Originally photographed by Alfredo Valente. Image is courtesy of the Alfredo Valente papers, 1941-1978, in the Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution.
Painter, printmaker. Born in Lewiston, Maine, Hartley followed his family to Cleveland, Ohio, where he won a scholarship to the Cleveland School of Art. In 1899 he moved to New York, studying first under William Merritt Chase and F. Luis Mora and the next year at the National Academy of Design. With financial assistance from Alfred Stieglitz, Hartley went to Europe in 1912, spending much of his time in Germany, where he met Wassily Kandinsky, Franz Marc, and other members of the Blaue Reiter group.
On the advice of Charles L. Daniel, a gallery owner who had earlier sponsored Paul Burlin’s stay in New Mexico, Hartley visited Taos and Santa Fe in 1918 and 1919. He was attracted by the landscape, which he thought “magnificent” and “austere,” by the primitive simplicity of local santos, and by Indian dances, which he proclaimed the one truly indigenous art form in America.
In the early 1920s, while living in Berlin, Hartley recalled the New Mexican landscape in a series of paintings far more turbulent and brooding than any he had done on location. The next decade he divided his time between Europe and America, but his last years were spent mostly in his native Maine, painting the rugged coastline and “archaic portraits” of local fishermen.
Marsden Hartley, Yliaster (Paracelsus), 1932, oil on paperboard mounted on particleboard, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Museum purchase made possible by the Smithsonian Institution Collections Acquisition Program and by George Frederick Watts and Mrs. James Lowndes, 1988.53
To Americans in the 1930s, Mexico represented an ancient and deeply spiritual civilization much different from the industrial culture to the north. Artists and writers returned to the United States exalted by the myths and rituals that permeated the everyday lives of the Mexican people. Hartley made the trip in 1932 on a Guggenheim Fellowship, absorbing the primeval landscapes and surviving remnants of Aztec art. In a private library in Mexico City, he read that the medieval mystic Paracelsus had given the name yliaster to the base matter from which everything in the universe was made. This painting shows the volcanic peak of Popocatepetl rising from a red plain against the disk of the sun. Fire and earth contend with the intense blues in the sky and lake, completing the four elements of earth, air, fire and water that Paracelsus described.
Exhibition Label, Smithsonian American Art Museum, 2006
Marsden Hartley, Waxenstein, 1933, lithograph on paper, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Museum purchase, 1972.118
Marsden Hartley, Popocatepetl, Spirited Morning– Mexico, 1932, oil on board, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of Sam Rose and Julie Walters, 2004.30.3
During his visit to Mexico City in 1932, Marsden Hartley was entranced by the two snow-capped volcanoes, Popocatépetl and Ixtaccihuatl, surrounding the city. He devoted much of his time to studying ancient Aztec and Mayan artifacts and primordial myths of creation. According to legend, a Tlaxcaltecas chief promised the hand of his beautiful daughter Iztacc to the brave warrior Popo. Falsely told that her lover had been killed in battle, the girl died from grief. When the young warrior returned, he took her body into the hills and knelt beside her to keep watch. To protect them, the gods covered their forms in eternal snow.
Marsden Hartley, Red Tree, 1910, oil on fiberboard, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of Flora E. H. Shawan from the Ferdinand Howald Collection, 1966.33.1
Marsden Hartley’s mother died when he was young, and he found comfort and companionship in the countryside around his home. This affinity for nature remained with him his entire life, and he traveled to many countries to paint the landscape. (Kornhauser, Marsden Hartley, 2002) He spent the summer of 1910 in North Lovell, Maine, creating brightly colored images of the mountains and forests. In Red Tree, Hartley placed the viewer at the top of a hill, looking down through the dense trees to a small clearing. The bulbous shapes, curved trunks, and vivid colors create an intense scene that reflects the artist’s restless energy.
“The inherent magic in the appearance of the world about me, engrossed and amazed me. No cloud or blossom or bird or human ever escaped me.” Hartley, Adventures in the Arts, 1921, reprinted in Kornhauser, Marsden Hartley, 2002
Marsden Hartley, Pink Begonias, 1928-1929, oil on wood panel, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Bequest of Edith S. and Arthur J. Levin, 2005.5.37
THE CLOISTERS M. FRANK, NINA LUBLIN, ARLENE BESSENOFF, ALEXIS VILLAFANE, HARA REISER, LAURA HUSSEY, THOM HEYER, MITCH ELINSON ALL GOT IT EARLY ON MONDAY MORNING!!
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
SMITHSONIAN AMERICAN ART MUSEUM
FUNDING PROVIDED BY ROOSEVELT ISLAND OPERATING CORPORATION PUBLIC PURPOSE GRANTS CITY COUNCIL REPRESENTATIVE BEN KALLOS DISCRETIONARY FUNDING THRU DYCD
Not in ancient times. Not even long ago. Only in 1895!
With the opening of the Harlem River Ship Canal. The Harlem River Ship Canal was one of the major infrastructure works in our country’s history and reshaped Manhattan – now Manhattan Island.
Current view of Harlem River connection to Hudson River. Marble Hill was once a physical part of Manhattan.
Today, we can sail north from our Island, and bear west on the Harlem River, around Manhattan and into the Hudson. We pass the Spuyten Duyvil Bridge, a swing-open railroad bridge which connects Manhattan and the Bronx. It’s only used by Amtrak traffic now, but in years past, it handled freight, passenger and all manner of trains. On the Bronx side is the neighborhood of Spuyten Duyvil. Both the neighborhood and the bridge are named after Spuyten Duyvil Creek, a small estuary that connected the Hudson River to the northern tip of the Harlem River. The creek wandered north of what is known today as Marble Hill, which was then well-connected to Manhattan.
Shallow and rocky, the creek was barely navigable even for small boats. In 1817, a narrow canal, called the ‘Dyckman Canal’, was dug to permit small craft traffic to sail south of Marble Hill. It allowed rowboats and small private sailing vessels to move between the upper part of Manhattan and the wider, western end of the Spuyten Duyvil Creek, connecting the Hudson and Harlem Rivers. Steam vessels, however, were far too large to make the passage.
This 18th-century military map shows Spuyten Duyvil Creek in its original state.
With the opening of the Erie Canal in 1821, shipping traffic on the Hudson increased greatly. Some of these ships were bound for Long Island Sound (and vice versa). If only they could fit through the Spuyten Duyvil Creek, valuable time and money wouldn’t be lost sending them around the southern tip of Manhattan.
