Apr

6

Monday, April 6, 2020 Artists Interpret the Island

By admin

AN ISLAND BRIDGED BY ART

HOW THE  BRIDGE
OVER OUR ISLAND WAS
INTERPRETED
BY ARTISTS 

******
The Mysterious Spiral Staircase
******’

Painting on High

MONDAY, APRIL 6, 2020

18h in our FROM THE ARCHIVES Series

New Yorker (c)
RIHS Archives (c)
Louis Lozowick (c)
Queensboro Bridge  Howard Cook etching (c)
Queensboro Bridge  Hayley Lever  1928  (c)
East River Valley  George Pitkin  1947
Queensborough Bridge, Autumn with a Police Boat Yvonne Jacquette   2002  (c)
The Queensborough Bridge   Louis Ashton Knight  1941   (c)

One of the early features of the Queensboro Bridge was a set of spiral staircases leading from one side of the upper pedestrian roadway to the other.  Find the staircases in the four illustrations below.

Study for Spiral Staircase Martin Lewis 1929  Pen and Ink   (c)
Spiral Staircase Queensboro Bridge  Martin Lewis (c)
Queensboro Bridge  Elsie Driggs  (c) Montclair Art Museum

Sebastian Cruset was an artist who climbed the spire of the Queensboro Bridge to paint the scenes below.

North View Queensboro Bridge inscribed, dated and signed ‘Enero 1910 S. Cruset’ (lower right)–inscribed with title on the stretcher oil on canvas 14 x 241/4 in. (35.6 x 61.6 cm.) NOTES Sebastian Cruset sought to depict unique, almost topographic, perspectives of New York from perilously high vantage points of the upper balconies of the city’s bridges. North View Queensboro Bridge was painted overlooking the East River, the Northern tip of Roosevelt Island and the shores of Manhattan and Queens. With exacting attention to detail, Cruset paints an active city, despite the snowy January day, as boats navigate the river and industrial smokestacks give off plumes of smoke visible on both shores. Shadows of the bridge itself are discernible in the foreground, reminding the viewer of the artist’s extraordinary location styles.
An eastward view of Queens from the Queensboro Bridge where Cruset viewed the scene from the spires.

Text by Judith Berdy
Thanks to Bobbie Slonevsky for her dedication to Blackwell’s Almanac and the RIHS
Thanks to Deborah Dorff for daily transferring our news to our website  rihs.us
Thanks to Kevin Dorff who keeps the tech stuff operating.
Thanks to Melanie Colter and Dottie Jefferies. (who have better editing talents thank I do)

EDITORIAL

It is all in the spelling:
QUEENSBORO
QUEENSBOROUGH
ED KOCH QUEENSBORO BRIDGE
59th STREET BRIDGE
Take your choice. Legally, it is Ed Koch Queensboro Bridge that opened in June of 1909.


THOUGHTS AND RAMBLING STUFF
For the last two weeks I have not watched TV shows from start to finish since the phone is ringing, texts, e-mails, questions, answers, volunteers and assorted friends and family.

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