Scenes of New York City: The Elie and Sarah Hirschfeld Collection
THE NEW-YORK HISTORICAL
Wednesday, May 14, 2025
ISSUE #1448
This collection exudes New York. Elie and Sarah Hirschfeld have amassed a stunning array of works honoring their hometown, from its bustling harbors to its Harlem diners, Village speakeasies, sleek skyscrapers, and gritty streetscapes. Their promised gift to the New-York Historical Society invigorates the Museum’s 20th- and 21st-century holdings and amplifies the story of a place at once enthralling, mystifying, and inspiring.
Art by Keith Haring, Jacob Lawrence, Andy Warhol, Giorgio de Chirico, and Georgia O’Keeffe, among others, brings the city to life. The 130 paintings, sculptures, prints, and drawings in the collection spotlight New York-centric movements like Abstract Expressionism and Pop, probe Gotham’s layered past, and trace the rhythms of the metropolis and its daily life.
To match the multiple facets captured in this portrait of the city, the New-York Historical Society invited multiple New Yorkers to respond to select objects in the collection. Their commentaries appear under the heading “COMMUNITY VOICE.”
1978 Cut black and white photograph 15 7/8 x 15 7/8 in.
Promised gift of Elie and Sarah Hirschfeld, Scenes of New York City IL2021.51.102 Solomon LeWitt, known as Sol, executed Manhattan with Roosevelt Island Removed the year the Conceptual artist received a major retrospective at MoMA. It belongs to a series of works on paper (1967–80) that explore the different ways that LeWitt could alter black-and-white aerial photographs and maps. The work is also part of a group of torn-, folded-, and cut-paper compositions that LeWitt termed “hundred dollar drawings” because he wanted them to be sold for $100 in perpetuity—a rock-bottom price for a one-of-a-kind artwork at the time. For the series, LeWitt excised geometrical shapes or areas from satellite photographs or cartographic maps of recognizable cities, among them New York (as in this work), Chicago, Amsterdam, London, and Florence, leaving empty spaces. The 1978 MoMA catalogue describes each as a “cut paper drawing.” They demonstrate LeWitt’s conceptual explorations of different markmaking systems and embody his resistance to the commodification of art. The action of cutting away a part of the image liberates the map or photograph from its producer and its original purpose, he stated, because it becomes a different entity. The action also induces sensations of dislocation as geography is disembodied. In addition, LeWitt’s titles are intended as instructions to anyone interested in repeating his procedure—in keeping with the artist’s decommodification of art and what one critic calls his “wink at any belief in maps’ reliability.” A son of Jewish immigrants from Russia, LeWitt visited Hartford, Connecticut’s Wadsworth Atheneum as a child, which sparked his interest in art; he would develop into a major figure in the vanguard of later twentieth-century art. As a youth, he was employed as a graphic designer at Seventeen magazine and in the office of the architect I.M. Pei. In 1960, he took a low-level job at MoMA, and this and his discovery of Eadweard Muybridge’s serial photographs of locomotion clinched his decision to be an artist. Prolific in a wide range of media—drawing, printmaking, photography, painting, installation, and artist’s books—LeWitt helped summarize Minimalism and Conceptualism with his 1969 credo: “[T]he idea becomes a machine that makes the art.” The artist and others denied the materiality of New York School painting, the quickly understood logos of Pop Art, and the swift commercial success of both. LeWitt reduced art to its geometric essentials—an open cube as a modular unit—which he multiplied into “structures” (a term he preferred to “sculptures”) that filled their settings. The cubes themselves were empty spaces; only their outlines were physical. The next step in this reductivism occurred in 1968, when he began executing drawings directly on the wall, and then to his providing drawing instructions to be executed by assistants. LeWitt’s radical step transformed the act of drawing—yet without losing beauty. In fact, the artist soon added full color and environmental scale, as he expanded his diverse drawings from floor to ceiling and around doors, while upending conventional relationships between art and architecture. Likewise, his Manhattan with Roosevelt Island Removed defies expectations of what aerial photographs and maps do. His simple excision turns a black-andwhite sign system into an object—an altered glossy photograph— and displays the artist’s power over a potent emblem of New York. Conceptual Art for LeWitt was neither mathematical nor intellectual but intuitive. That he was a major figure in the art world of the 1960s and 1970s is not surprising. COMMUNITY VOICE The excising of Roosevelt (formerly Blackwell’s) Island makes me wonder whether LeWitt is making a statement about its dark history as a hub for institutions housing the sick, poor, imprisoned, and mentally ill. Does the erasure represent a call for reforming these institutions and a more humane treatment of their residents? Steve Hanon President, The New York Map Society ClassificationsDRAWINGS Collections
Scenes of New York City: The Elie and Sarah Hirschfeld Collection
View of the East River Looking North with the Hell Gate and Triborough Bridges from Manhattan
1951 Watercolor and black crayon on paper Unframed: 8 1/2 × 11 1/2 in. (21.6 × 29.2 cm) Framed: 14 1/2 × 17 1/2 in. (36.8 × 44.5 cm)
Promised gift of Elie and Sarah Hirschfeld, Scenes of New York City IL2021.51.18 This watercolor has a provenance from Edith Halpert’s pioneering Downtown Gallery, the first commercial art space in Greenwich Village that promoted avant-garde art. By 1945, the gallery had moved to 32 East Fifty-first Street, where the John Marin Room, operated by John Marin Jr., opened in 1950. An early American modernist, Marin is known for his abstract landscapes and freely painted watercolors. Together, the two works reveal the artist’s stylistic development between 1936 and 1951 toward greater freedom and breadth of execution and, above all, toward mastery of the medium. View of the East River Looking North belongs to a series of small watercolors from 1951 entitled “From New York Hospital,” which the artist produced from his sickbed. Looking out of his window while lying gravely ill, he began using a syringe to draw lines. In 1912, New York Hospital became affiliated with the Cornell University Medical College and moved to York Avenue between East Sixty-sixth and Sixty-seventh streets; today, after another merger, it is known as New York-Presbyterian Hospital. Unlike most of the works in Marin’s series—views looking downtown featuring more southern bridges across the East River—this watercolor has an uptown vista toward the arched Hell Gate Bridge (1912–16) and the Triborough Bridge (1936), renamed the Robert F. Kennedy Bridge. Marin created this limpid cityscape with freely applied black brushstrokes that are similar to strokes of Chinese calligraphy, and he varied the width of the layers of translucent washes that resemble pure staining. He also left large areas of bare paper—known as “the reserve”—to create much of the atmospheric sky and the East River’s water: both elements are made mutable with transient effects. Marin’s ability to render water benefited from the many studies he had made of it during summers in Maine. “In painting water make the hand move the way the water moves,” the artist advised in a letter of 1933. In his youth, Marin had wanted to become an architect, and his fascination with architecture, which is evident in these watercolors, became a constant theme in his works. After attending the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in Philadelphia and the Art Students League in New York, like many of his contemporaries Marin went to Europe, and over the next six years obtained his first exposure to modern art. There, he mastered watercolor media and endowed his works with the sense of avant-garde freedom that became one of his hallmarks and allied him with like-minded figures in the art world. Introduced by the photographer Edward Steichen to Alfred Stieglitz, Marin was given his first one-person exhibition at Stieglitz’s avant-garde 291 Gallery in 1909. Four years later, Marin exhibited five watercolors in the landmark 1913 Armory Show. Then, in 1938, his art enjoyed a retrospective at MoMA, establishing him as a leading modernist. Among the first American artists to make abstract paintings, Marin is often credited with influencing the Abstract Expressionists. ClassificationsDRAWINGS Collections
Scenes of New York City: The Elie and Sarah Hirschfeld Collection
