Rosalind Bengelsdorf, Seated Woman, 1938, oil on canvas, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of Patricia and Phillip Frost, 1986.92.11
One of the youngest members of the American Abstract Artists, Rosalind Bengelsdorf championed abstraction in her writings and lectures as well as in her paintings.
As a teenager, she studied at the Art Students League (1930–34) with John Steuart Curry, Raphael Soyer, Anne Goldthwaite, and George Bridgman, and then for a year at the Annot School. In 1935, she entered Hans Hofmann’s atelier as one of the many scholarship students he took on. The following year, she joined the abstract artists working on WPA murals under Burgoyne Diller’s enlightened leadership. In Hans Hofmann, Bengelsdorf found a true mentor. His dedication to the painting as an independent object matched her growing belief that the picture plane was a “living reality” of forms, energies, and colors. Like Hofmann, Bengelsdorf believed that “the shapes that compose the picture belong to nothing else but the picture.”
She had begun to analyze objects in terms of geometric form under George Bridgman at the league and subsequently at Annot. In a high school chemistry class, Bengelsdorf became fascinated with the idea that space is filled with “myriad, infinitesimal subdivisions.” She saw “the universe as a charged miracle, a vibrating orchestration of the continuous interplay of all forms of matter.” Under Hofmann, who emphasized the interrelationship of objects and the environments they occupy, these impulses merged. For Bengelsdorf, the artist’s task became the description of “not only what he sees but also what he knows of the natural internal function” of objects and the “laws of energy that govern all matter: the opposition, tension, interrelation, combination and destruction of planes in space.”
This meant that the abstract painter was studying the laws of nature, tearing it apart and then reorganizing the parts into a new creation. Despite this emphasis on formalism, Bengelsdorf also believed that abstract art played a larger function within society. She separated artistic concerns from economic ones and championed art’s potential for increasing knowledge and understanding. Satire, motion pictures, posters, and other pictorial solutions addressed some kinds of human concerns; but the larger ones — of the mind, of the possibility for order within life’s experience — these were the domain of abstraction.
In her own paintings, such as Abstraction and Seated Woman, Bengelsdorfwas concerned with these questions. Abstraction, which relates to a WPA mural (now destroyed) Bengelsdorf painted for the Central Nurses Home on Welfare Island, balances simple geometric forms through position and color. Seated Woman, which was featured in the 1939 American Abstract Artists annual exhibition, owes a clear debt to Picasso’s Girl Before a Mirror (1932, Museum of Modern Art) and gives clear evidence of her belief that “energy and form are inseparable.”
After her marriage to Byron Browne in1940, and the birth of their son, Bengelsdorf turned from full-time painting to teaching, writing, and criticism. An articulate and perceptive writer, she often reviewed the exhibitions of work by her friends from the early days of the American Abstract Artists, and continued, through her writings, to champion the cause of abstract art.
They decided that there should be only “one painter in the family,” so Rosalind turned her attention to writing and teaching, only picking up a paintbrush again after her husband died in 1961 (Fraser, “Rosalind Browne, 62; Was Abstract Painter, Teacher and Historian,” New York Times, February 1979).
Rosalind Bengelsdorf, Abstraction, 1938, oil on canvas, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of Patricia and Phillip Frost, 1986.92.10
Rosalind Bengelsdorf believed that “energy and form are inseparable,” and created paintings that expressed her interest in physical science. Here, the round, cell-like shape at the bottom of the image contrasts with the rigid lines that divide the canvas. The bright primary colors and simple shapes express the artist’s wish to “tear … apart” nature into its basic forms and reconstruct the pieces into something new (Bengelsdorf, “The New Realism,” American Abstract Artists, 1938).
“[The artist’s] painting expresses the love of life, the form and color of life—a vibrating response to its powerful energy.” Bengelsdorf, “The New Realism,” American Abstract Artists, 1938
Rosalind Bengelsdorf, Cane Press, Untitled, from the portfolio American Abstract Artists, 1937, offset lithograph on paper, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of Patricia and Phillip Frost, 1986.92.114.3
“THE MURALS THAT NEVER WERE” CENTRAL NURSES RESIDENCE WELFARE ISLAND
Central Nurses’ Residence, Metropolitan Hospital, Welfare Island, 1935. Collection of the Public Design Commission of the City of New York.
The Art Commission reviewed abstract murals by Richard Goldman and Rosalind Bengelsdorf for the Central Nurses Residence. While Richard Goldman’s mural for the fourth floor living room of the Central Nurses Residence sailed through the review process without changes, Rosalind Bengelsdorf faced difficulties with her proposal for the fifth floor living room. It was first disapproved in March 1938. A simplified proposal that included more curvilinear forms was resubmitted in June of the same year. It too was rejected. Finally in November, she offered yet another revision, much less abstract, with visual references to musical instruments and musical notes. It was approved in December 1938. Judging from the material in the Commission’s archives, this was the only abstract mural proposal that the Commission requested be altered. Perhaps not coincidentally, it was also the only submission from a female artist.
The Art Commission reviewed abstract murals by Richard Goldman and Rosalind Bengelsdorf for the Central Nurses Residence. While Richard Goldman’s mural for the fourth floor living room of the Central Nurses Residence sailed through the review process without changes, Rosalind Bengelsdorf faced difficulties with her proposal for the fifth floor living room. It was first disapproved in March 1938. A simplified proposal that included more curvilinear forms was resubmitted in June of the same year. It too was rejected. Finally in November, she offered yet another revision, much less abstract, with visual references to musical instruments and musical notes. It was approved in December 1938. Judging from the material in the Commission’s archives, this was the only abstract mural proposal that the Commission requested be altered. Perhaps not coincidentally, it was also the only submission from a female artist.
Below are the second and third submissions.
BYRON BROWNE
Byron Browne, Abstract Collage, 1933, pen and ink, ink wash, gouache, and paper on paper mounted on paperboard, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of Patricia and Phillip Frost, 1986.92.7
Modernist painter and one of the founders of American Abstract Artists, a New York City organization devoted to exhibiting abstract art. Browne specialized in still life in the style of Synthetic Cubism, influenced by his friends John Graham, Arshile Gorky, and Willem de Kooning.
Joan Stahl American Artists in Photographic Portraits from the Peter A. Juley & Son Collection (Washington, D.C. and Mineola, New York: National Museum of American Art and Dover Publications, Inc., 1995)
Byron Browne was a central figure in many of the artistic and political groups that flourished during the 1930s. He was an early member of the Artists’ Union, a founding member of the American Abstract Artists, and participated in the Artists’ Congress until 1940 when political infighting prompted Browne and others to form the break-away Federation of Modern Painters and Sculptors. Browne’s artistic training followed traditional lines. From 1925 to 1928, he studied at the National Academy of Design, where in his last year he won the prestigious Third Hallgarten Prize for a still-life composition. Yet before finishing his studies, Browne discovered the newly established Gallery of Living Art. There and through his friends John Graham and Arshile Gorky, he became fascinated with Picasso, Braque, Miró, and other modern masters.
