Evolution of Our Ethnic Community in New York City
WORLD WAR I AND OUR NEW YORK COMMUNITY
“During World War I the Bohemian National Hall was one of the centers used by our ethnic community to support the American war effort through the Liberty Bonds. An equivalent of $500,000 was sold there. War effort was organized at the Bohemian National Hall. Many young men from our ethnic community served in the US Army and some never returned.”
There are only sparse notes on important political activities. T.G. Masaryk addressed a meeting at the Sokol Hall New York in June 1902 while being a visiting scholar at the University of Chicago. T.G. Masaryk and his older daughter Alice’s association with the University of Chicago before World I was made possible by the Masaryk admirer, an influential and wealthy industrialist Charles Crane who was a Slavic world believer, a friend and political campaign supporter of Woodrow Wilson. This connection proved critically crucial in the American support for a new country, Czechoslovakia.
TG Masaryk also addressed an enthusiastic crowd at the Sokol Hall in May 1918, in anticipation of founding of Czechoslovakia. On May 25, 1918 he held a speech at the Carnegie Hall to a rousing acclaim and then he headed a parade, after all ethnic societies had gathered in front of the Sokol Hall and the Bohemian National Hall. Huge crowds proceeded to the Fifth Avenue and then south. Masaryk then addressed the enthusiastic masses from the balcony of the Plaza Hotel where he resided. On the balcony there was next to the American flag a new Czechoslovak flag (with a blue triangular field), designed for this occasion by the librarian of Sokol NY, Josef Knedlhans.
During World War I the Bohemian National Hall was one of the centers used by our ethnic community to support the American war effort through the Liberty Bonds. An equivalent of $500,000 was sold there. War effort was organized at the Bohemian National Hall by Osvobozovací akce Národního sdružení v New Yorku. Many young men from our ethnic community served in the US Army and some never returned. Others were in the Czechoslovak legions in France, Italy, and Russia.
In 1920 after founding of the new Czechoslovakia, Jan Masaryk, the son of president T.G. Masaryk, the newly appointed charge d’affaires to the United States, addressed the Czechoslovak Chamber of Commerce at the Bohemian National Hall.
In 1922 there was at the Bohemian National Hall a violin concert of the famous virtuoso Váša Příhoda. Net proceeds of $104 were donated to the Czech School.