Mid Manhattan
1955 Charcoal, black ink, and watercolor on beige paper Unframed: 19 1/4 × 12 1/4 in. (48.9 × 31.1 cm) Framed: 24 1/4 × 25 in. (61.6 × 63.5 cm)
Promised gift of Elie and Sarah Hirschfeld, Scenes of New York City IL2021.51.19 Mid-Manhattan is Lyonel Feininger’s elegantly delineated ode to the vertical landscape of his birth city, which he executed a year before his death. The sheet’s distinguished provenance can be traced to the artist’s estate. Feininger is best known as a German-American painter and member of the Bauhaus (operative 1919–33), the German school of art and architecture famous for its modern approach to design. Its mission was to unite the fine and applied arts, the aesthetic and the functional, and to reconcile mass production with individual artistic vision. Architect Walter Gropius, founder of the Bauhaus, appointed Feininger to head its printmaking workshop. Not only did the latter teach at the Bauhaus with his friends Paul Klee and Wassily Kandinsky, but he also designed the expressionistic woodcut cover for its 1919 manifesto, whose aspirational forms are allied with those of Mid-Manhattan. His allegiance to Bauhaus ideals of crystalline architecture is evident in the Hirschfeld Collection promised gift, as is his early experience as a draftsman and a master of expressive, often witty linear invention. In fact, Feininger‘s teenage career as a cartoonist in the United States and Germany was so successful that he only began to paint at the age of thirty-six. The artist’s foundational years in Germany inform Mid-Manhattan. A child of professional musicians who instilled in him a love of music, Feininger was also a pianist and composer. At the age of sixteen, he began studying at the Leipzig Music Conservatory, but his interest in drawing led him to transfer to the Hamburg School of Art and soon afterward to the Royal Academy of Arts in Berlin. He exhibited drawings at the Berlin Secession (1901–03), supporting himself by producing caricatures and cartoons, which allowed him to experiment with shorthand styles and abstraction. Although Feininger is not well known for his work in comics, his strips play an important role in the history of comic art. Becoming a member of the Berlin Secession in 1909, Feininger also associated with avowedly Expressionist groups, such as Die Brücke (The Bridge) and Der Blaue Reiter (The Blue Rider). During trips to Paris, he was drawn to Cubism, especially the faceted planes of color in the works of Orphist Robert Delaunay. Like Delaunay, Feininger frequently focused on the urban landscape and its perceptually dazzling glass-walled buildings, as in the interpenetrating geometries of his ethereal Mid-Manhattan. When the National Socialist party came into power in 1933, it closed the Bauhaus and declared Feininger’s work “degenerate art,” exhibiting it in the 1937 exhibition of the same name, Entartete Kunst, the Nazis’ term for the spectrum of modern art. Before that exhibition in Munich, Feininger had escaped to the U.S., as had such Bauhaus leaders as Gropius and Anni and Joseph Albers, moving permanently in 1938 to a vastly changed New York City, which enthralled him until the end of his life. COMMUNITY VOICE Mid-Manhattan reminds me of the wonderful, unpredictable juxtaposition of buildings that makes New York’s skyline unique. I see both modern buildings and older buildings in this drawing. Feininger had been at the Bauhaus in Germany, and the architectural descendants of that movement were just making it to the United States when he drew this. I wonder if he was drawing what he saw out his window or what he imagined New York’s future to be. Frank Mahan Architect at Skidmore, Owings & Merrill ClassificationsDRAWINGS Collections
Scenes of New York City: The Elie and Sarah Hirschfeld Collection
New York
1940 Graphite, black chalk, black ink, watercolor, and white heightening on paper Unframed: 17 3/4 × 23 7/8 in. (45.1 × 60.6 cm) Framed: 24 1/2 × 30 in. (62.2 × 76.2 cm)
Promised gift of Elie and Sarah Hirschfeld, Scenes of New York City IL2021.51.48 Roberto Montenegro’s apocalyptic cityscape is populated by surreal creatures that morph into composite forms, and swim with fish in an aqueous atmosphere interpenetrating the geometric shapes of skyscrapers and earlier building types. Under a watchful eye with a crescent moon, this hallucinatory scene presents, among other things, a weeping eye that sprouts a female leg wearing high heels and a building in the shape of a skull. Winds whip disembodied faces around a wasteland that distantly evokes the southern tip of Manhattan surrounded by the sea. The Mexican artist may have included a self-portrait to the left of center in this personal vision, which is more than a disquieting visual nightmare, and today may seem prophetic. He has transfigured reality and created an oneiric world with its own puzzling laws and an iconography that remains too arcane to decipher completely. Although he claimed to be a “subrealist” rather than a Surrealist, Montenegro often mixed two elements: folklore and fantasy. New York reveals the artist’s awareness of Maurits Cornelis Escher, the Dutch graphic artist and illustrator, whose work showcases mathematical operations, impossible juxtapositions of objects, and explorations of reflections and infinity. Escher’s example may have encouraged Montenegro’s success as an illustrator. When the Mexican artist delineated this highly finished scene, he also must have known Pablo Picasso’s monochromatic painting Guernica (1937). In 1940, the Spaniard’s watershed antiwar statement was politically and artistically topical. During the Spanish Civil War, Guernica was exhibited in the Spanish Republican Pavilion at the 1937 Internationa; Expostion in Paris, and elsewhere, to raise money for war relief. At nearly two feet wide—unusual for a drawing—New York in scale and subject may testify to Montenegro’s experience as a muralist. In fact, he was one of the first artists involved in the Mexican muralist movement after the Mexican Revolution (ca. 1910–20). One of his classmates at the Academy of San Carlos in Mexico City was Diego Rivera, who helped establish the movement and became one of its leaders. Montenegro continued his artistic education in Europe, first in Spain and then in Paris (1907–10), where he met the Cubists Picasso, Georges Braque, and Juan Gris. When World War I broke out in 1914, he moved to Mallorca, painted his first mural, and earned his living as a fisherman—an experience reflected in New York. After moving back to Mexico permanently in 1921, he painted his most important murals at the former monastery and school of San Pedro y San Pablo in Mexico City, the church of which is now the Museo de la luz. Even though he did not consider himself a Surrealist, his works fuse diverse realities, seen especially in his beguiling self-portraits and portrayals of his colleagues and friends, including Rivera and Frida Kahlo. Montenegro’s passion for all things Mexican was manifested in his promotion of Mexican folk art and artisans through books and exhibitions in Mexico and the United States. ClassificationsDRAWINGS Collections
Scenes of New York City: The Elie and Sarah Hirschfeld Collection
Study for “Brooklyn Bridge”
1949 Charcoal and black and white chalk on paper Unframed: 39 7/8 × 29 1/2 in. (101.3 × 74.9 cm) Framed: 47 1/8 × 36 3/4 × 2 1/4 in. (119.7 × 93.3 × 5.7 cm)
Promised gift of Elie and Sarah Hirschfeld, Scenes of New York City IL2021.51.49 Georgia O’Keeffe’s powerful is dynamic and emotional. It has an eminent provenance from its original owner Doris Bry—O’Keeffe’s agent, confidante, and the noted scholar of Alfred Stieglitz, the artist’s husband. Bry acquired the large sheet directly from the artist in 1978, underlining that O’Keeffe valued it, keeping it with her for nearly three decades. That same year, O’Keeffe sold Bry another smaller, descriptive graphite sketch of one of the bridge’s towers with only a few cables delineated, which was likely O’Keeffe’s initial study. In the large drawing the artist placed the viewer inside rather than outside the bridge’s dynamic heart, its arches seemingly illuminated in white chalk with the cables swinging freely. O’Keeffe repeated the other tower with its crenelations, as in her initial sketch, in a smaller scale—either in the perspectival distance or like a footnote in a transparent experience of the bridge with two views telescoped together. This juxtaposition creates a simultaneity that endows the sheet with a complex and mysterious power. The artist loved to draw in friable charcoal, as well as in graphite, admiring its softness, boldness, and its ability to create threedimensional forms by smudging. She drew a few other bridges—among