 

The Hubs and I took a trip down memory lane recently. We celebrated our 35th anniversary with a trip to New York City. I was living in Park Slope, Brooklyn, when we met in 1990, and Jim visited me several times before I left the city for good right before we married. Credit his great idea to go back and see how things have changed and revisit some places which were special to me or us, and to see a few things I never did when I lived there.

We packed a good deal into the visit for a short 3-day trip. We arrived late in the day on a Friday, and after checking in to our hotel, decided to head downtown to visit the Irish Hunger Memorial. After visiting Ireland last spring and seeing cottages in their home setting, it was jarring to see one smack in the middle of Lower Manhattan's teeming skyline. The memorial pays tribute to the Irish who suffered during the famine, many of whom immigrated to the United States and arrived in New York ports. Many stayed in the city for good. 

The derelict cottage is set in the middle of a winding path where stones from each county in Ireland are arranged. Native plantings lushly framed the path and scented the air. We were surprised to overhear Irish accents as we walked along, and struck up a conversation with two visitors from Dublin who commented how much the scent reminded them of home. Small world.

 

Saturday morning we jumped on a subway train (So cool that you can use your phone to pay for the subway vs. tokens, and map your route on your smart phone!), and rode to Park Slope, Brooklyn, to see my old apartment where Jim first visited me. Though most of the neighborhood has changed, the building I lived in is still there, and we spied my bedroom window from the street below. "Ussie" time!

Silly us in front of my Park Slope apartment building 36 years after Jim came to visit me. (Photo: Jim Casey)

I was also tickled to see that my favorite after-work dinner spot, Smiling Pizza, was still on the corner. They were also celebrating an anniversary—their 50th! We each bought a slice for lunch, and it tasted exactly as I remember it! Delicious! 

Smiling Pizza storefront, right next to the subway entrance.

The logo has not changed in 35 years!

That afternoon, we visited the 9/11 Memorial and Museum. At every turn, I was reminded how fortunate I was to no longer live in New York on September 11th. For years afterwards I swore I never wanted to go back, not wanting to face the destruction of the area. I worked for a Wall St. firm for most of the time I lived in New York, and walked the streets of Lower Manhattan frequently. I could not imagine how it might have changed. 

But by now, enough time has passed and enough healing of the area had happened that I felt better about being there.* The museum is well done, but quite overwhelming, as it should be—it honors a tragedy of immense proportions. It's hard to get your mind around the many facets of that day's impact. Perhaps that is intentional.

I only took two photos around or at the museum, out of respect. 
 

The Oculus is across the street from the museum. It reminds me of girders from the two towers falling.

 

"In Flanders Field" has always been a favorite poem, written in memory of WWI's lost soldiers. Here, a cartoon artist reinterpreted it after 9/11.

After dinner on Saturday evening we went to Broadway to see Hadestown. Theatre and dance is what brought us together as a couple. Jim was a lighting designer and I was in a dance company when we met. It was a language we shared for many of the beginning years of our marriage, so it was nice to be in a theatre again, though those careers are far removed from our lives now.

Waiting for Hadestown to begin at the Walter Kerr Theatre. (Photo: Jim Casey)

Sunday was the day for visiting Lady Liberty and the Ellis Island Museum. Unbelievably, I had never visited the Statue of Liberty when I lived there, though I could see her in the distance from my living room window in Park Slope. I'm actually glad I waited, as it would not have had the same impact back then. I didn't know the stories of my ancestors who came through Ellis Island. But now, it was on the must-do list! 

We took the ferry to Liberty Island first. Compared to the New York skyline and viewed from a distance, Lady Liberty seems quite small. So, I enjoyed enjoyed seeing her appear larger and larger as we got closer. Standing next to her as we made our way to the museum, she is quite humbling.

I learned many things about Liberty on our visit. Did you know that Gustav Eiffel (yes, that one!), designed the interior grid system for the statue? I loved learning about how Liberty was made, seeing various drafted versions of her, and the many ways her image has been used over time. 

I was also quite surprised to look at a display case to see the poster below, as I had used that same image for two posts I wrote last year about alien registration forms. The lady in the babushka reminds me of my Slovak grandma and great-grandma. 

