Friday, March 12, 2021 – A WONDERFUL ARTPIECE CELEBRATING A WOMAN OF COURAGE

By admin

FRIDAY, MARCH  12, 2021

The

309th  Edition

From Our Archives

JOHNSON &JOHNSON SINGLE DOSE VACCINE AVAILABLE THIS WEEKEND

FOR THOSE OVER 60, SCHOOL STAFF, CHILD CARE WORKERS

AT
THE CARTER BURDEN SENIOR CENTER,
546 MAIN STREET.
REGISTER ON-LINE OR WALK-INS WELCOME.

The Roosevelt Island Historical Society and the New York Public Library are proud to host author Richard Panchyk and his presentation of his book “Abandoned Queens”.

TUESDAY, MARCH 16TH, 7 P.M. VIA ZOOM Click below to register:

https://www.nypl.org/events/programs/2021/03/16/abandoned-queens

There are many places in New York City’s borough of Queens where traces of the past linger, haunting reminders of the way things used to be, sometimes hidden and sometimes in plain sight. In this presentation, author Richard Panchyk takes us on a journey through his book Abandoned Queens, through a variety of fascinating abandoned places in Queens, including the chilling Creedmoor Psychiatric Center, the meandering remains of the country’s first modern highway, and a defunct airport reclaimed by wilderness. Because Queens is so densely populated, these abandoned places usually coexist adjacent to living, thriving locations, making for an often eerie and beautiful juxtaposition of old and new, used and unused. From an eerie old railroad line in Forest Hills to a destroyed neighborhood in the Rockaways, the poignant images in this book are filled with context and history.

SWING LOW: HARRIET TUBMAN MEMORIAL

FROM NYC PARKS

This larger-than-life bronze sculpture depicts abolitionist organizer and Underground Railroad leader Harriet Tubman (c. 1822-1913), and stands at the crossroads of St. Nicholas Avenue, West 122nd Street and Frederick Douglass Boulevard in Harlem. Douglass once said of Tubman that except for John Brown, he knew of “no one who has willingly encountered more perils and hardships to serve our enslaved people.”

Born into slavery in Maryland around 1822, Tubman escaped in 1849 via the Underground Railroad, the network of places and people dedicated to helping slaves find their way to freedom in non-slaveholding communities. Settling first in Philadelphia, then Canada, Tubman spent ten years returning to Maryland at great personal risk, to guide scores of friends and family members to freedom. Determined to end slavery, she later served the Union Army as a scout, spy and nurse in the Civil War. Settling in Auburn, New York after the war, she continued campaigning for equal rights for women and African-Americans. Her humanitarian work, including caring for the sick, homeless and disabled of all races, resulted in the establishment of the Harriet Tubman Home for the Aged in that community. She died in 1913 and was buried in Fort Hill Cemetery in Auburn with semi-military honors.

The portrayal of Harriet Tubman in Swing Low as the powerful and fearless train of freedom is hardly overstated in the artful sculpture that stands on the traffic island of a Harlem intersection. Facing South in righteous conviction for another trip as a conductor on the Underground Railroad, the Bronze and Chinese granite statue is lined with alternating tiles depicting events of Harriet Tubman’s life and traditional quilting patterns. The surrounding area around the Harriett Tubman memorial is landscaped with plants native to both New York and Maryland, Tubman’s home state, provides a contemplative space to consider Tubman’s legacy.

Frontispiece from Scenes in the Life of Harriet Tubman, ca. 1868. National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC.

ALISON SAAR’S SWING LOW

RENÉE ATER

Public Scholar
April 13, 2018

Welcome to my blog! In the coming months, I will post on objects related to my Contemporary Monuments to the Slave Past project as well as big ideas I need to sort out. For now, it will not be open for comments but feel free to like!

I selected Alison Saar’s Swing Low: Harriet Tubman Memorial (2008) as my first blog post because it is such a powerful and compelling image, and I am currently obsessed with Harriet Tubman as a woman and as a historical figure. The first public monument to an African American woman in New York City, the statue is located at Harriet Tubman Square, formed at the intersection of St. Nicholas Avenue and Frederick Douglass Boulevard at West 122nd Street in Harlem.

The contrast between the verdigris patina of her coat and skirt and the slate black patina of her skin are visually striking. With a stoic expression and determined gaze (think Roman portrait bust), Tubman moves forward with the steam of a locomotive. The bottom of her skirt becomes the pilot of a train, sometimes called a cattle catcher, which was the device mounted at the front of a locomotive to deflect obstacles on the track that might derail the train. Embedded in her skirt are portraits of anonymous faces, the passengers of the Underground Railroad, as well as objects carried north by fugitive slaves including cowry shells, medicine bottles, time pieces, shoe souls, and the broken manacles of slavery.

Trailing behind Tubman and attached to a boulder and her skirt are tree roots. These gnarled, intertwined roots represent Tubman’s efforts to uproot the system of slavery and the “pulling up of roots by the slaves and all they had to leave behind.” Along the base of the sculpture, Saar included bronze quilt blocks: traditional geometric quilt designs as well as applique blocks of scenes from Tubman’s rescue efforts to the Eastern Shore of Maryland.

I think that Saar ‘s conception of Tubman is based on the 1869 frontispiece from Sarah Bradford’s Scenes in the Life of Harriet Tubman. In June 1863, Tubman became the first woman to lead an armed military raid when she guided Col. James Montgomery and his 2nd South Carolina black regiment up the Combahee River, routing Confederate outposts, liberating more than 700 slaves, and destroying stockpiles of cotton, food, and weapons. Saar incorporated the core visual elements of the nineteenth-century wood engraving including the head wrap, the pleated skirt, and the Union army issued sack coat and haversack. Strikingly, Saar omitted the 1861 Springfield rifled musket. I speculate that Saar and city planners chose deliberately to omit the weapon because of the location of the memorial across from the 28th Precinct of the NYPD, and its long and difficult history of policing the once predominantly black Harlem. What would it have meant to have a statue of an armed black women in such a prominent public space?

FRIDAY PHOTOS OF THE DAY

SEND YOUR SUBMISSION TO:
ROOSEVELTISLANDHISTORY@GMAIL.COM

THURSDAY  PHOTO  OF THE DAY

BROOKLYN TERMINAL
FOR 
LONG ISLAND RAILROAD
ARLENE BESSENOFF AND ANDY SPARBERG GOT 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  Deborah Dorff
Roosevelt Island Historical Society

Sources

UNTAPPED NYC
NYC PARKS DEPARTMENT

FUNDING PROVIDED BY ROOSEVELT ISLAND OPERATING CORPORATION PUBLIC PURPOSE GRANTS CITY COUNCIL REPRESENTATIVE BEN KALLOS DISCRETIONARY FUNDING THRU DYCD

Copyright © 2021 Roosevelt Island Historical Society, All rights reserved.Our mailing address is:
rooseveltislandhistory@gmail.com