Jinny Ewald sent this to us this morning from Long Island
PRISONERS, SWIMMERS AND OTHERS WHO ENDED UP IN THE EAST RIVER
In the East River Our Island is covered – lightly – in the first snow of the year. It is very cold. So it’s a good time to talk about dipping our toes in the East River.
Come with me on a modest tour d’horizon of getting wet in the River. First, getting off the Island the hard way. Did Blackwell’s Island prisoners escape by swimming off the island?
There’s no Blackwell’s Island myth like that of escape from Alcatraz. The place seems to have been buttoned up quite effectively. Visitors were not allowed on the Penitentiary grounds without a permit from the Commissioners. Sentinels were stationed along the water fronts, and guard-boats patrolled the river to prevent the escape of convicts.
Still, despite spite these precautions, the website of Corrections History informs us, “men have succeeded in making their escape to the opposite shore.”
There’s a record of twelve nude men swimming for freedom from the Island in 1853. They were seen coming out of the water at what is now Long Island City, but there’s no record if they were caught. In 1875 Dutch Harmon, a highwayman described by The New York Times as “one of the most desperate criminals in the country,” organized the mass escape of seven prisoners while wearing a ball and chain. Which must have made swimming problematic. And, of course, who could forget the saga of “Oily” Rockford, 22, the lad with a penchant for jail-breaking, who was recaptured in June 1922, a year after having gone missing from the Penitentiary. The Times reported that Rockford promised to escape again in time to bask in the sunshine of September. But we don’t know if he did.
No, getting into the River does not appear to have been a frequent maneuver for prisoners.
Well then, second, what about jumping?
Oddly enough, our bridges seem not to have been favored by the suicide-minded.
More people have tried to leap from the George Washington Bridge and, lesser, the Brooklyn Bridge. And while some have tried our own Queensboro Bridge, the numbers are fairly low. But nothing here compares with San Francisco’s Golden Gate.
Opening Day at the Queensboro Bridge, NYC Municipal Archives
However, more than 235 folks did actually apply for permission to jump off the Queensboro Bridge on the opening day celebration, June 12, 1909. The Celebration Committee analyzed the requests and classified them in this way:
Women (18-32): 30 Professionals: 168 Freaks: 34 Would-be suicides: 9 Unemployed: 24 You may relieved to learn that the Celebration Committee announced that no bridge jumping will be allowed.
OK. What about involuntary swimming? I mean those iconic “concrete shoes”. A myth punctured. The credibility of the “cement shoes” myth is pretty thin.
“The story of cement shoes is, in my opinion, a twisted-over-time variation of something that did actually happen,” said Christian Cipollini, author of Lucky Luciano: Mysterious Tales of a Gangland Legend. He explains that the myth originated in the 1930s and 1940s after the American mafia shifted from bootlegging during prohibition to other illicit ventures like drug trafficking and loansharking, and began infiltrating labor unions, and legitimate industries such as textiles and construction. Cipollini said there are no credible instances of a mafia murder victim being fitted with cement shoes around this time, but there is the story of Abe “Bo” Weinberg, a Jewish mobster in New York who worked closely with prohibition kingpin Dutch Schultz. Weinberg disappeared in 1935, supposedly after Schultz had him killed and disposed of his body in the East River after fitting him with a pair of cement shoes. “That much may indeed be true, but it was one of many of the tall tales that further evolved into a truism of sorts, that was basically ‘accepted’ as such by historians, press and mafia history aficionados.”
And from another expert: “So let’s review what we know: (1) Underworld gossips have repeatedly insisted that mob hit men sometimes encase a victim partially or completely in concrete. (2) However, the one confirmed instance of a concretized corpse we’ve been able to turn up wasn’t a mob hit. (3) In cases of mob hits definitively known to involve concrete, we’re not talking concrete shoes so much as concrete anchors, in the form of blocks used to keep the body submerged. We have no evidence of a mob hit in which the killer mixed up concrete, planted a victim in it, and (not to fixate on this, but one has to consider the practical aspects) waited for the stuff to dry. Conclusion: Either custom concretewear is 100 percent effective, and the victim invariably vanishes forever from the ken of man, or the whole thing’s a myth.”
We know there were floating baths in the late 1800s. The barge-shaped, wooden structures surrounded a pool—open on top to the air and to the dirty river water on the bottom. In 1915, there were 15 baths berthed around the city, but by 1940 or so they had all closed because of water pollution.
And we know that in 2004, the Neptune Foundation purchased the C500, one of dozens of single-hull, flat-top, metal barges flooding the market. The vessel, renamed The Floating Pool Lady, was repurposed with a half-Olympic-sized pool, sunk into a cutout in the barge.
But while the picture shows kids having fun, the baths were made less for recreation than to remedy New York’s dire public health plight. Political reformer Josiah Quincy said: “The advance of civilization is largely measured by the victories of mankind over its greatest enemy – dirt.” And public bathing was at the forefront of this.
The floating baths were built along the East and Hudson Rivers from 1870, and by 1888 around 2,500,000 men and 1,500,000 women used them every year during bathing season (June to September). The baths were free. However, they were such a welcome relief from the summer heat that there was often conflict.
The city imposed a 20-minute time limit in an effort to restrict lingering. But there were accusations of patrons bribing attendants to turn a blind eye. Young boys were more innovative, and often went from one bath to another, dirtying themselves on the way so as not to be denied admittance.
Early in the 20th century, pollution of the river water reached serious levels and so, in 1914, all floating baths were required to be watertight. If river water was used, it had to be purified and filtered. The need for year-round bathing also meant the need for indoor public baths.
But if we want to think of swimming in the East River, let’s end this odd tour with several works by Thomas Eakins & George Bellows, who really caught the idea.
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City Hospital with the Nurses Residence to the south, pier for steamer landings, with Queensboro Bridge north.
Jay Jacobson got it right!!
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Nicola Victor Ziroli, Bridges in Winter, 1934, oil on canvas, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Transfer from the U.S. Department of Labor, 1964.1.88
Bridges in Winter is an example of the urban scenes that were popular with artists working for New Deal art programs in the 1930s. The snow-covered bridge in the painting is similar to the series of bridges (including the Clark Street Bridge) that span the Chicago River, providing an essential link between the two halves of the city. The bridges can be raised easily to allow river traffic to pass through when needed. Chicago’s bridges may have served as inspiration for the artist, as he spent a great deal of time there. In the foreground a crowd of people gather at one end of the bridge, with more people behind them in the distance. A newspaper boy waves his arm in the air as he hawks his newspapers. The stormy sky could be the customary chill gray of a Chicago winter, or it could allude to the troublesome times Americans faced during the Great Depression.
