Herzl Emanuel, Lower Manhattan from Apartment in Brooklyn, 1937, bronze, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of Patricia and Phillip Frost, 1986.92.20
Herzl Emanuel created this piece shortly after he moved to New York. In this early work, he experimented with cubism by breaking up and distorting the traditional landscape format. Lower Manhattan from Apartment in Brooklyn displays patterns of bricks, architectural details, fragments of the Brooklyn Bridge, and ripples of water to create an imagined cityscape of jumbled shapes and crisscrossing lines.
“Hopefully one idea, the strongest, the most persistent, nagging and tenacious will emerge and survive, impose its will, resolve the conflict and cause a work of sculpture to come into being.” Herzl Emanuel, 1983
Harry LeRoy Taskey, Approach to George Washington Bridge, lithograph, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Transfer from the Evander Childs High School, Bronx, New York through the General Services Administration, 1975.83.94
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
Ann Nooney, Near Brooklyn Bridge, 1935-1941, lithograph on paper mounted on paperboard, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Transfer from the Evander Childs High School, Bronx, New York through the General Services Administration, 1975.83.71
WEDNESDAY PHOTO OF THE DAY THE DRIVERS FLOOR SPACE ON THE RED BUS!!
CLARA BELLA GOT IT!!
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
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SMITHSONIAN AMERICAN ART MUSEUM
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At first glance, the board game Monopoly doesn’t seem like it has a New York City connection. The man who sold it to Parker Brothers in 1935 was from Philadelphia, and the board features properties in Atlantic City.
J.P. Morgan
Then there’s that mustached man long dubbed “the Monopoly Man” or “Mr. Monopoly.” He appears on the Chance and Community Chest cards, always in a Depression-era suit with a bowtie and top hat.
But the Monopoly Man isn’t just a board game invention—this iconic character (who has an actual name, Rich Uncle Pennybags) is supposedly based on the image of an actual New Yorker.
Rich Uncle Pennybags So who is he?
Apparently he’s modeled after banker J.P. Morgan. Morgan’s company financed some of the Gilded Age’s biggest corporations. He consolidated railroads, helped rescue the gold standard, and helped stabilize financial markets during the Panic of 1907, according to History.com. His former mansion on Madison Avenue is now the Morgan Library.
Phil Orbanes, a former VP at Parker Brothers and author of The Monopoly Companion, confirmed in this interview that the artist who drew Mr. Monopoly based him on J.P. Morgan.
Kahn On the other hand, a site called monopolyland raises the possibility that Mr. Moneybags is based on Otto Khan, a German-born financier with a mansion on Fifth Avenue who died in 1934, close to the release date of Monopoly. (Morgan died in 1913.) Khan also wore a top hat and had the requisite mustache.
They both certainly look like Uncle Pennybags. A composite perhaps?
[Top image: Biography.com; second image: pixy.org; third image: Wikipedia]
Chapel of the Good Shepherd NINA LUBLIN, VICKI FEINMK, ALEXIS VILLAFANE, ED LITCHER, GLORIA HERMAN ALL GOT IT!!!
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
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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
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A painter’s evocative look at an empty street beside the Manhattan Bridge August 16, 2021
Anthony Springer was a lawyer-turned-artist who painted the energy and vitality of various downtown New York City neighborhoods until his death in 1995.
A lawyer-turned-artist’s moody Greenwich Village December 3, 2018 Until recently, I’d never heard of Greenwich Village painter Anthony Springer. But I’ve found myself captivated by his colorful, textural images of a less dense, less luxurious Village and other surrounding neighborhoods.
Born in 1928, Springer, a native New Yorker, worked as a lawyer before deciding to make painting his vocation at the age of 40, according to friend and fellow artist Robert Holden.
Tony was a wonderful, quietly mysterious kind of guy, who played poker all night long, slept until the late morning, and then grabbed his half-box French easel and 16×20 inch stretched linen canvas to go paint the narrow side streets of the Village in the dusty afternoon light, a habit he kept up for 20 years or more,” wrote Holden.
When he died in 1995, Springer left behind “hundreds of his beautiful, moody gray cityscapes,” he wrote. More than two decades or so have passed since Springer’s death, and his evocative work serves as a reminder of the very different pre-2000s Greenwich Village. Springer’s “Meatpacking District,” at top, takes us to the Belgian block intersection of Greenwich and Gansevoort Streets.
When Springer painted it, this was a daytime corner of trucks, garbage carts, and pigeons before it became an pricey restaurant playground. His image of a gas station amid tenements is a reminder that downtown used to actually have gas stations.