The mid 1930s were difficult financially for Browne.(1) His work was exhibited in a number of shows, but sales were few. Relief came when Burgoyne Diller began championing abstraction within the WPA’s mural division. Browne completed abstract works for Studio D at radio station WNYC, the U.S. Passport Office in Rockefeller Center, the Chronic Disease Hospital, the Williamsburg Housing Project, and the 1939 World’s Fair.(2)
Although Browne destroyed his early academic work shortly after leaving the National Academy, he remained steadfast in his commitment to the value of tradition, and especially to the work of Ingres.(3) Browne believed, with his friend Gorky, that every artist has to have tradition. Without tradition art is no good. Having a tradition enables you to tackle new problems with authority, with solid footing.(4)”
Browne’s stylistic excursions took many paths during the 1930s. His WNYC mural reflects the hard-edged Neo-plastic ideas of Diller, although a rougher Expressionism better suited his fascination for the primitive, mythical, and organic. A signer, with Harari and others, of the 1937 Art Front letter, which insisted that abstract art forms “are not separated from life,” Browne admitted nature to his art—whether as an abstracted still life, a fully nonobjective canvas built from colors seen in nature, or in portraits and figure drawings executed with immaculate, Ingres-like finesse.(5) He advocated nature as the foundation for all art and had little use for the spiritual and mystical arguments promoted by Hilla Rebay at the Guggenheim Collection: When I hear the words non-objective, intra-subjective, avant-garde and such trivialities, I run. There is only visible nature, visible to the eye or, visible by mechanical means, the telescope, microscope, etc.”(6)
Increasingly in the 1940s, Browne adopted an energetic, gestural style. Painterly brushstrokes and roughly textured surfaces amplify the primordial undercurrents posed by his symbolic and mythical themes. In 1945, Browne showed with Adolph Gottlieb, William Baziotes, David Hare, Hans Hofmann, Carl Holty, Romare Bearden, and Robert Motherwell at the newly opened Samuel Kootz Gallery. When Kootz suspended business for a year in 1948, Browne began showing at Grand Central Galleries. In 1950, he joined the faculty of the Art Students League, and in 1959 he began teaching advanced painting at New York University.
1. When she met him in October 1934, Rosalind Bengelsdorf Browne recalled that her future husband’s daily diet consisted of a quart of milk, a box of cornmeal, a head of lettuce, and some raisins. See Rosalind Bengelsdorf Browne Papers, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C.
2. Browne was also involved with Léger’s mural project for the French Line terminal building that was canceled after officials discovered Léger’s communist sympathies. See Rosalind Bengelsdorf Browne Papers, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C.
3. The abstract quality of Ingres’s work held special appeal not only for Browne, but for John Graham and Arshile Gorky. Rosalind Bengelsdorf Browne remembered Gorky waving an Ingres reproduction around at the opening of the first American Abstract Artists annual exhibition and proclaiming that the French master was more “abstract” than all the work in the exhibition. See Rosalind Bengelsdorf Browne Papers, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C.
4. Gorky is quoted in Melvin P. Lader, “Graham, Gorky, de Kooning and the “Ingres Revival” in America,” Arts Magazine 52, no. 7 (March 1978): 99.
5. The classical drawings, a group of which was exhibited at Washburn Gallery in 1977, show heads (often of cross-eyed women) and classically garbed and garlanded seated figures. They have important stylistic parallels to John Graham’s paintings and drawings of the period.
6. Quoted in Gail Levin, “Byron Browne in the Context of Abstract Expressionism,” Arts Magazine 59, no. 10 (Summer 1985): 129. Browne’s notebook is in the collection of his son Stephen B. Browne. Theidea of portraying matter visible through telescope or microscope parallels the fusion of scientific and artistic vision discussed by Rosalind Bengelsdorf.
Virginia M. Mecklenburg The Patricia and Phillip Frost Collection: American Abstraction 1930–1945 (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press for the National Museum of American Art, 1989)
Byron Browne worked at a lumberyard to pay his tuition at the National Academy of Design, where he enrolled in 1925. He was inspired by European artists such as Pablo Picasso and Joan Miró and in 1930 burned several of his realistic works as a gesture against conventional painting. He was a founder of the American Abstract Artists and in 1935 led a march protesting museums that did not collect modern work. After World War II, Browne exhibited frequently at the Kootz Gallery, which ardently supported avant-garde American artists. While abstract expressionism dominated New York’s art world, Browne’s paintings, which still showed recognizable figures and objects, failed to draw an audience. The gallery sold all of Browne’s work in a department store sale at “50% off,” dealing a heavy blow to the artist’s career. (Rogers, Byron Browne, A Seminal American Modernist, 2001)
Byron Browne, Cane Press, Untitled, from the portfolio American Abstract Artists, 1937, offset lithograph on paper, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of Patricia and Phillip Frost, 1986.92.114.6
Byron Browne, Head, 1938, oil on fiberboard, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of Patricia and Phillip Frost, 1986.92.9
At first glance, Byron Browne’s Head appears frightening, with its menacing mouth and abstracted features. The pastel colors and the figure’s gaze, however, make it less intimidating and perhaps more human. Browne was greatly inspired by nature and felt his artwork should reflect what he saw in spite of his abstract style. The figure in Head also evokes a primitive mask. This type of mask, predominately from Africa, but also from Asia and Pre-Columbian America, was inspirational for a number of abstract artists during the first half of the twentieth century due to its simplified geometric shapes and sometimes brightly colored designs. Browne became interested in primitive masks while studying at the National Academy of Design in the 1920s. His style was also greatly shaped by European abstract artists, particularly Pablo Picasso, whose works reflected the influence of primitive masks as early as 1907. “I sometimes paint the object more, I sometimes paint the object less, but by all means I must paint the object.” The artist, quoted in Levin, “Byron Browne: In the Context of Abstract Expressionism” (Arts Magazine, Summer 1985)
http://Byron Browne, White Still Life, 1947, oil on canvas, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of Katie and Walter C. Louchheim, 1971.6
Above: “Festival at Hamburg,” a mural study for the Hamburg, Iowa Post Office, by William Edward Lewis Bunn (1910-2009), created while he was in the New Deal’s Section of Fine Arts, 1941. According to SNAC, a collaborative enterprise that includes the National Archives and the University of California, “Wiliam Edward Lewis Bunn was a designer, muralist, and painter in Muscatine, Iowa and Ojai, Calif… During the 1930s he won commissions from the Federal Department of Fine Arts [the U.S. Treasury and the Federal Works Agency] to paint murals in public buildings throughout the Midwest. He also worked as an industrial designer for Shaeffer Pen and Cuckler Steel.” Image courtesy of the Smithsonian American Art Museum.
FROM WNYC STUDIO TO NEW STATEN ISLAND COURTHOUSE
Byron Browne WNYC mural. (Photo courtesy of the Art Commission of the City of New York/FAP-WPA Photo)
Of all the artists, Byron Browne was the only one who tailored his work to fit the studio. He painted directly onto the acoustic tiles that were the soundproofing of the room. The mural (as well as the von Wicht) and some of WNYC’s Warren McArthur furniture had been used as part of 1986/87 Brooklyn Museum show The Machine Age in America, 1918-1941. Unfortunately, the mural did not return to WNYC but was moved to the city office of Management and Budget on the north side of the Municipal Building. Eventually, there were changes to those offices and the work was stored with the Art Commission of the City of New York. The mural was recently conserved and installed in the new Staten Island Courthouse.
The image of the mural was used on annual report cover.