As early as 1829 the idea of a ship canal connecting the Harlem and Hudson rivers had been explored. If they could cut through the solid rock surrounding the Spuyten Duyvil Creek, the distance between the Hudson and Long Island Sound would be reduced by some twenty-file miles. More, 10 miles of new wharves could be added to the Manhattan’s new northern waterfront. And Manhattan would finally become a true island.
In 1863, the Hudson And Harlem River Canal Company was formed, still another effort to start the canal to join the Hudson and Harlem rivers with a navigable canal. But only in 1873 did the US Congress finally break the logjam by appropriating funds for a survey of the relevant area, following which New York State bought the necessary land and gave it to the federal government. In 1876, the New York State Legislature issued a decree for the construction of the canal.
But exactly where would the canal go? On March 3, 1881 Congress passed the River and Harbor act and called for a survey of possible routes for the proposed canal. (This might sound a familiar note that infrastructure legislation did not move expeditiously even then!) Several paths were considered. From an engineer’s perspective, the obvious choice would have been to blast through the south tip of the Bronx creating a straight line from river to river. But right here was the Johnson Ironworks, a major supplier of guns and cast ammunition to the US military, and that path would require condemning the major portion of its works and isolating the southern part. So, ultimately, it was decided that cutting through “Dyckman’s Meadows” would be the best option, and so the initial canal looped south of the foundry.
Construction of the Harlem River Ship Canal – officially the United States Ship Canal – finally started on January 9, 1888, when a group of some two hundred, mostly Italian laborers, set to work. To make the 1,200 foot cut the workers erected dams on either end of the Spuyten Duyvil–one dam at the eastern end of the small stream, where it emptied into the Harlem River, and another on the western end along the Hudson. Between these two man-made structures, designed to keep the water out, laborers blasted away the surrounding hills and burrowed through solid rock to create a channel 350 feet wide and 85 feet deep.
The work was dangerous and labor-intensive. Nor’easters caused extensive damage to the project, and destroyed the dams erected at the east and west ends to permit water-free excavation. Construction machinery was ruined by the flooding, and the canal was finished by dredging both the rock and the machinery away, while the drilling and blasting was done from that point on by underwater divers.
Harlem Ship Canal, Harper’s Weekly, February 16, 1895.
The canal opened officially in 1895. John Jacob Astor IV, one of the world’s richest men and a backer of the canal, who had speculated heavily on the real estate that the canal would improve into waterfront, was set on being the first man through it. However, three months prior to the opening ceremony a lowly steam tugboat – the Lillian M. Hardy – managed to traverse the entire route with its shallow draft, stealing his thunder.
The official ceremony, months later, would be opened by the U.S.S. Cincinnati firing a broadside to signal the opening of the Spuyten Duvil Bridge to ship traffic. A huge celebration took place, with hundreds of thousands showing up for the spectacle.
“The United States Cruiser Cincinnati, her brass guns shining brightly in the sun, lay near the New York shore, a little above the drawbridge, and around her the tugs and launches and the private yachts and excursion steamers collected, waiting for the signal to start…. The fleet of vessels made a pretty sight in the Hudson, waiting for the signal to start. The tugs, of which there were two dozen or more, were all profusely decorated with flags. The little steam and electric and naphtha launches puffed around here and there like brilliant-hued Croton bugs, while the Stiletto, the Now Then, the Vamoose, and other marine fliers cruised about on the western side of the river. The police steamer Patrol arranged the boats in the order in which they were to go throughout the canal.” (New York Times, June 18, 1895)
For a while Marble Hill would be an island, but in 1916, part of the old creek was completely filled in, making the former island of Marble Hill physically contiguous with the Bronx. But in this case, possession wasn’t nine tenths of the law. Despite being physically in the Bronx, Marble Hill remained administratively part of Manhattan.
The Marble Hill story wasn’t over yet. In 1939, the Bronx borough president planted a borough flag and claimed it for the Bronx. The issue rattled around in court for decades (nothing moves quickly) until in 1984, the New York State Legislature permanently included Marble Hill as an administrative part of Manhattan.
In 1919, New York State passed a bill in order to straighten the western end of the canal feeding into the Hudson. Initially, it had been diverted south to avoid disturbing the Johnson Iron Works foundry. The foundry held out until 1923 when it vacated the premises, and in 1927 was awarded $3.28 million in compensation, just over a third of their original demand of $11.53 million. Plans to excavate the channel were finalized in 1935, and the channel was excavated from 1937 to 1938. The canal was now invisible, just a section of the Harlem River. The work severed the Johnson foundry’s 13.5-acre peninsula of land from the Bronx, and a piece of the Bronx was then absorbed into Manhattan’s Inwood Hill Park.
But there’s a still mystery. We know that the opening of the Canal was a very big deal on the Hudson side: “It was a great day for upper New York. The joining of the waters of the Hudson and East Rivers was celebrated as no similar event has been celebrated since the Erie Canal was opened in 1825.” (Newburgh Daily Journal, June 17, 1895)
But what about on this side? I find no information about celebrations on the East River as the flotilla of ships passed through the Canal and Harlem River and exited just north of our Island. Surely Island residents must have known about the Canal opening. Were they waiting to see the first ships emerge? Was there a celebration here?
New tasks for the renowned Roosevelt Island Historical Society!
O I remember that. The S Klein discount clothing store on Union Square The dress company I worked for 3 summers in the 1960’s did hush-hush business with them M. Frank
As the name on the building indicates this is one of the two S Klein on the Square Buildings. This building still exists as 24-32 Union Square East. The second and larger S. Klein building on Union Square occupied the corner lot at 14th Street and 4th Avenue (Park Avenue South). When I worked for a home care company that was created by Roosevelt Island Residents with Disabilities we had an office at 853 Broadway which is across from the S Klein location. While working there, I witnessed the demolition of Klein’s and the replacement of that building with Zechendof Towers. Ed Litcher
S Klein Department Store, 14th Street and 4th Ave. (now Park Ave. South). Andy Sparberg
The Great S. Klein store on 14th Street. I remember seeing it for the first time as a youngster and insisting that it was owned by a favorite uncle, Manny Klein. I made such a nuisance of myself about this that I was taken to the restaurant that my uncle DID own and had a chocolate ice cream soda ! Jay Jabobson
Discount clothing on Union Square. My aunt bought her wedding dress there in the 50’s. Harriet Lieber
Klein’s department Store. I lived down the street from Klein’s and loved searching for bargains for my new apartment in 1970. Gloria Herman
Alexis Villafare, Hara Reiser, Laura Hussey also 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 All image are copyrighted (c)
FUNDING PROVIDED BY ROOSEVELT ISLAND OPERATING CORPORATION PUBLIC PURPOSE GRANTS CITY COUNCIL REPRESENTATIVE BEN KALLOS DISCRETIONARY FUNDING THRU DYCD
Kenneth Hayes Miller, Shopper, 1930, oil on canvas mounted on fiberboard, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of Mrs. Harold G. Wolff, 1972.49
Kenneth Hayes Miller, 1934, Peter A. Juley & Son Collection, Smithsonian American Art Museum J0001902 Painter and teacher. An influential teacher of artistic theory and technical methods, he counted Reginald Marsh and Isabel Bishop among his students at the Art Students League.
