GUASTAVINO, THE TILES THAT MADE CEILINGS MASTERPIECES
Above St. Paul’s Chapel at Columbia University
The Guastavino tile arch system is a version of Catalan vault introduced to the United States in 1885 by Valencian (Spanish) architect and builder Rafael Guastavino (1842–1908). It was patented in the United States by Guastavino in 1892.
In 2014, the Museum of the City of New York housed an exhibition on the work of the Guastavinos, named “Palaces for the People: Guastavino and the Art of Structural Tile.” The retrospective called attention to many structures, including the Ellis Island Registry Room (The Great Hall), which used to be the first step in the U.S. immigration process for people who were waiting to be inspected by Immigration Service Officers. The room opened in 1900, and for over two decades, up to 5,000 immigrants passed through on a daily basis. Guastavino’s work, however, was not added until 1918. The Registry Room has since been restored to its appearance in 1918-24. (Untapped Cities)
Don’t worry about conspicuously lingering about in this government building; there is no need to go inside to find Guastavino tiles. The south wing of the Municipal building on Chambers Street is fitted with a vaulted tile ceiling, though not in the characteristic herringbone pattern. The Manhattan Municipal Building was the first to incorporate a subway station in its base, and it’s regarded as one of the most beautiful stations in the city, featuring 11 columns. According to MCNY, Guastavino “devised a series of elegant vaults to cover the space, adapting to its various shapes three basic forms: the barrel vault, used along the length of the colonnades; lunettes, curving between the columns; and groin vaults, to accommodate the diversely shaped polygons spanning the internal columns.” (Untapped Cities)
Guastavino vaulting is a technique for constructing robust, self-supporting arches and architectural vaults using interlocking terracotta tiles and layers of mortar to form a thin skin, with the tiles following the curve of the roof as opposed to horizontally (corbelling), or perpendicular to the curve (as in Roman vaulting). This is known as timbrel vaulting, because of supposed likeness to the skin of a timbrel or tambourine. It is also called Catalan vaulting and “compression-only thin-tile vaulting”[.Guastavino tile is found in some of New York’s most prominent Beaux-Arts structures and in major buildings across the United States. It is also found in some non-Beaux-Arts structures such as the crossing of the Cathedral of St. John the Divine.
The Guastavino terracotta tiles are standardized, less than an inch (25 mm) thick, and approximately 6 inches (150 mm) by 12 inches (300 mm) across. They are usually set in three herringbone-pattern courses with a sandwich of thin layers of Portland cement. Unlike heavier stone construction, these tile domes could be built without centering. Each tile was cantilevered out over the open space, relying only on the quick drying cements developed by the company. Akoustolith, a special sound absorbing tile, was one of several trade names used by Guastavino.
Guastavino tile has both structural and aesthetic significance. Structurally, the timbrel vault was based on traditional vernacular vaulting techniques already very familiar to Mediterranean architects, but not well known in America. Terracotta free-span timbrel vaults were far more economical and structurally resilient than the ancient Roman vaulting alternatives. Guastavino wrote extensively about his system of “Cohesive Construction”. As the name suggests, he believed that these timbrel vaults represented an innovation in structural engineering. The tile system provided solutions that were impossible with traditional masonry arches and vaults. Subsequent research has shown the timbrel vault is simply a masonry vault, much less thick than traditional arches, that produces less horizontal thrust due to its lighter weight. This permits flatter arch profiles, which would produce unacceptable horizontal thrust if constructed in thicker, heavier masonry. (Wikipedia)
Inside the RIHS Visitor Center Kiosk dating from 1909, when the Queensboro Bridge opened with 5 kiosks for entry to the below ground trolley station under 60th Street and Second Avenue.
OUTSIDE NEW YORK
BOSTON PUBLIC LIBRARY
BAIRD AUDITORIUM, SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTE, WASHINGTON, D.C.
THE TILE HOUSE BAY SHORE, LONG ISLAND, NY
The Tile House, its local nickname, is an eccentric, Moorish-looking brick folly on the south shore of Long Island, built by Rafael Guastavino Jr., the son of the architect Rafael Guastavino Sr., who developed the tile-vaulting system used in the Oyster Bar, the Whispering Gallery and in hundreds of other spaces, including Carnegie Hall and the Cathedral of St. John the Divine. Begun in 1912, when the younger Guastavino was working on Grand Central, the house is a riot of tile work: his own instantly recognizable herringbone arches, supplemented with European tiles he brought back from a honeymoon tour. When he died in 1950, he left the place to his daughter, Louise, who sold it eight years later (she died in 2004). By 2005, it was for sale, and on the Preservation League of New York State’s “Seven to Save” list. A couple from Florida who are in the business of buying and restoring old houses bought it then, saving it from a developer who wanted to tear it down. Their renovations included removing the decades-old trees that were growing in a garage. (NY Times)
THURSDAY IMAGE OF THE DAY
The interior of Temple Emanu-El is lined in Akoustalith tiles from Guastavino. These are non glazed tiles and the rough natural face gives them a more enjoyable sound resonance than glazed tiles. They were restored to their original condition in 2006. The tiles were cleaned with dry sponges absorbing decades of dust and grime.
CARNEGIE LIBRARY WASHINGTON, DC A TREASURE OF A BUILDING
This D.C. public library was closed for years. Last year, 2019, it re-opened as a research library, art gallery and Apple Store. The building is shining in the sunlight, just across the street from the DC Convention Center. Inside the main floor has a great Apple Store with a a performance space. Upstairs is a wonderful gallery with a selection of panoramic photos. The ground floor level is an art gallery featuring the building’s history. The ceilings are Guastavino tiles, these reproduced for the restoration.
THURSDAY PHOTO OF THE DAY
WHAT IS THIS BUILDING? SEND ANSWER TO JUDITH BERDY JBIRD134@AOL.COM
WEDNESDAY PHOTO OF THE DAY ENTRANCE TO NYPL ROOSEVELT ISLAND BRANCH The winner is Arlene Bessenoff
FROM OUR READERS
Wednesday Photo of the Day This is the original staircase in the Octagon
EDITORIAL
It is fun to look thru art and design such as today’s images of the works by the Guastavino family. Last summer we walked into a fantastic building in Washington, D.C. The Carnegie Library is worth the trip alone. It glows in the square where it is located. I returned a few months after my first visit to show to another friend. Upstairs the Preservation League of DC has an exhibit of panoramic photos. Next time you are in DC, stop by. You are in for a treat.
This is an important week. Time to early vote for the primary election. Some news:
The only party having a Primary are the DEMOCRATIC PARTY
Our Primary EARLY VOTING SITE IS AT 440 EAST 26 STREET
FROM TODAY UNTIL SUNDAY.
HOURS ARE: THURSDAY 10 A.M. TO 6 P.M. FRIDAY 7 A.M. TO 3 PM. SATURDAY AND SUNDAY 10 A.M. TO 4 P.M.
REGULAR VOTING IS TUESDAY, JUNE 23 AT P.S./I.S. 217 6 A.M. TO 9 P.M
Judith Berdy
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 All image are copyrighted (c) Roosevelt Island Historical Society unless otherwise indicated UNTAPPED CITIES NEW YORK (C) CONGREGATION EMANU-EL NEW YORK TIMES (C) AVERY ARCHIVES/COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY
FUNDING PROVIDED BY ROOSEVELT ISLAND OPERATING CORPORATION PUBLIC PURPOSE GRANTS CITY COUNCIL REPRESENTATIVE BEN KALLOS DISCRETIONARY FUNDING THRU DYCD
In New Dorp, Staten Island, on the southeastern waterfront of the borough is a decommissioned airfield used for half a century by the U.S. Army from 1919 to 1969. Part of the Gateway National Recreation Area today, Miller Field is one of those remaining anomalies: where formal activities co-exist side by side with quasi-accessible remnants of the past.
Bicycle and pedestrian paths wind around abandoned hangars, a lighthouse, and a control tower. You can get tantalizingly close to the forgotten structures, despite a chain link fence. Graffiti work inside clearly shows the ease in which explorers can jump the barriers. Grass and weeds are growing around the hangars, while geese and ducks are bathing undisturbed in the makeshift urban ponds where seaplanes once taxied. And incredibly, on the northern area of the site, people are still living in adorable clapboard homes built for military personnel and their families.