Birge Harrison, Winter Sunset, ca. 1890, oil on wood mounted on wooden cradle, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Museum purchase, 1984.23
In his 1909 book, Landscape Painting, Birge Harrison described color as “dancing” in nature, and he was especially fascinated by the subtle tones in a wintry landscape. In this image, he painted the pinks and purples of a winter sunset reflected and diffused across broken ice. The dark boats trapped by the frozen water and the pale colors evoke an environment that is both harsh and beautiful.
“Color is very closely allied to music. Both are sensuous and [passionate], playing directly upon the emotions …” The artist, in his book Landscape Painting, 1909
George Catlin, Buffalo Chase in Winter, Indians on Snowshoes, 1832-1833, oil on canvas, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of Mrs. Joseph Harrison, Jr., 1985.66.416
In the summer, plains bison led mounted pursuers on dangerous chases. Winter snows, however, made tracking buffalo safer and easier, slowing the animal’s escape and allowing Indian hunters on snowshoes to move easily over the ground. Catlin traveled in the West in the warmer months and never witnessed such a hunt, but he undoubtedly heard descriptions from both Indians and whites and may have seen the first known representation of it, by the Swiss-Canadian artist Peter Rindisbacher. Catlin painted this work in his studio during the winter of 1832–33.
John Henry Twachtman, End of Winter, after 1889, oil on canvas, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of William T. Evans, 1909.7.65
Twachtman drew inspiration from his seventeen acres of land in Greenwich, Connecticut, and his paintings of the property express the emotional and spiritual comfort he found there. This image describes the beginning of the seasonal transition from winter to spring. Twachtman depicted bare trees and an icy, swollen brook, but allowed the brown primed canvas to show through his thinly applied paint so that a feeling of warmth and regeneration could emerge. Twachtman created many images of streams and brooks, and these ceaselessly moving bodies of water might have held a deeper significance for him. By the time Twachtman painted his Connecticut landscapes, American artists and intellectuals had been interested in Buddhism for more than two decades, and the artist himself had studied Zen philosophy and Japanese art. (Pyne, “John Twachtman and the Therapeutic Landscape,” in Chotner et al., John Twachtman: Connecticut Landscapes, 1989) This may account for the meditative quality of his pictures, the sense of looking not at an actual landscape, but at an inward image of something seen long before.
Saul Kovner, Winter, n.d., lithograph, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of Audrey McMahon, 1968.98.15
Henry Gasser, Winter Parking, ca. 1935-1945, watercolor and pencil on paper, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of Paul W. Doll Jr., 1979.120.1
Benson B. Moore, Winter on the Anacostia, n.d., softground etching and drypoint on paper, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of Sade C. Styron, 1970.149
Henry Carter Johnson, Winter Landscape, 1939, oil on canvas, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Transfer from the U.S. Department of Labor, 1964.1.184
Aldro T. Hibbard, Rockport in Winter, ca. 1940, oil on canvas, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of International Business Machines Corporation, 1969.122
Harold Weston, Giant Winter Evening, 1932-1958, oil on canvas, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of Mrs. Faith Weston, 1977.124.2
FORMER CITICORP BUILDING IN 2005, WHEN THERE WERE NO OTHER STRUCTURES NEAR THE SITE. ALEXIS VILLEFANE GOT IT RIGHT
TUESDAY PHOTO OF THE DAY
New York City Waterfalls is a public art project by artist Olafur Eliasson, in collaboration with the Public Art Fund, consisting of four man-made waterfalls placed around New York City along the East River. The most famous was at the Brooklyn Bridge in lower Manhattan.BILL SCHIMOLER GUESSD IT RIGHT
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) Smithsonian American Art Museum
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Janet E. Turner, Wintering Snow Geese, 1968, color linoleum cut and screenprint, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of the artist, 1973.21.2
WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 16, 2020
OUR 237th ISSUE
OF
FROM OUR ARCHIVES
SNOW AS A WORK OF ART
FROM THE SMITHSONIAN AMERICAN ART MUSEUM
Everett Warner, Falling Snow, New York, 1922, oil on canvas, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Bequest of Henry Ward Ranger through the National Academy of Design, 1978.63
Isadore Weiner, Snow Shoveller, 1939, color lithograph on paper, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of Jean Nichols, 1974.38.31
Frank McClure, Snow on the Window, 1969, linoleum cut, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of Frank McClure, 1970.108
William B. Post, Path in the Snow, ca. 1897, platinum print, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Museum purchase from the Charles Isaacs Collection made possible in part by the Luisita L. and Franz H. Denghausen Endowment, 1994.91.147
Fairfield Porter, Snow Landscape, ca. 1960-1965, lithograph on paper, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of Arnold Elser, 1981.154.101
Fritz Scholder, Indian in the Snow, 1972, acrylic on canvas, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of Benjamin P. Nicolette, 1980.107
Howard Cook, Street in Snow (Houses in Snow) (Illustration for The Checkerboard), 1931, wood engraving on paper, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of Barbara Latham, 1980.122.145
Carl W. Peters, Little Village, ca. 1930, oil on canvas, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of Mrs. Carl W. Peters, 1984.77
Carl William Peters loved to paint snow scenes because of the delicate effects of light on the frozen, white landscape. He never traveled far from his home in Fairport, New York, and this image probably shows a view of a town close to his studio. The bright sunshine suggests a cheerful scene of people walking along the snow-covered sidewalks. But Peters did not beautify the small rickety houses, which look like they would struggle to keep their occupants warm. In this way, he captured both the charm and the hardships of an older America that still existed in small country villages.
William H. Johnson, Snow Peaks and Blossoms, ca. 1935-1938, oil on burlap, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of the Harmon Foundation, 1967.59.938
Harry Shokler, Waterfront–Brooklyn, ca. 1934, oil on canvas, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Transfer from the U.S. Department of Labor, 1964.1.121
Leslie Umberger is the Curator of Folk and Self-Taught Art at SAAM.