them two graphite sketches of the Triborough Bridge in New York (1936), and an unidentified bridge (1901–02)—but none have the immersive power of the Hirschfeld Collection sheet. The longest suspension bridge in the world when it opened in 1883, John A. Roebling’s engineering wonder captivated artists and writers alike. Although unique to her, O’Keeffe’s works on the Brooklyn Bridge theme contain a nod to the Italian-born American Futurist Joseph Stella, who depicted the span in numerous studies and in five oils. His fractured compositions of the fabled structure reflect his modernist approach while simultaneously recalling the stained-glass windows of Gothic architecture: a marriage of the old with the new. In O’Keeffe’s monumental drawing, her formal inventions rival those of Stella. Like O’Keeffe, Walker Evans in several of his photographic series of the bridge (1928–30) put the viewer within its cables. Pioneering abstractionist O’Keeffe executed her Brooklyn Bridge trio around the time she left New York—after settling Stieglitz’s museum-quality estate—to live in New Mexico. As a group, they may have been a salute to her success in the City, a monument to the ability of bridges to connect people and places, or a gateway to her new life. O’Keeffe was known to have driven down to Wall Street on Sundays and back and forth across the Brooklyn Bridge. Unlike the arches in the painting, those of the drawing suggest the lobes of a heart, creating a valentine to New York, where she and Stieglitz had launched their careers COMMUNITY VOICE O’Keeffe was among my favorite artists, long before she came into our collection. The eroticism in her pictures, including in this one, is subtle and palpable at the same time. Sarah and I both loved the Brooklyn Bridge for many reasons. Now, inspired by the artist’s amazing vision, we see the Bridge in a new way as this piece emotes a uniquely different powerful feeling. Elie Hirschfeld New York City real estate developer ClassificationsDRAWINGS Collections
Scenes of New York City: The Elie and Sarah Hirschfeld Collection
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ROCKEFELLER PLAZA ALL IN FLORAL SPLENDOR
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Scenes of New York City: The Elie and Sarah Hirschfeld Collection
All image are copyrighted (c) Roosevelt Island Historical Society unless otherwise indicated THIS PUBLICATION FUNDED BY DISCRETIONARY FUNDS FROM CITY COUNCIL MEMBER JULIE MENIN & ROOSEVELT ISLAND OPERATING CORPORATION PUBLIC PURPOSE FUNDS.
Unidentified maker. Shirtwaist, 1890–1900. Cotton, needlepoint lace. The New York Historical, Z.1317
Between the 1860s and 1910s, the shirtwaist was a wardrobe essential, as popular a women’s garment as a pair of jeans are today. As a result, shirtwaists are an object of inquiry for many Center for Women’s History projects.
This tailored bodice, worn tucked into a skirt, was a democratic equalizer donned by American women of all classes and races. It was among the first women’s clothing to be available ready-made in an endless variety of fabrics, styles, and price points. The wide variety of shirtwaist styles (sometimes called simply waists) made them a wardrobe staple, especially for younger women. Shirtwaists could be tailored with starched collars and cuffs in a masculine style or femininely soft and lightweight, with lace and needlepoint inserts like the example included in our 2023–24 exhibition Women’s Work. These popular garments could be paired with a light, matching skirt for a summer afternoon outing, or paired with a dark skirt for a woman working as a clerk, a salesperson, a teacher, a garment worker, or—as pictured here—a public health official.
They are literally thousands of doors lining the streets of Paris. Some are very simple doors, others are extravagant works of art. The styles of these doors tell about the history of Paris. As you walk across the 20 arrondissements of Paris, you will discover Gothic, Renaissance, Haussmann and Art Nouveau door styles. It is up to you to take the time to look for little details of these Paris’ most beautiful doors: mascarons, statues, bas-reliefs, gold-leaves, handles…
Jessie Tarbox Beals (1870–1942), photographer. Dr. Josephine Baker, head of the Child Hygiene Dept. of the Dept. of Health of C[it]y of NY, 1917–19. Patricia D. Klingenstein Library, The New York Historical
Shirtwaists could also be worn for leisure activities and sports, such as bicycling, sailing, tennis, and golf, that both pushed the boundaries of “acceptable” feminine behavior, and required clothes that allowed a full range of motion. Along with slightly shorter hemlines, many of these athletic outfits incorporated ties, tailored jackets, and shirtwaists. Sometimes they were paired with bloomers, the ballooning undergarments adopted by that time period as gym clothes in women’s colleges around the country.
Burr McIntosh (1862–1942), photographer. Woman with golf clubs, ca. 1900–10. Patricia D. Klingenstein Library, The New York Historical
The shirtwaist in The New York Historical’s collection was most likely sewn at home, perhaps using a paper pattern purchased from the several home-sewing magazines that were available during that time period. Women’s magazines of the time often included detailed descriptions of how to construct shirtwaists at home using a domestic sewing machine: a mid-19th century innovation that helped reduce the time-consuming task of dressing the family while increasing the number of clothes per person. For our Women’s Work exhibition, we commissioned dress historian and living-history specialist Kenna Libes to create a matching skirt that would closely illustrate how the shirtwaist in our collection would have been worn. She used historical patterns to recreate the skirt from lightweight linen, closely matching the one used to make the original garment
National Cloak and Suit Company. New York Fashions, 1908. Bella C. Landauer Collection of Business and Advertising Ephemera, Patricia D. Klingenstein Library, The New York Historical
By the last quarter of the 19th century, shirtwaists were predominantly manufactured by low-paid women toiling in Manhattan’s sweatshops. Garment manufacturing labor was historically divided by gender and dictated by the type of garment. Men traditionally worked with finer, high-quality woolens requiring careful tailoring, while women made cheaper, looser-fitting garments, especially those worn by women themselves. But, by the mid- to late 19th century, these roles shifted. Immigrant men increasingly occupied jobs previously held by women and produced a greater number of women’s clothes in a task system: instead of making a garment from start to finish, each worker was in charge of one step in the manufacturing process. That also meant that skilled tailors who could fashion a garment from start to finish were increasingly unnecessary, replaced by low-paid workers, predominantly Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe. The production of shirtwaists, children’s dresses, and robes became known as the “women’s industries,” because 95 percent of the workforce were young, unmarried women.
Ironically, many of the women toiling in New York’s massive factories, making ready-made shirtwaists for American women of every walk of life, were themselves wearing shirtwaists. In 1909 and 1910, thousands of garment workers left their sewing machines and marched the streets of Manhattan demanding better pay and better working conditions. Known as the “Shirtwaist Strikes” or the “Uprising of the 20,000,” it brought out a mass of demonstrators in their finest: white shirtwaists, paired with serious looking dark skirts, and fashionable hats that sent the message that their labor was respectable and worthy of a living wage, a clean and healthy environment, and a workday that did not extend from dawn to sunset. Sadly, despite the strides they made in 1909 and 1910, it took a horrifying disaster to bring meaningful change: in 1911, the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire claimed the life of 146 garment workers, mostly young Jewish immigrant women, and exposed the human cost of fashionable, affordable clothing. You can read more about the fire that claimed so many young lives in this post from our archives.
Frederick Hugh Smyth (1878-1949), photographer. Triangle Waist Co. Factory Fire, Washington Place & Greene Street, 1911. Patricia D. Klingenstein Library, The New York Historical
Don’t miss out on a chance to learn more about shirtwaists: visit Real Clothes, Real Lives: 200 Years of What Women Wore, an exhibition of garments from the Smith College Historic Clothing Collection, on view in our Joyce B. Cowin Women’s History Gallery until June 22, 2025.