Could this be the one Eighth and Greenwich Avenues? “Downtown Street” shows a quiet scene of a narrow side street and empty sidewalks. Maybe Mercer Street, or Greene Street?
The last image, “Townhouses and Naked Trees,” feels appropriate for the current season with winter approaching. Hmm, Tenth Street?
[First and last images: Doyle; second and third images: mutualart] Tags:Anthony Springer Greenwich Village, Anthony Springer Painter, Downtown New York Street 1980s, Greenwich Village 1970s, Greenwich Village Gas Station, Greenwich Village painters, Meatpacking District 1980s
COOK WITH EFFLER FAMILY WHO LIVED IN BLACKWELL HOUSE AROUND 1914. SEATED BY KITCHEN AREA
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
EPHEMERAL NEW YORK
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Prior to 1920 the blocks east of First Avenue above 50th Street were home the Peter Doelger Brewery, decaying rowhouses and tenement buildings. Fashionable society lived toward the center of Manhattan–around the Madison, Park and Fifth Avenue sections. But that year wealthy literary agent Elisabeth Marbury commissioned architect Mott Schmidt to transform an old rowhouse at No. 13 Sutton Place into a neo-Georgian residence. By the mid-1920’s Sutton Place had become an exclusive enclave, home to residents like Anne Morgan and Anne Vanderbilt.
In 1926 real estate operator Joseph G. Thomas commissioned Van Wart & Wein to design an upscale apartment building at the end of East 52nd Street overlooking the East River, slightly to the south of Sutton Place. The 14-floor building was completed the following year–a Jazz Age take on Venetian Gothic.
The two-story base of rough-faced stone reflected traditional elements of Gothic design. The entrance was recessed within a pointed arched opening, and trefoils and tracery embellished the second floor. The upper floors were faced in rough-faced brick which gave the impression of age.
There were just sixteen apartments within The Beekman Campanile. The architects took advantage of the riverside location by including a yacht landing and private club, the Montauk Yacht Club.
The building quickly attracted upper class residents. Among the first was Ralph Pulitzer, Jr., grandson of publisher Joseph Pulitzer. His sprawling apartment had an additional occupant following his wedding to Bessie Catherine Aspinwall on June 27, 1929.
Living here at the same time was Leonard Outhwaite and his wife. The couple maintained a 90-foot schooner, the Kinkajou. On June 30, 1929, according to The New York Times, the “Outhwaite yacht set sail from the Montauk Yacht Club landing at Fifty-second Street and East River.” The cruise would entail 13,000 miles and last eight months. It did not go entirely smoothly. Outhwaite had to take over the handling of the vessel himself after Captain Olaf Berg was tragically drowned near England.
On November 27, 1931 the New York Evening Post reported quietly “Mrs. William K. Dick rented an apartment at 450 East Fifty-second Street.” She was Madeleine Talmadge Force Astor Dick, the widow of John Jacob Astor, who died in the sinking of the R.M.S. Titanic, and current wife of millionaire William Karl Dick. It was no doubt the couple’s domestic problems which prompted her taking an apartment alone. Within two years Madeleine divorced William Dick and quickly married Enzo Fiermonte.
One colorful resident in particular, The New Yorker critic Alexandex Woollcott, may have changed the personality of The Beekman Campanile. In his 1956 book More in Sorrow, Wolcott Gibbs wrote that after the break-up of the Algonquin Round Table its members visited Woollcott here.
While they no longer knew one another intimately, however, almost all of them kept in pretty close touch with Mr. Woollcott. His apartment at 450 East Fifty-second Street, which Dorothy Parker in a spasm of rascality had named Wit’s End, was a comfortable, untidy garret looking down on the East River, and long after the Round Table and the Thanatopsis Club were dead it was still a hangout for whatever members of the old mob happened to be in town. Sunday breakfast there lasted practically all day, with Mr. Woollcott in rumpled pajamas and an ancient, rather horrible dressing gown, receiving his guests from a throne in one corner with an air that would have done credit to Queen Victoria.
In the meantime the Mayfair Yacht Club with its stunning river views was a favorite among society. On October 14, 1932, for instance, The New York Sun reported that “Mrs. James H. Snowden gave a luncheon yesterday at the Mayfield Yacht Club, 450 East Fifty-second street.” Its Marine Room featured an orchestra and dancing. And alcohol.
On February 1, 1933 The New York Sun reported that the “classy speakeasy” had been raided. Prohibition agents had been tipped off two weeks earlier by a disgusted patron who objected to paying $1 for a bottle of beer in the tough Depression years. The article said he felt it “was plain highway robbery and he thought something should be done about it.” Something, indeed, was done. The manager, a beer delivery man, and fifteen waiters and bartenders were arrested.