I discovered after our visit that this image was created for a U.S. food conservation program in 1917 during WWI. Under the title "Food Will Win the War," it was produced in several languages, here in Yiddish.1

I used the same image for a post last August.

Ellis Island was fascinating to visit knowing that several of my ancestors passed through its same doors. Though the metal-barred aisle markers are gone, the immense Registry Room is still impressive to see, with its tile-vaulted ceiling and large windows. 

The Registry Room, currently under renovation.

 

I can imagine my Croatian great-grandmother Vjekoslava Baltorinic looking wide-eyed upwards to take it all in as she made her way through the various stations in 1905. She would have been pressed by the crowds of immigrants and heard a torrent of languages swirling around her. 

Registry Room in 1910. (Image: National Park Service)

I learned the answer to a question I had often wondered: How did she get to Pennsylvania from New York? Did she have a ticket already? Did someone come to get her and shepherd her to her new home? I think I found the answer at one interpretive plaque.

 

Vjekoslava's sister Zora had immigrated a few years earlier, married, and was living in Pennsylvania already.¹ On the ship manifest, Vjekoslava stated she was going to her brother-in-law Jacob Vukic and her destination was Lemont Furnace, Pennsylvania.² It must be that Jacob travelled to fetch her at Ellis Island. In a room devoted to how immigrants got to their destinations, I found a Baltimore and Ohio R.R. map which showed the likely route they took to Pennsylvania.

The stop at Dunbar, Pennsylvania, would have been the closest stop on the B.& O. R.R. to Lemont Furnace, Vjekoslava's destination.

Another interpretive plaque causes me to question whether my great-grandfather Janos Simonik came to the U.S. already with a job or because he was seeking one? I've often heard that mine representatives travelled to Eastern European countries to recruit men to work in the mines in Pennsylvania and elsewhere, but this plaque suggests that Janos (or John as he was known here), might have come without a job, but perhaps hoping to secure one at the recommendation of friends or family.

 Other images from Ellis Island...

My ancestors Janos and Anna Simonik may have looked like this as they entered Ellis Island. The image was taken just five years after they arrived.

A traveler's suitcase with a sticker for the Swedish American Line ships.

The route to Ellis island, and an image of the building from the water taken the year Vjekoslava arrived.

The process each immigrant had to go through at Ellis Island.

I'm glad to see that the museum took on this often-repeated myth about name changes at Ellis Island.

Such a great newspaper editorial image of officials turning away an immigrant, while the ghosts of their own immigrant ancestors loom behind them in rebuke.

Sailing away from Liberty.

What a fantastic trip it was. I can't think of anyone I would rather have spent the weekend with looking back at our own past and to seeing evidence of my ancestors' past as well. Jim and I are very well suited that way! We're looking forward to many more years of making all sorts of discoveries—genealogical and otherwise—together. ❤️

Until next time...

All images by author unless otherwise noted. 

*I wrote about my 9/11 memories in the post "Witness to History: 9/11."

 

NOTES

¹ Beaver County, Pennsylvania, Marriage License Docket, Book 13, p. 7462, no. 7462, Jacob Vukic and Lora Baltoronica, 29 April 1903; imaged, "Pennsylvania County Marriages, 1775-1991," FamilySearch (https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/3:1:33S7-9GB4-DMZ : accessed 7 Sept. 2026); citing Clerk of Orphans' Court, Beaver. Also, U.S. Food Administration, "Food Will Win the War," poster. ca. 1917; imaged, "History Resources," The Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History (https://www.gilderlehrman.org/history-resources/spotlight-primary-source/food-will-win-war-1917 : accessed 7 September 2026).

² Slavonia, Passenger Manifest, Vjekoslava Baltorinic, arriving New York, 5 December 1905; imaged, "New York, Passenger Arrival Lists (Ellis Island) 1892-1925," FamilySearch (https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/3:1:3Q9M-C9PR-YK9N : accessed 10 Sept. 2026); citing Volume 1393-1395, Roll 645, NARA Series T715, Records of the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service, National Archives and Records Administration, Washington, D.C..