SEATING AREA BEHIND THE NEW 460 MAIN STREET NINA LUBLIN GUESSED THE WATER CONTAINERS USED FOR WEIGHT TESTING OF THE TRAM CABINS
Jay Jacobson came up with a unique answer to the question:
A supply of celebratory adult beverages for huge 8 day festival when retail shops on the Island are leased to merchants who understand that coming to Roosevelt Island is not merely to make money but also to provide a genuine community benefit. One of the vats is filled with sacred extra virgin olive oil.
OOPS ON SATURDAY WE DID NOT MENTION THAT ALEXIS VILLEFANE GUESSED THE SAYRE AND FISHER BRICKS AT THE CHAPEL!!! ALEXIS IS OUR NUMBER ONE PHOTO IDENTIFIER .JAY JACOBSON NINA LUBLIN, JOAN BROOKS AND MANY OTHERS ARE DOING GREAT.
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EDITORIAL
Start with one idea and you never know where you end up. I was looking into Rosalind Bengelsdorf and discovered she was married to to artist Byron Browne.
I had heard that Bengelsdorf had designed murals for the Central Nurses Residence. I discovered images of her three designs on the website of the Design Commission, formerly the Art Commission. You can see the images on the pages here.
We found an image of the WNYC studio on their website. Trying to find an image, we could not find one of the mural in its new home in the Staten Island courthouse. Finally, I located it on the cover of an annual report.
Without the wonderful websites and reference material. you can track down so much with your key board.
TODAY WE USED: WIKIPEDIA THE LIVING NEW DEAL NYC DESIGN COMMISSION WNYC ARCHIVES RIHS ARCHIVES
Judith Berdy
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)
PHOTOS FROM JUDITH BERDY COPYRIGHT RIHS/2020 (C)
MATERIAL COPYRIGHT WIKIPEDIA, GOOGLE IMAGES, RIHS ARCHIVES AND MAY NOT BE REPRODUCED WITHOUT PERMISSION (C) FOR THIS ISSUE: SEE EDITORIAL ATTACHED
FUNDING BY ROOSEVELT ISLAND OPERATING CORPORATION PUBLIC PURPOSE FUNDING
DISCRETIONARY FUNDING BY COUNCIL MEMBER BEN KALLOS THRU NYC DYCD
I cannot believe this Monday is our 150th issue!!! Send us your favorite articles and items that were in the first 149 issues of FROM THE ARCHIVES. Your comments are welcome too. We will feature them in issue #150. Issue #150 is on MONDAY. Send to rooseveltislandhistory@gmail.com
WEEKEND EDITION
SEPTMEBER 5-6, 2020 The 149th Edition
DONALD DE LUE
MASTER IN BRONZE
THE ROCKET THROWER FLUSHING MEADOWS PARK, NY
The “Rocket Thrower” by Donald De Lue commissioned for the 1964 Worlds Fair, in Flushing Meadows Park in Queens in New York
Life and career De Lue studied at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts and later served as an assistant to sculptors Richard Henry Recchia and Robert P. Baker. This was followed by five years in Paris where he continued his study, while working as an assistant to various French artists.
He returned to the United States where he was engaged by Bryant Baker. In 1940 he was elected into the National Academy of Design as an Associate member, and became a full Academician in 1943. In 1941, De Lue won a competition to create sculpture for the U.S. Post Office and Courthouse Building in Philadelphia, and from then on he stopped being an assistant for other artists and only worked on his own commissions and creations.
De Lue’s works can be found in many museums across America. Like many other sculptors of his generation, he executed architectural works. He was also a prolific designer of medals and medallions. De Lue taught at the Beaux-Arts Institute of Design in New York City during the early 1940s. (See Issue #142 on August 28th)
In 1960, he won two Henry Hering Awards, given by the National Sculpture Society for outstanding collaboration between a sculptor and an architect, for the Normandy American Cemetery and Memorial in Colleville-sur-Mer, France, and for the Stations of the Cross at the Loyola Jesuit Seminary in Shrub Oak, New York.
In 1967, De Lue won the American Numismatic Society’s J. Sanford Saltus Award for Outstanding Achievement in the Art of the Medal, known as the Saltus Award. Beginning in 1964, for many years De Lue was a Trustee of Brookgreen Gardens, as well as Chairman of the Art Committee. In his later years, De Lue and his wife Naomi (who served as a model for many of his statues) lived in the Leonardo section of Middletown Township, New Jersey, a small shore town with a bayside beach and long-distance view of lower Manhattan.
De Lue cited the 23rd Psalm and the words “He leadeth me beside the still waters…” as the inspiration by which he arrived in Leonardo from New York City. Although he continued to maintain his NYC apartment, it was in his Leonardo studio that many of his largest statues were made. One of the last was a commission by a private individual intended for the Alamo in San Antonio, Texas. The bigger-than-life statue of Bowie, Travis and Crockett was considered “too violent” by the Daughters of the Republic of Texas for placement in a sacred chapel.
A compromise was sought, that the statue be installed outside the building in the large courtyard rather than inside. DeLue and his patron, a wealthy Texan, preferred the statue be installed in the interior space for which it was made. Unfortunately, the impasse was never resolved in De Lue’s lifetime. Donald and Naomi De Lue are buried in Manalapan Township, New Jersey at the cemetery at Old Tennent Presbyterian Church.
PHOTO NY DAILY NEWS (C) 2013
JUSTICE AND LAW PHILADELPHIA FEDERAL BUILDING 1941
THE ALCHEMIST UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA 1940
NORMANDY AMERICAN CEMETERY COLLEVILLE-SUR-MER, FRANCE
The loggias and colonnade are made of Vaurion, a French limestone from the Cote d’Or region. Centered in the open arc of the memorial facing the graves area is a 22-foot tall bronze statue, The Spirit of American Youth Rising from the Waves, created by the American sculptor Donald De Lue. The statue stands on a rectangular pedestal of Ploumanach granite from Brittany, France. Encircling the pedestal of the statue on the floor in bronze letters is the inscription: MINE EYES HAVE SEEN THE GLORY OF THE COMING OF THE LORD.
ICARUS
Donald De Lue, Icarus, modeled 1934, signed 1945, plaster with metallic patination, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Bequest of the artist, 1989.29
JACOBI HOSPITAL, BRONX, NY
Donald De Lue Untitled, 1954 incised white marble relief 11′ x 7′ Main entrance lobby (Abraham Jacobi Hospital Building)
One of the most popular portrait series of medals in the world, the Hall of Fame for Great Americans Series honors the most famous Americans chosen by highly selected judging committees and sponsored by New York University. The first election was held in 1900 — when a building was erected to house the Hall and an ongoing collection of statues. Elections were held every five years thereafter. Bronze statues of the honorees were installed within outside niches along the open colonnade at the University Heights campus. It partly surrounds a Pantheon style building created by architect Stamford White that has served as a library and auditorium over its first century. The Medals.
In 1962 a coalition was formed to sponsor and market fine art medals to honor these same famous Americans. The coalition consisted of New York University, the owner of the Hall of Fame; the National Sculpture Society, which would furnish an art committee; the Medallic Art Company, which would manufacture the medals; and the Coin and Currency Institute which would market the medals.
The Art Committee was formed of five members with sculptor Donald De Lue as chairman; this committee issued commissions to American sculptors who expressed an interest in creating one or more of the medals. (Those sculptors who had created the bust were given first choice to do the medal.) Over the next 13 years, 96 medalswere created by 42 sculptors, predominantly members of the National Sculpture Society.