The Great Depression had little effect on the residents like the Pulitzers, still here in the 1940’s, and wealthy tenants like John Hertz and his family, the Thomas L. Chadbournes (whose chef had previously worked for King Edward VIII), the family of John Louis Zauggs, and Henry Wise Miller and his writer and activist wife, Alice Duer Miller.
The “fairway” to the fair. Fairway Yacht Club, 450 East 52nd St., New York City, Below: Yachts docking at nearby pier. Campanile pier still functioning after highway was built.
Seen as it appeared in May 1930, the pine-paneled library of Henry and Alice Duer Miller was decorated with antique furnishings and paintings. photo by Samuel H. Gottscho from the collection of the Museum of the City of New York
Alice Duer Miller’s bedroom was more like a Parisian salon. photo by Samuel H. Gottscho from the collection of the Museum of the City of New York
Perhaps the Beekman Campanile’s first truly theatrical resident was Noël Coward, who took the former apartment of Alexander Woollcott. In 1942 film executive Gustoaf Miesegaes, president of Transfilm, Inc., took a nine-room apartment; and in May 6 the following year actress Ethel Barrymore moved into the former duplex apartment of the recently deceased Alice Duer Miller.
Stage and screen star Ethel Barrymore was theatrical royalty. from the collection of the Library of Congress.
In 1953 film star Greta Garbo took a fifth floor apartment. The now-retired actress decorated her home in her personal style, including having an antique Swedish skåp (a painted armoire) dismantled and installed as wall panels in a bedroom. She personally designed several of the colorful rugs.
The pine paneling in this section of the Garbo apartment matched that of the Miller apartment’s library. photo via 6sqft.com
Already living in the building were some of Garbo’s friends, like George Schlee and his fashion designer wife Valentina, and Sir William Stephenson. Other residents at the time included Clare Boothe and Henry Luce (founder of TIME magazine), H. J. Heinz and his wife (whose apartment had twenty-one rooms), Drue, Rex Harrison, publisher Walter Thayer, and actress Mary Martin.
Garbo installed panels from an antique Swedish armoire on the walls of a guest room. photo via 6sqft.com
Valentina Schlee designed Garbor’s wardrobe and by the mid-1940’s George Schlee was her financial adviser. The trio would sometimes attend social events together; but little-by-little Greta’s and George’s relationship deepened. According to Richard Alleman in his New York: The Movie Lover’s Guide, Schlee was “her escort, her confidant, and often her traveling companion.” It came to a head when, while Garbo and Schlee had adjoining suites in the Crillon Hotel in Paris, Schlee suffered a fatal heart attack.
Alleman writes “When Garbo discovered that Schlee was dead, she reportedly ran from the hotel and left Valentina to deal with the messy details…Garbo’s irresponsible behavior is said to have so angered Valentina that she made it clear that she didn’t want the actress to attend her husband’s funeral. The two remained neighbors at 450 East 52nd Street for years thereafter but reportedly never again exchanged a word.”
His unusual portrait of Garbo was taken in 1925 by German-American photographer Arnold Genthe from the collection of the Library of Congress
Garbo died on April 15, 1990 leaving an estate estimated at around $200 million. Her sole heir was her niece, Gray Gustafson Reisfield. She and her husband, Dr. Donald Reisfield, used the Beekman Campanile apartment as a pied-à-terre until moving in permanently in 2012. Following Gray Reisfield’s death in 2017 the three-bedroom apartment was put on the market for $5.95 million. Multiple offers came in and it sold later that year for $8.5 million.
The Beekman Campanile–home over the decades to millionaires, celebrities and a speakeasy–has changed little since the glittering Gatsby Era along the East River when it was first opened.
WEEKEND PHOTO Early 20th Century View of Octagon Staircase
Jinny Ewald, Hara Reiser, Thom Heyer all 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)
All image are copyrighted (c) Roosevelt Island Historical Society unless otherwise indicated
DAYTONIAN IN MANHATTAN
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ON TUESDAY, AUGUST 17TH. MEET AT BUILDING LOBBY AT 5 PM. RESERVATIONS REQUIRED, SPACE IS LIMITED E-MAIL: DANIELLESHUR@NYPL.ORG THIS IS A FREE PROGRAM SPONSORED BY THE RIHS AND NYPL
AUGUST 14-15, 2021
OUR 442nd EDITION
THE BRANDS WE SMOKED!!!
(OR OUR PARENTS SMOKED)
Joe Camel was my favorite reason to visit Times Square. I think he was replaced by a steam iron!