Miller Field has the distinction of being the only Air Coast Defense station in New York City, and on the entire eastern seaboard. There were seven planned defense stations, but this was the only one actually constructed. Before its decommission, Miller Field was the last airport in New York City to have a grass runway. The land also has a very New York City, Gilded Age past. The airfield was built atop the family farm amassed by “Commodore” Cornelius Vanderbilt, who was born on the north shore of Staten Island.
The farm, which also served as a horse breeding station, was later operated by his son George Washington Vanderbilt who built the Biltmore estate in Asheville, North Carolina. Washington Vanderbilt moved the 24-room home built by his father, dubbed the “white house” to the center of the farm in the early 1900s and lived there periodically until he died in 1914, according to the National Park Service. In 1919, the U.S. government acquired the 187 acres of land for Miller Field from the Vanderbilts for $100,000 — a sum that would be nearly $1.5 million in 2018 dollars. It was named for Captain James E. Miller, the very first American aviator killed in action during World War I. Nearly a century after his death, Miller was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross in 2017 for his brave actions fighting off two German aircraft solo over France.
In 1921, Miller Field was ready for operation, accommodating both land and sea planes with a “concrete seaplane ramp, two grass runways, two landplane hangers, two seaplane hangers,…and three 85 foot radio masts,” as itemized on the National Park Service’s detailed history of the site. However, several of the original Vanderbilt buildings actually remained on site well into the 1930s, including the “white house” which was used as Officer’s Club, along with a stable complex, a dairy house, and an ice house/bull pen. Later, during World War II, observation towers and coastal guns were added, with the airfield becoming under the jurisdiction of Fort Wadsworth.
A later archeological study found fragments of Spanish tile from the roofs of the Vanderbilt buildings and provides significant detail about the location of the Vanderbilt buildings in reference to the airfield structures. A former barrier that still remains, looking out onto the sports field Many military units have used Miller Field, including the Green Berets, New York National Guard, Army Reserve, Civil Air Patrol, and an Antiaircraft Artillery Battalion. One of the more historical moments at Miller Field was the testing of Admiral Byrd’s new plane, the Ford Trimotor, which he took on his first expedition to Antarctica in 1928 — an adventure chronicled in Untapped Cities writer Laurie Gwen Shapiro’s book The Stowaway: A Young Man’s Extraordinary Adventure to Antarctica. And on a more morbid note, Miller Field is where the TWA Super Constellation plane crashed after colliding with a United Airlines DC-8, which would make its way all the way to Brooklyn where it landed in Park Slope at the intersection of Sterling Place and 7th Avenue. There were no survivors from the TWA plane, and only one in Park Slope, a little boy who died a day later.
Miller Field also included housing for troops and their families, built in classic American-style architecture — clapboard houses painted in white with green window frames. Set along a curved road lined with lampposts, the homes still evoke ideals of the American Dream. Curiously, the collection of a dozen or so homes remain part of the National Park Service site and are still inhabited. As Matt Green noted in his quest to walk every street in New York City, he was told by a resident there that the houses are only for National Park Service employees and certain other federal workers and their families. The park’s bicycle and walking paths go right by them. Miller Field is a beautiful spot to visit on Staten Island. Head up beyond the sand dunes along the waterfront and catch a nice hidden beach.
In 1919, the U.S. government acquired the 187 acres of land for Miller Field from the Vanderbilts for $100,000 — a sum that would be nearly $1.5 million in 2018 dollars. It was named for Captain James E. Miller, the very first American aviator killed in action during World War I. Nearly a century after his death, Miller was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross in 2017 for his brave actions fighting off two German aircraft solo over France.
Miller Field also included housing for troops and their families, built in classic American-style architecture — clapboard houses painted in white with green window frames. Set along a curved road lined with lampposts, the homes still evoke ideals of the American Dream. Curiously, the collection of a dozen or so homes remain part of the National Park Service site and are still inhabited. As Matt Green noted in his quest to walk every street in New York City, he was told by a resident there that the houses are only for National Park Service employees and certain other federal workers and their families. The park’s bicycle and walking paths go right by them.
WEDNESDAY’S PHOTO OF THE DAY
What is this and where is it located E-mail jbird134@aol.com Win a trinket from Kiosk
TUESDAY’S PHOTO OF THE DAY
Vent tubes from Rivercross
EDITORIAL
TIME TO EXPLORE THE OUTER BOROS. LET’S HEAD OFF ON AN ADVENTURE AND REMEMBER THE JOYS OF SUMMER AND LEAVING OUR HOMES.
All image are copyrighted (c) Roosevelt Island Historical Society unless otherwise indicated TEXT FROM THE NEW ENGLAND HISTORICAL SOCIETY FUNDING PROVIDED BY ROOSEVELT ISLAND OPERATING CORPORATION PUBLIC PURPORE GRANTS CITY COUNCIL REPRESENTATIVE BEN KALLOS DISCRETIONARY FUNDING THRU DYCD
AMERICAN MASTERS Mae West: Dirty Blonde Over a career spanning eight decades, the subversive Mae West broke boundaries and possessed creative and economic powers unheard of for a female entertainer in the 1930s. Tuesday, June 16 at 8p
TUESDAY
JUNE 16, 2020
RIHS’s 80th Issue of
Included in this Issue:
MANHATTAN
WASHINGTON SQUARE
”IMAGES FROM HOMAGE TO THE SQUARE PICTURING WASHINGTON SQUARE 1890-1965″
BRUCE WEBER (C)
FERNAND LUNGREN A WINTER WEDDING-WASHINGTON SQUARE 1897
Born in Hagerstown, Maryland, of Swedish descent, on November 13, 1857, Fernand Lungren was raised in Toledo, Ohio. He showed an early talent for drawing but his father induced him to pursue a professional career and in 1874 entered the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, to study mining engineering.
However, after meeting the painter Kenyon Cox (1856-1919), he was determined to follow a career as a visual artist.[1] At the age of 19, and following a dispute with his father, Lungren was finally permitted to enroll at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in Philadelphia, where he studied under Thomas Eakins (1844-1916) and Robert Frederick Blum (1857–1903). He also studied briefly in Cincinnati and in 1882, he furthered his studies in Paris at the Académie Julian, but only remained there for brief period, abandoning formal study for direct observation of Parisian street life. It was during this period that he painted In The Cafe Illustrator in New York City Illustration from St. Nicholas, (serial) (1873)
In 1877, now twenty years old, and upon completion of his studies, Fernand Lungren moved to New York City. There he rented a studio with the prominent painter and pastellist Robert Frederick Blum. In New York City, he found work as an illustrator for Scribner’s Monthly (renamed Century in 1881) during the period known as ‘the Golden Age of American illustration.’ His first illustration appeared in 1879 and he continued to contribute to Scribner’s Monthly until 1903. He was also an illustrator for the children’s magazine, Saint Nicholas from 1879 to 1904 and later for Harper’s, McClure’s and The Outlook. His illustration work in these periodicals focussed on portraits, landscapes and social scenes, which gave him some notoriety as the illustrator of New York street scenes.[4] In 1878, he helped found The Tile Club, an association of young artists who gathered for the purpose of painting on decorative tiles. Among the members of the club were William Merritt Chase, J. Carroll Beckwith, John Twachtman, Winslow Homer, J. Alden Weir, and Robert Frederick Blum.
PAUL CORNMOYER WASHINGTON SQUARE 1900
Paul Cornoyer (1864–1923) was an American painter, currently best known for his popularly reproduced painting in an Impressionist and sometimes pointillist style. Born in St. Louis, Missouri, Cornoyer began painting in Barbizon style and first exhibited in 1887. In 1909, he was elected into the National Academy of Design as an Associate Academician. He taught at Mechanics Institute of New York and in 1917, he moved to Massachusetts, where he continued to teach and paint.