Rules for the medal design were simple. It had to bear a portrait on the obverse, significant scene from that subject’s accomplishment for the reverse. The lettering HALL OF FAME FOR GREAT AMERICANS AT NEW YORK UNIVERSITY must appear on the medal, either side was permissible. While the design was left to the artist, each submission had to pass the approval of the Art Committee composed of the artist’s sculptural peers. Medals were struck in two sizes. A large 3-inch (76mm) size in bronze only, and a small 1 3/4-inch (44mm) in bronze and silver. The silver was serially numbered.
Medalist Laura Gardin Fraser had selected two medals to create — Mary Lyon and Gilbert Stuart — but died before completing the models. Sculptor Karl Gruppe finished the two medals as close to her designs and style as possible. The two Wright Brothers, with different statues and years of election, appear on one medal, by Paul Fjelde. Later status. In 1973 and 1976 the last 20th century elections were held and seven new honorees* were elected into the Hall (which would fill in every niche in the colonnade). In 1973 New York University sold their University Heights Campus to City College of New York along with the building and the statues forming the Colonnade. The statues, and the Hall of Fame itself, were in limbo for awhile. Bronx Community College, which now occupies the campus, is present stewardship of the Hall.
Since 1977 no elections have been held, no new statues erected or medals issued. However, visitors to New York City can still travel to University Heights in the Bronx and walk the Colonnade, viewing the magnificent statues overlooking the Hudson River. Or they can build a set of fine art medals created by some of the most talented medalists of the 20th century with high relief portraits and stunning medallic art. * For 1973: Louis Brandeis, George Washington Carver, Franklin Delano Roosevelt and John Phillip Sousa. For 1976: Clara Barton, Luther Burbank and Andrew Carnegie.
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FRIDAY PHOTO OF THE DAY
SAYRE AND FISHER BRICK THAT WAS PLACED ON THE REVERSE IN THE CHAPEL. IT IS ON THE NORTH WALL NEAR THE EXIT
A little information about the bricks in the Chapel of the Good Shepherd:
Sayre and Fisher Brick Company was established in 1850 by James R. Sayre, Jr., and Peter Fisher,and later became one of the USA’s leading manufacturers of building brick, fire brick, and enamel brick.
In 1876 the area around the village then known as Wood’s Landing was renamed Sayreville, after the company’s co-founder. It eventually acquired most factories along the Raritan River, and by 1905 operated a two-mile-long complex with 13 separate yards. By 1912, production reached 62 million bricks a year, providing employment for a large part of the local population, some of whom lived in company housing.
The complex included a power plant, granary, bakery, slaughterhouse, coal yard, ice plant, general store, machine shop, and blacksmith shop. Among the structures built with bricks from the company are the Empire State Building, Rockefeller Center, the base of the Statue of Liberty, and the Brooklyn Academy of Music.
Brick manufacturing declined in the Great Depression, but recovered and stayed profitable into the 1960s. The Sayre and Fisher plant closed in 1970. While most of the industrial buildings were razed, the reading room and some housing buildings remain. The water tower has been restored.
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EDITORIAL
When researching artwork at other municipal hospitals, we discovered the work of Donald De Lue. Turns out we found another great artist and his work. Our H+H system has an amazing collection of artworks and we will feature more in the future.
Enjoy the story of the backwards brick at the Chapel. Next time you are there, see if you can locate it.
Judith Berdy
Funding Provided by: Roosevelt Island Operating Corporation Public Purpose Funds Council Member Ben Kallos City Council Discretionary Funds thru DYCD Text by Judith Berdy
CREDITS:
NEW YORK TIMES NEW YORK DAILY NEWS SMITHSONIAN AMERICAN ART MUSEUM WIKIPEDIA NYC PARKS DEPT. Thanks to Deborah Dorff for maintaining our website Edited by Deborah Dorff ALL PHOTOS COPYRIGHT RIHS. 2020 (C) PHOTOS IN THIS ISSUE (C) JUDITH BERDY RIHS
I cannot believe this Monday is our 150th issue!!! Send us your favorite articles and items that were in the first 149 issues of FROM THE ARCHIVES. Your comments are welcome too. We will feature them in issue #150. Issue #150 is on MONDAY.
Elizabeth Kolligs works on restoring Vertis Hayes’s “Pursuit of Happiness” at Harlem Hospital.Credit…Karsten Moran for The New York Times
At Harlem Hospital, Murals Get a New Life
From the NY Times (C): By Robin Pogrebin Sept. 16, 2012 This article is from 2012 and the mural pavilion is easy visible from the street
When the Works Progress Administration commissioned murals for Harlem Hospital Center in 1936, it easily approved the sketches submitted by seven artists, which depicted black people at work and at play throughout history. The hospital, however, objected, saying four of the sketches focused too much on “Negro” subject matter and that blacks “may not form the greater part of the Community” in years to come. Protesters rallied around the art, though, lodging complaints as high as President Franklin D. Roosevelt, and the murals ultimately prevailed.
Over the years, those wall paintings deteriorated or were obscured by plaster. Now they have been restored and brought front and center as part of a new, $325 million patient pavilion for the hospital, on Lenox Avenue at 135th Street that will be unveiled on Sept. 27. The WPA’s Federal Art Project, created in 1935 to support and employ artists, commissioned more than 500 murals for New York City’s public hospitals.
Harlem Hospital’s were perhaps the first major federal government commissions awarded to African-Americans.
The artists — the last of whom, Georgette Seabrooke, died last year — were not well known and their murals portrayed ordinary people going about their daily lives. Vertis Hayes’s “Pursuit of Happiness” panel traces the African diaspora from 18th-century African village life to slavery in America to 20th-century freedom; from agrarian struggles in the South to professional success in the industrialized North.
Ms. Seabrooke’s “Recreation in Harlem” depicts children roughhousing, a couple dancing, a group of women chatting. After decades of renovations and building changes, some of the murals had all but disappeared. But they were rediscovered in 2004 during a campus modernization project by the architecture firm HOK. At that point, all conservators could see of the Seabrooke mural was the left-hand corner where the artist had signed her name.
The new pavilion at Harlem Hospital will showcase murals.The murals’ new home is a 192,000-square-foot building — called the Mural Pavilion — that connects the existing Martin Luther King Jr. Pavilion to the Ron Brown Building. The Mural Pavilion contains new intensive care units, surgery rooms, clinics, imaging spaces and an emergency department.
Part of the hospital’s mandate to the architects was to save the murals, and the cost has been considerable, topping $4 million, which had to be raised privately. “We were going to preserve these national treasures,” said Deborah Thornhill, the hospital’s associate executive director for strategic planning. “They’re an important part of the history of the hospital, the community and the country.” Where the murals had been visible only to staff members and patients, now they have a gallery all to themselves, visible from the street.
Digital enlargements of three of the murals adorn the building’s 12,000-square-foot glass facade. These color images — printed on the glass using ceramic ink — are a city block long and five stories high. “All the murals tell wonderful stories,” said Chuck Siconolfi, HOK’s senior principal for health care. “We said, ‘Let’s go beyond displaying these murals and make them emblematic of the whole community and its role in American life.” “This was not only a cultural device but a therapeutic device,” he added.