Turkeys is a classic Grandma Moses painting depicting the annual Thanksgiving ritual of catching the holiday bird. Moses captures the cold November sky and an early snow, contrasted by the bright colors worn by both the poultry and the people. Moses gives an unusual amount of detail to the turkeys themselves, paying tribute to the noble bird that Ben Franklin called “a true original of North America.” Moses, a lifelong farm woman, understood the nature of growing crops and raising livestock, yet still pitied the poor turkey for being so widely regarded as delicious. Thanksgiving only became an official American holiday when Moses was a child, yet its role as a family-centric and gratitude-based holiday gave it a special place in her oeuvre.
Moses began painting when she was in her sixties, looking back to the rural ways of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Her art became wildly popular after 1939, when the Museum of Modern Art acclaimed her as a “modern primitive,” a label that attached her to the developing American art world as much as it distanced her from it. In the 1940s and especially in the 1950s, her accessible style and subjects were viewed as both quintessentially American and the perfect antidote to a postwar modern art that felt cold and arcane.
The Marchbanks Calendar December by Harry Cimino, n.d/ . We’ve just turned the last page on this year’s calendar and it’s time to count down the days remaining in 2008. To take a good look at the last month of the year, I’ve chosen December from Harry Cimino’s Marchbanks Calendar. The artist was born in Indiana in 1898 and died in New York in 1969. Not the longest life on record but certainly one that saw its share of changes, beginning while Queen Victoria was still in power, and ending when men were putting their footprints on the moon. Somewhere in between (as this woodcut is undated), Cimino crafted this image. From what I can gather, the work was likely done in the 1920s.
For me, it has that Currier and Ives feel of Americana deepened by the artist’s choice of color. The red is vital to the sky and the church windows, while the gray-blue of the horse and riders carries most of the action (though the horse’s hind legs seem to be lacking a certain rhythm). I like the woosh of the woman’s scarf and the almost opposite effect of the man’s blanket, which seems to be melting into the snow.
Cimino produced a calendar for the Marchbanks Company, and many of the illustrations are in American Art’s collection. I hope we can look at more because they create miniature worlds that capture a time and place. Cimino also created woodcuts for book illustrations that also endear . . . and endure.
MONDAY PHOTO OF THE DAY Elevated #7 Flushing Line Train along Queens Blvd in 1917 at Rawson Street Bill Schimoler, Andy Sparberg and Nina Lublin were the first to have the answer.
SNOW IS COMING!!!
ENJOY THE ARTISTIC VERSIONS OF SLUSH-FREE WINTER PANORAMAS WITH NO ICE TO SLIP ON AND LOOSING YOUR SHOE IN A SNOWDRIFT. WHAT A WONDERFUL DAY TO SLIDE DOWN THE HILLS SOUTH OF CORNELL TECH!!!
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
SMITHSONIAN AMERICAN ART MUSEUM
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News and Stories about the Waterways of New York and New Jersey
Ann Buttenwieser’s
NYC History in 10 Barges
March 16, 2018
What can we learn about New York City and its waterfront from its boats? Waterwire is inviting those across the maritime world and beyond—historians, planners, artists, business people, scientists—to share their perspectives on NYC History in10 Boats.
Ann Buttenwieser, the driving force behind a giant barge refurbished into a floating pool, is known as the Floating Pool Lady (as is the pool itself). The co-founder of the Council for Parks and Playgrounds (which later merged with what is now New Yorkers for Parks) and the founder of the nonprofit Neptune Foundation,
Ms. Buttenwieser spent more than two decades working to recreate the floating baths of the 19th century, her mission to get recreationally underserved New Yorkers into the water. Ann is currently writing a book about that adventure. Here is her NYC History in 10 Barges.
(For RIHS, with Stephen Blank)
Hopper Barge: Michael Hughes came from Ireland in 1843 and began to build wooden hopper barges in New Brunswick, New Jersey. A hopper barge is a type of ship used primarily in marine construction, dredging, and marine salvage that isn’t mechanical and that cannot self-propel (with exceptions). It is ideal for carrying materials like grain, sand, coal, soil, sugar, timber products, and rocks and for dumping those materials. Hopper barges typically have double-hull construction, which means that the bottoms and sides of their cargo remain separate from the hull with the use of empty spaces. Two common types of hopper barges are box hopper barges and raked hopper barges. A raked hopper barge has a curved bow, often at the head of the tow, which minimizes resistance when the barge is being pushed. This allows a raked hopper barge to move faster on the water than other types. Raked hopper barges can also be double-raked, which further decreases their resistance on the water and increases how fast they can move. Hughes’ early vessels carried coal between Pennsylvania and New York. Today, Hughes Marine is famous for its specialty flat-top metal barges, which provide sets for musical performances, movies, and send up the Macy’s July 4th fireworks.
Floating Baths: In 1880, Boss Tweed opened New York City’s first floating baths. The barge-shaped, wooden structures surrounded a pool—open on top to the air and to the dirty river water on the bottom. In 1915, there were 15 baths berthed around the city, but by 1940 or so they had all closed because of water pollution.
Oil Barge: An award for bravery in the 1916 Black Tom Explosion gave Captain Fredrick Bouchard funds to found the Bouchard Transportation Company. In order to meet federal restrictions on single-hull vessels after the Exxon Valdez oil spill, the company constructed 400-foot-long, double-hull, metal barges that can each carry 138,000 barrels of oil in holds under the deck, thus removing an estimated 650 trucks per barge and untold pollution from the roadways.
Floating Island: In 1970, Artist Robert Smithson, famous for his Great Salt Lake work Spiral Jetty, sketched a toy boat pulling a barge that resembled a park. Smithson died three years later. In September 2005, as part of a Whitney Museum retrospective, Smithson’s wife, artist Nancy Holt, created a real floating island on a barge. For eight days, the art work, with a lawn, rocks and trees, circled Manhattan.
Mobro: Unlike the appealing Floating Island, the Mobro carried 3,100 tons of trash, with which contractor Lowell Harrison hoped to start a business producing methane. For two months in 1987, the barge hauled the same load of garbage from Long Island to six states, three countries, and back to Brooklyn, seeking landfill space but continually turned away. The trash was finally incinerated in Brooklyn, and the episode touched off a national discussion about waste disposal.
Bargemusic: At Fulton Landing in Brooklyn, music lovers enjoy concerts while floating on the East River. Bargemusic, an intimate, unique chamber music hall, was the brainchild of violinist Olga Bloom, who in 1976 repurposed a metal barge that 100 years earlier had transported sacks of coffee beans.