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)
During the forty years that Kenneth Hayes Miller taught at the Art Students League, he inspired a generation of American painters to find the sources of their art in both the Renaissance and contemporary urban life. Miller himself had sought traditional academic training from Kenyon Cox and H. Siddons Mowbray at the Art Students League and had worked with William Merritt Chase at the New York School of Art. After a trip to Europe he joined the staff at the New York School in 1899, and in 1911 began his teaching career at the League. Miller’s early romantic paintings revealed the influence of his friend Albert Pinkham Ryder, but during the second decade of the century he turned to the Renaissance compositional devices and technical media later adopted by Reginald Marsh, Paul Cadmus, Edward Laning, and other Miller protégés. For his subjects, Miller looked to 14th Street and Union Square. His sales girls and shoppers seem frozen in space, the forms of their bodies described in terms of interlocking ovals that are contained within carefully conceived contour lines.
Virginia M. Mecklenburg Modern American Realism: The Sara Roby Foundation Collection (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press for the National Museum of American Art, 1987)
Kenneth Hayes Miller, Pause by a Window (Waiting for the Bus), ca. 1930, etching on paper, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of Virginia Zabriskie, 1978.23
During the forty years Kenneth Hayes Miller taught at the Art Students League in New York City, he encouraged a generation of American painters, including Reginald Marsh, Paul Cadmus, and Sara Roby, to find inspiration in contemporary life. Yet he also counseled compositional balance and the value of classic form. For his own work, Miller looked to the shoppers, salesgirls, strollers, and streetwalkers he encountered around Fourteenth Street and Union Square. In Bargain Hunters, he captured the crush of femininity on sale day. Although the women seem frozen in space, their eyes sparkle with the excitement of bargain hunting. Modern American Realism: The Sara Roby Foundation Collection, 2014
Kenneth Hayes Miller, Play, 1919, etching and drypoint on paper, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Museum purchase, 1972.36
Kenneth Hayes Miller, Leaving the Shop (Shoppers Leaving the Shop), 1929, etching, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of the Zabriskie Gallery, 1972.126
SARATOGA RACE TRACK SUSAN RODETIS, NANCY BROWN, ANDY SPARBERG, LAURA HUSSEY, ED LITCHER GOT IT RICHT.
OOPS!!
THURSDAY’S PHOTO WAS THE ENID HAUPT CONSERVATORY AT BRONX BOTANICAL GARDEN
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
SMITHSONIAN AMERIAN ART MUSEUM
FUNDING PROVIDED BY ROOSEVELT ISLAND OPERATING CORPORATION PUBLIC PURPOSE GRANTS CITY COUNCIL REPRESENTATIVE BEN KALLOS DISCRETIONARY FUNDING THRU DYCD
Saratoga’s Kensington Hotel: From Sanitarium to Skidmore
FROM: NEW YORK ALMANACK
It is August and time to travel north to Saratoga and the annual races. Enjoy the historical ups and downs of the town and the characters involved in a community that loved to gamble.
Visitors from every part of the world have made their way to Saratoga Springs for myriad reasons, but mainly for their health or their hippic interest. They have been accommodated in fabulous structures, but unfortunately most of these great hotels have been lost. In their time they established a superior level of service, dedicated to sybarite satisfaction which help make Saratoga a resort destination. They mainly stood along Broadway. The Kensington Hotel however, stood away from the others. Its location was on fashionable Union Avenue, the splendid thoroughfare which reaches from the village to the Saratoga Lake, with the race track in between.
In 1877 Dr. W. J. Haine purchased property on the northwest corner of Union Avenue at Regent Street, and planned to build a sanitarium for the treatment of his patients. This structure would be of masonry construction, being configured as an “L” in shape, with an entrance on both Union and Regent. Bricks were delivered in the spring of 1878, and the new building was underway. By mid-May the Union Street section of the Haine Sanitarium had one story complete and the Regent Street wing stood at two stories.
The progress on the building slowed with the winter seasons as the masons stopped, and the carpenters and joiners moved to indoor shops to fashion interior pieces. Both 1879 and 1880 passed with the structure still incomplete. In the summer of 1881, James H. Rodgers, the proprietor of the Coleman House in New York City, visited Saratoga and inquired about the still incomplete sanitarium. He found that an offer to exchange real estate in Ogdensburg was acceptable, and the structure was repurposed as a hotel.
The pace of construction increased with the new ownership, and the unfinished building allowed Rodgers plenty of latitude for reconfiguration, and his largest revision was adding a fifth and final floor. The reception area with marble floor and cherry panels and desk was most welcoming, and rich Wilton carpeting was used in the well-lighted halls. Three large stairways and an elevator connected the upper parts of the house, with communication provided by an electric annunciator and speaking tubes.
The guest chambers were furnished in black walnut and Brussels carpets, and period plumbing. The rooms facing Union Ave and Regent Street were provided with balconies or loggia, which were joined together across the front by a colonnaded piazza. The shape of the building allowed for a lovely front garden with the word KENSINGTON spelled out in blooming flowers. The Hotel could accommodate 300-400 guests, and welcomed the first of these visitors in June 1882.
GRAND UNION HOTEL AND CONGRESS HALL HOTEL
Like many of the other grand accommodations in Saratoga Springs at the time, the Kensington was seasonal, closing in the late fall and winter, with reservations for the spring and summer being made at a companion hotel in New York City. By 1885 Rodgers found enough success to add 103 rooms to the north side of the structure, along with another large dining room, barroom, billiard room, barber shop, smoking and reading room and children’s play room.
This expansion placed the Kensington as the forth in size of the local establishments, behind the Grand Union, the United States and Congress Hall, all on Broadway. The babblings from the springs of the nation’s finest Spa, and sporting interests, ensured prosperity during the Gilded Age. Early in 1887 Rogers found it time to turn over his investment across from Congress Park, once again in exchange for other property, this time on Lafayette Avenue in Brooklyn and $200,000, transferred his title in the Kensington to German émigré Paul C. Grening.
