Tag Archives | oddities

Meet Battery Park’s Queen: Zelda the Turkey

Zelda - Queen of Battery Park

There are plenty of celebrities in lower Manhattan… and foul creatures abound in the Financial District.  But one famous, fowl lady has become a beloved institution: Zelda, the wild turkey known as “The Queen of Battery Park.” Zelda has ruled the roost in Battery Park (which just happens to be the site of the city’s […]

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Father Duffy, Fearless New Yorker

Who is Father Duffy? Well, he’s important enough to have a statue on New York’s Times Square! A venerated Catholic priest and Army chaplain—for whom the pedestrian island between West 46th and 47th Street is named—Father Duffy is one of New York’s most fascinating residents. Francis Patrick Duffy was born in Ontario, Canada in 1871. […]

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Till Death Do Us Part: The Love Story of Jonathan Reed

Brooklyn merchant Jonathan Reed was devoted to his wife Mary. When she died in 1893, he bought a mausoleum in Greenwood Cemetery, Brooklyn, in which she was laid to rest, along with an empty coffin for him. According to the New York Times, Reed furnished the tomb “just like a living room in a fine […]

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