“They are as much a tool in the delivery of care as any radiological device or any scalpel.” Because the digital copies of the murals are backlit, the facade essentially becomes a light box, “to the point,” Kenneth Drucker, HOK’s director of design, said jokingly, “where there could be some traffic accidents on the street.
The facade can also be appreciated from inside the building, the architects said, since column-free corridors are directly behind it, and patients can look into the gallery from adjoining waiting areas and hallways. “When you talk to people about the murals, they listen politely,” Ms. Thornhill said. “It’s only when they walk in the gallery and see how awesome they are that you get the ‘wow’ moment.”
The other murals include Charles Alston’s “Magic in Medicine” and “Modern Medicine,” a diptych that highlights both traditional and modern healing practices in Africa and the United States. A ritual Fang reliquary sculpture from Gabon, in Central Africa, for example, is juxtaposed with a microscope. Ms. Thornhill said Mr. Alston featured Myra Logan, whom he would later marry, as a nurse in the painting; she was an intern at the time and eventually became a surgeon. Mr. Alston also included the microbiologist Louis Pasteur and a surgeon modeled after Louis T. Wright, the first African-American physician appointed to the hospital and a friend of the artist. “The artist wanted to share the importance of African-American and white physicians working together toward a common goal,” Ms. Thornhill said.
More than 75 years ago, in response to the initial rejection of the murals by the hospital superintendent, the Harlem Artists Guild issued a statement with the Artists Union — copies of which were sent to Mayor Fiorello H. La Guardia and members of President Roosevelt’s cabinet in addition to the president himself. The hospital had rejected the murals, citing the extent of the “Negro subject matter,” the possible demographic change in the neighborhood in years to come and the hospital’s perception that the murals would offend some blacks. Publicity about the controversy aroused support for the artists. The hospital’s commissioner eventually reversed his decision after determining that “there was no offense to Negroes in these paintings.”
The current restoration of the murals was overseen by the city’s Public Design Commission, which questioned whether it was appropriate to display the murals so prominently because, as a matter of history, they had previously been located largely out of public view.
The surviving son of Ms. Hayes testified before the commission that it was not only appropriate “but the correction of an injustice to have hidden them in a back corridor,” Ms. Thornhill said. Although the hospital raised $4.2 million to restore the murals, it is still seeking funds to finish the work; Ms. Seabrooke’s mural — the most conservation intensive — still needs $400,000 worth of work. “It was a struggle for the artists to create them,” said Denise C. Soares, the hospital’s executive director. “And it was our honor to conserve their legacy.”
The new pavilion at Harlem Hospital will showcase murals. Credit…Karsten Moran for The New York Times
“MODERN SURGERY AND ANESTHESIA” ALFRED CIMI
Alfred Cimi’s Modern Surgery and Anesthesia is the only fresco in the Harlem Hospital Center. Crimi, an accomplished fresco artist trained in Italy, was the only non-African American commissioned for the project. A fresco is a challenging technique in which watercolor is applied rapidly to wet lime plaster. As it dries, the colors become fixed in the plaster. Modern Surgery and Anesthesia was created in an alcove in the former Physician’s Dining Room.
“RECREATION IN HARLEM”
GEORGETTE SEABROOKE
A detail of Georgette Seabrooke’s “Recreation in Harlem.”Credit…Karsten Moran for The New York Times
“IN PURSUIT OF HAPPINESS” VERTIS HAYES
Vertis Hayes’s eight-panel mural spans both walls of the first-floor corridor of the New Nurses Residence. The work chronologically follows an arc of African American history, transporting the viewer from Africa to America, from an African village to an American city peopled by African Americans in zoot suits and white nurse’s dresses. The mural also suggests the migration of African Americans from their agrarian lives in the South to the industrialized North, an experience of personal significance for the artist who himself migrated from Atlanta to New York. Hayes’s work deploys numerous motifs of progress, which, for many artists of the period, was symbolized by capitalism and Western civilization. In this mural, Hayes describes the irresistible force of progress symbolized by a giant cog. Most likely, he borrowed this symbol from another African American artist, Aaron Douglas, who uses a cog in his 1934 muralAspects of Negro Life, also created under the patronage of the WPA for the 135th Street branch of the New York Public Library.
Crocodile 1st century BC- 1st century AD Red granite
In ancient times crocodiles lived in great numbers on the banks of the Nile. Ancient Egyptians had an ambivalent attitude toward these animals, as they did toward many other species. Crocodiles were the most dangerous creatures in the Egyptian environment, and so embodied the essence of evil. On the other hand, they were also believed to incarnate the ba (soul) of the creator god Sobek. In this role crocodiles represented cosmic and regenerative powers, and might accompany deities such as Isis.
During Hellenistic and Roman times the cults of the Egyptian gods Isis and Serapis, along with elements of their Egyptian iconography including the crocodile, spread widely throughout the Mediterranean and reached Rome itself. Placed in the context of Roman art, crocodile images served primarily to evoke the Nilotic environment. This superb sculpture serves the same function today at the temple of Dendur.
Text from the Metropolitan Museum of Art label.
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My neighbor Anne Cripps asked me a question this morning about the Harlem Hospital murals. I hope this issue is the answer. The project was done in 2012 by Evergreene Studios. Working in an active hospital, which was under construction and restoration at the time revealed a wonderful art experience after many years of planning and restoration.
Harlem is a municipal hospital owned and operated by the NYC Health + Hospitals. This hospital, like Coler treats all persons without question of immigration status or ability to pay.
Judith Berdy
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For those of you who have not been commuting recently there are some images to remind you of your traveling world. You may work from home even longer after seeing these.
“Locomotive Standing,” a lithograph by Harold Faye (1910-1980), created while he was in the WPA’s Federal Art Program, 1939. Image courtesy of the General Services Administration and the Gibbes Museum of Art.
“Locomotive Standing,” a lithograph by Harold Faye (1910-1980), created while he was in the WPA’s Federal Art Program, 1939. Image courtesy of the General Services Administration and the Gibbes Museum of Art.
“Long Island Railroad,” an oil painting by Earl John Colville (1878-1970), created while he was in the WPA’s Federal Art Project, 1937. Image courtesy of the General Services Administration and Gregory Halpern.
“Wall Street Station,” a lithograph by Elizabeth Olds (1896-1991), created while she was in the WPA’s Federal Art Project, ca. 1935-1938. Image courtesy of the General Services Administration and the Baltimore Museum of Art.
Dox Thrash, Railroad Yard, ca. 1933-1934, aquatint, etching and pencil on paper, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Museum purchase, 1981.11.2
Jack Savitsky, Train in Coal Town, 1968, oil on fiberboard, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of Herbert Waide Hemphill, Jr. and museum purchase made possible by Ralph Cross Johnson, 1986.65.137 Jack Savitsky’s Train in Coal Town depicts a coal-fired passenger train traveling between Pottsville and Silver Creek, two well-known coal towns in Pennsylvania. Behind the smoky plume of the locomotive stand a blue-gray coal breaker and eight mill houses—the very houses that make up the painting’s border. Savitsky conveys the sameness and unending work of the company town through his use of repetitive patterning and decorative elements. However, the lively colors and cheerful rural setting also reflect an energetic spirit within the miner community. Title Train in Coal Town Artist Jack Savitsky Date 1968 Location Smithsonian American Art Museum Luce Foundation Center 3rd Floor 22A Dimensions
Karl Fortess, Island Dock Yard, 1934, oil on canvas, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Transfer from the U.S. Department of Labor, 1964.1.94
Trains, trucks, and industrial buildings were what Karl Fortess envisioned when the Public Works of Art Project suggested that he depict “the American Scene.” The artist left his home in the picturesque artists’ colony of Woodstock, New York, and traveled ten miles to Kingston to make this painting. Kingston had long been a thriving Hudson River port town that supplied Pennsylvania coal and local brick, stone, and cement to New York City. The Depression slowed shipping, but a newly invented concrete mixture stimulated the local cement business. Fortess’s pictorial research at Kingston was demanding, as he noted, “Inclement weather and bad roads have made it impossible to go into Kingston as often as necessary.”