The elegant nature of the Kensington was further fostered by Grening, who added one of the most sophisticated music-boxes ever constructed to the main parlor; it was said to be the size of a piano. His new chefs and bakers found wide acclaim amongst the patrons. Grening took to the waters of Saratoga and the social mobility of his position. He became the treasurer of the Saratoga Association for the Improvement of the Breed of Horses, and the Kensington Hotel, like its Broadway competitors, sponsored a stakes race on the local oval for many seasons.
In 1889 Mr. Grening acquired another resort hotel, the Glen Mountain House, in Watkins Glen, and for a few years, he was able to keep all the balls in the air. The wolves that gather at the door indicating financial vulnerability growled at Greening following the 1892 Saratoga season. A meeting of his creditors took place in New York with the treasurer of the Saratoga Racing Association listing his assets in Saratoga, Watkins Glen and embarrassments engendered by a Brooklyn real estate development. In the fall of 1893 foreclosure proceedings were commenced on the Glen Mountain House, yet Grening, with some payments and many promises, managed to stump up and forestall them. The Elmira Telegram described him as; “rich in real estate, but poor in spot cash.”
The continuing financial woes went sideways in the spring of 1894, spinning out of control and foreclosure of the Kensington Hotel by three different banks took place and Grening, who had been raising his children in Saratoga, vacated for Brooklyn, where he went on to political office. All through the rest of the 1890s, the multiple financial institutions which took control through foreclosure, leased the Kensington annually to various operators. This same period saw the Saratoga Race Track’s reputation slip under the management of Gottfried “Dutch Fred” Walbaum, who offended many horsemen and punters. William C. Whitney and a syndicate of like-minded investors turned that around as the twentieth century began. In this same time period Lucy Skidmore Scribner, widowed in 1879 with no children, established her Young Woman’s Industrial Club in 1903, across from Congress Park, on the same block as the Kensington Hotel.
The July 20th, 1902 New York Sun published a ringing endorsement, “The Kensington has, in many ways, the finest location of any hotel in Saratoga. It is on the crown of Union Avenue, overlooking the valley of the Springs, within two blocks of the race course and on the direct road to Saratoga Lake.”
Most of the local press in the early years of the new century detailed the great orchestra’s performing at the Kensington and the fine meals offered and Japanese gardens, with a seemingly endless mention of being under new management. By 1905 the ownership of the Kensington Hotel building was held by the National Savings Bank of Albany, while the furniture was the property of Citizens’ National Bank of Saratoga, who agreed like a harp and a harrow and was not an ideal business arrangement.
Local management returned in 1907 with Joseph Kelly, the manager of The Worden House on Broadway, and his son, Worden Kelly taking charge. The summer season of 1908 was the final year of operation of the Kensington Hotel, and in 1909 demolition was begun. Advertisements were run in the local papers offering “second hand building materials of all descriptions for sale cheap,” at the former Kensington site.
The old pile came down a lot faster than it went up, as what had occurred was that a group of prominent residents, Douglass W. Mabee, D. P. McQueen, Capt. John K. Walbridge and Hiram C. Todd Sr., all on the que vive denizens of Union Avenue, became involved under the corporate name of the Neighborhood Realty Company. Fearing what could become of the Kensington property and the potential problems that could be posed in their posh neighborhood, they purchased the hotel from the bank and had it razed.
After the Kensington was demolished, the Neighborhood Realty Company leased the vacant lot to Mrs. Scribner for athletic fields for what had evolved into the Skidmore School of Arts, and by that time occupied nearly the entire block formed by Union Avenue, Circular Street, Spring Street and Regent Street. The January 29th, 1916 Saratogian mentioned that the Neighborhood Realty Company gifted the property to Skidmore, reporting that, “the names of the donors of which are not to be made public.”
The property on which the Kensington Hotel once stood was used by Skidmore College for a track, tennis courts, and an ice rink during the winter. In the early 1920s Skidmore’s Margarette E. Griffith Hall, at the corner of Circular Street and Union Avenue, was expanded to the east on a portion of the previous Kensington property. The former Griffith Hall is the present day 1 Union Avenue address of the Empire State College’s Administrative offices, and the next door down at 3 Union Avenue at Regent Street, occupies the site of the former Kensington Hotel.
Photos, from above: the Kensington Hotel on the north side of Union Avenue between Circular and Regent Streets courtesy Lucien R. Burleigh 1888 bird’s-eye-view map of Saratoga Springs; and the Kensington Hotel on Union Avenue at Regent Street in Saratoga Springs courtesy Detroit Publishing Company catalogue (1901-1906).
Our first program with our partners the R.I. branch of the NYPL is on TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 21st. The program with author Kim Todd will be at 6:30 p.m. There are two ways to enjoy the program: Watch on ZOOM at the Community Room at our NYPL branch Watch on ZOOM at home Registration details to follow
In the waning years of the nineteenth century, women journalists across the United States risked reputation and their own safety to expose the hazardous conditions under which many Americans lived and worked. In various disguises, they stole into sewing factories to report on child labor, fainted in the streets to test public hospital treatment, posed as lobbyists to reveal corrupt politicians. Inventive writers whose in-depth narratives made headlines for weeks at a stretch, these “girl stunt reporters” changed laws, helped launch a labor movement, championed women’s rights, and redefined journalism for the modern age.
The 1880s and 1890s witnessed a revolution in journalism as publisher titans like Hearst and Pulitzer used weapons of innovation and scandal to battle it out for market share. As they sought new ways to draw readers in, they found their answer in young women flooding into cities to seek their fortunes. When Nellie Bly went undercover into Blackwell’s Insane Asylum for Women and emerged with a scathing indictment of what she found there, the resulting sensation created opportunity for a whole new wave of writers. In a time of few jobs and few rights for women, here was a path to lives of excitement and meaning.
After only a decade of headlines and fame, though, these trailblazers faced a vicious public backlash. Accused of practicing “yellow journalism,” their popularity waned until “stunt reporter” became a badge of shame. But their influence on the field of journalism would arc across a century, from the Progressive Era “muckraking” of the 1900s to the personal “New Journalism” of the 1960s and ’70s, to the “immersion journalism” and “creative nonfiction” of today. Bold and unconventional, these writers changed how people would tell stories forever.
ED LITCHER, ANDY SPARBERG, LAURA HUSSEY, VICKI FEINMEL, ARLENE BESSENOFF, HARA REISER ALL HAD 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)
NEW YORK ALMANACK
FUNDING PROVIDED BY ROOSEVELT ISLAND OPERATING CORPORATION PUBLIC PURPOSE GRANTS CITY COUNCIL REPRESENTATIVE BEN KALLOS DISCRETIONARY FUNDING THRU DYCD
If it’s been so long since you’ve walked through Central Park that you’ve forgotten how magical it is in the springtime, then let Adolf Dehn’s Midcentury lush and dreamy park paintings remind you.