Unidentified maker. Pink striped shirtwaist, ca. 1902–03. Cotton, mother-of-pearl studs. Smith College Historic Clothing Collection, SCHCC 2015.1.38
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All image are copyrighted (c) Roosevelt Island Historical Society unless otherwise indicated THIS PUBLICATION FUNDED BY DISCRETIONARY FUNDS FROM CITY COUNCIL MEMBER JULIE MENIN & ROOSEVELT ISLAND OPERATING CORPORATION PUBLIC PURPOSE FUNDS.
Who would have known that one day I’d be writing on Paris’ most beautiful doors! After all, when you end up living in Paris, you get so busy discovering the most famous monuments and museums (and stores!) of the city that it would seem quite a loss of time to look at little details such as doors. But doors are the reflection of what lies beyond, the Parisians’ homes. After all, they are part of the city’s history. After years of walking through the 20 arrondissements of Paris, I have compiled a few of my best photos of Paris doors. I’ve shared their exact location so you can also see them for yourselves!
They are literally thousands of doors lining the streets of Paris. Some are very simple doors, others are extravagant works of art. The styles of these doors tell about the history of Paris. As you walk across the 20 arrondissements of Paris, you will discover Gothic, Renaissance, Haussmann and Art Nouveau door styles. It is up to you to take the time to look for little details of these Paris’ most beautiful doors: mascarons, statues, bas-reliefs, gold-leaves, handles…
Madame de Maintenon, the future wife of Louis XIV, once lived in this mansion built at the end of the 16th century.
50, rue de Turenne, 3rd arrt. The emerald painted door of a former mansion
The tall doors of Notre-Dame cathedral are masterpieces that are often ignored by the thousands of visitors that enter the sanctuary each day. Take a look at their wrought-iron strap hinges and arabesques which were restored in the 19th century.
This Art Nouveau door dates from 1901. It was created by architect Jules Lavirotte in an exotic and intricate design. The centrepiece of the building is its extravagant doorway. The wooden door itself was depicted as a gigantic reversed phallus and is a frame with statues of Adam and Eve. Of all Paris’ most beautiful doors, this is probably the most eccentric one!
Another beautiful Art Nouveau door designed by architect Jules Lavirotte who lived there with his family. The entrance is decorated with fine stone carving and cast iron features.
All image are copyrighted (c) Roosevelt Island Historical Society unless otherwise indicated THIS PUBLICATION FUNDED BY DISCRETIONARY FUNDS FROM CITY COUNCIL MEMBER JULIE MENIN & ROOSEVELT ISLAND OPERATING CORPORATION PUBLIC PURPOSE FUNDS.
Text by Judith Berdy Thanks to Bobbie Slonevsky for her dedication to Blackwell’s Almanac and the RIHS Thanks to Deborah Dorff for maintaining our website Edited by Deborah Dorff All image are copyrighted (c) Roosevelt Island Historical Society unless otherwise indicated
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All image are copyrighted (c) Roosevelt Island Historical Society unless otherwise indicated
THIS PUBLICATION FUNDED BY DISCRETIONARY FUNDS FROM CITY COUNCIL MEMBER JULIE MENIN & ROOSEVELT ISLAND OPERATING CORPORATION PUBLIC PURPOSE FUNDS.
On this day in 1876, a young man from Upstate New York hit the first home run in the history of the National League. Ross Barnes, the Chicago White Stockings’ second baseman, was not known as a home-run hitter, but in the infancy of professional baseball, no one was.
The parks were spacious, and the ball was dead. Nearly all homers were inside-the-park jobs, with the batter dashing around all the bases. Hence, the term home run.
He hit the homer off Cherokee Fisher, the ace of the Cincinnati Red Stockings, in the top of the fifth inning. A sportswriter for the Chicago Tribune described the feat: “Barnes, coming to bat with two men out, made the finest hit of the game, straight down the left field to the carriages, for a clean home run.”
In the parlance of the time, a “clean home run” was one that did not involve errors or overthrows, according to the Vintage Base Ball Association. Henry Chadwick, the pioneering baseball writer, argued that only clean home runs should count as genuine home runs. In this instance, Barnes hit a ball that reached horse-drawn carriages deep in the outfield from which some spectators watched the game.
Barnes had two more hits, including a triple, as Chicago beat the Red Stockings, 15-9. Errors on both sides, not infrequent in the days before players wore gloves, accounted for much of the scoring.
About 4,000 people attended the game at Cincinnati’s Brighton Park. Barnes would hit only one other homer in 1876, which was the first year of the National League. The season’s home-run champion, George Hall of the Philadelphia Athletics, hit just five.
Barnes dominated the other offensive categories like no one before or since. He batted .429, an astounding 63 points higher than Hall, the second-place finisher. He also led the league in hits, runs, doubles, triples, walks, total bases, slugging percentage, and on-base percentage.
What’s more, Barnes led all second basemen in fielding average. He was known for his sure hands and strong, accurate throws. Decades later, old-timers who had seen Barnes in action described him as one of best to play the game. More recently, baseball historians have revived interest in Barnes and other 19th-century players. It has even been suggested that he belongs in the National Baseball Hall of Fame.
Charles Roscoe “Ross” Barnes was born on May 8, 1850 in Mount Morris, a small town in Livingston County, south of Rochester. Its population was about 4,500. Other notables born there include Francis Julius Bellamy, the author of the Pledge of Allegiance, and John Wesley Powell, the explorer of the Grand Canyon and the American West.
By the mid-1860s, the Barnes family had moved to Rockford, Illinois, where Ross played baseball in a youth league. Within a few years, the teenager was playing for the Rockford Forest City Club, an adult amateur team. Another local teen, Al Spalding, was the mound ace.
Rockford was one of the strongest baseball teams in the country. In 1867, Spalding pitched the Rockfords to a celebrated victory over the powerful Washington Nationals. It was the Washington team’s only loss in its tour of the Midwest.
In 1871, both Spalding and Barnes were recruited by Harry Wright to play for the Boston Red Stockings. This was the inaugural year of the National Association of Professional Base Ball Players, the first pro league. Wright, who managed the club and played centerfield, was one of the main organizers of the association.
The National Association lasted only five years, and Boston won four of the annual championships, thanks in no small part to Spalding and Barnes. Spalding led the league in wins every year, including 55 in 1875. In three of the seasons, Barnes hit over .400, and he twice won the batting title. Overall, he hit .388 during the league’s existence. He also excelled in the field and on the base paths.
After the poorly managed National Association folded, Barnes and Spalding joined the Chicago White Stockings in the new National League. Unlike the association, the NL was run not by the players but by businessmen. It was the brainchild of William Hulbert, president of the Chicago club. Hulbert served as the league’s president for its first six seasons.
Chicago won the first NL pennant in 1876, with Spalding getting credit for 47 of the club’s 66 victories. As noted earlier, Barnes was the league’s dominant hitter. Unfortunately, it would be his last great season. Due to illness, he played in only 22 games the following year, batting .272.
He didn’t play at all in 1878. He tried coming back with the Cincinnati Red Stockings in 1879. In 77 games, he hit .266. After another year off, he signed with Boston for a final season in the majors, hitting .271.
Some historians attribute Barnes’s precipitous decline to the abolition of the fair-foul rule in the NL’s second season. Under this rule, a struck ball that landed in fair territory and then rolled foul was still in play. If a batter managed to hit a ball like this, the fielders would be hard-pressed to get to it in time to throw him out. Barnes mastered the art of the fair-foul ball.
David Nemec, a historian of 19th-century baseball, concedes that Barnes’s stats might have been hurt by the rule change, but “his abrupt deterioration in 1877 was actually rooted in a chronic illness that permanently robbed his strength.”
Bill James sees reliance on the fair-foul rule as a demerit and argues that Barnes does not belong in the Hall of Fame. “His ‘greatness’ as a player is based on his ability to do something which was eliminated from the game 125 years ago because it was perceived as cheap trickery,” he wrote in The New Bill James Historical Baseball Abstract, published in 2001.