Fortess described his painting as “a view of the Kingston Point railway yard, showing track intersections, [a] station, freight trains, . . . shacks, and [a] background of buildings with a suggestion of a plain and barren winter trees [on] a grey day.” The artist emphasized the angular geometry of the structures. He played the predominant shadowy gray colors against spots of intense red, yellow, and blue. Trucks and trains hurry to and fro, but the action proceeds without the presence of a single visible human figure.
Theodore C. Polos, Train, n.d., lithograph, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Transfer from D.C. Public Library, 1967.72.210
Steve Ashby, Train in Landscape, n.d., carved wood with applied wood pieces, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of Herbert Waide Hemphill, Jr., 1998.84.4
“I wake up with an idea that won’t let me get back to sleep. So I get up and make that idea.” Steve Ashby converted most of his ideas into objects in the early 1960s after his wife had died and he retired from his years of work as a farm hand and gardener. Ashby’s favorite subjects were figures and animals, often inspired by the agrarian activities of Fauquier County, Virginia, where his ancestors had been slaves. Some of his figures were wind-activated to perform various activities that ranged from the domestic to the pornographic. Others include parts that move when handled. Lynda Roscoe Hartigan Made with Passion: The Hemphill Folk Art Collection in the National Museum of American Art (Washington, D.C. and London: National Museum of American Art with the Smithsonian Institution Press, 1990) A descendant of Virginia slaves, Steve Ashby spent his entire life in Delaplane, Virginia. Ashby and his wife rented a former schoolhouse and enjoyed a modest lifestyle with their adopted son. Ashby had a lifelong interest in carving but began making the figures he called “fixing-ups” in the early 1960s, after his wife had passed away and his son no longer lived at home. These works were slapdash and highly expressive, comprising found objects and personal items such as clothing, jewelry, and hair. Ashby sometimes used photographic cutouts to create faces and frequently bestowed his sculptures with moving parts.
Reginald Marsh, Locomotives, Jersey City, 1934, oil on canvas mounted on fiberboard, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Bequest of Felicia Meyer Marsh, 1979.127.1 Locomotives, Jersey City is from a series of paintings Reginald Marsh did in the 1930s that focuses on modes of transportation. Here, four mighty trains power along the tracks, while the smoke and steam emitted from the smokestacks trail behind. In the distance, Marsh painted a cloud of smoke using a thin oil wash, creating a backdrop that is both delicate and dense. Together, the distant smoke clouds and those coming from the locomotives obscure much of the sky. The painting’s gritty colors reflect the urban environment of Jersey City, which was a manufacturing center in the years preceding World War II. Railroads, however, were the biggest employer and owned a third of the city’s nearly fifteen square miles. It was here that the national train networks terminated (Andrew Jacobs, “A City Whose Time Has Come Again,” New York Times, April 30, 2000).
Lily Furedi, Subway, 1934, oil on canvas, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Transfer from the U.S. Department of the Interior, National Park Service, 1965.18.43
In this painting Lily Furedi boldly did something that few dare to do: she looked at people on the subway. She took the viewpoint of a seated rider gazing down the car at her fellow passengers. The Hungarian-born artist knew of the subway riders’ customary avoidance of staring at one’s fellow riders; most people in her painting keep to themselves by hiding behind a magazine or newspaper, or by sleeping. Those who violate the unwritten rule do so furtively. A woman takes a quiet sidelong glance at the newspaper read by the man next to her, while a man steals a peek at a young woman applying lipstick. Only two women in the foreground, who obviously know each other, dare to look directly at each other as they talk companionably.
Furedi takes a friendly interest in her fellow subway riders, portraying them sympathetically. She focuses particularly on a musician who has fallen asleep in his formal working clothes, holding his violin case. The artist would have identified with such a New York musician because her father, Samuel Furedi, was a professional cellist.
Home time ,some news to read too I like this painting by artist Lily Furedi 1896-1969 ‘Subway’ painted 1939.
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EDITORIAL
Exciting things are happening at Coler. Thru a wonderful program ARTS IN MEDICINE, Coler will have a new three part mural painted in the main corridor. ARTS IN MEDICINE is funded by the Laurie M. Tisch ILLUMINATION FUND.
Members of the Coler residents, staff and others are on a committee to choose the artwork and theme. After approval the mural panels will be painted by the residents and then the panels will be applied to the walls.
By the first week in November their will be an unveiling and hopefully members of the island community will be able to attend. (The nursing home is still closed to outside visitors).
Coler is one facility that is receiving a mural this year. The others are Jacobi, Queens Hospital,Gouveneur Hospital, Seaview, Lincoln and Elmhurst Hospital
Judith Berdy
2019 Murals at Municipal Hospitals. Photo NYC H+H
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 TEXT AND IMAGE COURTESY OF THE ANNEX GALLERIES. All image are copyrighted (c) Roosevelt Island Historical Society SMITHSONIAN AMERICAN ART MUSEUM.
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Hayley Lever, East Gloucester, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of Mr. and Mrs. William S. Benedict in memory of her parents, Sophie and Carl Boschwitz, 1977.110.2
HAYLEY LEVER
Lever was born in Bowden, South Australia on 28 September 1875, the son of Albion W. Lever. He excelled in painting classes at Prince Alfred College under James Ashton and on leaving school continued to study under Ashton at his Norwood art school. He was a charter member of the Adelaide Easel Club in 1892.
Lever’s maternal grandfather Richard Hayley, owner of Bowden Tannery, died in 1882,and the subsequent inheritance was sufficient for Lever to finance a trip to England in 1899 to[ further his career in painting. He moved to St. Ives, a fishing port and artistic colony on the Cornish coast. The town’s reputation as a centre for marine painting was largely due to Julius Olsson, who became a prominent British seascape painter. In St. Ives, Lever shared a studio with Frederick Judd Waugh, and studied painting techniques under the Impressionists Olsson and Algernon Talmage.
Lever also painted in the French port villages of Douarnenez and Concarneau, Brittany, directly across the English Channel from St. Ives. In late 1904 Lever made a trip back to Adelaide, where his mother was dying of tuberculosis. During his twelve-month stay he staged several exhibitions, painted seascapes and taught.
In 1906, upon returning to Europe, he married Aida Smith Gale in St. Ives’ Parish Church. In 1908, Lever did a series of paintings called Van Gogh’s Hospital, Holland expressing the profound influence he felt from that artist. In 1911, Ernest Lawson, an Impressionist painter, persuaded Lever to move to United States, saying he would have greater success there. Lever arrived in New York City in 1912 and painted views of the Hudson River, Times Square and Central Park. Upon discovering the American east coast, he painted in Gloucester, Massachusetts for several summers and at Marblehead, Massachusetts. Both artists developed spontaneous, bold painting styles, and Lever was accepted into Lawson’s circle of friends: Robert Henri, William Glackens, John Sloan and George Bellows.