The River Café: A year later, across the foot of Old Fulton Street from Olga’s Bargemusic, after a 13-year struggle with federal and state regulations and fire codes that applied only to land-based buildings, restaurateur and Waterfront Alliance board of trustee, Michael O’Keeffe opened the now legendary floating restaurant on another converted coffee barge.
Waterfront Museum: More than a century ago, the wooden Lehigh Valley Barge #79 moved cargo from ships to rail. In the 1950s, containerization took the vessel out of its middleman position. David Sharps rescued the mired-in-mud vessel in 1985 and brought it to Red Hook, Brooklyn. Now on the National Register of Historic Places, the artifact is a museum where visitors can enjoy theater, educational programs and exhibitions about the waterfront
New York New Jersey Rail: Until the mid-20th century, and because the nearest railroad bridge crossing was in Albany, railroad companies saved time and money by operating barges across New York Harbor. Known as car floats, the barges carried rail cars from tracks that ended at the New Jersey waterfront to those that began in Manhattan and Brooklyn. When trucking boomed, railroads soon went bankrupt and the car floats mostly disappeared from the harbor. In 2008, however, The Port Authority of New York & New Jersey took over the last remaining car float operation in New York Harbor—called New York New Jersey Rail—and invested millions of dollars to modernize the service. Each car float can shuttle 18 rail cars, with more than a thousand tons of freight, between the Greenville Yard in Jersey City, and the 65th Street Yard in Brooklyn.
The Floating Pool Lady: In 2004, the Neptune Foundation purchased the C500, one of dozens of single-hull, flat-top, metal barges flooding the market. The vessel, renamed The Floating Pool Lady, was repurposed with a half-Olympic-sized pool, sunk into a cutout in the barge.
HOPPER BARGE
FLOATING BATHS
FLOATING ISLAND
MOBRO
BARGEMUSIC
RIVER CAFE
MUGS FOR ALL YOUR DRINKS
WATERFRONT MUSEUM
NEW YORK NEW JERSEY RAIL
THE FLOATING POOL LADY
MONDAY PHOTO OF THE DAY
ARTICLE COURTESY OF THE WATERFRONT ALLIANCE WATERWIRE (C) 2018
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)
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MONDAY DEC 14, 21 AND FRIDAY DEC. 18 HOURS ARE 1-7 P.M.
Monday, December 14, 2020
Our 235th Edition
THOMAS RAINEY: A MAN AND A BRIDGE
STEPHEN BLANK
Thomas Rainey: A Man and a Bridge
This is about a guy who spent a lot of time and a pile of money on a bridge that wasn’t built, though it was built later.
We’re talking about the Rainey Bridge or the Blackwell’s Island Bridge (not the purple Roosevelt Island Bridge that’s there now, but the one that wasn’t built). And ultimately the Queensboro Bridge – I mean the Ed Koch Bridge. A lot of bridges to cross.
So, meet Thomas Rainey, who worked long and hard to build a bridge from Manhattan to Queens.
Rainey was born in Yanceyville, Caswell County, North Carolina in 1824, oldest of 15 children. His New York Times obit (New York Times, March 30, 1910) is marvelous: “…because of thrashing, he ran away and wandered out West. With only a moderate education he had picked up in local schools and with a pistol and $3.50 in his pocket, he continued his journeyings by working his way until he had crossed West Virginia, Ohio and Missouri.” He studied “phonography, arithmetic by cancelation and medicine” (not a mistake – “arithmetic by cancelation” does exist), “lectured throughout Missouri and Iowa and in 1847 published ‘Rainey’s Improved Abacus’ a treatise on arithmetic and geometry by cancelation.”
Schooled at some point in engineering, he studied steam navigation in Europe and eventually earned the honorific title, Doctor – and he continued to lead a colorful life. Rainey became involved in politics, and at the request of the National Whig Committee, established The Cincinnati Daily Republican as their official organ. In Washington, he became acquainted with Daniel Webster, then Secretary of State. In 1853, Rainey was appointed Consul to Bolivia. He did not take up that position but did find himself in Brazil where, at one time, owned a fleet of sixteen steam ferry boats.
His fortune was made in Brazil, but it was a bridge that became his life’s passion. Rainey lived in Ravenswood, Queens (long before the current Ravenswood power plant, when Ravenswood was a riverside community of fine mansions) and spent 25 years of his life and most of his fortune advancing the construction of a bridge across the East River between Manhattan and Long Island City. What is now Rainey Park was to be the Queens anchor for a bridge which would extend over Blackwell’s Island, a project backed by leading citizens of Long Island City after the American Civil War.
As New York expanded, the need for bridges across the East River, especially between Manhattan and Brooklyn became clear. John A. Roebling, the architect of the Brooklyn Bridge, had talked about a Brooklyn span as early as 1852. In his diaries, William Steinway (yes, the piano guy, who was much involved in all Queens-Manhattan bridge building) says that Roebling himself determined that the East River between Manhattan and Queens could be bridged using Blackwell’s Island as an ideal intermediate point. Steinway writes that in the mid-1850s Roebling was invited by businessmen and financiers to provide such a design and in 1856 he provided a proposal with a cost estimate of $1.2 million. The project, however, did not move forward, and Roebling soon became an advocate for connecting Manhattan and Long Island by constructing a bridge to Brooklyn – rather than Queens
Why Blackwell’s Island? Easy. Using Blackwell’s Island meant that the bridge would have two spans – one span over the west channel of the river between Manhattan Island and Blackwell’s and another over the east channel between Blackwell’s and Queens. This would simplify the engineering by eliminating the need for one long suspension bridge that would need to cross the width of the entire river, requiring cables at both ends to support the roadway. It also meant that the mid-bridge towers could be built on dry land rather than in deep water.
In fact, this wasn’t the first time the idea for a Queens-Manhattan bridge had been bruited about. In 1838, a plan was developed to build a suspension bridge across the East River from somewhere between 65th and 75th Streets in Manhattan, across the northern end of Blackwell’s Island to Queens. Known as the “Graves” Plan for an iron hanging bridge, but it was doomed to disappointment.