Jessie Tarbox Beals WASHINGTON SQUARE NORTH, 1920 PHOTOGRAPH
was an American photographer, the first published female photojournalist in the United States and the first female night photographer. She is best known for her freelance news photographs, particularly of the 1904 St. Louis World’s Fair, and portraits of places such as Bohemian Greenwich Village. Her trademarks were her self-described “ability to hustle” and her tenacity in overcoming gender barriers in her profession.
In 1893 Beals took a new teaching position in Greenfield, Massachusetts and visited the World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago. At the Exposition, Beals’ interest in traveling and photography was sparked having met Frances Benjamin Johnston and Gertrude Käsebier. In 1897, Beals married Alfred Tennyson Beals, an Amherst graduate and factory machinist. In 1899, Beals received her first professional assignment when she was asked by The Boston Post to photograph the Massachusetts state prison.
Beals taught Alfred the basics of photography and the couple set out to work as itinerant photographers in 1900, with Alfred as Beals’s darkroom assistant. That year, Beals also received her first credit line for her photographs in a publication, the Windham County Reformer.
By 1901, the Beals’ funds were depleted and they resettled in Buffalo, New York. Later that year, Beals was hired as a staff photographer by the Buffalo Inquirer and The Buffalo Courier, after impressing the editor with a photograph of ducks waddling in a row entitled “On to Albany.”This position made her the first female photojournalist and was well-regarded by the papers and citizens of Buffalo and worked at the publications until 1904 when she left to take photos of the World’s Fair.[
Photojournalism was physically demanding, often risky work, but Beals could be seen carrying out assignments in her ankle-length dresses and large hats, with her 8-by-10-inch glass plate camera and 50 pounds of equipment in tow.
During one assignment for the lurid murder trial of Edwin L. Burdick in Buffalo, Beals broke a rule that forbade photographs of the trial by climbing a tall bookcase to a window to snap a picture of the courtroom before she was detected.In 1904, Beals was sent to the opening of the Louisiana Purchase Exposition in St. Louis, Missouri. There, Beals persuaded officials to give her a late press permit for the pre-exposition, climbed ladders and jumped into a hot air balloon just to get photographs that interested her.
She was greatly interested in the Indigenous peoples which resulted in capturing many spontaneous images that didn’t necessarily fit into the predominate narrative of racial and developmental progress. She had a different style than most news photographers of the day, focusing on series of pictures that would later be used to write stories, rather than vice versa. Beals’s display of her signature “hustle” earned her the position of official Fair photographer for the New York Herald, Leslie’s Weekly and the Tribune, as well as the Fair’s publicity department, producing over 3,500 photographs and 45,000 prints of the event.
In addition to photographing the various exhibits at the Fair, Beals also captured a candid photograph of President Theodore Roosevelt. This initial encounter earned her a special pass to photograph Roosevelt and the Rough Riders at their reunion in San Antonio, Texas in 1905. A studio on Sixth Avenue In 1905 Beals opened her own studio on Sixth Avenue in New York City. Beals continued to take on a variety of photograph assignments, ranging from shots of auto races and portraits of society figures, to her well-known photographs of Bohemian Greenwich Village and the New York slums Over the years Beals also photographed several presidents and celebrities, including Presidents Coolidge, Hoover and Taft; Mark Twain; Edna St. Vincent Millay; and Emily Post.While Beals’ career flourished, her marriage became troubled.
In 1911, Beals gave birth to a daughter, Nanette Tarbox Beals, most likely from another relationship. Beals finally left her husband in 1917. A studio and a gallery in Greenwich Village She moved to Greenwich Village and opened a new photography studio and gallery in 1920. For a few years, Beals juggled working and caring for Nanette, who also suffered from rheumatoid arthritis and was frequently hospitalized, eventually deciding to send Nanette to camps and private boarding schools throughout the year. Nanette would later go on to live semi-permanently with one of Beals’ old friends.
ERNEST LAWSON WASHINGTON SQUARE 1909-1911
GLENN O. COLEMAN THE ARCH 1927 WHITNEY MUSEUM
Glenn Coleman’s life and art demonstrate the difficulties that often seem to adhere to the artist’s calling. He was born in Springfield, Ohio in 1887, living until only the age of 45, dying on Long Island, New York in 1932 after a period of financial struggle and changing art tastes that effected both his style and subject matter, as well as the response to his art.
Coleman had a talent for drawing, which earned him a position as an apprentice artist for an Indianapolis newspaper while still a teenager. He went to New York City in 1905, where his life became a struggle to find time to paint while trying to survive by working at any job he could find, and studying for a short time with Ash Can artists Everett Shinn and Robert Henri.
Glenn Coleman identified with the poor because he was one of them. Because of this struggle his and theirs he became interested in socialism, selling drawings to the socialist magazine, “The Masses”. His painting were deeply felt reflections of everyday life in the off-beat nooks and crannies of Greenwich Village, Chinatown and the river. Here life was lived in a nearly small town setting, while uptown skyscrapers dwarfed humanity, and all around a great urban metropolis sprawled Strangely, it was the towering architecture of this metropolis, at the expense of his personal depictions of simple, struggling humanity that, in the mid-1920s, began to evolve into the dominant direction of his art. Cubism intruded itself into Coleman’s style, as it had so many other artists, but it was startling to see a move from a manifestation of Ash Can realism to a form of stylized abstraction.
As this transition was taking place, the artist apparently tried to reach back to his earliest artistic concerns, making realistic lithographs from his youthful drawings of people in the city that, unfortunately, failed to attract any interest in the surging, rapidly-changing, hurly-burly of modernist styles. Moving to Long Island in the year of his death, Coleman appeared to want to re-ground himself in nature, painting the landscape there, but he did not live long enough to accomplish this. Coleman was a member of the New Society of Artists, the Society of Independent Artists and the Whitney Studio Club. His work is in the Newark Museum, New Jersey, and the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York City. Source: Michael David Zellman, 300 Years of American Art Biography from the Archives of AskART
Nankivell studied art at Wesley College, Melbourne. He later travelled to Japan and earned a living as a cartoonist in Tokyo where he made the acquaintance of Rakuten Kitazawa, who later became father of the Japanese comic art now known as manga. Nankivell left Japan in 1894 to study art in San Francisco. He left for New York in 1896 where he worked on magazines as a popular and influential cartoonist devoting his work mainly to social subjects and to state and federal political issues. Nankivell remained in New York until 1913. Nankivell later became a member of the New York Circumnavigators Club, which was open only to those who had circumnavigated the globe longitudinally, by land and/or sea. Other members included Ernest Hemingway and Harry Houdini
THOMAS HART BENTON THE ARTISTS SHOW, WASHINGTON SQUARE PARK 1946
Thomas Hart Benton (April 15, 1889 – January 19, 1975) was an American painter and muralist. Along with Grant Wood and John Steuart Curry, he was at the forefront of the Regionalist art movement. The fluid, sculpted figures in his paintings showed everyday people in scenes of life in the United States. His work is strongly associated with the Midwestern United States, the region in which he was born and which he called home for most of his life. He also studied in Paris, lived in New York City for more than 20 years and painted scores of works there, summered for 50 years on Martha’s Vineyard off the New England coast, and also painted scenes of the American South and West.
ALFRED S. MIRA WASHINGTON SQUARE 1943
FOR A BIOGRAPHY OF THIS ARTIST SEE: https://ephemeralnewyork.wordpress.com/2015/09/28/the-greenwich-village-vision-of-artist-alfred-mira/
LUIGI LUCIONI SNOW AT WASHINGTON SQUARE 1935
Luigi Lucioni (born Giuseppe Luigi Carlo Benevenuto Lucioni November 4, 1900 – July 22, 1988) was an Italian American painter known for his still lifes, landscapes, and portraits.
MYSTERY PHOTO OF THE DAY
WHAT AND WHERE IS THIS? Send your submission to JBIRD134@AOL.COM Win a trinket from the RIHS Visitor Center Kiosk
MONDAY’S PHOTO OF THE DAY
The correct answer is a portion of the Albert Swinden mural from Goldwater Hospital that is now at Tata Innovation Center at Cornell Tech.