Virginia Slims sponsored women’s tennis matches
One of the long lasting Tareyton campaigns
Bad choice lady!
From what I heard all the Marlboro men died of lung diseases
Cigarette ads on billboards proliferated in all neighborhoods, especially targeting some areas.
Joe Camel was aimed at the teenage market
OKAY, he is Tom Sellek….mustache and all that hair!
HAVE A CANDY CIGARETTE, JUST CHOCOLATE OR BUBBLE GUM INSTEAD OF TOBACCO
THE GUASTAVINO CEILING IN THE FORMER FOOD EMPORIUM UNDER THE QUEENSBORO BRIDGE
ED LITCHER, HARA REISER, CLARA BELLA, ANDY SPARBERG ALL GUESSED GUASTAVINO AND SINCE THEY ALL LOOK THE SAME, EVERYONE IS A WINNER TODAY!!
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
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Tilden Mansion: Victorian Facade and Political Scandal
PORTABLE NYC TOURS on JUNE 22, 2021
Though Samuel Tilden failed to become an American president, he succeeded in creating a masterpiece of a home.
While working as an attorney in 1863, Samuel J. Tilden purchased a home in Gramercy—the most fashionable area in town at the time. When he became governor of New York in 1874, he bought a mansion at # 14 to compliment his original home at #15. While busy with his civic responsibilities and political career, Samuel J. Tilden resided in this double-mansion on Gramercy Park South.
When he ran for president in 1876, he nearly won. On election night, Tilden’s victory seemed clear—he held the national popular vote by a 51%-48% margin. A candidate at that time needed 185 electoral votes to win; Tilden had 184 by midnight, with several states still left undecided. By the next morning, the country was in absolute turmoil. Tilden’s opponent, Rutherford B. Hayes, had captured Florida, bringing his electoral total to 185 votes! Samuel Tilden refused to admit defeat and didn’t concede the 1876 presidential election to Rutherford B. Hayes until June 1877.
His future political aspirations were furthermore cut short by an unfortunate misunderstanding. Tilden had had a telegraph machine installed in his house that counted the incoming votes. The press, however, ran a story that ruined his reputation and crushed any further political advancements: he was accused of using the machine to manipulate the ballot counters.
Tilden Mansion facade, High Victorian Gothic detail After the loss Tilden channeled his energies into a major remodeling of his Gramercy Park property. He hired Calvert Vaux—the famed architect known was his work on Central Park and Museum of Natural History—to “victorianize” his home. The two mansions, 14 and 15 Gramercy Park, were joined together by one facade in a High Victorian Gothic style, characterized by polychrome decoration, varying textures, asymmetry, and Gothic details.
Tilden Mansion facade with the busts of Shakespeare, Goethe, Dante, Milton, and Benjamin Franklin
Remodeling lasted for years and was finally finished in 1884, which sadly left very little time for Samuel J. Tilden to enjoy the house; he died in 1886. The stunning facade, with its busts of Shakespeare, Goethe, Dante, Milton, and Benjamin Franklin, point to Tilden’s love of literature. His extensive library (along with donations from Astor and Lenox) served as the foundation for the New York Public Library. The entrance to Tilden’s library at 14 Gramercy is adorned by a bust of Michelangelo—perhaps as a nod to Michelangelo’s great Laurentian Library in Florence.
The Tilden Mansion found a new life at the beginning of the 20th century as the venerated National Arts Club.
Lots of answers to today’s picture. The photo was taken on April 5, 2008 during a rescue drill on the old cabins. Enjoy the Photos!!!
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
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PortableNYC RIHS ARCHIVES
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No one guessed the roof of 504 Main Street, the home of our NYPL Branch, St. Francis Cabrini Church and the RI Youth Program.
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
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NEW YORK CITY MUNICIPAL ARCHIVES
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For a painting with such a perfunctory name, “Municipal and Woolworth Buildings, Lower Manhattan,” by Lionel S. Reiss, gives us a stunning look at a two-tiered city.
THE ANNEX GALLERIES
Lionel Samson Reiss was born in Jaroslau, Austria on January 29, 1894. His family emigrated to America, arriving on June 20, 1900 at which point his middle name was changed to Samuel. Reiss grew up on Manhattan’s Lower East Side. As immigrants to the United States, Reiss’ parents joined the ranks of other Eastern European Jews who were fleeing their native countries at the start of the 20th century. He married Frances Grossel on December 4, 1935.