In February 1867, the New York State Senate passed a bill that allowed the construction of a suspension bridge from Brooklyn to Manhattan. In the same year, 1867, the New York State Legislature granted a charter to the New York & Long Island Bridge Company. This project was led by a group of business leaders who were concerned that the proposed Brooklyn Bridge would not open up Long Island for development. They formed the New York and Queens County Bridge Company in 1871, chaired by Steinway. The Company was permitted to acquire land, but no provision was made for public funding. The initial stock capitalization was set at $2 million with each share valued at $100. Once built, the owners were authorized to collect tolls to produce a net profit not to exceed 15 percent.
The Panic of 1873 disrupted planning but the process restarted in 1876. Plans resumed and a caisson was sunk into the river on the Queens side, off the outpost of Ravenswood. A newspaper report from the time notes that the bridge is “under contract, and the contractors are now busy on the ironwork of the pier foundations.” Construction cost was estimated at $5 million, with a timeline of three years.
The NY Bridge Co (Brooklyn Bridge) statute was similar to the one for the bridge to Queens with one very significant difference: funding. Unlike the Queens effort — which would have to rely on private investment — the language creating the NY Bridge Co. authorized the “… cities of New York and Brooklyn … to subscribe to the capital stock of said company … and to issue bonds in payment of such subscriptions, payable in not less than thirty years, or may guarantee the payment of the principal and interest of the bonds of the company….” This provision, along with Brooklyn’s vastly greater population and the financial spoils the project provided to Boss Tweed and his cronies who dominated New York politics, were critical differences in the ultimate fates of the two competing bridge projects.
Rainey had been one of the earliest and staunchest supporters of the project, and the burden of organizing and refinancing the Company fell on him, first as treasurer in 1874, then as president in 1877. Ultimately, Rainey resigned from the Company leadership to allow him to spend more time raising funds for the bridge. Money was short, however, and the Company was never financially set.
In any case, the Brooklyn Bridge opened two years later, in 1883. It was a spectacle that caught the attention of New Yorkers and took away any hype surrounding a second bridge to Queens. With less money invested and a waning interest in the project, the Company that was chartered to build Rainey Bridge ended construction. The Company eventually went bankrupt in the 1890s.
Still another effort was made to build that bridge, this time pushed by the LIRR seeking access into Manhattan. After plans for a tunnel came unglued, plans were made for a bridge across the East River from 64th St in Manhattan to Harswell Avenue in Queens. Work seems to have begun on the Manhattan side but the project was abandoned in 1895.
Now here’s a Roosevelt Island mystery. Eleanor’s Pier, roughly opposite the Subway Station, rests on the foundation for a bridge that would link Manhattan and Queens. However, it is opposite 64th St in Manhattan, not 77th. When was it built, and for what purpose isn’t clear.
The project still wasn’t dead. A group called the Committee of Forty kept the effort alive and Rainey continued to search for funding. Finances, legal challenges from landowners, legislative “fixes,” and concerns about the navigability of the East River if the bridge was built, were the major themes for the 1880s and 1890s. In March 1881 the first contract was awarded for construction and work did at last begin on a pier on the Queens side of the river. It was not completed, however, due to lack of money.
Time, once again, was running out on Rainey and the bridge advocates; and, again, the New York State Legislature stepped in. On May 29, 1885 – just three days before the completion deadline set in 1879 — an amendment was passed to require that construction start by May 30, 1888. This time there was no completion deadline, but there were requirements that certain amounts of money be spent each year of construction, beginning with $100,000 in 1889. The legislature apparently was looking for financial commitment from the bridge promoters to support their scheme.
While the statutory and legal aspects of the process were a tangle, the backers were able to engineer legislative fixes and juggle legal challenges. But the fundamental issue was never resolved: funding. Municipal financial support was never authorized. The bridge seemed to be viewed as a project for the benefit of developers and wealthy commercial interests.
In the end, despite three decades of activity, the Blackwell’s Island Bridge was not built as a private project. Rainey failed to interest capital in the project and, in the words of the Times obit, “retired a broken, weary man, to live the last ten years of his life at the home of his youngest sister.”
Ultimately, it was pressure by the Committee of Forty, the emergence of the consolidated City of New York in 1898, and, now, public funding that led to the construction of a bridge spanning the East River at Blackwell’s Island. This time, the City took responsibility and construction began the bridge in 1901. It was completed in March 1909 and celebrated with eight days of events. Considered “a work of art” the bridge has been designated a national monument, and is, according to the Greater Astoria Historical Society, “an exuberant piece of the urban fabric.”
On opening day in 1909, Dr. Rainey realized his dream as he crossed the new bridge with Governor Charles Evans Hughes. Rainey had remained the lone public voice for the bridge. Although a broken and bankrupt man, he never gave up hope and, in the celebration, he received a gold medal inscribed: “Father of the Bridge.” That day Rainey told the New York Times:
“This is my bridge. At least it is the child of my thought, of my long years of arduous toil and sacrifice. Just over there, are the old towers of my bridge, which I began to build many years ago. I spent all I owned on the project . . . It is a grand bridge, much greater than the one I had in mind. It will be in service to thousands in the years to come, when Dr. Rainey and his bridge projects will long have been gathered into the archives of the past.”
The new structure was named the Queensboro Bridge, but Rainey’s contribution was not forgotten. On April 18, 1904, the City of New York acquired several acres of waterfront property through condemnation procedures. The concrete sea wall, built where the park meets the East River, was completed in 1912, by which time Rainey had passed away. To honor his public spirit, the city named the property Rainey Park. This park is the largest in Ravenswood, once an exclusive neighborhood.
Why this bridge?
Build it and they will come.
A bridge held out the promise of commercial transformation of sparsely populated Queens, home to only 45,000 inhabitants in 1870 compared to 942,000 in Manhattan. Before the bridge opened in 1909, although Newtown creek was fully industrialized and factories were found along the river, Queens was mostly woods and farmland, with small clusters of villages and small towns scattered about this bucolic landscape. Not surprisingly, the prospect of moving people and freight more easily over a bridge, rather than exclusively by ferry and barge, was appealing to business leaders in Queens who had land to develop and products to manufacture and sell. Within 10 years of the bridge’s completion, the population of Queens had nearly doubled, from 275,000 to half a million people. Built it and people came.