EDITORIAL
Washington Square has always been a meeting place, a playground. a place to play your guitar or a chess game. It has been enhanced by historic restorations, new designs and plantings. The arch glows white and at the foot of Fifth Avenue the “Village” begins. Recently the site of many BLM demonstrations it holds itself up well and come by and enjoy the park and surrounding neighborhood.
Judith Berdy
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
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 Melanie Colter and Deborah Dorff FUNDING PROVIDED BY: ROOSEVELT ISLAND OPERATING CORPORATION THRU PUBLIC PURPOSE FUNDING
CITY COUNCIL MEMBER BEN KALLOS DISCRETIONARY FUNDS THRU DYCD
IMAGES FROM THE COLLECTION OF THE MUSEUM OF THE CITY OF NEW YORK (C) MATERIAL COPYRIGHT WIKIPEDIA, GOOGLE IMAGES, RIHS ARCHIVES AND MAY NOT BE REPRODUCED WITHOUT PERMISSION (C) HOMAGE TO THE SQUARE (C) BRUCE WEBER
ARRIVING AT JFK IN THE YEARS GONE BY IT WAS AND ADVENTURE TO GO THE THE AIRPORT. WHEN YOU MET AN INTERNATIONAL VISITOR AT THE ARRIVALS HALL, YOU COULD WATCH THEM GO THRU CUSTOMS INSPECTION IN THE HALL BELOW. LIFE WAS DIFFERENT IN THE 1970’S AND 1980’S. EVENTUALLY THE WINDOWS WERE BLOCKED OFF AND SECURITY TIGHTENED,
AFTER BEING RE-NAMED JFK, THE AIRPORT WAS MODERNIZED INCLUDING VAST NEW TERMINALS AND EVEN THREE CHAPELS AS A CENTERPIECE. ALL OF THESE AMENITIES VANISHED TO PARKING LOTS, AIRTRAIN LINES, LARGER LOADING AREAS AND MORE UTILITARIAN ARCHITECTURE. THE AMERICAN AND PAN AM TERMINALS VANISHED. LUCKILY ONE SURVIVED.
THE SAARINAN DESIGNED TERMINAL WAS A STANDOUT FROM THE BEGINNING. IT MIGHT NOT HAVE BEEN THE MOST EFFICIENT FOR PEOPLE MOVING BUT THE EXPERIENCE WAS GREAT.
ONE FUN THING TO DO WHEN THE WORLD RE-OPENS IS TO TAKE THE AIR-TRAIN FROM JAMAICA TO THE TWA HOTEL. IT IS A GREAT RESTORATION. THERE IS A CONSTELLATION OUTSIDE WITH A LOUNGE. YOU CAN WATCH THE PLANES ON THE RUNWAY FROM THE ROOFTOP POOL.
MONDAY PHOTO OF THE DAY
Identify and locate this. Send your answer to jbird134@aol.com Win a trinket from the RIHS kiosk.
WEEKEND MYSTERY PHOTO OF THE DAY
The Willis Avenue Bridge passing under the Queensboro Bridge to its new home on the Harlem River.
EDITORIAL
I am working on East 75th Street at Early Voting this week*. Walking in Manhattan is an odd feeling. Big name stores, Bloomingdale’s is still closed and the windows are boarded up. Most restaurants are closed though some have take-out.
We are being kept safe. We want normal.
We want our throbbing, noisy , tumultuous city back…soon Judith Berdy
* For some reason they moved Roosevelt Island early voting to Brookdale Center on East 26th Street. We will be at PS 217 on the 23rd for the Democratic Primary.
Text by Judith Berdy Thanks to Bobbie Slonevsky for her dedication to Blackwell’s Almanac Thanks to Deborah Dorff for maintaining our website Edited by Melanie Colter and Deborah Dorff All materials in this publication are copyrighted (c) IMAGES FROM THE COLLECTION OF THE MUSEUM OF THE CITY OF NEW YORK (C)
FUNDING BY ROOSEVELT ISLAND OPERATING CORPORATION PUBLIC PURPOSE FUNDING
THE BROOKLYN WAS THE FIRST TO OPEN IN 1883, THE WILLIAMSBURG IN 1903 AND THE MANHATTAN IN 1909
BROOKLYN NAVY YARD
The Navy Yard has been the home of ship-building and heavy manufacturing for over a century. After most businesses left in the 1960’s the yard and neighborhood declined. Now it is the home lo new light manufacturing, movie studio, innovative and technology companies. Many of the old buildings are restored and new food preparation and dining venues area appearing. It is an easy ride on the Astoria NYC Ferry ferry from Roosevelt Island.
PROSPECT PARK
In the 18th century Brooklyn was one of six villages dotting the western end of Long Island. In 1814 Robert Fulton’s ferry service contributed to the expansion of East River commerce and linked the growing town with its neighbor and competitor, New York City. Chartered in
1834, Brooklyn became the new nation’s third largest city within thirty years. The resulting crowds and unsanitary conditions prompted the first American attempts at urban planning, with public green space seen as a health necessity more than an aesthetic one. At the same time, new concepts concerning the role of public parks in America were gaining popularity.
In 1858, designers Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux completed Central Park in Manhattan. Soon a movement grew in Brooklyn for a park of its own. James T. Stranahan, a business and civic leader, spearheaded the endeavor as head of the Brooklyn Parks Commissioners, overseeing the Park’s creation from inception to completion. In the early 1860s, Stranahan argued that a park in Brooklyn “would become a favorite resort for all classes of our community, enabling thousands to enjoy pure air, with healthful exercise, at all seasons of the year…”
BROOKLYN MUSEUM BROOKLYN CHILDREN’S MUSEUM
BED-STY, PROSPECT PARK, PARK SLOPE NEIGHBORHOODS
HIPSTER NEW BROOKLYN IN WILLIAMSBURG AND BUSHWICK
In recent years under-developed areas of Brooklyn have been ripe for redevelopment and the blossoming of new buildings catering to those who must live in Brooklyn.
BROOKLYN BY THE BAY
FLOYD BENNETT FIELD, JAMAICA BAY WILDLIFE PRESERVE FORT TOTTEN
IN THE SOUTHEAST CORNER OF BROOKLYN IS THE AREA THAT IS STILL UNDEVELOPED AND PRESERVED TO NATURE AND WILDLIFE. A CAR IS NEEDED TO REACH THIS AREA AND YOU WILL BE REWARDED. YOU CAN ALSO SEE THE SITE OF BARREN ISLAND, WHERE OUR CITY HANDLED THE UNDESIRABLE CHORES OF THE DISPOSAL.
MYSTERY PHOTO OF THE DAY
Can you identify this object and location? Send you response to jbird134@aol.com Winner gets a trinket from kiosk.
YESTERDAY’S IMAGE
The trusswork of the Roosevelt Island Bridge. The winner was Andy Sparberg
EDITORIAL
We embarked on a voyage of the 5 boroughs this weekend. Lots of images and memories to remind you of times past and other tidbits of history.
Just took my first subway trip in 3 months. The train was spotless, the station was clean, the elevator did not have any of its usual aromas and the mouse scurrying under the Metrocard machine at 23rd Street did not have a mask!
I will be off the island to work at Early Voting next week in Manhattan. If you did not do an absentee ballot you can vote early in Manhattan at Wagner JHS. See the instructions at vote.nyc. If you still want to vote the old fashioned way we will be at PS 217 on Tuesday, June 23rd from 6 a.m. to 9 p.m.
The Bronx (/brɒŋks/) is a borough of New York City, coterminous with Bronx County, in the U.S. state of New York, the third-most densely populated county in the United States.[4] It is south of Westchester County; northeast and east of Manhattan, across the Harlem River; and north of Queens, across the East River. The Bronx has a land area of 42 square miles (109 km2) and a population of 1,418,207 in 2019.[1] Of the five boroughs, it has the fourth-largest area, fourth-highest population, and third-highest population density.[4] It is the only borough predominantly on the U.S. mainland
if each borough were its own city, the Bronx would rank as the eighth-most populous in the U.S. The Bronx is divided by the Bronx River into a hillier section in the west, and a flatter eastern section. East and west street names are divided by Jerome Avenue. The West Bronx was annexed to New York City in 1874, and the areas east of the Bronx River in 1895.[5] Bronx County was separated from New York County in 1914
.[About a quarter of the Bronx’s area is open space, including Woodlawn Cemetery, Van Cortlandt Park, Pelham Bay Park, the New York Botanical Garden, and the Bronx Zoo in the borough’s north and center. These open spaces are situated primarily on land deliberately reserved in the late 19th century as urban development progressed north and east from Manhattan. The name “Bronx” originated with Swedish-born Jonas Bronck, who established the first settlement in the area as part of the New Netherland colony in 1639.