He exhibited with this group regularly, but eventually left New York to settle in Massachusetts. From 1919 to 1931, Lever taught art classes at the Art Students League of New York where he maintained a Gloucester studio and often traveled to paint on Nantucket and Martha’s Vineyard. He offered this message to his students: “Art is the re-creation of mood in line, form and color. If I were confined to my own back yard for the rest of my life, I’d still have more pictures in my mind than I would have time to paint. Art is nothing but having a good time.” Lever went to Pittsburgh in 1922 as an art juror for the Carnegie International exhibition.
In 1924, Lever was commissioned to paint a portrait of the presidential yacht, USS Mayflower, which was subsequently presented to President Calvin Coolidge in the Cabinet Room of the White House. By 1930, Lever had moved to Caldwell, New Jersey, staying there until 1938, when he moved to Mount Vernon, New York. While living in New York, Lever painted marines and landscapes in New Jersey, New England, New York and the Canadian Maritimes.
Throughout his life, he traveled and painted extensively, including Nova Scotia and Grand Manan Island in Canada, The Bahamas and Florida, while often returning to Europe. In 1933, Hayley was named Director of the Green Mountains summer art school at Smugglers Notch in Stowe, Vermont. Lever also taught painting classes at the Forum School of Art in Bronxville, New York from 1934 to 1935.
In later life, Lever was inflicted with arthritis in his right hand, which prevented him from further travel and forced him to concentrate on still-life subjects instead. As his arthritis advanced, he taught himself to paint with his left hand. However, following the death of his wife Aida in 1949, Lever was confined to his home, where he continued to paint from 1953 until his death.
Hayley Lever died on 6 December 1958 at his home in Mount Vernon, New York. News of his death surprised some: Lever had all but disappeared from public view over two decades earlier, despite once having been enormously popular and critically acclaimed. Even so, he had continued to paint in the intervening years to such a degree that colleagues and dealers alike were confounded by the cache of unsold, and largely unseen, paintings in his Mount Vernon barn. Since his death, he has been recognized as one of the leaders of American Impressionism in the 20th century.
WIKIPEDIA
Hayley Lever, Interior with Table Top, ca. 1900, crayon on paper, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of Nion McEvoy, 2014.39.4
Figures on a Dock by Hayley Lever (1876–1958) Oil on canvas 20 x 23⅞ inches Signed lower right: Hayley Lever Questroyal Fine Art
66th Street, Looking West, New York, 1935 by Hayley Lever (1876–1958) Oil on board 8⅞ x 11⅞ inches Signed and dated lower left: Hayley Lever 35; on verso label: 66th St Looking West. / Park Ave Corner Hayley Lever. / New York 1935 Questroyal Fine Art
Cornwall, England, 1905 by Hayley Lever (1876–1958) Oil on canvas 9½ x 12½ inches Signed and dated lower left: Hayley Lever / 1905 Questroyal Fine Art
Waterfall, Woodstock, NY by Hayley Lever (1876–1958) Watercolor on paper 14⅜ x 17⅜ inches (sight size) Questroyal Fine Art
East river, 1938 Watercolor on paper
Richard Hayley Lever is not considered an exceptional artist, although some of his paintings are very pretty and appear in the collections of important museums. They are rarely displayed, however. Perhaps his brightest moment came in 1924, when President Calvin Coolidge commissioned him to paint a picture of the presidential yacht, the Mayflower. The dour Coolidge always took an awkward photograph, and the one wherein he accepts the painting is the same. Born in Australia in 1876, Hayley Lever studied painting in England. He became captivated by the wild sea and countryside at Cornwall, a peninsula at the southwest corner of England. Just before World War I, he left England for New York where he became friendly with George Bellows, John Sloan, and other artists who comprised the “Ashcan School.”
Richard Hayley Lever 1876-1958 President’s Yacht “Mayflower” at Marblehead at Night, with President Coolidge Aboard Doyle Galleries
MOUNT VERNON, NEW YORK
LEFT The electric company building in Mt. Vernon, N.Y. appears in Hayley Lever’s paintings below. (Westchester County Historical Society) RIGHT City Scene, painting of downtown Mt. Vernon, N. Y. (Richard Hayley Lever, 1943) (www.1stdibs.com) Courtesy Through the Hourglass.com (c)
LEFT Hayley Lever’s painting of the Mt. Vernon, N. Y. train station, in the style of the Ashcan School, 1930s (www.1stdibs.com) RIGHT Railroad Yards, Mt. Vernon, N. Y. (Richard Hayley Lever, 1940s)
RICHARD HAYLEY LEVER, American (1876-1958), Lighthouse with Boats, oil on panel, unsigned., 12 x 15 3/4 inches
Island House 555 Main St. JOAN BROOKS #1 NINA LUBLIN #2 ALEXIS VILLEFANE #3
EDITORIAL
How did I find Hayley Lever? When we were publishing “Images of America-Roosevelt Island” back in 2003, one of our members Maria Harrison was working at Spanierman Galleries on East 58th Street. I saw the exhibit and have a copy of the book about the artist. I have been looking at the long neglected book on my shelf. Lever’s story and art are interesting, varied and remind me of my favorite impressionists.
There is a watercolor of the Queensboro Bridge included, with simple lines showing the south end of our island.
Reading about his life with surprise that he was virtually unknown in his day. After his death, a treasure trove of works were discovered over 2,000 in all.
Enjoy his story and his art.
JUDITH BERDY
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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
Hayley Lever Carol Lowrey Spanierman Gallery, LLC 2003 (c)
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The Blackwell Island Lighthouse is a mysterious remnant of Roosevelt Island’s distant past. Before the slender East River island came to be owned by the city in the 1820s, it was owned by the Blackwell family and hence bore the family name. The lighthouse was commissioned by the city, not the Coast Guard, in 1872. The tower was meant to help illuminate the New York City Insane Asylum for incoming boats. James Renwick, Jr., the architect of the island’s nearby Smallpox Hospital (which still stands in ruins) and St. Patrick’s Cathedral, designed the tower and it is likely that patients were used for labor.
The mystery which surrounds the lighthouse is that of two possible asylum inmates whose names are associated with it. Legend says that before the lighthouse was constructed, asylum patient John McCarthy was building a clay fort to defend against British invasion on the site. When the lighthouse was to be built, his fort was destroyed. Supposedly what happened next was that another patient, Thomas Maxey, a self-styled architect, mason, carpenter, civil engineer, philosopher, and philanthropist built the lighthouse tower. Despite this version of events, a plaque at the lighthouse’s base, which disappeared in the 1960s, credited the lighthouse construction to McCarthy, leading historians to conjecture that either Maxey and McCarthy were the same person or that neither ever even existed.
The lighthouse was decommissioned in the 1940s and became a landmark in the 1970s. Today the site is run by the Roosevelt Island Operating Corp. The grounds surrounding the tower are open to the public but the lighthouse tower remains closed.