Dehn, who started his artistic career as a lithographer of satirical scenes in the early 20th century, found more success as a New York City landscape painter in the 1940s and 1950s.
“Spring Blossoms, Central Park,” at top (exact date unknown), focuses on blooming leafs and love, perhaps, with couples lounging and walking in the forefront. “Central Park Stroll,” completed in 1942, above, gives us the park’s gentle, verdant hills and trees—with the Chrysler building and other skyscrapers surrounding the lawn like castles.
“Central Park,” from 1950, is a portrait of the park’s playful characters: strollers, dog walkers, boat rowers, and bench sitters. It’s a dollhouse-like miniature of the park at twilight, a reminder of the park’s dreamy enchantment.
ARLENE BESSENOFF, NINA LUBLIN 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 All image are copyrighted (c) Roosevelt Island Historical Society unless otherwise indicated
EPHEMERAL NEW YORK
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
FUNDING PROVIDED BY ROOSEVELT ISLAND OPERATING CORPORATION PUBLIC PURPOSE GRANTS CITY COUNCIL REPRESENTATIVE BEN KALLOS DISCRETIONARY FUNDING THRU DYCD
Few industrialists in the history of the United States have been so widely involved in multiple production operations as Henry Ford. His business philosophy was to operate and control all phases of his manufacture, which included transportation between production facilities. Certain operations of his automobile empire involved the transportation of raw materials, and completed sub-assemblies between the main plants in the Detroit area, and satellite plants on the eastern seaboard.
Ford, a trenchant industrialist, realized that the New York State Barge Canal offered business a tremendous economic corridor between the Great Lakes and the Atlantic Ocean.
The commercial virtue of the Barge Canal became apparent to Henry Ford after he vacationed on the system in 1922. He began the trip as the guest of Governor Nathan Miller aboard the New York State yacht Inspector, with a tour of the Champlain Division. Ford spent a weekend with the governor’s family at their cottage on Lake George, after which he was met by his son Edsel aboard their private yacht the Greyhound, returning to Detroit via the then five year old canal network and Great Lakes.
The yacht Greyhound, Henry Ford Museum
Henry Ford’s companies built Atlantic seaboard plants, and in January of 1931 he sent a group of design engineers to Albany to meet with state canal officials to discuss a corporate proposal to operate a fleet of large motorships on the Barge Canal. The motorships were designed by the noted naval architecture firm of Henry J. Gielow, Inc. of New York. Ford Motor Company ordered two 300-foot cargo ships, the largest ever built for service on the Barge Canal and the first turbine powered craft built. The keels for the first two ships were laid at the Great Lakes Engineering Works of River Rouge, Michigan in 1931.
The design of the vessels included a retractable pilot house that would lower the entire helm into a well in the ship’s hull. This arrangement, similar to an elevator shaft, would allow the craft to pass under bridges on the canal that limited overhead clearance. The other protuberances, such as exhaust stacks, masts, and flag poles also descended to the deck. All ship controls were designed to be operated directly from the pilot house, a novel aspect for the day that saw most vessels designed with only a system of bells for the pilot to signal the crew with his intentions.
Each motorship would be operated by a crew of twenty-two men on a 24-7 schedule, and would be powered by two 800 horsepower Westinghouse geared steam turbine engines, fired by fuel oil. The craft could make 11.3 knots and had a capacity of 2800 net tons which could be loaded through nine telescopic hatches. The design of the motorships also took into account the confined conditions of canal operations, with the vessels equipped with dual rudders and direct reversing engines, making turning easy in low speed maneuvering.
The first ship was launched on May 9, 1931, and named the Chester, so named for the Ford plant in Chester, Pennsylvania, near Philadelphia, which the craft would service. The second motorship, the Edgewater, was launched on May 16, 1931, with its namesake being the Ford Plant in Edgewater, New Jersey, across the Hudson River from New York City.
Both of the identical sister ships were fitted out and ready for Ford service by mid-summer with the sides of the new vessels emblazoned with the Ford script logo. The craft, while sized to fit the dimensions of the Barge Canal, were designed for navigation on the more challenging waters of the Great Lakes and Atlantic Ocean. This advantage allowed the seaworthy self-propelled cargo vessels to make connections from the absolute limits of the system without the requirement to break and reload the shipment in various vessels.
The Chester and the Edgewater operated during the depression years and proved to be a profitable asset to Ford’s developing export market. Occasionally, as market forces dictated, the motorships would be contracted out to haul commodities for companies other than Ford, in an effort to keep the vessels and crews constantly productive.
In 1937 Ford decided to double the size of the canal fleet by building two new vessels. These new motorships would be similar to those built six years previous, but the designers would add some refinements learned from operation of the original vessels. The new ships would have an increased capacity of 3000 net tons, the intended limit of Barge Canal locks. The retractable pilot house would be placed further aft on the new vessels, rather than in the far forward position on the original craft. The sides on the newer freighters met the deck at a square angle, rather than the water shedding bevel of the original design. The total horsepower was reduced from 1600 to 1200, with an eye toward economy, with the installation of newly designed Cooper-Bessemer diesel power-plants. The most important difference on the new motorships would be that the two new ships would be the first freighters on the Great Lakes to utilize completly welded hull construction. This pioneering development and prototype in ship construction would greatly aid the speedy emergency construction of cargo vessels in the approaching world war.
The two new craft would be named the Green Island in honor of the Ford plant near Troy, NY, and the Norfolk named for the plant in Norfolk, Virginia. These craft allowed Ford to ship completed sub-assemblies, such as engines built in Detroit, to the east coast export plants. Westbound, the vessels would carry bumpers, springs and radiators, built by vendors, back-hauling to the massive Ford River Rouge Plant.
Both the Barge Canal and the Ford vessels were operated twenty-four hours a day. This ambitious schedule saw the vessels constantly moving in both directions with full holds during the shipping season. The incorporation of consistency in equipment, both on the vessels and at the unloading facilities of all plants, allowed efficient, integrated operation of independent units. The four craft operated successfully in this manner upon the Barge Canal for a number of years prior to the United States’ involvement in the Second World War.
All four Ford ships were requisitioned by the United States Navy for use in the war effort by January 1942. The vessels were used in the Caribbean Sea, in what was considered safe waters. It is surprising from the perspective of the present day that the Navy decided to use these vessels on blue water, rather than their designed and proven mission of moving the products of industry between the Great Lakes and the Atlantic.