DELACORTE THEATRE WITH BELVEDERE CASTLE CENTRAL PARK WE GOT LOTS OF CORRECT ANSWERS, MANY OF YOU WHO MISS SHAKESPEARE IN THE PARK EVERY SUMMER CLARA BELLA, LAURA HUSSEY, LISA FERNANDEZ, GLORA HERMAN, ALEXIS VILLEFANE, HARA REISER, BRENDA VAUGHAN, THOM HEYER
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Terminal 3, also known by the trademarked name Worldport, was an airport terminal built by Pan American World Airways (Pan Am) in 1960 at John F. Kennedy International Airport in Queens, New York, United States. It operated from May 24, 1960 to May 24, 2013, and was demolished in 2013–2014.
The distinctive “flying saucer” roof design of the Worldport The terminal was originally known as the “Pan Am Terminal” or Pan Am “Unit Terminal Building (UTB).” It was designed by Ives, Turano & Gardner Associated Architects and Walther Prokosch of Tippets-Abbett-McCarthy-Stratton as a showcase for international jet travel and is particularly famous for its 4-acre (1.6 ha) “flying saucer” roof suspended far from the outside columns of the terminal by 32 sets of pre-stressed steel posts and cables. The terminal was designed to allow for aircraft to be parked under the partial overhang; marketing brochures promoted it as the jet-age terminal that brought the plane to the passenger. The overhang sheltered passengers as they boarded the aircraft by stairs or by uncovered bridges. The American Institute of Architects (AIA) Guide to New York City called the terminal a “genuine architectural attempt to answer the problem of all-weather connections to the planes” but derided the overall concept as “compromised by an overabundance of distracting detail”.
The building’s facade originally featured zodiac figures made by sculptor Milton Hebald, although these were later removed by the Port Authority.
The terminal featured the Panorama Room, a dining room with a view of the entire concourse, and the Clipper Hall museum of Pan Am history.
In 1971, the terminal was expanded to accommodate the large Boeing 747 and renamed the “Pan Am Worldport”. The Worldport was the world’s largest airline terminal and held the title for several years. A Pan Am Boeing 707-100 at Worldport (1961) I
in 2012 Operation of the Worldport changed hands when Pan Am declared bankruptcy in 1991. Delta Air Lines acquired many of Pan Am’s assets, including the lease on the Worldport, which became known simply as “Terminal 3”, and operated most of its long-haul flights out of JFK to Europe, Asia, Africa, and South America from the building.
In March 2006, Delta COO Jim Whitehurst announced that Delta would spend US$10 million before the end of that year to renovate Terminal 2 and Terminal 3,
A ROOSEVELT ISLAND COINCIDENCE
The same engineering firm worked on the Pan Am Worldport Tippets-Abbett-McCarthy-Stratton
MILTON HEBALD
THE ZODIAC SCULPTURES
Milton Elting Hebald (May 24, 1917 – January 5, 2015) was a sculptor who specialized in figurative bronze works. Twenty-three of his works are displayed in public in New York City, including the statues of Romeo and Juliet and The Tempest in front of the Delacorte Theatre in Central Park.
His major work is a 220-foot (67 m), 12-piece “Zodiac Screen”, then the largest sculpture in the world, commissioned by Pan-American Airlines for its terminal at John F. Kennedy International Airport, and now owned and stored by the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey.[
Early life
Hebald was born in New York City. He studied at several New York art schools, starting at the age of ten, including the Art Students League of New York, the National Academy of Design and the Beaux-Arts Institute of Design. In New York City he taught at the Art Students League, The Cooper Union, American Artists School and also privately . He also taught at the Brooklyn Museum of Art, Skowhegan School of Art, in Maine, and at the University of Minnesota. He has been a guest lecturer and teacher at many other academic institutions. Hebald had his first one-man show at the age of 20, in New York City. He is currently exclusively represented by the Pushkin Gallery in Santa Fe, New Mexico.
Hebald was awarded the Prix de Rome Fellowship to the American Academy in Rome in 1955, 1956 and 1957. He stayed in Italy, living in Rome, with his wife, painter, Cecille Rosner Hebald, until 1970 when they moved to Bracciano, 25 miles outside Rome. In 2004, six years after his wife’s death, he returned to the United States. Hebald lived in Los Angeles at the time of his death.near to his daughter, Margo Hebald (aka Margo Hebald-Heymann), Architect, granddaughter Lara Hebald Embry and great-granddaughter Cecille Tuccillo all of whom live in California.
Work Hebald created a series of pieces in 1960 featuring representations of the Zodiac on the exterior of the Pan American World Airways Worldport at John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York City. A 200-foot-long (61 m) and 24-foot-high (7.3 m) windscreen in front of the terminal’s entrance was adorned with bas relief representations of the 12 signs of the zodiac, visible from both outside and inside the terminal building When it was created, it was the largest such work in the world. As part of renovations, the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey removed the sculptures, which sit unused in a hangar at the airport
Hebald has created a pair of statues in front of Central Park’s Delacorte Theatre. The bronze unveiled in 1966 features Prospero, the protagonist of William Shakespeare’s play The Tempest. The piece was a gift of George T. Delacorte Jr., who also donated the Delacorte Theatre.[6] A 14-foot (4.3 m) bronze of Prospero and Miranda by Hebald was dedicated in Central Park in honor of Joseph Papp, founder of the New York Shakespeare Festival.
Hebald’s sculpture of Romeo and Juliet was dedicated outside the Delacorte Theater in 1977.[8] Hebald created a bust of operatic tenor Richard Tucker for Richard Tucker Park, located in front of Lincoln Center, at the corner of Broadway and Columbus Avenue at 66th Street. Dedicated on April 20, 1980, the statue consists of a larger-than-life size bronze portrait on a 6-foot-high (1.8 m) granite pedestal.
The original 1978 proposal for a seven-foot statue of Tucker, depicted in the role of Des Grieux in the opera Manon Lescaut by Giacomo Puccini, had been opposed by a member of Manhattan Community Board 7, who felt that the piece should have been placed in the Metropolitan Opera Hall of Fame, and not on public property.
In Zurich, Switzerland, Hebald was commissioned to do a life sized, full figure portrait of James Joyce, for Joyce’s tomb. He also made a bust of British novelist Anthony Burgess, to whom he once also sold a house near Rome. Burgess was quoted in 1971 as saying Hebald was “without doubt the most important living figure sculptor.”[1] In Los Angeles, two of his bronze works were commissioned for the Adam’s sculpture garden surrounding the Stuart Ketchum YMCA, the “Olympiad” in tribute to the 1984 Olympics held in Los Angeles, and “Handstand”, depicting an acrobatic young boy which echos the “Y” logo.