LITTLE RED LIGHTHOUSE
The Little Red Lighthouse is perhaps one of New York City’s most famous. The vibrantly colored beacon sits underneath the George Washington Bridge in Fort Washington Park on the shore of the Hudson River. Officially named the Jeffery’s Hook Lighthouse, it was originally erected across the river in New Jersey in 1880 then moved its current location in 1921.
The 40-foot tall structure has 48 cast-iron steps inside which will take you all the way to the top for stunning views of the New York skyline and the Hudson River. Though its color is its most famous feature, the lighthouse wasn’t always red, and no one knows exactly when or why it was painted! The Little Red Lighthouse found its way into the heart’s of New Yorkers
In 1942 when writers Hildegarde Swift and Lynd Ward published The Little Red Lighthouse and the Great Gray Bridge. In 1931, the completion of the bridge made the lighthouse obsolete and the Coast Guard planned to demolish it. The book helped to endear the little lighthouse to the public who ultimately saved the lighthouse.
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EXECUTION ROCK
The ominously named Execution Rocks Lighthouse sits on a rocky stretch of reef in the Long Island Sound, not far from City Island and Hart Island in the Bronx. Legend has it that the moniker comes from executions carried out on the island by the British before the American Revolution. The British allegedly would chained prisoners to the rocks at low tide and let them drown when high tide came in, but there is no evidence to support this. The official origin story of the name comes from the treacherous, rocky terrain of the area which has led to many boats being “executed” as they tried to pass.
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ROMER SHOAL LIGHTHOUSE
The Romer Shoal Lighthouse, a landmarked structure placed at its current location in 1898. Before becoming a beacon in the water the steel structure was used at the Staten Island Lighthouse Depot to test fuel, wicks, bulbs and other equipment. Before the lighthouse was moved to its current spot, two other structures marked the location of the dangerous shoal, or hidden ridge, beneath the water. The Romer part of the name has been contested, though the most likely story is that it was named after Wolfgang William Romer, a Dutch military engineer and cartographer who mapped New York’s waterways in the 18th-century.
The lighthouse was manned by a crew of three men while in operation. It was automated in 1966. After a severe storm caused damage to the lighthouse in 1992, the Coast Guard wanted to replace it but Joe Esposito, keeper of the Staten Island Lighthouse at the time, wouldn’t allow it.
In 2011 the lighthouse was put up for auction and purchased by John Scalia. The lighthouse has sentimental value to Scalia who grew up looking at it from his home on Staten Island. It was also the first structure his immigrant parents saw as they journeyed to Ellis Island. Today, Scalia leads an organization of “Romer Keepers” who are working to restore the lighthouse which has sustained significant damage from the passage of time and storms like Superstorm Sandy. UNTAPPED CITIES
PRINCES BAY LIGHTHOUSE
The Princes Bay Lighthouse was erected in 1828 in response to increased shipping traffic in New York City. The original structure consisted of a rubblestone tower which reached a height of just over thirty feet tall. It was replace in 1864 by a new brownstone tower and a two-story keeper’s house was completed next to it in 1868. The two structures are connected by a fifteen-foot-long passageway, which doubled as an oil room. Material from the original house was used to build a new barn and stable.
In 1926, the lighthouse was sold to the Mission of the Immaculate Virgin in a public auction. The mission was a residence and school for orphans which already occupied the land surrounding the lighthouse. One way the mission customized the lighthouse to their needs and taste was by adding a statue of the Virgin Mary to the top of the tower. New York State and the Trust for Public Land bought the structure and surrounding land from the Archdiocese of New York in 1999 and it is now part of Mount Loretto Unique Area. The lighthouse has been renamed the John Cardinal O’Connor Lighthouse in honor of the Archbishop of New York who and it currently serves as the residence of the local forest ranger. UNTAPPED CITIES
KINGSBOROUGH LIGHTHOUSE
Located near the eastern tip of the peninsula below Sheepshead Bay in Manhattan Beach, the Kingsborough Lighthouse is the newest lighthouse in New York City. Built by the Coast Guard in 1990 and originally named the Marine and Academic Center, or MAC, the structure is part of the Kingsborough Community College campus. The flashing white light beams outward from 114 feet above sea level and shines out eleven miles.
The light is housed in a metal point at the top of a building which serves as space for classes and conferences, as well as cultural events and performances as part of On Stage at Kingsborough programming. One of the most popular series hosted at the site is the annual series of intimate jazz concerts, Jazz at the Lighthouse. With floor to ceiling windows which look out to the water, the lighthouse is a great place to enjoy a show.
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NEW DORP LIGHTHOUSE
This Staten Island lighthouse takes its name from the surrounding town which was a Dutch settlement. New Dorp is the anglicized version of the Dutch phrase for “New Town.” The lighthouse tower sticks out from the center of the keeper’s house to cast its light across Lower New York Bay and Sandy Hook, New Jersey.
When the lighthouse was built, the only other nearby establishment was the Moravian Cemetery to the east. The path through the woods to get to the lighthouse wasn’t even wide enough for a horse and wagon, so keepers would use the roads of the cemetery. The town became more populous through the decades and in 1964 the lighthouse was abandoned and boarded up. It sold at auction in 1974 to a local Staten Island resident, John Vokral, who restored the structure, though no light shines out from the tower anymore. It remains a private residence.
UNTAPPED CITIES
SANDY HOOK LIGHTHOUSE
The Sandy Hook Lighthouse in New Jersey is the oldest continuously operating lighthouse in the United States. Serving as the entryway into New York Harbor, the lighthouse was built in 1764 on Sandy Hook, a stretch of land which juts out dangerously (for ships) into the Atlantic Ocean. In order to help pay for the purchase of land and construction of the lighthouse a lottery was held. 10,000 tickets were but the profit didn’t raise enough money to fun entire project. It did however allow for the purchase of four acres on Sandy Hook from its current owners at the time, Esik and Richard Hartshorne. A second lottery raise the remaining funds.
Since New Yorkers were the ones to raise the money, it was originally called the New York Lighthouse. The Sandy Hook Lighthouse was designated as a National Historic Landmark on its bicentennial in 1964 and transferred to the National Park Service in 1996. In 2014 it underwent a restoration and is open to the public for tours. Because of shifting sands, the lighthouse now sits more than a half mile inland from its original spot, and interesting reversal of shore erosion.
Z-BRICK ALL OVER MAIN STREET ORIGINAL PAVING FOR STREETS AND SIDEWALKS
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Yesterday was a perfect day to head of to the Metropolitan Museum. The museum has admissions procedures very well organized. Quick temp check, no food or drinks allowed, not package check. Once you are in the museum there are one way signs in certain areas which means that you end up in area you usually do not visit. To get to the American Wing I travelled thru Egypt and had a brief rest at the Temple of Dendur. Some of the smaller rooms are shut off, but there is lots to see. My old favorites in the Impressionist galleries still are wonderful. Other areas have new exhibits and the 150th anniversary tells the stories of the donors and benefactors that filled the Met with treasures. In today’s world the stories are interesting and enlightening.
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
THANKS TO UNTAPPED CITIES FOR THE WONDERFUL LIGHTHOUSE DESCRIPTIONS.
FUNDING PROVIDED BY ROOSEVELT ISLAND OPERATING CORPORATION PUBLIC PURPOSE GRANTS CITY COUNCIL REPRESENTATIVE BEN KALLOS DISCRETIONARY FUNDING THRU DYCD