This unwise decision penalized New York State by removing the only class of vessels which were ever designed and built to take maximum advantage of the Barge Canal. These craft were exactly what the designers of the Barge Canal had envisioned, a vessel that could transport any type of material from any port on the Great Lakes, to any port on the Atlantic coast, without the need to shift cargo.
The motorships, sent in harm’s way, did suffer damage on the high seas. The Green Island was the most ill-fated of the four Ford canal vessels pressed into war time service. The low profile of the motorship, especially during the hours of darkness, could be confused with the outline of a surfaced submarine. In the early morning of January 27, 1942, off the coast of Florida, the crew of the U.S. Navy destroyer USS Hamilton mistakenly identified the Green Island, and rammed the vessel, damaging its port side. The Green Island was able to move to Miami for repairs.
Just after returning to service the Green Island was sunk by the Nazi U-boat U-125 on May 6, 1942. The surfaced submarine encountered the motorship south of Jamaica as the vessel was returning from Cuba with a load of sugar. Captain Ulrich Folkers, in uncharacteristic compassion toward merchant seamen, ordered the crew into the safety of their lifeboats before he fired a fatal torpedo into the side of the out of place canal vessel, sending her to the floor of the Caribbean Ocean.
The Navy modified the three remaining Ford motorships to better suit their wartime duties on salt water. This adaptation involved raising the pilot house and making its position fixed. The Chester, Edgewater and Norfolk survived the conflict, contributing to the Allied victory.
After the war was over, the scope of business practices had changed and the vessels were disposed of by Ford, never returning to the service of that company. The Chester was sold to Brazilian interests and was renamed Lourival Lisboa and later renamed Guararapes before be scrapped in the mid-1950s.
The Edgewater operated under the new name Orion on the Great Lakes as a tanker and later as a sand barge, sinking in Lake Erie in 1968. The Norfolk was operated by Canadian interests as the Humerdoc until it was scrapped in 1967. Because of the modifications the US Navy made, which affected the height of the craft, the vessels were no longer able to transit the Barge Canal.
Many motorships have plied the Barge Canal, Great Lakes and Hudson River network, but Henry Ford demonstrated the designs were viable.
Photos, from above: Ford River Rouge Plant; CHESTER; EDGEWATER; GREEN ISLAND; and NORFOLK courtesy Historical Collections of the Great Lakes.
Our first program with our partners the R.I. branch of the NYPL is on TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 21st. The program with author Kim Todd will be at 6:30 p.m. There are two ways to enjoy the program: Watch on ZOOM at the Community Room at our NYPL branch Watch on ZOOM at home Registration details to follow
In the waning years of the nineteenth century, women journalists across the United States risked reputation and their own safety to expose the hazardous conditions under which many Americans lived and worked. In various disguises, they stole into sewing factories to report on child labor, fainted in the streets to test public hospital treatment, posed as lobbyists to reveal corrupt politicians. Inventive writers whose in-depth narratives made headlines for weeks at a stretch, these “girl stunt reporters” changed laws, helped launch a labor movement, championed women’s rights, and redefined journalism for the modern age.
The 1880s and 1890s witnessed a revolution in journalism as publisher titans like Hearst and Pulitzer used weapons of innovation and scandal to battle it out for market share. As they sought new ways to draw readers in, they found their answer in young women flooding into cities to seek their fortunes. When Nellie Bly went undercover into Blackwell’s Insane Asylum for Women and emerged with a scathing indictment of what she found there, the resulting sensation created opportunity for a whole new wave of writers. In a time of few jobs and few rights for women, here was a path to lives of excitement and meaning.
After only a decade of headlines and fame, though, these trailblazers faced a vicious public backlash. Accused of practicing “yellow journalism,” their popularity waned until “stunt reporter” became a badge of shame. But their influence on the field of journalism would arc across a century, from the Progressive Era “muckraking” of the 1900s to the personal “New Journalism” of the 1960s and ’70s, to the “immersion journalism” and “creative nonfiction” of today. Bold and unconventional, these writers changed how people would tell stories forever.
Playground in Central Park in the 1950’s Gloria Herman got it early!!!
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
NEW YORK ALMANACK
FUNDING PROVIDED BY ROOSEVELT ISLAND OPERATING CORPORATION PUBLIC PURPOSE GRANTS CITY COUNCIL REPRESENTATIVE BEN KALLOS DISCRETIONARY FUNDING THRU DYCD
When I was a baby my parents lived in an apartment house on the same block as the Dorilton. There are many photos of myself in a carriage in front of the most impressive architecture. (Cannot find the photos, but still looking)
History
In his book, “Historic Manhattan Apartment Houses,” (Dover Publications, Inc., 1996), Andrew Alpern illustrates the building on his cover and remarks on its “overblown ostentation,” quoting a cynical review by famed critic Montgomery Schuyler,
Alpern noted that Schuyler was upset at the “stone balls on the gate posts of the entrance, two feet in diameter, left there for titans to roll at ten pins.”
Indeed, in his 1979 book, “The City Observed, New York, A Guide To The Architecture of Manhattan,” (Vintage Books, a division of Random House) Paul Goldberger wrote that “Now the building seems more to be pitied than censored, a rather too eager-to-please piece of Second Empire foppery. Once, some thought that a mansard roof and a lot of sculpture and cartouches make a building French; now we know better. Still, it is sad to see this building, for all its foolishness, in the sorry state of decay it has descended to, with unsympathetic storefronts along the Broadway side and a façade that clearly has not been cared for in years.”
“In its day,” Christopher Gray observed in his September 30, 1990 “Streetscapes” article in The New York Times, “it was considered the architectural equivalent of a fist fight,” adding that “over the years large hunks of its blowsy decoration have been removed, leaving it more curiosity than contretemps.”
Mr. Gray noted that the building’s “limestone lower stories are voluptuous in their deep carving,” adding that “the middle section is an epidemic of quoining, ironwork, brackets, cartouches, oriels and other details.” When it opened, it had “separate servant and passenger elevators, filtered water, separate tenant storerooms and a provision for charging electric automobiles,” according to Mr. Gray.
“In 1902,” Mr. Gray continued, “the critic Montgomery Schuyler chose the Dorilton for his Architectural Aberrations column in Architecture Record. He remarked on ‘the wild yell with which the fronts exclaim, ‘Look at me,’ as if somebody were going to miss seeing a building of this 12-stories area.’ ‘The incendiary qualities of the edifice may be referred, first to violence of color, then to violence of scale, then to violence of ‘thinginess,’ to the multiplicity and importunity of the details.’ ‘Motley elements,’ he said, ‘set the sensitive spectator’s teeth on edge.’”