Yet the contemporaries of Barnes recognized that mastering the fair-foul hit required exceptional bat control. “Only the most highly skilled strikers were able to execute it with consistency,” Robert H. Schaefer writes in National Pastime, the journal of the Society for American Baseball Research (SABR).
Moreover, Barnes led the NL in doubles and triples in 1876. He also led the National Association in doubles twice and triples once. Surely, not all these extra-base hits were cheap trickery.
“Far from being a one-trick pony capable only of fair-foul hits, Barnes was a complete hitter who sprayed balls to all fields as attested by countless game summaries from Boston and Chicago newspapers,” Gregory H. Wolf writes in an article for SABR.
James is on firmer ground for denying Barnes entry into the Hall of Fame when he suggests that the National Association was not a major league. For one thing, the teams followed a haphazard schedule, competing in as few as 30 games a year. As for the 1876 season, James likens the caliber of play in the early NL to Double A ball.
Barnes played in 265 games in the National Association and 234 games in the National League. Judged by today’s standards, that’s fewer than two seasons in each league. Taken together, he played the modern equivalent of three seasons – of at best Double A ball, in James’s estimation.
And yet writers and players continued to praise his skill decades after Barnes retired. Some said he was as good as Ty Cobb, Honus Wagner, and Nap LaJoie. Bob Ferguson, one of his contemporaries and a longtime manager, proclaimed Barnes the “best batter and ball player that ever lived,” according to Wolf. Al Spalding, who became a sporting-goods magnate, considered Barnes the best second baseman ever.
In 2013, the Society for Baseball Research named Barnes an Overlooked 19th Century Legend. He did a lot more than hit the NL’s first home run, and though he’s not in the hall, he deserves to be remembered.
PHOTO OF THE DAY
The clock in the Steam Plant
CREDITS
NEW YORK ALMANACK Illustrations, from above: Ross Barnes in 1874; a newspaper article detailing the home run; and an advertisement for the Avenue Grounds (Brighton Park) announcing its opening with a September 9, 1875 game.
All image are copyrighted (c) Roosevelt Island Historical Society unless otherwise indicated THIS PUBLICATION FUNDED BY DISCRETIONARY FUNDS FROM CITY COUNCIL MEMBER JULIE MENIN & ROOSEVELT ISLAND OPERATING CORPORATION PUBLIC PURPOSE FUNDS.
The City has issued paperwork to demolish the steam plant. Not used since 2013, the original building opened in 1939 and an addition added in 1954. The plant provided steam to Goldwater Hospital, isalnd insttuions and all the up the east side to Coler Hospital.
The steam plant is in a complicated location and any demolition will be a massive exercise. Some of the complications include: A building contaminated with asbestos, fuels, lead. Tunnels leading to the east side tunnel along the river Two smokestacks that are in dangerous locations, including one by the Tram Station Being located directly adjoining the Tram Station and under the Queensboro Bridge Being located adjacent to a subway tunnel (E line) A large area containing underground fuel storage to the south of the building. Being located on the only southbound access street to the south end.
The original building designed by Starrett & Van Vleck Architects
A smokestack next to the Tram
I visited the interior of the plant in 2012-2014 while it was still staffed by Goldwater engineers.
The building was used for movie shoots and then closed down due to asbestos concerns.
Whatever actions are taken, this will be a massive project due to the buildings location, condition and all the structures and roads that it is surrounded by, A Special Job
All image are copyrighted (c) Roosevelt Island Historical Society unless otherwise indicated THIS PUBLICATION FUNDED BY DISCRETIONARY FUNDS FROM CITY COUNCIL MEMBER JULIE MENIN & ROOSEVELT ISLAND OPERATING CORPORATION PUBLIC PURPOSE FUNDS.
At the start of the 1880s, Barcelona was an expanding city of about 350,000 people. Its medieval walls had been knocked down only twenty-five years earlier. Capital of the autonomous community of Catalonia, city and region developed into Spain’s economic dynamo. Prosperity mushroomed. A self-confident territory strove to re-establish its identity by invigorating local traditions, culture and language. Barcelona became an engine of change and modernity.
The embellishment of the city was ambitious. Having been selected to host the 1888 World Exhibition, the authorities were willing to consider unconventional views of young architects and designers. The event not only prompted urban upgrades, including a new sewage and water system, but the period from 1880 onward also witnessed the flowering of La Renaixença (the Catalan Renaissance). Identified by a flair for innovation, it was driven by a passion to make Barcelona distinct and different from Madrid in every conceivable manner.
Catalan modernism was a coalition across the artistic spectrum, but primarily associated with architecture. Nowhere else in Europe did Art Nouveau leave and equally strong legacy. The movement was pushed forward by Lluis Domenech i Montaner, the inspirational Director of the Barcelona School of Architecture (Antoni Gaudi was one of his pupils).
His essay “In Search of a National Architecture” (1878) is a seminal text in the history of Catalan modernism. The challenge was to create a peculiar style that would set Barcelona apart from other world cities. Its architecture came to be characterized by a preference for the curve over the straight line, a disregard of symmetry, a passion for botanical shapes and motifs, as well as a return to Arabic patterns and decorations. Traditional methods and local skills were valued.
Modernism was an extension of, not a break with the past. It merged new technologies with established building crafts. Colorful and glamorous, Catalan modernism stood in sharp contrast to the minimalism of modernist construction in northern Europe. It left an impact on New York’s cityscape.
Master Builder
Rafael Guastavino y Moreno was born in 1842 in Valencia. In 1861, he moved to Barcelona to study at the School of Master Builders (Escola Especial de Mestres d’Obres). The course was arduous and took him eleven years to complete. Guastavino was bestowed the title mestre d’obres (master builder). He aspired to qualify as an architect and took additional courses (studying alongside Antoni Gaudi), but never achieved that goal as the number of commissions mounted.
He soon made a name for himself, completing notable works such as the Batlló Textile Mill in Barcelona’s La Bordeta neighborhood in which he blended traditional tile vaulting with industrial innovations, as well as the charming La Massa Theater in the Catalan village of Vilassar de Dalt. Domènech i Montaner and other pioneers of modernism acknowledged his talent.
Reviving a traditional Catalan masonry technique of layering thin terra cotta tiles bonded in herringbone patterns with Portland cement to produce lightweight and fireproof arches would define his future. The method was possibly a regional variation of Roman arches or may have been introduced by Muslim invaders into Spain during the eighth century.
Rafael’s focus on vaulting technology and fireproof factory design attracted international interest which motivated him to submit some designs to the 1876 Centennial Exhibition in Philadelphia for which he gained a medal of merit. With America’s Industrial Revolution in full swing and a keen interest amongst investors in safe technologies, new business opportunities opened up for him. It may have prompted his abrupt move to the United States in 1881.
The reasons for this move have never been entirely clear. There are suggestions that he left a turbulent and chaotic personal life behind him. His marriage had failed and his wife had run off to Argentina with her daughters, whilst he took his nine year old son Rafael to the city of New York; there were also rumors of a financial scandal.
Could there have been an element of creative rivalry too? Competing with Antoni Gaudi and a number of highly talented architects in a relatively tight domain of creative activity may have persuaded him to take up the fresh challenge that America offered.
Boston Public Library
Once settled and in spite of financial problems and language barriers, he succeeded in establishing The Guastavino Fireproof Construction Company in Manhattan in July 1881 (renamed R. Guastavino Company in 1897). New York was in the midst of a construction boom at the time with the development of Manhattan’s Upper West Side underway.
Having patented his “Tile Arch System” in 1885, he was commissioned that same year by real estate broker and French immigrant Bernard S. Levy to design a row of townhouses (“Bernard Levy Houses”) stretching from no. 121 through to 131 West 78th Street, between Columbus and Amsterdam Avenues.