RICHARD TUCKER SCULPTURE IN PARK BY LINCOLN CENTER
James Joyce sculpture in Zurich Anthony Burgess sculpture in Rome
Menorah Celebration at the ROOSEVELT ISLAND JEWISH CONGREGATION NINA LUBLIN AND ARLENE BESSENOFF WERE THE WINNERS
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EDITORIAL
As a more frequent traveler than I am now, Pan Am was the airline that took me everywhere. Whether on a DC6, 707, or 747 Pan Am was the carrier of preference. I would go to the ticket office in the Pan Am building to get my ticket. The ticket office was a showplace of midcentury modern design.
At JFK the terminal never functioned well. It was too small and the additional wing that was built was a giant “U: shape. You would always end up in the wrong wing and walks were very long.
JudyB
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On this first day of Chanukah, we are celebrating the menorah, the candle holder or oil vessel used to celebrate the Festival of Lights.
A few months back we wrote about Maurice Ascalon, the Israeli artist whose techniques launched the symbolic turquoise metalwork from his workshops.
Stylized Hanukah menorah circa 1950 by the Israeli sculptor Maurice Ascalon (1913-2003).
Contemporary Menorah by the son of Maurice Ascalon, Brad Ascalon
An example of a traditional Shabbat candlestick holder. This bronze example was designed by Maurice Ascalon and manufactured by his Pal-Bell Company in British Mandate Palestine in the 1940s.
270-year-old Hanukkah lamp sold in the Netherlands in November, 2016, which belonged to the family of a Dutch Jewish resistance fighter killed by the Nazis
Important Polish silver Hanukkah Lamp, first half of the 19th century. The back plate embossed and applied with a crown flanked with two trees birds, foliage and vine leaves. Fitted with two seated lions flanking eight oil sockets, set on four claw form supports. The servant light hanging with a cockerel. Clearly hallmarked and stamped with the quality mark 12. Circa 1820. Courtesy Ivantiques
Latkes, Potato Pancake are another Chanukah tradition with applesauce or sour cream
FRIDAY PHOTOS OF THE DAY
THURSDAY PHOTO OF THE DAY
1911 flag wHen Oklahoma was added to make a 46 star flag
The NYC Test & Trace Corp, Manhattan Borough President, Gale Brewer Roosevelt Island Operating Corp
are holding:
“Get Tested” event on Roosevelt Island this weekend,
December 12-13, 2020 from 8:00 A.M – 7:00 P.M.
Free Mobile COVID-19 tests Protect Your Health, Family & Community! Get tested on Roosevelt Island
Good Shepherd Plaza 543 Main Street
Bring your insurance card if you have one— but if not, don’t worry, this is not required. Results usually take 24- 48 hours
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The soon to be unveiled sculptures of FDR and young girl at the Hope Memorial in Southpoit Park Vicki Feinmel & Alexis Villefane got it right
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Bulova was founded and incorporated as the J. Bulova Company in 1875 by Bohemian immigrant Joseph Bulova. It was reincorporated under the name Bulova Watch Company in 1923, and became part of the Loews Corporation in 1979[and sold to Citizen at the end of 2007.
In 1912, Joseph Bulova launched his first plant dedicated entirely to the production of watches. Manufacturing watches at their factory in Biel (Switzerland), he began a standardized mass production new to watchmaking. In 1919, Bulova offered the first complete range of watches for women and men in 1924. The visual style of his first popular advertising made its watches popular with the American public. But beyond the original style, precision and technological research also became imperative for Bulova. In 1927, he set up an observatory on the roof of a skyscraper located at 580 5th Avenue to determine universal time precisely.
Bulova established its operations in Woodside, New York, and Flushing, New York, where it made innovations in watchmaking, and developed a number of watchmaking tools. Its horological innovations included the Accutron watch, which used a resonating tuning fork as a means of regulating the time-keeping function.
Bulova became a renowned watch company in 1923. Bulova produced the first advertisement broadcast on radio in 1926, announcing the first beep of history: ‘At the tone, it’s eight o’clock, Bulova Watch Time’, an announcement heard by millions of Americans. In 1927, Charles A. Lindbergh became the first solo pilot to cross the Atlantic nonstop. His crossing earned him a Bulova Watch and a check for $1000, and it became an emblem for the brand that created the model “Lone Eagle” in his likeness. Bulova claims to have been the first manufacturer to offer electric clocks beginning in 1931, but the Warren Telechron Company began selling electric clocks in 1912, 19 years prior to Bulova. In the 1930s and 1940s, the brand was a huge success with its rectangular plated watches whose case was strongly curved to better fit the curve of the wrist.
Women working in the pinion department of Bulova Watch circa 1937.
Bulova produced the world’s first television advertisement, on July 1, 1941 (the first day that commercial advertising was permitted on television), before a baseball game between the Brooklyn Dodgers and Philadelphia Phillies over New York station WNBT (now WNBC). The announcement, for which the company paid anywhere from $4.00 (equivalent to $70 in 2019)[citation needed] to $9.00 (equivalent to $156 in 2019),[citation needed] displayed a WNBT test card modified to look like a clock with the hands showing the time. The Bulova logo, with the phrase “Bulova Time”, was shown in the lower right-hand quadrant of the test pattern while the second hand swept around the dial for one minute.[6][7]
In the 1940s, Bulova made a few examples of their complex four sided, five-dial per side “sports timer” analog game clock[8] for use in NHL pro ice hockey games and for the nascent NBA pro basketball league of that time. They were put in indoor sports arenas such as Boston Garden, Chicago Stadium and the Detroit Olympia. The last example was taken out of service in Chicago in 1976, all replaced by digital-display game timepieces.[9]
In 1945, Arde Bulova, Chairman of the Board, founded the Joseph Bulova School of Watchmaking to provide training for disabled veterans after the Second World War. The school later became a full-fledged rehabilitation facility, an advocate for disabled people nationwide, and one of the founders of wheelchair sports in the United States. The school closed in 1993.
In 1967, Bulova bought the Manufacture des Montres Universal Perret Frères SA at Geneva and sold it in December 1977. The factory in Biel was closed in 1983.