The native Lenape were displaced after 1643 by European settlers. In the 19th and 20th centuries, the Bronx received many immigrant and migrant groups as it was transformed into an urban community, first from various European countries (particularly Ireland, Germany, Italy and Eastern Europe) and later from the Caribbean region (particularly Puerto Rico, Haiti, Jamaica, and the Dominican Republic), as well as African American migrants from the southern United States.
THE GRAND CONCOURSE
The Grand Concourse (also known as the Grand Boulevard and Concourse) is a 5.2-mile-long (8.4 km) thoroughfare in the borough of the Bronx in New York City. Grand Concourse runs through several neighborhoods, including Bedford Park, Concourse, Highbridge, Fordham, Mott Haven, Norwood and Tremont. For most of its length, the Concourse is 180 feet (55 m) wide. The Grand Concourse was designed by Louis Aloys Risse, an immigrant from Saint-Avold, Lorraine, France. Risse first conceived of the road in 1890, and the Concourse was built between 1894 and 1909, with an additional extension in 1927.
The development of the Concourse led to the construction of apartment buildings surrounding the boulevard, and by 1939 it was called “the Park Avenue of middle-class Bronx residents” A period of decline followed in the 1960s and 1970s, when these residences became dilapidated and the Concourse was redesigned to be more motorist-friendly. Renovation and redevelopment started in the 1980s, and a portion of the Grand Concourse was reconstructed starting in the 2000s.
The southern portion of the Grand Concourse is surrounded by several historically important residential buildings, which were listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1987 as part of the Grand Concourse Historic District. In 2011, the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission designated numerous buildings around the Grand Concourse as part of a city landmark district. Additionally, several individual points of interest are located on or near the Concourse, including the Bronx Museum of the Arts and Edgar Allan Poe Cottage.
NEW YORK BOTANICAL GARDEN
CONSERVATORY AT THE NEW YORK BOTANICAL GARDEN
Overview Established in 1891, The New York Botanical Garden (NYBG) is distinguished by the beauty of its landscape, collections, and gardens, and the scope and excellence of its programs in horticulture, education, and science. NYBG was inspired by an 1888 visit that eminent botanists Nathaniel Lord Britton and his wife, Elizabeth, took to the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, near London.
The Brittons believed New York should have a great botanical garden to advance public understanding of plants, be a repository of rare and valuable specimens, and lead original research in botanical science. Because of its picturesque terrain, freshwater Bronx River, rock-cut gorge, and 50 acres of old-growth forest, the Garden was sited on the northern half of Bronx Park.
Today, the 250-acre Garden—the largest in any city in the United States—is a National Historic Landmark. In addition to the natural attributes that attracted the Brittons, NYBG encompasses 50 specialty gardens and collections comprising more than one million plants, the Nolen Greenhouses for Living Collections, and the Enid A. Haupt Conservatory, the nation’s preeminent Victorian-style glasshouse.
Highlights include the award-winning Peggy Rockefeller Rose Garden, considered among the world’s most sustainable rose gardens; the Native Plant Garden, celebrating the diversity of northeastern North American plants; and 30,000 distinguished trees, many more than 200 years old.
More than one million visitors annually enjoy the grounds, view innovative exhibitions, and participate in educational programs that are larger and more diverse than those of any other garden in the world. From its earliest days, NYBG has also been driven by a mission to conduct basic and applied research on the plants of the world with the goal of protecting and stunning urban oasis, created one of the world’s most comprehensive plant research and conservation programs, amassed unrivaled research collections, and, as a living museum, taught millions of visitors of all ages to love and respect the plants of the world. The New York Botanical Garden is committed to preserving and protecting the planet’s biodiversity and natural resources and enhancing human well-being by educating, training, and empowering the next generation of Earth’s caregivers—in partnership with both local and global communities.
THE BRONX ZOO
THE BRONX ZOO OR NOW KNOWN AS THE WILDLIFE CONSERVATION SOCIETY
Located right across the street from the Botanical Gardens is the Bronx Zoo.
The Bronx Zoo is a zoo located within Bronx Park in the Bronx, New York. It is one of the largest zoos in the United States by area, and is the largest metropolitan zoo in the United States by area,[5] comprising 265 acres (107 ha) of park lands and naturalistic habitats separated by the Bronx River. On average, the zoo has 2.15 million visitors each year as of 2009.[5] The Bronx Zoo is world-renowned for its large and diverse animal collection, and its award-winning exhibitions.[5] The zoo is part of an integrated system of four zoos and one aquarium.
HALL OF FAME
LOCATED ON THE CAMPUS OF BRONX COMMUNITY COLLEGE, FORMERLY NY UPTOWN THE HALL COMMEMORATES GREAT AMERICANS, THOUGH SOME HAVE PROVEN CONTROVERSIAL
YANKEE STADIUM
BOROUGH OF PARKS
CROTONA AND PELHAM BAY PARK
LOEW’S PARADISE THEATRE
The Loew’s Paradise, located on the Grand Concourse at East 188th Street, is widely considered the grand dame of the Bronx’s former movie theaters. Long before the multiplex era, this single screen auditorium had over 3,800 seats, making it one of the largest in the city. It was one of the five famed “Wonder Theatres” developed by the Loew’s move chain in the late 1920s as movie palaces with highly elaborate details inside and out. The Loews Paradise was designed by John Eberson, who was the originator and leading architect of this style of “atmospheric theater.” Eberson designed theaters throughout the country and as far away as Australia. Today known as the Paradise Theater, it is now home to World Changers Church. It is designated as both an exterior and interior New York City Landmark.
PHOTO OF THE DAY
WHAT IS THE IS AND WHERE IS IT LOCATED? SEND ANSWER TO JBIRD134@AOL.COM
YESTERDAY’S PHOTO OF THE DAY
THIS IS A PORTION OF A PLAQUE THAT HUNG IN CITY HOSPITAL “DIED IN THE DISCHARGE OF DUTY” THE PIECES WERE BORROWED IN THE 1980’S AND RETURNED TO THE R.I.H.S. YEAR LATER.
EDITORIAL
Today we are starting a 5 borough series on FROM THE ARCHIVES. Let’s explore one or more special aspects of each boroughs.
Looking for more fun subjects for the ongoing series. If you recognize areas that you grew up in or know well, send us some photos and stories.
Judith Berdy
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 Melanie Colter and Deborah Dorff
All image are copyrighted (c) RIHS Thanks to the RIHS Archives for Images
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CITY COUNCIL MEMBER BEN KALLOS DISCRETIONARY FUNDS ADMINISTERED BY NYC DIVISION OF YOUTH AND COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT
WASHINGTON SQUARE PARK, JUNE 9, 2020 BY RON CRAWFORD (C)
INDUSTRIAL SUBLIME, Part 2
Creating Industrial Sublime
Billowing Smoke stacks, booming industry, noble bridges, and an epic waterfront-American art swung on an axis.
PART 2 OF 2 PARTS
GEORGE AULT FROM BROOKLYN HEIGHTS C 1925-1928
GIFFORD BEAL ON THE HUDSON AT NEWBURGH 1918
CARLTON THEODORE CHAPMAN THE EAST RIVER, NYC 1904
GLENN COLEMAN EMPIRE STATE BUILDING 1930-1932
Coleman’s career was in ascendancy when he died, aged 48, of a rare illness in May, 1932. Originally from the Midwest, he came to New York to become an artist. After studying with Robert Henri, he began selling paintings of Manhattan scenes to important patrons like John D. Rockefeller and Edward W. Root, as well as to museums including the Brooklyn Museum, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Musée Luxembourg, Paris and the Detroit Art Institute.