It was New York City’s first encounter with Catalan modernist thinking. Moorish inspiration was brought to the streets of Manhattan.
The project made his name. His building technique drew attention in a country obsessed with fire resistance construction following the devastating blazes that had shocked Chicago (1871) and Boston (1872). In 1887, the prestigious New York firm of McKim, Mead & White was chosen to design a much enlarged new home for Boston’s Public Library (BPL).
Established in 1848 with the passing of an act by the General Court of Massachusetts, it was the first free municipal library in the United States. As its holdings included many rare Americana and Shakespeareana as well as the papers of John Adams, the architects were very much alert to fire risks. In 1889, Rafael was awarded the contract for the building’s vaulted ceilings.
Between the 1880s and late 1950s, the Guastavino Fireproof Construction Company was involved in the construction of over 1,000 buildings in thirty-two states. At the height of its expansion, the firm maintained offices in New York, Boston, Providence, Chicago and Milwaukee, and ran a tile manufacturing plant in Woburn, Massachusetts (by 1903, the facility was firing over 200,000 tiles annually). The company eventually received twenty-four patents.
Rafael Guastavino y Esposito worked for his father until the latter’s death in 1908 and then assumed control of the company. Under his leadership some of the firm’s most ambitious projects were completed including the massive dome of New York City’s Cathedral, St John the Divine, and the tiled ceiling of the Registry Room (known as the “Great Hall”) at Ellis Island where five thousand immigrants a day were medically examined and registered. The massive vaulted ceiling and large arched windows accentuated the intimidating enormity of the space.
Architect of New York
An obituary in the New York Times described Guastavino as the “architect of New York.” Today, the city takes pride in more than two hundred existing buildings with vaults of his design, including the Metropolitan Museum, the arcade under the approach to Queensboro Bridge’s fruit and vegetable market, Carnegie Hall, Grant’s Tomb, the Elephant House at Bronx Zoo, the art galleries at “Kykuit,” the Rockefeller property at Tarrytown, NY, or the dome of St Paul’s Chapel at Columbia University.
Aware of it or not, wherever New Yorkers move they are confronted with Catalan-inspired designs.
A telling example of Guastavino’s masterful skill is City Hall Station, the southern terminus of Manhattan’s first underground transit line. Opened in October 1904, it was the subway’s “crown jewel.” Designed by the firm of Heins & LaFarge, the city’s most prominent architects at the time, the station was outfitted with Romanesque arches and vaulted ceilings.
Each arch displayed Guastavino terra cotta tiles in green, pale brown and cream which were placed in an alternating herringbone pattern. Large brass chandeliers and skylights lit up the platform.
At the time, the concept of an underground railway was revolutionary and, to many travelers, an unnatural and frightening prospect. The station was designed and decorated in a manner to ease discomfort. The effect was dramatic. The grand space below the city was hailed as a cathedral of modern life and praised as the “Mona Lisa of subway stations.”
Closed down in 1945 for technical reasons, the station remains well-preserved, giving testimony to Guastavino’s exceptional technique and use of durable materials.
At 12:01 am on Sunday February 2, 1913, the Grand Central Terminal was presented to the public. That day, more than 150,000 people pushed their way inside to admire the architectural wonder of the largest train station in the world. To the utter delight of oyster-obsessed New Yorkers, the 440-seat Grand Central Oyster Bar opened its doors three weeks later.
The space featured arched and vaulted ceilings covered in terra cotta tiles designed by Guastavino. For three decades the Oyster Bar was run by the legendary chef Viktor Yesensky (who had made his name for running a similar bar at the Knickerbocker Hotel) and from the outset the establishment was one of the city’s most crowded counters, offering commuters a place to slurp oysters or enjoy oyster pan roasts or stews before heading home.
One of its “secrets” was the large vault at the entrance of the Oyster Bar, known as the corner-to- corner “Whispering Gallery.” The perfection of the arches caused an acoustic oddity whereby every whispered phrase could be heard on the other side, even over the din of crowds, as the words followed the curvature of the ceiling. It was here that locals learned to whisper.
Hispanic Presence
Since the late sixteenth-century Protestant Europe had depicted Catholic Spain as a backward nation that was characterized by despotic rule, cruel persecution and brutal repression. It was a country that had lost touch with the American continent and the rest of Europe. This perception of Spain as an inferior “other” was exported from the Low Countries and Britain to the United States and would stick for a considerable period of time.
By the beginning of the nineteenth century that negative image started to recede. French Romantic writers and poets were intrigued by the perceived exoticism of the region and they put Andalusia on the literary map. During the era, nomadic painters and artists began to add Spain to their European tours to capture the country’s scenic charms and customs.
A number of American artists traveled to the country to absorb local subjects and styles into their own work. There were collectors too. Archer Milton Huntington, heir to a railroad fortune, amassed the largest collection of Spanish art in the United States. In 1904, he built a private museum on 3741 Broadway, known as The Hispanic Society of America.
There were traces of Andalusian architecture in Manhattan. Officially completed in 1873, Bethesda Terrace in the heart of Central Park was designed by London-born architect Calvert Vaux. His assistant, Kent-born Jacob Wrey Mould, was responsible for the carvings on its architectural features.
The latter had spent two years in Granada studying the Alhambra and Moorish influences are evident from the Terrace’s intricate engravings and the tiles on the arcade’s ceiling. Washington Irving, New York City’s most prominent writer and a Hispanist (author of Alhambra in 1832), had been a significant member of the Park’s advisory committee.
When Rafael Guastavino arrived in Manhattan in 1881, the city counted relatively few inhabitants of Catalan descent. A lack of reliable census makes it impossible to be specific, but the number was nevertheless large enough for a monthly magazine to be published there. Between November 1874 and May 1881 seventy-three issues of La Llumanera de Nova York highlighted the Catalan presence in the metropolis and promoted its activities.
It made the achievement of the Guastavino Company even more remarkable. Father and son pushed the boundaries of American architecture and design. Their legacy endures to this day. The high survival rate of the firm’s work is testament to the quality of design and craftsmanship of the artisans who executed it. The traditional Catalan tiled vault technique left an indelible mark on New York’s cityscape.
THE RIHS VISITOR CENTER KIOSK
probably has the smallest Guastavino Ceiling
Our kiosk, part of the 1909 Queensboro Bridge has Quastavino tiled celing in perfect condition after a century.,
The ceiling is highlighted with the original copper windows.
A Special Job
PHOTO OF THE DAY
The Oyster Bar in Grand Central
has the most extravagant display of Guastavino tiles
CREDITS
Illustrations, from above: Andalusian architecture at Bethesda Terrace in Central Park; Della Robbia Bar in New York City’s former Vanderbilt Hotel; Guastavino’s row of Bernard Levy Houses on the West Side, 1885-6; Domes of the market under the Queensboro Bridge; The Oyster Bar at Grand Central Station; and the long-closed City Hall subway station.
All image are copyrighted (c) Roosevelt Island Historical Society unless otherwise indicated THIS PUBLICATION FUNDED BY DISCRETIONARY FUNDS FROM CITY COUNCIL MEMBER JULIE MENIN & ROOSEVELT ISLAND OPERATING CORPORATION PUBLIC PURPOSE FUNDS.
AFTER TWO YEARS, IT WAS TIME TO SEE WHAT HAS DEVELOPED IN THE FORMER POST OFFICE, TURNED AMTRAK STATION AND MALL. &
A VIEW OF WHAT META DID WITH THE ART IN THEIR SPACE For Meta’s New York Office, Artists Created their Largest Works Yet. See Them Here.
