I am still getting my bearings after a recent trip to New York City. I loved all the walking, all the sightseeing, and all the delicious food! And, this may surprise those of you familiar with my vacations: I left my cardboard G. Oliver Riggs at home. That’s because – as far as I can tell – my well-traveled great-grandfather never visited New York.

No G. in NYC? Why not, I wonder?

G. Oliver Riggs, on the cover of the New York-based American Musician and Art Journal

The only New York connection I’ve found is a feature article about G. Oliver that ran in the New York-based American Musician and Art Journal magazine on Dec. 13, 1913. The writer of the article conducted the interview not in New York, but in Chicago, at the studio of one of G. Oliver’s mentors, the famous bandmaster and brass instrument teacher A.F. Weldon. At the time of the interview, G. Oliver had a job directing a band in Havre, Montana.

(I tracked down the article a few years ago when my dad and I were at the Library of Congress; I’d deduced that such an article existed after finding the top half of the magazine cover, pictured above, in the family files, and a mention of the article in a newspaper clipping).

Chicago was G. Oliver’s city, the big city that was so important for him musically. It’s where he studied violin in the mid-1890s under Luigi von Kunitz (Kunitz later conducted the Toronto Symphony). It’s where G. Oliver’s wife, Islea, studied piano with Emil Liebling before G. Oliver and Islea married. And it’s where G. Oliver returned occasionally to study the cornet and band directing under Weldon during the Golden Age of Bands.

I can understand G. Oliver’s connection to Chicago, but I am surprised that he didn’t find a reason to go to New York, especially during the earlier part of his career. The city’s history of impressive wind bands dates back to the 1830s, when the Dodworth Band formed and began to dominate the music scene (Fun fact: the Dodworth Saxhorn Band, a Michigan-based recreation of the original Dodworth Band, plans to return to Northfield in August for the 2013 Vintage Band Festival).

New York continued to support well-regarded bands during and long after the Civil War – like the one directed by Patrick Gilmore.

It would have taken some time for G. Oliver to travel from the Midwest to Manhattan, but he did live during a time when Americans traveled easily and frequently by train. Distance didn’t stop him from traveling as far east as Oberlin, Ohio, to attend college in the late 1880s/early 1890s; from traveling to the South in 1906 with an Iowa regimental band; or from traveling as far west as Tacoma, Wash., in 1910 to form a professional band.

So if he never made it to New York, it could have been due to a lack of desire. Or it might be that the right opportunity never presented itself. I can understand how that could happen. Even though I’ve traveled to most of the 50 states, I’d never visited New York City until a couple of years ago, when Steve and I took the kids there on a family vacation. This time, the trip was work-related (for Steve, anyway).

Grand Central Terminal in Midtown Manhattan.

If I’m wrong, and G. Oliver did travel to New York a century ago, he might have detrained at Grand Central Station (officially known as the Grand Central Terminal). And, while there, he might have spent several minutes soaking up the atmosphere of the cavernous place, wondering about all the other people rushing by, their lives and dreams intersecting for a moment amid the grandeur of marble and the utility of train tracks.

Or maybe that was just me. Me in New York, minus the G.