However he was often obliged to supplement his income with routine jobs – he served as an usher at Carnegie Hall, and was a police patrol officer in the community of Long Beach, L.I., where he lived modestly with his wife. He became known for depicting Manhattan skyscrapers in a dramatic Modernist style. The present canvas, one of the largest, represents what was at the time the newest and tallest addition to the skyline, the Empire State Building. The dirigible alludes to the short-lived and rather fantastic plan that would have airships moored to the building’s mast and have passengers disembark – by ladders! – to the observation deck, whence they could proceed, by elevators, to the street.
Coleman’s Estate was handled by his uncle, who donated most of his studio to the Whitney Museum of American Art; this museum held a memorial exhibition in October 1932, coincident with their publication of a monograph, part of a series on American artists. This work was originally donated by the Estate to the Long Beach Public Library, then the only public institution in the community.
COLIN CAMPBELL COOPER HUDSON RIVER WATERFRONT, NYC 1913-1921
RALSTON CRAWFORD WHITESTONE BRIDGE 1939-1940
AARON DOUGLAS TRIBOROUGH BRIDGE 1936
JOHN FOLINSBEE QUEENSBOROUGH BRIDGE 1915
John Folinsbee was a fine artist being motivated by the beauty of form, color, line and texture and all that was good from the great tradition of the past. Without bothering to make sketches he attacks his canvas with lusty strokes and with astonishing speed the face and form seem to come to life. With a full brush and a broad stroke, the magic texture grew under his hand.
REGINALD MARSH TUGBOAT AT DOCKSIDE 1932
Marsh liked to venture out to Coney Island to paint, especially in the summer time. There he began to paint massed beached bodies. Marsh emphasizes the bold muscles and build of his characters, which relate to the heroic scale of the older European paintings. Marsh said “I like to go to Coney Island because of the sea, the open air, and the crowds—crowds of people in all directions, in all positions, without clothing, moving—like the great compositions of Michelangelo and Rubens.”
Marsh was also drawn to the ports of New York. In the 1930s, the harbors were extremely busy with people and commerce due to the country’s necessity for economic recovery. The Great Depression brought about a decline in raw materials and therefore the demand for those materials grew dramatically, resulting in bustling harbors in big cities such as New York. Marsh would sketch the seaports, focusing on the tugboats coming in and out of the harbor, and capturing the details of the boats such as the masts, the bells, the sirens, and the deck chairs.
REGINALD MARSH NEW YORK SKYLINE 1937 WATERCOLOR
JOHN NOBLE THE BUILDING OF TIDEWATER 1937
John A. Noble John A. Noble (1913-1983)He spent his early years in the studios of his father and his father’s contemporaries, innovative artists and writers of the early part of this century. He moved with his family to this country in 1919, a year which had great significance to him and foreshadowed his life’s work. “It was the greatest wooden ship launching year in the history of the world,” he wrote. “About 1929 I started my crude drawings and paintings,” the artist recalled. “In the wintertime, while still going to school, I was a permanent fixture on the old McCarren line tugs, which had the monopoly on the schooner towing in New York Harbor.
This kept them constantly before my eyes. In the summertime, I would go to sea.” A graduate of the Friends Seminary in New York City, Noble returned to France in 1931, where he studied for one year at the University of Grenoble. There he met his wife and lifetime companion, “the lovely, green-eyed” Susan Ames. When he returned to New York, he studied for one year at the National Academy of Design. From 1928 until 1945, Noble worked as a seaman on schooners and in marine salvage. In 1928, while on a schooner that was towing out down the Kill van Kull, the waterway that separates Staten Island from New Jersey, he saw the old Port Johnston coal docks for the first time. It was a sight, he later asserted, which affected him for life. Port Johnston was “the largest graveyard of wooden sailing vessels in the world.”
Filled with new but obsolete ships, the great coalport had become a great boneyard. In 1941, Noble began to build his floating studio there, out of parts of vessels he salvaged and from 1946 on, he worked as a full-time artist, setting off from his studio in a rowboat to explore the Harbor. These explorations resulted in a unique and exacting record of Harbor history in which its rarely documented characters, industries, and vessels are faithfully recorded.
Although he was raised in artistic circles and quickly gained recognition for his work, Noble always remained intimate with the people of the Harbor. “I’m with factory people, industrial people, the immigrants, the sons of immigrants,” he asserted. “It gives life to it.” Late in his life, Noble recalled his first compelling views of New York Harbor. “I was crossing the 134th Street Bridge on the Harlem River on a spring day in 1928, and I was so shocked–it changed my life. I was frozen on that bridge, because both east and west of the bridge were sailing vessels. And I thought sailing vessels, you know, were gone… There it was, and I couldn’t eat, or anything; I was so excited.” By the time of his death in the spring of 1983, shortly after the passing of his beloved Susan, the sailing vessels he loved were all gone, and the maritime industry in the Harbor had diminished significantly. But Noble’s inexorable interest in the sea had not diminished. Although he felt the loss of many kinds of vessels, he was “just as interested in drawing the building of a great modern tanker, the working of a modern dredge, as…in the shifting of topsails.” In fact, he wrote, “Anywhere men work or build on the water is of interest to me…My life’s work is to make a rounded picture of American maritime endeavor of modern times.”
TWO PAINTINGS BY GEORGIA O’KEEFE IN 1928 FROM SHELTON HOTEL
CHARLES ROSEN THE ROUNDHOUSE, KINGSTON, NEW YORK 1927
Charles Rosen (28 April 1878 – 21 June 1950) was an American painter who lived for many years in Woodstock, New York. In the 1910s he was acclaimed for his Impressionist winter landscapes. He became dissatisfied with this style and around 1920 he changed to a radically different cubist-realist style. He became recognized as one of the leaders of the Woodstock artists colony.
THURSDAY IMAGE OF THE DAY
WHAT IS THIS OBJECT? SEND ANSWER TO JUDITH BERDY JBIRD134@AOL.COM
WEDNESDAY PHOTO OF THE DAY
ENTRANCE TO NYPL ROOSEVELT ISLAND BRANCH The winner is Arlene Bessenoff
FROM OUR READERS
We have been receiving some great photos and comments. Enjoy some of them below.
JUDITH BERDY
LETTER TO THE EDITOR
From Matthew Katz Responding to the June 8 edition I must take exception to the description of an egg cream (my neighborhood in Brooklyn did not recognize the spelling “creme” as anything this side of the Atlantic) as including “chocolate syrup.” If it doesn’t include Fox’s U-Bet chocolate syrup it is bogus. One must maintain one’s standards! BTW, my wife, who grew up in Denver, Colorado, was introduced to a “Grandma’s Special” by her Brooklyn-born nanna. This was ginger-ale and milk; a pitiful substitute for those benighted refugees living west of the Mississippi and yearning for some taste of the real thing. When she moved to New York and tasted the ambrosia of the real thing she recognized the connection.
From the 1918 flu pandemic WEAR A MASK OR GO TO JAIL
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
All image are copyrighted (c) Roosevelt Island Historical Society unless otherwise indicated CATALOG REFERENCE FROM HUDSON RIVER MUSEUM FROM THE EXHIBIT INDUSTRIAL SUBLIME (C)
FUNDING PROVIDED BY ROOSEVELT ISLAND OPERATING CORPORATION PUBLIC PURPOSE GRANTS CITY COUNCIL REPRESENTATIVE BEN KALLOS DISCRETIONARY FUNDING THRU DYCD
Billowing Smoke stacks, booming industry, noble bridges, and an epic waterfront-American art swung on an axis.
PART 1 OF 2 PARTS TO BE CONTINUED ON THURSDAY, JUNE 11TH
GEORGE AULT FROM BROOKLYN HEIGHTS C 1925-1928
This article is from the 2014 review of this show at the Hudson River Museum in Yonkers:
They came to New York from near and far — Connecticut and Australia, Pennsylvania and Norway — to paint the wonders of the new century. But even though the 50-odd artists whose works are on view in the magnificent new show at the Hudson River Museum were all looking at the same railyards and bridges and waterways, they were seeing very different things.