JUDITH BERDY
WEDNESDAY, MAY 7, 2025
ISSUE #1442
Meta—the company formerly known as Facebook—has inaugurated its newest home in the landmarked James A. Farley building in midtown Manhattan with five site-specific commissions.A roster of five New York-based artists have created large-scale artworks, from joyful murals to free-hanging organic forms and to fiber and textiles murals that call to mind New York’s patchwork of people. The artists include Baseera Khan, who has created two installations inspired by the handmade silk rugs of Kashmir, and Matthew Kirk, whose panel paintings are an homage to Navajo artistic tradition.The centerpiece commission is Timur Si-Qin’s Sacred Footprint, a 50-foot-tall stainless steel and aluminum tree sculpture, suspended from the four-story skylight of Meta’s central commission.Si-Qin is an artist of German and Mongolian-Chinese descent, who grew up in Berlin, Beijing, and in a Native American community in the American Southwest, and his works speak to the ecological responsibility that unites disparate culture. With a tech-centered practice (He created the sculpture using 3D scans of trees), Si-Qin a good fit for the company’s dedicated art program, Meta Open Arts.The installations “respond to the history of the iconic Beaux Arts building, pay tribute to the natural landscapes and Indigenous communities that inhabited the space long before the structure was built, and celebrate its future as an epicenter for connection and creativity in the heart of New York City,” Meta said in a statement.See the installations below:
Photo : Bradford Devins/OWLEY Matthew Kirk created two paintings for the Farley South Lobby: A Shadow of a Shadow and Distant Lie.
2025 Installation complete.
Photo : Timur Si-Qin Timur Si-Qin’s Sacred Footprint (2022) under construction.
Photo : Bradford Devins/OWLEY Esteban Cabeza de Baca and Heidi Howard’s in process largest-scale collaboration, ‘Nature Remembers Love’.
Photo : Bradford Devins/OWLEYTodayNature Remembers Love (2022) in the main lobby.
Photo : Bradford Devins/OWLEY One half of Baseera Khan’s two-part installation, a hollowed-out column form wrapped in handmade silk rugs.
Photo : Bradford Devins/OWLEY One half of Baseera Khan’s two-part installation, a hollowed-out column form wrapped in handmade silk rugs.
THE TERMINAL IS A GRAND OPEN SPACE FOR AMTRAK AND PUBLIC
The massive train hall leading down to the lower boarding area.
THE SYMBOLIC CLOCK HANGS PROUDLY IN THE HALL
The Food seems to be a neighborhood favorite. Promptly at noon the lines formed for the variety of dining spots from Pastrami, Middle Eastern, Fried Chicken, Pizza, Bagels, French desserts and much more. There are plenty of high stool tables and regular seating. Everything is well space so those with luggage are not crowded into small spaces.
A Special Job
PHOTO OF THE DAY
I ENJOYED LUNCH SITTING WITH THESE BUSINESS ASSOCIATES FROM JAPAN
CREDITS
META
All image are copyrighted (c) Roosevelt Island Historical Society unless otherwise indicated THIS PUBLICATION FUNDED BY DISCRETIONARY FUNDS FROM CITY COUNCIL MEMBER JULIE MENIN & ROOSEVELT ISLAND OPERATING CORPORATION PUBLIC PURPOSE FUNDS.
Behind the Curtain Wall w/ NYC Architect Richard Roth Jr: The Palace Hotel
Discover what made The Palace Hotel such a divisive project, and how the architect overcame each obstacle!
Joe Holmes
Tuesday, May 6, 2025 Untapped New York ISSUE #1442
Every month this year, Untapped New York will release a new essay from Jo Holmes about the life and work of the late architect Richard Roth, Jr. of Emery Roth & Sons. Each essay explores a different building or developer from Richard’s career, intertwined with stories of his personal life and snippets of exclusive interviews conducted by Holmes and Untapped New York’s Justin Rivers (which can be viewed in our on-demand video archive). Check out the whole series here!
A Rare Opportunity
The Palace Hotel was a divisive project. Developers Harry and Leona Helmsley hit the headlines regularly in the late 20th century, for all the wrong reasons. Despite this, architect Richard Roth, Jr. of the family firm Emery Roth & Sons took on the challenge of designing a hotel tower for the Helmsleys, and by 1980, a 55-story dark bronze glass and aluminum building rose above the existing Gilded Age Villard Houses on the site.
The building has undergone several interior renovations since it was completed and is now known as The Lotte New York Palace Hotel. It has been described as ‘one of Manhattan’s most historically significant and luxurious hotels’ and ‘a unique merging of a 19th-century landmark mansion with a 20th-century high-rise tower.’Achieving that fusion successfully took careful handling on Richard’s part, both of the architecture and the clients.
A Historic Foundation In the 1880s, railway magnate Henry Villard commissioned the illustrious architecture firm of McKim, Mead & White to design an unusual building between 50th and 51st streets on Madison Avenue. Modeled on the Palazzo della Cancelleria in Rome, the complex comprised six residences arranged in a U-shape around a courtyard. It was completed in 1884, just as Richard’s grandfather, Emery, arrived in the United States aged 13.
By 1974, the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of New York had gradually acquired all the residences. At that point, the Archdiocese sold the air rights to developer Harry Helmsley and granted him a 99-year lease on the houses.
“Our first designs were for offices. But the banks said there were too many and they were too empty,” explained Richard. It was a generally tough time for developers and architects in New York. (Richard was traveling the world regularly to drum up business elsewhere.) Helmsley couldn’t raise the finance for his next idea of making half the building a hotel and the other half offices either, so he opted to just build a hotel.
Many people were, understandably, worried about the implications for the much-loved Villard Houses. “The project took longer than we had expected because we wound up before the Board of Estimate, before the City Council, before the Landmarks Preservation Commission, before every agency in the City of New York. And there was a group of people from the local community board who absolutely hated Harry Helmsley. Why, I don’t know,” explained Richard. “I had over 100 meetings with them!” said Richard.
All these negotiations had the positive impact of getting Helmsley to make greater efforts to preserve the Villard Houses. But ultimately, the community board couldn’t prevent a new development altogether, which they seemed to want to do. “At one meeting, the City Council members asked the community board members point blank: ‘If it was up to you and this was the most beautiful building in the world…would you still be against it?’ And they said, ‘Yes, we’d be against anything Harry Helmsley did,’” described Richard. “I turned to our lawyer, and I said, we just won…”
There was a point when the community board tried to sue everyone involved because the plans specified a 50-story building, but there was a sign on the site suggesting the building would be 55 floors (the discrepancy related to ‘mechanical’ floors without accommodation). “They even sued the guy who did the sign!” explained Richard. “That was a first!”
For Richard, incorporating the Villard Houses held great opportunities. The Archdiocese had used the Gold Room (originally a music room) in the main residence for religious services. “It was really something–very spectacular. The original idea was to tear it apart and make a dining room out of it. But I said: ‘This is the perfect lounge.’ I mean, what a great place for cocktails! It had a balcony, and I said you could put a string quartet up there and it would just be wonderful. So, we really turned the Archdiocese into a bar,” laughed Richard.
A Party at the Palace Hotel in the Gold Room, circa 1981, Courtesy of Robyn Roth-Moise
It’s illegal to serve hard liquor within a certain distance of the entrance to a church or a school. “We were on top of St Patrick’s Cathedral,” said Richard. “So, we had to measure the distance from the entrance of the hotel to the entrance of the cathedral. The Lady Chapel door at the back was nearest. We made it by three feet!”
St. Patrick’s Cathedral and the tower Richard Designed for the Palace Hotel
A Tricky Client
Harry Helmsley put Leona in charge of the project. She already had a reputation for being demanding and unpleasant, but Richard found he could ‘manage’ her.
“She liked the look of the Park Lane Hotel and wanted to use columns on the façade in the same way. We did the drawings and she loved it–we hated it. It was absolutely the wrong design,” said Richard. So, he got ‘the other side’ involved. He encouraged architecture critic Ada Louise Huxtable to lobby to have the plans thrown out. “Leona never knew it and Harry never knew it…but one had to do things like that at times.”
