New York Salvage

Manhattan is renowned for its street-looting ethos. Walking down the street it’s hard to resist taking a look at the latest detritus left out on the sidewalk for potential hidden treasure. A scrimmage broke out on the Upper West side in New York a few years ago as a basement clearance was taking place outside an old apartment building.

…Some passers-by jimmied open the locks of the trunks in search of old money, others stared transfixed at the treasures spilling out: a red kimono; a beaded rose flapper dress; a cloth-bound volume of Tennyson’s poems; the top half of a baby’s red sweater still hanging from its knitting needles …

Among this load was the lost diary of 14 year old Florence Wolfson, a couture heiress from the 1930s. The diary then fell into the hands of New York Times journalist Lily Koppel, who became obsessed by the stories within its red leather locked covers – illicit affairs with men and women, riding horses in Central Park, and a fastidious account of the different outfits she wore – she would often keep her jodhpurs and breeches on for school, because she thought she looked so dashing. Koppel tracked down Wolfson, now in her nineties and returned the diary to her; a strange journey she then went on to describe in a biography of this young girl who was a direct product of the roaring twenties and yet remarkably untouched by the Great Depression: “I feel like a ripe apricot – every thing is so exotic”.

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/16/nyregion/thecity/16diar.html