ELSIE DRIGGS QUEENSBOROUGH BRIDGE 1927
(NOTE SPIRAL STAIRCASE LEADING OVER THE UPPER LEVEL FOR PEDESTRIANS, SINCE REMOVED)
LEON KROLL QUEENSBOROUGH BRIDGE 1912
OSCAR BLUEMNER HARLEM RIVER 1912
In “Industrial Sublime: Modernism and the Transformation of New York’s Rivers, 1900-1940,” viewers can share the excitement — maybe even the ecstasy — that these painters felt as they confronted both the urban maelstrom and the new ways of setting it down. Some, like Georgia O’Keeffe, gained wide celebrity; others became merely art-history footnotes. But all were seeking transcendence in the great, gritty machinery of the city, just as previous generations of painters had sought it in the rough grandeur of the American wilderness.
THEODORE EARL BUTLER BROOKLYN BRIDGE 1900
EDWARD BRUCE POWER 1933
DANIEL PUTNAM BRINLEY 1915 HUDSON RIVER VIEW (SUGAR FACTORY AT YONKERS)
Noble, the youngest of the exhibition’s painters, was born in 1913, the year that the modernist innovations of the Armory Show turned America’s art world on its ear. Several pictures selected for “Industrial Sublime” by the curators, Kirsten M. Jensen and Bartholomew F. Bland, like Oscar Bluemner’s vivid 1912 watercolor “Harlem River,” were in the Armory Show. But many more clearly proclaim its impact. Refer your friends to The Times. They’ll enjoy our special rate of $1 a week.
Around 1915, Daniel Putnam Brinley depicted a manufacturing plant as a Fauvist riot of color and geometry in “Hudson River View (Sugar Factory at Yonkers).” Cubist influence can be discerned in the simple forms and flattened color of George Ault’s striking 1920s oil “From Brooklyn Heights,” rightly chosen for the cover of the show’s excellent catalog. John Marin has a different take on the New York skyline in the nervous energy of “Lower Manhattan From the River, No. 1,” a 1921 watercolor. And the soft hues and agitated brushwork of John Folinsbee’s 1917 “Queensborough Bridge” dissolve its snowy rooftops and distant ironwork into passages of near-abstract painting.T Men and women who created the works in “Industrial Sublime” were painting contradictions — and sometimes expressing their own ambivalence about the gleaming skyscrapers and bustling harbors in their pictures. So at the very start of the 20th century, in “Cumulus Clouds, East River,” the pivotal Ashcan painter Robert Henri places the unsettling figure of a child in white amid looming black towers on the waterfront, then overwhelms both with a gorgeous, blazing sunset. And in “The Building of Tidewater,” John Noble, based in Staten Island, turns an oil refinery being constructed in late-1930s Bayonne, N.J., into a luridly compelling dreamscape of scarlet tubes and tanks.
ROBERT K. RYLAND THE BRIDGE 1931
VIEW FROM THE 30TH FLOOR OF THE HOTEL SHELTON GEORGIA O’KEEFE 1928
AARON DOUGLAS POWER PLANT IN HARLEM 1934
GLENN COLEMAN THE DOCK
LOUIS LOZOWICK LOWER MANHATTAN 1932
RICHARD HAYLEY LEVER HIGH BRIDGE OVER THE HARLEM RIVER 1913
Like so many of the figures in these paintings (and, for that matter, like those in canvases by the Hudson River artists), the workers are small and insignificant, dwarfed, even crushed, by their surroundings. In two of the show’s most dramatic snowscapes, Richard Hayley Lever’s imposing 1913 “High Bridge Over the Harlem River” and Martin Lewis’s luminous “Railroad Yards, Winter, Weehawken,” painted somewhat later, natural splendor vies for dominance with the engineering. But the people who built and used the structures the paintings celebrate have become invisible. That’s perhaps the point of Robert K. Ryland’s melancholy little oil “The Bridge Pier,” in which a man in a white shirt seems to slump beneath the weight of the city.
Painted during the Great Depression, it looks up at the dark, hulking forms of the Brooklyn Bridge and Manhattan’s Municipal Building and sees oppression. Just 17 years earlier, Jonas Lie had surveyed the same scene — streams of smoke from the river traffic, the gothic towers of the bridge, the Manhattan skyline across the way — and captured it all from above, in the jaunty, joyous “Path of Gold.” Agony and ecstasy, shimmery smoke and hard-edge steel, grim murk and eye-popping color — the early 20th-century city was all these things, and in “Industrial Sublime” we experience it anew.
INNA GARSOIAN EAST SIDE DRIVE 1940
MARGUERITE OHMAN VIEW OF QUEENSBOROUGH BRIDGE FROM CENTRAL PARK, NEW YORK 1940
GLENN COLEMAN QUEENSBORO BRIDGE, EAST RIVE 1910
The span, now named for former Mayor Edward I. Koch but still called the 59th Street Bridge by most who cross it, seems to have been a favorite subject — along with fresh snow — in the 40 years covered by the 70-plus works in the exhibition. Julian Alden Weir masks the bridge’s outline in a dark Whistlerian haze in 1910. Around the same time, Glenn Coleman crisply renders its red girders above a shockingly white paddle-wheeler, with shadowy spectators admiring both from the riverbank. And in 1912, Leon Kroll emphasizes the bridge’s monumental gray bulk, contrasting it with a dense plume of smoke rising from a tug and a cascade of powdery snow dumped onto a barge by workers who have shoveled it off the streets and sidewalks.
We will feature other images in the Thursday edition.
WEDNESDAY’S PHOTO OF THE DAY
What is this and where is it located E-mail jbird134@aol.com Win a trinket from Kiosk
TUESDAY’S PHOTO OF THE DAY
PEDESTRIAN ELEVATOR TOWER AT 60 STREET AT THE QUEENSBORO BRIDGE
TODAY IS ISSUE # 75!!
WOW
Thanks for your support and especially to Deborah who gets every issue on-line at rihs.us
EDITORIAL I know the popularity of East River and bridge art that are featured in INDUSTRIAL SUBLIME. The artwork will continue in the Thursday edition.
Please send me your comments and stories about your New York experiences. We are having ongoing discussions about egg-cremes or egg-creams with Matt Katz.
In the meantime check out our display window in RIvercross. Eunice Chang has donated many of the wonderful POETRY IN MOTION posters that hung in NYC subway cars.
Just to add to the double feature and (ice-cream) “bonbons”, besides the two films there were newsreels and cartoons. The show began at noon and ended at around 5:00 p.m., depending on the length of the feature films. All for 25 cents admission! And yes, a big draw in the summer is that aside from the local supermarket, it was the only place around that was air-conditioned, in the 1950s. Everyone brought their lunch from home and ate it in the movie theater. The place would reek of salami and tuna sandwiches.
Susan Berk Seligson
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 Melanie Colter and Deborah Dorff
All image are copyrighted (c) Roosevelt Island Historical Society unless otherwise indicated TEXT FROM THE NEW ENGLAND HISTORICAL SOCIETY FUNDING PROVIDED BY ROOSEVELT ISLAND OPERATING CORPORATION PUBLIC PURPORE GRANTS CITY COUNCIL REPRESENTATIVE BEN KALLOS DISCRETIONARY FUNDING THRU DYCD
JUNE 6th BRING YOUR DOG TO THE KIOSK TRAM PLAZA 1-4 P.M. DOG TREATS GOODIES FUN MERCHANDISE THE DOGS NEED A SOCIALLY DISTANCING FUN EVENT
IMAGE COURTESY OF MARC TETRO (C)
POLITICAL CARTOONS
THOMAS NAST ON WILLIAM “BOSS” MARCY TWEED
“The Brains” Harper’s Weekly Oct. 21, 1871
The Tammany Tiger Loose “What are you going to do about it?” Harper’s Weekly November, 1871
A group of Vultures Waiting for the Storm to “Blow Over”- “Let us Prey” Harper’s Weekly, Sept. 23, 1871
“No Prison is big enough to hold the Boss.”