Not long after the hotel opened in 1981, Richard went to a party in Harry Helmsley’s honor. “Leona beckoned me over and said: ‘I have three problems with the Palace Hotel.’” She explained the first two issues, which related to air conditioning and elevators. Richard told her he knew about these concerns, and they’d be resolved within a month.
Then it came to problem number three. “Leona said, ‘People are falling off the toilets…’ It took everything in me not to laugh!” remarked Richard. It so happened he had a friend who was staying there. “I called her and said, ‘Lizzie, can I come over and sit on your toilet?’ She said, ‘Sure, come on over.’ So, I went, and I sat on the toilet and the toilet seats were the cheapest piece of nonsense I’d ever seen. They were just terrible.” He checked his original specifications. “We’d spec’d the best toilet seats—made by a company called Church. I called Leona. Now, she had a deep resentment and hatred for Carl Morse who was head of Diesel Construction, who did all of Helmsley’s construction. Harry had a wonderful relationship with Carl—he trusted Carl.” Richard called Leona and explained it appeared Carl Morse had bought cheap toilets, not following the specifications. “There was this smile I could see through the telephone because she had something she could pin on Carl.”
Somewhat surprisingly, given the financial irregularities that would land Leona in jail, Richard said the Helmsleys always paid their bills on time. “Even though Leona had a notorious reputation for being difficult in all other ways, she was very good about paying her bills. We never had a problem with payment from Harry Helmsley ever, on anything.”
An Abrupt Ending Richard had some later encounters with Leona. “She owned the Holiday Inn on Longboat Key near Sarasota, Florida. After she got out of jail, she called me and said, ‘Richard, these architects down here are driving me crazy. You are the only architect I know who I respect and who will tell me the truth.’”
She wanted to add a floor to create an apartment for herself. Despite some health issues—Richard had had cancer a couple of years prior and was just recovering from a case of Legionnaires’ disease—he went down to see her, taking an engineer and an interior designer. Having investigated, Richard had to tell Leona it wouldn’t be possible to build her apartment without closing the hotel, which she couldn’t afford to do. This is likely what others had said, but she took it from Richard: “She trusted me.” But that wasn’t to last.
“About six months later, I’m getting ready to retire and move to the Bahamas. Leona calls me and says, ‘I bought the top floor of a building under construction, and I’ve dealt with five architects and none of them know what I want. I need you.’”
Richard decided it was a project his son, who was based in Miami, could manage once he himself had done the initial design. “I’d been living in the Bahamas for probably two months when I get a call from her lawyer. He says: ‘Richard, I have some very bad news for you: Leona wants me to fire you.’ I said, ‘That’s the best news I’ve had in years!’”
The job had proved frustrating. Richard asked the lawyer how long he’d worked for Leona. “He said, ‘Two months.’ I said, ‘That’s good because you got about three to go.’ There was dead silence, then he said, ‘Are you telling me she’s gonna fire me?’ I said, ‘No lawyer’s ever worked for her for more than six months.’ So, that was the end of my conversation with the lawyer and the end of my conversations with Leona.”
A Special Job While some may dislike the exterior of the hotel tower, many are happy that the historic houses survive to the extent they do. “It’s difficult to hide a 50-story building, so the looks of the building really took a simplistic form in trying to match the colour of the Villard Houses as best as possible,” said Richard. “But you can’t hide an elephant!”
It was built in an era when scandals swirled around real estate, but Richard felt he was able to maintain his integrity despite working with ‘the Queen of Mean.’ He enjoyed working with Harry and loved the Palace Hotel. For him, there was never any intention to overshadow, detract, or distract from the Villard Houses. “You couldn’t have designed a better entry than having this wonderful garden in front and these huge arches that led you into the hotel. I mean it was an architect’s dream…it really made this something very special.”
PHOTO OF THE DAY
THE NEW Maker LAB
was officially opened on Friday. A space innovation, creation and designing
All image are copyrighted (c) Roosevelt Island Historical Society unless otherwise indicated THIS PUBLICATION FUNDED BY DISCRETIONARY FUNDS FROM CITY COUNCIL MEMBER JULIE MENIN & ROOSEVELT ISLAND OPERATING CORPORATION PUBLIC PURPOSE FUNDS.
From Horse Stables to Police Station, the Evolution of one of the Oldest Buildings in Central Park
Monday, May 5 2025 Ephemeral New York ISSUE #1441
One of the marvels of Central Park is that so many of the early buildings within its 843 acres, completed during or just after the park’s opening in the 1850s, have been repurposed over time.
The Dairy, where children could get safe, fresh milk, is now a visitors center. The Sheepfold, where the park’s 200 resident sheep sheltered, became Tavern on the Green in 1934. The Arsenal, which predates the park and served as the first menagerie, houses park administrative space. Then there’s this low, long storybook confection of stone, slate, and dormer windows (above photo). The Victorian-style building and a cottage next door sit on the south side of the 86th Street transverse—brick and mortar dwellings interrupting the lush greenery along this winding sunken thoroughfare.
Like the Dairy and Sheepfold, they were put up with specific functions in mind. The long building served as a stable for cart horses, which likely pulled carts and wagons for park employees tasked with construction and maintenance.
The designer behind the stable and cottage was Jacob Wrey Mould. This British-born architect doesn’t get as much credit as he should for his aesthetic contributions to Central Park.
Working with Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux to bring their Greenward Plan to life, Mould designed Belvedere Castle, the nature-inspired carvings on Bethesda Terrace, the Sheepfold, and many of the bridge
In 1870, Mould (below left) was made head architect for the Department of Public Works. A year later, his stables and cottage were completed (above photo).
Though not as ornate as the sheepfold, the stable “bears the mark of architectural distinction” thanks to the “loping rhythm of the dormers, and high level of craftsmanship,” noted Francis R, Kowsky, co-author with Lucille Gordon of Jacob Wrey Mould and the Artful Beauty of Central Park.
Inside was room for 26 horses as well as repair shops and storage areas, wrote Kowsky. The stable shared the site with a structure—perhaps the cottage—built for park keepers, an early incarnation of the park police, per the Central Park Conservatory.
Office space for the Central Park Board of Commissioners was planned.
“The new offices would have included ‘engineering, architectural, and gardening apartments,’” and “a separate building to house blacksmiths, carpenters, and other craftspeople,” according to a 2023 post by Cynthia Brenwall at the NYC Department of Records & Information Services.
Also on the site was a house built for the reservoir keeper, whose job was to keep an eye on the two reservoirs flanking the transverse, one pre-existing the park and one built by Olmsted and Vaux.
What was the reservoir keeper looking out for? Think maintenance issues and suicide victims, per a 2002 New York Times article by Christopher Gray.
Into the early 20th century, the stable, cottage, and reservoir keeper’s house remained part of the parkscape. But when the pre-existing reservoir was decommissioned in 1929 and replaced by the Great Lawn in 1936 (with landfill from the digging out of Rockefeller Center), the keeper’s house was demolished.
Meanwhile, the stable and cottage were about to undergo a transformation. The park keepers who had patrolled the park in its early years had transitioned into a New York Police Department precinct, with the Arsenal serving as its precinct house, per the Central Park Conservatory.
In 1936, the cart horses were cleared out of the stable and the precinct took over. Renovated in the early 2000s, the Central Park Precinct house—a lovely survivor of the park’s early years in the late 19th century—is the oldest NYPD station in New York City.
PHOTO OF THE DAY
THE NEW Maker LAB
was officially opened on Friday. A space innovation, creation and designing
All image are copyrighted (c) Roosevelt Island Historical Society unless otherwise indicated THIS PUBLICATION FUNDED BY DISCRETIONARY FUNDS FROM CITY COUNCIL MEMBER JULIE MENIN & ROOSEVELT ISLAND OPERATING CORPORATION PUBLIC PURPOSE FUNDS.
