Moving Day (New York City)
Moving Day was a tradition in New York City dating back to colonial times and lasting until after World War II.
[4][5] The tradition was likely derived from the practice of verhuisdag [nl], with contracts in the Netherlands generally ending on May 1,[6][7] while The Encyclopedia of New York City links it instead to the English celebration of May Day.
[9] While it may have originated as a custom, the tradition took force of law by an 1820 act of the New York State Legislature, which mandated that if no other date was specified, all housing contracts were valid to the first of May[10][11] – unless the day fell on a Sunday, in which case the deadline was May 2.
[14] By 1820, because of the large increase in the number of propertyless renters, Moving Day had become "pandemonium", with the streets gridlocked with wagons carting household goods.
[21] Over time, the tradition of a specific Moving Day began to fade, with the remnant evident in commercial leases, which still generally run out on May 1 or October 1.
[23][15]John Pintard, a co-founder of the New-York Historical Society described moving day in a letter to his daughter Eliza in 1832 or 1833: Tuesday 1st May.
High rents, incommodious dwellings, & necessity combine to crowd our streets with carts overloaded with furniture & hand barrows with sofas, chairs, sideboards, looking glasses & pictures, so as to render the sidewalks almost impassable.
This practice of move all, to strangers appears absurd, but it is attended with the advantage of affording a greater choice of abodes in the Feb[ruar]y quarter.
Hence, from the peep of day till twilight, may be seen carts which go at a rate of speed astonishingly rapid, laden with furniture of every kind, racing up and down the city, as if its inhabitants were flying from a pestilence, pursued by death with his broad scythe just ready to mow them into eternity.
Into the cellar and upon the roof, into the rat-holes and on the yard fence, into each room and prying into every cupboard, they mill make reprisals of many things "worth saving," and mark the day white in their calendar, as little less to be longed for in the return than Fourth of July itself.Keep your tempers, good people.
When the scratched furniture comes in don't believe it is utterly ruined, – a few nails, a little glue, a piece of putty, and a pint of varnish will rejuvenate many articles that will grow very old 'twixt morning and night, and undo much of the mischief that comes of moving, and which at first sight seems irreparable.
We certainly haven't advanced as a people beyond the nomadic or migratory stage of civilization analogous to that of the pastoral cow feeders of the Tartar Steppes.
Small chairs, which bring up such pretty, cozy images of rolly-pooly mannikens and maidens, eating supper from tilted porringers, and spilling the milk on their night-gowns – these go ricketting along on the tops of beds and bureaus, and not unfrequently pitch into the street, and so fall asunder.
Children are driving hither and yon, one with a flower-pot in his hand, another with work-box, band-box, or oil-canakin; each so intent upon his important mission, that all the world seems to him (as it does to many a theologican,) safely locked up within the little walls he carries.
The dogs seem bewildered with this universal transmigration of bodies; and as for the cats, they sit on the door-steps, mewing piteously, that they were not born in the middle ages, or at least in the quiet old portion of the world.
And I, who have almost as strong a love of localities as poor puss, turn away from the windows, with a suppressed anathema on the nineteenth century, with its perpetual changes.
A lady in the neighbourhood closed all her binds and shutters, on May-day; being asked by her acquaintance whether she had been in the country, she answered, "I was ashamed not to be moving on the first of May; and so I shut up the house that the neighbours might not know it."