Address: 40-24 62nd Street Neighborhood: Woodside Architect: Perry, Shaw and Hepburn with C. M. Lobejager and William F. Leppin Year: 1948 Current Status: Extant Award: Bronze Plaque for Public Buildings Typology: Commercial Building
The J. Bulova Company was founded in 1875 in New York City as a maker of watches and clocks, becoming the largest watchmaker in the world. Subsequently, the Joseph Bulova School of Watchmaking was started in 1945 as a non-profit institution to provide training and rehabilitation for disabled World War II veterans, building a physical school just a few years later. The complex still exists on a narrow side street in Woodside. Design-wise the building uses elements of high style Georgian architecture and may have been an effort to associate the company to America’s past. The building incorporates an early use of a wheelchair ramp, which was an integral part of the design in order to allow disabled veterans to enter the building easily.
According to the history of Bulova, the school evolved into a full-fledged advocate for disabled people nationwide, and acted as one of the founders of wheelchair sports in America.
The school closed in 1993. Today the building houses the Church of Latter Day Saints.
Sources: Savitz, Harriett May. Wheelchair Champions: A History of Wheelchair Sports. iUniverse, 2006. Google books. 12 December 2014. books.google.com
Accutron Accutron Movement. The tuning fork prongs are around the two electromagnetic coils at the top of the watch, which drive it. Bulova’s “Accutron” watches, first sold in October 1960, use a 360 Hz tuning fork instead of a balance wheel as the timekeeping element.
The inventor, Max Hetzel, was born in Basel, Switzerland, and joined the Bulova Watch Company in 1948.[11] The tuning fork was powered by a one-transistor electronic oscillator circuit, so the Accutron qualifies as the second “electronic watch”, following the Hamilton Electric released in 1957. Instead of the ticking sound made by mechanical watches, the Accutron had a faint, high-pitched hum which came from the vibrating tuning fork. A forerunner of modern quartz watches which also keep time with a vibrating resonator, the Accutron was guaranteed to be accurate to one minute per month, or two seconds per day, considerably better than mechanical watches of the time. In 2020, Bulova relaunched the Accutron brand.
HALL OF BLACKWELL HOUSE JOAN BROOKS, NINA LUBLIN, JOAN BROOKS, VICKI FEINMEL WERE THE FIRST TO GET IT.
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Driving past the Bulova Building reminds me that buildings can be re-purposed and still be a lovely addition to the neighborhood. JudyB
Text by Judith Berdy Thanks to Bobbie Slonevsky for her dedication to Blackwell’s Almanac and the RIHS Thanks to Deborah Dorff for maintaining our website Edited by Deborah Dorff All image are copyrighted (c) Roosevelt Island Historical Society unless otherwise indicated
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HOW NEW YORK BECAME A METROPOLIS OF STOOPS
December 7, 2020
New Yorkers can thank the Dutch settlers of the 17th century for the stoop (like this one near Columbus Avenue), arguably the city’s most iconic and beloved architectural feature.
Houses in Holland were built with a front stoop to keep parlor floors from flooding. When the early inhabitants of New Amsterdam built their dwellings, they kept the stoop—though they probably weren’t the grand and ornate staircases built two centuries later. (Below, Lower Manhattan stoops as they reportedly looked in the 1820s)
The stoop could have gone the way of wood-frame houses and corner tea water pumps in the developing metropolis. But stoops served another purpose after the Commissioners’ Plan of 1811—aka, the city street grid—went into effect.
The grid plan didn’t leave any space for alleys. Without a back door to a rowhouse accessed through an alley, servants and workers would enter and exit a residence using the same front stoop the owners used—which wasn’t too popular, at least with the owners.
But a tall stoop set back from the sidewalk allowed for a side door that led to the lower level of the house. While the owners continued to go up and down the stoop to get to the parlor floor (and see and be seen by their neighbors), everyone else was relegated to the side, according to Street Design: The Secrets to Great Cities and Towns. (This Turtle Bay brownstone, above, exemplifies the two-entrance distinction.)
And of course, as New York entered the Gilded Age of busy streets filled with dust, ash, refuse, and enormous piles of horse manure, a very high stoop helped keep all the filth from getting into the house. (See the two above and below, both on the Upper West Side, each with 11 stairs to the front door.)
As architectural styles changed, the New York City stoop changed as well. The short stoops on Federal Style houses from the early 19th century fell out of favor as brownstones, with their high, straight, ornate stoops—took over the streets of Manhattan and Brooklyn.
In the late 19th century, with brownstones derided for their cookie-cutter design (and chocolate sludge appearance), Romanesque Revival styles gained favor. Architects created playful takeoffs of the typical stoop. The “dog-leg” stoop, which turns to the left or right halfway down the steps, was popular on the Upper West Side and in parts of Brooklyn (see the photo above and also at the top of the page).
On East End Avenue is a stoop that I’m calling a double stoop, which appears to serve two halves of a wide brick townhouse.
By the beginning of the 20th century, stoops were getting lopped off altogether in favor of a lower-level entrance requiring just a few steps up or down. A stoop was seen as old-fashioned, for starters. Also, it was easier for a landlord to carve up a brownstone into separate apartments without one, according to Andrew S. Dolkart, the director of the historic preservation program at Columbia University, via a 2012 New York Times article.
Stoops are back in style again, the Times article says. And why wouldn’t they be? Elegant or functional, original or rebuilt (as the stoop above probably was), with ironwork on the railings or without, stoops are the front seats in a neighborhood—sharable space where people gather, kids play, and communities grow. They’re symbols of New York, past and present.
[Second image: NYPL; third image: painting by William Chappel]
A WONDERFUL HAWK WHO SPENT AN HOUR ON MY NEIGHBOR’S TERRACE ON SATURDAY ED LICHTER CLARA BELLA ALEXIS VILLEFANE GUESSED HAWK
ANOTHER VIEW OF THE BACK OF OUR TERRACE HAWK. THE SAME AFTERNOON A FRIEND SPOTTED THIS HAWK ON THE HOOD OF A CAR AT COSTCO
CLARIFICATION WE ARE HAPPY TO GIVE WINNERS OF OUR DAILY PHOTO IDENTIFICATION A TRINKET FROM THE VISITOR CENTER. ONLY THE PERSON IDENTIFYING THE PHOTO FIRST WILL GET A PRIZE. WE HAVE A SPECIAL GROUP OF ITEMS TO CHOOSE FROM. WE CANNOT GIVE AWAY ALL OUR ITEMS,. PLEASE UNDERSTAND THAT IN THESE DIFFICULT TIMES, WE MUST LIMIT GIVE-AWAYS. THANK YOU
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