Goodness gracious. Presumably the renowned Mr. Schuyler never stepped foot into a full-blown Baroque masterpiece in Europe! His sanctity might not have survived intact!
By 1974, the city’s Landmarks Preservation Commission had the good graces to declare the building a landmark, noting that it was “exceptionally handsome.”
About a decade later, the mansard roof was re-slated and some of the dormers were rebuilt but a 10th floor cornice could not be rebuilt, according to Mr. Gray, because of cost, and for “a lesser cornice at the 11th floor level, also missing, the bare wall was painted in trompe l’oeil to imitate the banding and shadows of the original. Designed by John Wright Stephens and Jonathan Williams it is an amusing deception.”
One of the building’s early residents was William Zeckendorf.
In August, 1938, the building was sold at auction under foreclosure by the Dry Dock Savings Institution.
“It was only with conversion as a cooperative in 1984 that the depredations of decades began to be turned along….and with patience, imagination and a large amount of money, the Dorilton may yet recover its lost outrageous glory,” Alpern wrote.
“Particularly distinctive are the two Brobdingnagian, classically draped maidens serenely surveying the passing scene from their perch overlooking Broadway at the balustraded fourth floor. Comparably unusual, along West 71st Street, are the two pairs of near-nude muscular men supporting (with great effort) iron-railed balconies at the sixth floor,” Mr. Alpern observed.
A fairer assessment of the building can be found in “New York 1900, Metropolitan Architecture and Urbanism 1890-1915,” (Rizzoli International Publications, 1983). In it, authors Robert A. M. Stern, Gregory Gilmartin and John Montague Massengale wrote that “The Dorilton’s bold massing dominated Sherman Square….The Dorilton was distinguished by the astonishing voluptuousness of its details….It was precisely the intricacy and the burly swagger of the Dorilton which was the source of its drama and expressed the optimism of the new century.”
Over the years, the Dorilton was overshadowed by the high visibility of the nearby Ansonia, the celebrated legends of the Dakota and the skyscraping glories of the multi-towered apartment buildings of Central Park West.
Despite decades of neglect, the Dorilton has survived, thank goodness, a masterpiece of urban architecture, a lively, enriching edifice that Paris would love to have.
ORIGINAL RENDERING OF THE TROLLEY KIOSK, NOW THE RIHS VISITOR CENTER ED LITCHER 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 Melanie Colter and Deborah Dorff
All image are copyrighted (c) Roosevelt Island Historical Society unless otherwise indicated
Carter B. Horsley, a former journalist for The New York Times, The International Herald Tribune and The New York Post. Mr. Horsley is also the editorial director of CityRealty.com.
FUNDING PROVIDED BY ROOSEVELT ISLAND OPERATING CORPORATION PUBLIC PURPOSE GRANTS CITY COUNCIL REPRESENTATIVE BEN KALLOS DISCRETIONARY FUNDING THRU DYCD
For more than 60 years, the 14-story building built in 1927 at 29-27 Queens Plaza North was the tallest commercial building in Queens. Until it was surpassed in 1990 by other structures, the building with the clock towered over the Queensborough Bridge and the elevated Flushing and Astoria subway lines running next to it.
The Long Island City Clock Tower, as the building came to be known, was purchased by developers in 2014 who, using land and air rights from the clock tower, as well as air rights from an adjacent lot owned by and purchased from the Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA), a 77-story residential tower is rising adjacent to the historic Long Island City Clock Tower.
While the Clock Tower’s hands have not moved in decades, it is landmarked and there are plans to renovate and restore the four clock faces below the gargoyles atop the 93-year-old neo-Gothic Clock Tower. The New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission (LPC) was asked to approve the replacement of 11 windows on the west façade of the building at a public hearing scheduled for the Community Board 1 virtual meeting on November 17.
The brown-brick landmarked Clock Tower, with castellated clock tower turret, copper windows, and granite shields, will have its glass and iron clock faces restored. The LPC approved the clock restoration plan in October 2019 with the stipulation that the old glass panels be replaced with the same frosted glass as the originals.
“(The Clock Tower) is a real icon for the city and the entire borough,” said LPC Commissioner Diana Chapin in an October 31, 2019 Curbed New York report.
LPC public review and official landmark designation protect the Clock Tower from destruction, but allow construction around it. Construction of the 762-foot residential tower, known as Sven, is concave, and curves partially around the Clock Tower and creating a closeness between the two buildings. The new structure, when complete, will assume the title of tallest building in Queens, supplanting the Citicorp building which stands at 673 feet.
LPC rules set forth the Commission’s application and public hearing procedures, and the rules and standards for work on buildings in historic districts and individual landmarks. The LPC is the largest preservation agency in the nation, it is responsible for protecting New York City’s architecturally, historically, and culturally significant buildings and sites by granting them landmark or historic district status and regulating them after designation.
Aerial render of Queens Plaza Park looking west towards Manhattan, from The Durst Organization
It looks like construction is coming to a close on Sven, a 762-foot-tall skyscraper at 29-37 41st Avenue and the second-tallest building in Long Island City, Queens. Also known as Queens Plaza Park, the 67-story tower is designed by Handel Architects for The Durst Organization and will yield 958 rental units with interiors designed by Selldorf Architects, including 300 units set aside as affordable housing. Hunter Roberts is the general contractor and Jaros, Baum & Bolles Engineering administered the mechanical systems for the project, which is bound by Northern Boulevard to the east, Queens Plaza North and Dutch Kills Green to the south, and 41st Avenue to the west.
Since our last update in April, the exterior hoist has been fully disassembled from the flat western elevation and the glass façade panels have filled in the exposed gap. Only some minor work remains to be completed around the ground level
The Queens Clock Tower and Sven. Photo by Michael Young
Apartments at Sven are all about the experience. Stylish and thoughtful details, amenities you’ll actually use, a location unmatched in its convenience. In just a few short weeks we’re opening our housing lottery and individuals can apply for the rent-stabilized apartments in our community.
For those who qualify it’s an incredible opportunity to live in a beautiful new community at an affordable rate.
THIS IS DEFINITELY A FUN ADDITION. JUST LOOK UP A THE CEILING AND STUDY SOME HISTORY!
THE FULL VIEW OF THE MAP
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
FUNDING PROVIDED BY ROOSEVELT ISLAND OPERATING CORPORATION PUBLIC PURPOSE GRANTS CITY COUNCIL REPRESENTATIVE BEN KALLOS DISCRETIONARY FUNDING THRU DYCD
For more than 60 years, the 14-story building built in 1927 at 29-27 Queens Plaza North was the tallest commercial building in Queens. Until it was surpassed in 1990 by other structures, the building with the clock towered over the Queensborough Bridge and the elevated Flushing and Astoria subway lines running next to it.
