A plaque remaining from the Big Apple Night Club at West 135th Street and Seventh Avenue in Harlem.

Above, a 1934 plaque from the Big Apple Night Club at West 135th Street and Seventh Avenue in Harlem. Discarded as trash in 2006. Now a Popeyes fast food restaurant on Google Maps.

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Entry from November 08, 2015
“Bad weather always looks much worse through a window”

“Bad weather always looks much worse through a window,” wrote Bronx-born John Kieran in Footnores on Nature (1947). The quote has been frequently cited, although the word “much” is often left out.
 
Kieran was a sportswriter for the New York (NY) Times, but he also loved nature and wrote frequently about it. There is a John Kieran Trail in Van Cortlandt Park in the Bronx.
     
 
Wikipedia: John F. Kieran
John Francis Kieran (August 2, 1892 – December 9, 1981) was an American author, journalist, amateur naturalist and radio and television personality.
 
Biography
A native of The Bronx, Kieran earned a Bachelor of Science degree (cum laude) from Fordham University. He began his newspaper career in 1915 as a sportswriter for The New York Times. He continued on the sports beat during his entire career, working for a number of New York City newspapers and becoming one of the country’s best known sports columnists. During his 1927–1943 tenure as The Times’ senior sports columnist, he was profiled in the January 9, 1939 issue of Time magazine, which described him as “short, wiry, grey, bristly and brilliant”.
(...)
Legacy
In 1987, six years after his death, the New York City Parks Department inaugurated The John Kieran Nature Trail, which runs along some of the most scenic areas of the Bronx’s Van Cortlandt Park. The trail is part of the former Putnam Division of the New York Central Railroad.
 
NYC Parks
Van Cortlandt Park
The John Kieran Nature Trail

John Kieran (1892-1981) was a writer and amateur naturalist who loved Van Cortlandt Park. Born in the Bronx, Kieran attended City College and Fordham University. In 1915, he began his career as a sportswriter for The New York Times. Over the next thirty years, he wrote for various other New York newspapers, and served on the expert panel for the radio show Information, Please. Nature was of the utmost importance to Kieran, especially the swamps and woods of Van Cortlandt Park. He wrote several books and articles including A Natural History of New York City for which he received the John Burroughs Medal in 1960. This work remains an invaluable reference to the city’s wildlife and wilderness during the first part of the 20th century.
 
OCLC WorldCat record
Footnotes on nature
Author: John Kieran; Nora S Unwin
Publisher: Garden City, N.Y. : Doubleday, 1947.
Edition/Format:   Print book : English : [1st ed.]
   
Google Books
The Reader’s Digest
Volume 51
1947
Pg. 28:
BAD WEATHER always looks much worse through a window.
— John Kieran, Footnotes on Nature (Doubleday)

1 February 1948, Twin Falls (ID) Times-News, pg. 20, col. 3:
Bad weather always looks worse through a window…John Kieran said that.
 
14 June 1948, The Post-Standard (Syracuse, NY), “Just Around the Corner” by Bertrande, pg. 18, col. 7:
IT SEEMS TO ME
(...)
THAT bad weather always looks worse thru a window.
 
6 February 1950, Tipton (IN) Daily Tribune, “Omega Home Economics Club Meets With Mrs. Leach,” pg. 3, col. 2:
Mrs. Kenneth Leach opened the meeting by reading the quotation of the month, “Bad weather always looks worse through a window.”
 
Google Books
All I Want Is Everything
By Marion Mill Preminger
New York, NY: Funk and Wagnalls
1957
Pg. 29:
Though my mother had been brought up in Paris, she was Hungarian too, and consequently the family’s way of life and thought were not totally alien to her. “Bad weather always looks worse through a window,” she used to tell us when we were despondent.
 
23 February 1958, Boston (MA) Sunday Herald, “Children, Poets Happy at Snow” by Marjorie Mills, sec. 4, pg. 14, col. 5:
“Bad weather always looks worse through a window,” says John Kieran in “Footnotes on Nature.”
 
25 February 1965, Bristol Courier and Levittown Times (Bristol ,PA), Earl Wilson syndicated entertainment column, pg. 6, col. 4:
REMEMBERED QUOTE; “Bad weather always looks much worse through a window.”—John Kieran.
 
25 June 1972, Springfield (MA) Sunday Republican, “This Week With: The Old Farmer’s Almanac,” pg. 34, col. 1:
Bad weather always looks worse through a window.
 
Google Books
Tweet This Book:
The 1,400 Greatest Quotes of All Time in 140 Characters Or Less

By Sayre Van Young and Marin Van Young
Berkeley, CA: Ulysses Press
2011
Pg. ?:
Bad weather always looks worse through a window.
Anonymous
 
Google Books
Daily Inspiration for Women
By Vinita Hampton Wright, Margaret Silf, Ginny Kubitz Moyer and Jessica Mesman Griffith
Chicago, IL: Loyala Press
2013
Pg. 43:
Bad weather always looks worse through a window. —Tom Lehrer
   
Twitter
Mara
‏@Manarhamawandi
Bad weather looks worse through
a window so go out and leave the shadow.
1:50 PM - 29 Mar 2015
Brent, London

Posted by Barry Popik
New York CityTime/Weather • Sunday, November 08, 2015 • Permalink


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