In on one side, and out at the other. This Harper’s Weekly cartoon by Thomas Nast predicts that the legal authorities of New York City will not be able to keep William Tweed, the corrupt boss of Tammany Hall, in jail. In the 1860s and early 1870s,
William Tweed ran Tammany Hall, the powerful Democratic political machine in New York City, and served as the city’s public works commissioner and as a state senator (1867-1871). The name of Boss Tweed and his bulky visual caricature became synonymous with political corruption and greed, an association that remains potent even today. This is thanks in large part to the creatively memorable cartoons drawn by Thomas Nast for Harper’s Weekly.
As political boss, Tweed used his formal and informal authority to gain financial profit for himself and his Tammany Hall cohorts. The Tweed Ring, as they became known, extorted a reported $6 million from the public treasury, although more recent estimates put the figure between $30 to $200 million. Tweed became one of New York City’s largest landowners by the late 1860s, and spent his ill-gotten gain lavishly, living in a mansion on Fifth Avenue and wearing a large diamond stud on his shirt. Although criticized by good-government reformers, the Tweed Ring found support among the working class, many of whom were immigrants, by providing jobs and basic necessities like food and fuel, establishing the Manhattan Eye and Ear Hospital, and expanding the number of public baths, almshouses, and orphanages in the city. However, in the less than three years of the height of the Tweed Ring’s power (1869-1871),
New York City’s debt tripled and its taxes rose accordingly. The downfall of the Tweed Ring came when disgruntled Tammany Hall members leaked incriminating evidence to the New York Times, which published a series of damning articles beginning in July 1871. Harper’s Weekly and other newspapers joined the Times to expose the scandal, and Tweed allegedly most feared “those damned pictures” by Harper’s Weekly cartoonist Thomas Nast. In November 1871, Tweed was reelected to another term in the state senate.
In general, though, the press campaign against the Tweed Ring was successful, with most Tammany Hall candidates losing in the fall election. In December, Tweed was arrested on fraud charges, and forced to resign as public works commissioner, state senator, and head of Tammany Hall. The first criminal trial against Tweed resulted in a hung jury, but the second ended with a conviction on misdemeanor charges. The sentence was a $12,500 fine and 13 years in jail, which in 1875 an appeals court deduced to $250 and one year.
Since he had already served 19 months in the city jail on Blackwell’s Island, he was released. The police, however, rearrested him the next day to stand trial on the civil charges. Being unable to raise the $3 million bail, Tweed ended up in Ludlow Street jail. He was granted privileges and liberties not allowed to other inmates, such as carriage rides and visits to his home and those of his adult children.
On December 4, 1875, he escaped while on such a sojourn and hid out in New Jersey. In March 1876, the civil jury found Tweed guilty and liable for over $6 million. Learning of the judgment, he fled to Cuba, then Spain. In September, Spanish officials arrested and deported him, mistakenly identifying him (through a Nast cartoon) as a child abductor. Back in New York by late November, he was placed in the Ludlow Street jail again. In poor health, Tweed gave the attorney general, Charles Fairchild, a full confession as part of a deal for his release. Fairchild, however, changed his mind and Tweed remained in prison. The former political boss later testified before a Board of Aldermen investigation, detailing how the ring operated, but he received no pardon for his cooperation. In April 1878, he died in Ludlow Street jail of heart failure caused by pneumonia
REVEREND EDWARD COWLEY by THOMAS NAST
Shepherd’s Fold was an institution under Reverend Edward Cowley charged with helping children. Instead many died in their charge. For the sad tale, see “Damnation Island” by Stacy Horn”
Campaign against the Tweed Ring The “Brains” Boss Tweed depicted by Thomas Nast
Nast’s drawings were instrumental in the downfall of Boss Tweed, the powerful Tammany Hall leader. As commissioner of public works for New York City, Tweed led a ring that by 1870 had gained total control of the city’s government, and controlled “a working majority in the State Legislature” Tweed and his associates—Peter Barr Sweeny (park commissioner), Richard B. Connolly (controller of public expenditures), and Mayor A. Oakey Hall—defrauded the city of many millions of dollars by grossly inflating expenses paid to contractors connected to the Ring.
Nast, whose cartoons attacking Tammany corruption had appeared occasionally since 1867, intensified his focus on the four principal players in 1870 and especially in 1871. Tweed so feared Nast’s campaign that he sent an emissary to offer the artist a bribe of $100,000, which was represented as a gift from a group of wealthy benefactors to enable Nast to study art in Europe. Feigning interest,
Nast negotiated for more before finally refusing an offer of $500,000 with the words, “Well, I don’t think I’ll do it. I made up my mind not long ago to put some of those fellows behind the bars”. Nast pressed his attack in the pages of Harper’s, and the Ring was removed from power in the election of November 7, 1871. Tweed was arrested in 1873 and convicted of fraud. When Tweed attempted to escape justice in December 1875 by fleeing to Cuba and from there to Spain, officials in Vigo were able to identify the fugitive by using one of Nast’s cartoons.
Cartoon depicts how Tweed lived on Blackwell’s Island While others worked the quarry and lived in cells he seemed to be living in the warden’s house
EDITORIAL
Many of us have seen an increase in the number of four legged friends on the island since March. It is time for the dogs to have a day in the sun. Bring your pooch over to the kiosk on Saturday from 1 to 4 p.m. Snacks for them and all the water they can drink.
The kiosk is not open yet, but we will be glad to provide any gifts you need. We are eager to welcome everyone back soon! We have a real good deal on winter gloves, which were good sellers when we closed on March 15th!!!
See you Saturday and the Kiosk crew will be here to welcome you and your four legged friends back Judith Berdy 212 688 4836 Jbird134@aol.com
IMAGE OF THE DAY THURSDAY
What is this object and where is it located? E-Mail: jbird134@aol.com Win a trinket from the RIHS Kiosk
YESTERDAY’S IMAGE OF THE DAY
Correctly guessed by Shelly Brooks
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 Melanie Colter and Deborah Dorff
All image are copyrighted (c) Thanks to the RIHS Archives for Images Harper’s Weekly Archive Damnation Island
FUNDING PROVIDED BY: THE ROOSEVELT ISLAND OPERATING CORPORATION PUBLIC PURPOSE FUNDS
CITY COUNCIL MEMBER BEN KALLOS DISCRETIONARY FUNDS ADMINISTERED BY NYC DIVISION OF YOUTH AND COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT
MINIATURE WATER COLOR SCENES OF NEW YORK HARBOR AND ISLANDS
These unmarked cards were probably collecting cards, from Chapin Collection (c) RIHS
Blackwell’s Island
Ward’s Island
Astoria
Governor’s and Bedloe’s Islands
Fort Hamilton
Staten Island
Governor’s Island
FEEDING THE ISLAND
After looking at the 19th and early 20th century dining choices, we will be glad to live here now.
Superintendent’s Cook
City Hospital Kitchen
Un-named Kitchen
Dinner at the Men’s Almshouse
Dinner at the Women’s Almshouse
Dinner will be served at the Penitentiary
(c) Ben Shahn Collection Harvard Museums
Island Staff including chef
Metropolitan Hospital School of Nursing Dining Room at Draper Hall
Effler family outside Blackwell House Kitchen with cook
Goldwater cook that prepared over 3.000 meals a day in the kitchens
Goldwater’s kitchens prepared meals for all special occasions
With this crowd, I am sure food was involved
WEDNESDAY’S PHOTO OF THE DAY
What is this and where is it located E-mail jbird134@aol.com Win a trinket from Kiosk
TUESDAY’S PHOTO OF THE DAY A SECTION OF ROSE WINDOW IN CHAPEL OF THE GOOD SHEPHERD
EDITORIAL #blackouttuesday
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 Melanie Colter and Deborah Dorff
All image are copyrighted (c) Roosevelt Island Historical Society unless otherwise indicated TEXT FROM THE NEW ENGLAND HISTORICAL SOCIETY FUNDING PROVIDED BY ROOSEVELT ISLAND OPERATING CORPORATION PUBLIC PURPOSE GRANTS CITY COUNCIL REPRESENTATIVE BEN KALLOS DISCRETIONARY FUNDING THRU DYCD