The Long Island City Clock Tower, as the building came to be known, was purchased by developers in 2014 who, using land and air rights from the clock tower, as well as air rights from an adjacent lot owned by and purchased from the Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA), a 77-story residential tower is rising adjacent to the historic Long Island City Clock Tower.
While the Clock Tower’s hands have not moved in decades, it is landmarked and there are plans to renovate and restore the four clock faces below the gargoyles atop the 93-year-old neo-Gothic Clock Tower. The New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission (LPC) was asked to approve the replacement of 11 windows on the west façade of the building at a public hearing scheduled for the Community Board 1 virtual meeting on November 17.
The brown-brick landmarked Clock Tower, with castellated clock tower turret, copper windows, and granite shields, will have its glass and iron clock faces restored. The LPC approved the clock restoration plan in October 2019 with the stipulation that the old glass panels be replaced with the same frosted glass as the originals.
“(The Clock Tower) is a real icon for the city and the entire borough,” said LPC Commissioner Diana Chapin in an October 31, 2019 Curbed New York report.
LPC public review and official landmark designation protect the Clock Tower from destruction, but allow construction around it. Construction of the 762-foot residential tower, known as Sven, is concave, and curves partially around the Clock Tower and creating a closeness between the two buildings. The new structure, when complete, will assume the title of tallest building in Queens, supplanting the Citicorp building which stands at 673 feet.
LPC rules set forth the Commission’s application and public hearing procedures, and the rules and standards for work on buildings in historic districts and individual landmarks. The LPC is the largest preservation agency in the nation, it is responsible for protecting New York City’s architecturally, historically, and culturally significant buildings and sites by granting them landmark or historic district status and regulating them after designation.
Aerial render of Queens Plaza Park looking west towards Manhattan, from The Durst Organization
BY: MICHAEL YOUNG 8:00 AM ON JULY 27, 2021
It looks like construction is coming to a close on Sven, a 762-foot-tall skyscraper at 29-37 41st Avenue and the second-tallest building in Long Island City, Queens. Also known as Queens Plaza Park, the 67-story tower is designed by Handel Architects for The Durst Organization and will yield 958 rental units with interiors designed by Selldorf Architects, including 300 units set aside as affordable housing. Hunter Roberts is the general contractor and Jaros, Baum & Bolles Engineering administered the mechanical systems for the project, which is bound by Northern Boulevard to the east, Queens Plaza North and Dutch Kills Green to the south, and 41st Avenue to the west.
Since our last update in April, the exterior hoist has been fully disassembled from the flat western elevation and the glass façade panels have filled in the exposed gap. Only some minor work remains to be completed around the ground level
The Queens Clock Tower and Sven. Photo by Michael Young
Apartments at Sven are all about the experience. Stylish and thoughtful details, amenities you’ll actually use, a location unmatched in its convenience. In just a few short weeks we’re opening our housing lottery and individuals can apply for the rent-stabilized apartments in our community.
For those who qualify, it’s an incredible opportunity to live in a beautiful new community at an affordable rate.
THIS IS DEFINITELY A FUN ADDITION. JUST LOOK UP AT THE CEILING AND STUDY SOME HISTORY!
THE FULL VIEW OF THE MAP
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
FUNDING PROVIDED BY ROOSEVELT ISLAND OPERATING CORPORATION PUBLIC PURPOSE GRANTS CITY COUNCIL REPRESENTATIVE BEN KALLOS DISCRETIONARY FUNDING THRU DYCD
FROM: EPHEMERAL NEW YORK & SMITHSONIAN AMERICAN ART MUSEUM
Like other New York City printmakers in the 1930s, Armin Landeck’s etchings and engravings focus on the city’s dark corners and mysterious pockets. [“Housetops, 14th Street,” 1937]
His work displays the kind of familiarity with the city one would expect from an artist who grew up peering around the early 20th century Manhattan of dimly lit bars, shadowy elevated trains, and hidden tenement roofs.
Pop’s Tavern (1934)
But he was not a New York City native. Born in Wisconsin in 1904, Landeck arrived in Gotham to study architecture at Columbia University and attend summer classes at the Art Students League on West 57th Street.
Manhattan Vista (1934)
“By the time of his graduation from Columbia in 1927, he had become interested in printmaking and had bought a used press,” states the website for the National Gallery of Art. When he couldn’t find a job as an architect, he turned to printmaking. Though he lived in Connecticut, he taught in New York and had a studio on 14th Street. Landeck spent much of his career rendering nocturnes of rooftops, stairwells, street corners, and other “secretive places amid the very public place, Manhattan,” as the New York Times put it in a 1998 article.
Manhattan Nocturne (1938)
“Like Hopper, Landeck uses the human figure sparely; he was more interested in the surroundings, and his ambience of choice obviously was urban,” stated the Times.
Approaching Storm (1938)
In a 1980 Times article, Landeck addressed the fact that often the only person in one of his prints is the viewer. “That there are no people is intentional on my part, because I look at New York in terms of theater very often,” he said. Landeck’s work became more abstract as the 20th century continued, but no less accomplished.
Still, his prints from the 1930s and 1940s might best exemplify his style. Armin was “ever the master of twilight, of shadow, and mystery,” as one 2003 book title described him.
[Prints 1, 2, and 4: Smithsonian American Art Museum; Print 3: Artnet; Print 5: Artnet] Tags:Armin Landeck 1930s, Armin Landeck artist, Armin Landeck New York City, Armin Landeck printmaker, Artists 1930s New York, New York in the 1930s
Armin Landeck, Stairhall, 1950, engraving on paper, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of Ruth B. Benedict, 1983.96.1
Armin Landeck, Studio Interior no. 1, 1935, drypoint on paper, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Museum purchase, 1975.7.1
Armin Landeck, Untitled, n.d., engraving, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of John B. Turner, 1972.24.8
The elevated rail tracks at Queens Plaza adjoining the tallest building in Queens.
ANDY SPARBERG, NINA LUBLIN, ALEXIS VILLAFANE, VICKI FEINMEL AND LAURA HUSSEY KNOW THEIR GEOGRAPHY
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)
EPHEMERAL NEW YORK SMITHSONIAN AMERICAN ART MUSEUM
FUNDING PROVIDED BY ROOSEVELT ISLAND OPERATING CORPORATION PUBLIC PURPOSE GRANTS CITY COUNCIL REPRESENTATIVE BEN KALLOS DISCRETIONARY FUNDING THRU DYCD