Reiss became known for his portraits of Jewish people and landmarks in Jewish history, which he made during his trip to Europe, Africa, and the Middle East in the early 1920s. Being American and Jewish himself, Reiss became fascinated with Jewish life in the Old World. In 1919 Reiss temporarily left the United States to travel to the aforementioned regions, and recorded the everyday life that he encountered in the ghettos. Self taught as an artist this trip resulted in exhibitions in major American cities.
At the dawn of the Holocaust in 1938, Reiss, who had long returned to the United States, published his book My Models Were Jews, in which he illustratively argued that there is no such thing as a “Jewish ethnicity”, but the Jewish people are rather a cultural group, whereby there is significant diversity within Jewish communities and between different communities in different geographical regions. Reiss was therefore presenting an argument against what he considered to be a common misconception that existed about the Jews. Later works included a 1954 book, New Lights and Old Shadows, which dealt with “the new lights” of a reborn Israel and the “old shadows” of an almost eradicated European Jewish culture. In his last book, A World of Twilight, published in 1972, with text by Isaac Bashevis Singer, Reiss presented a portrait of the Jewish communities in Eastern Europe before the Holocaust.
Reiss worked as a commercial artist for newspapers, publishers, and a motion picture company. in the early 1920s he became an art director for Paramount Studios and is credited with being the creator of the Leo the Lion logo of Metro-Goldwyn-Meyer Studios.
Lionel Samson Reiss died on April 16, 1988 in New York.
“BEAUTY AND THE BEAST” CHRYSLER BUILDING AND ITS NEW NEIGHBOR ONE VANDERBILT ANDY SPARBERG, JAY JACOBSON HARA REISER, GLORIA HERMAN, ALEXIS VILLAFANE, NINA LUBLIN ALL GOT IT!!
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Been thinking about hotels – with the new Graduate Hotel here, and because I’m looking at hotels for a planned trip to Venice, Trieste and Ravenna next month.
When I taught at Pace downtown, I thought the Astor Hotel, which had been located nearby on Broadway, was the first New York hotel. Turns out that I was wrong. The story is more interesting than that. So let’s talk about hotels and New York.
First of all, commercial hotels seem to have been an American invention. Granted, all sorts of inns and taverns had existed around the world for centuries. But these were typically small affairs, attached to (or in) the owner’s home. The large, commercial hotel was something quite different and quite soon, a significant business in many cities.
Why here? No single answer. It’s said that when George Washington traveled as President, he refused to stay in people’s homes – as English and French Kings had always done, roving from great estate to great estate – but stayed instead in inns. The inns were so grubby and dirty and mean that Americans were embarrassed and came up with a new idea, a modern, clean hotel! Others say that a rising American entrepreneurial class needed better places to stay on their travels, that business and political leaders needed meeting places, and that wealthy families sought out sites for weddings and parties. The new hotel idea met all of these needs.
The first hotel in New York and in the US? The City Hotel, which opened in 1794 on Broadway near Trinity Church, was the first American structure purpose built as a hotel. Designed by John McComb Jr., a leading New York architect, it was huge, with 73 rooms, mostly for overnight guests. It included a ballroom, public parlors, a bar, stores, offices, and the country’s largest circulating library. Taller than almost all New York churches, and at $200,000, it was the city’s costliest building, except for the newly built New York Stock Exchange headquarters Wall Street. The City Hotel soon became a center of social activities and, until the early 1840s, it was the city’s principal site for prestigious social functions and concerts.
One of the most famous of these was the magnificent dinner for Charles Dickens in February 1842. More than 200 of New York elite attended. The New York Sun reported the “unalloyed good feeling and hilarity” that marked the evening. An unusual feature of this man-only world was the presence of a group of ladies, including Dickens’ wife, in a room adjoining the banquet hall. They edged their way into the ballroom to listen to the speechmaking.
City Hotel demonstrated that American innovators would change the direction of the hospitality business; soon Americans were known for the largest and finest hotels in the world. The idea spread quickly and by the early 1800s, the best hotels had as many as seven floors and over 200 rooms, and cost more than a half a million dollars.
The new hotels helped create a new urban culture and new images of women. In his review of Sandoval-Strausz’s Hotel: An American History, Edward Short writes, “By the early nineteenth century, hotels had already become what they continue to be in the twenty-first: meeting places for politicians and businessmen, reception spaces for the newly wed, retail outlets for shoppers, getaways for tourists, hideaways for adulterers. In the nineteenth century, enterprising prostitutes threatened the reputations of even the best hotels; books of hotel etiquette warned unwary guests against them. ‘Have little to say to a woman who is traveling alone without a companion,’ advised one, ‘and whose face is painted, who wears a profusion of long curls about her neck, who has a meretricious expression of eye, and who is overdressed.’ By the same token, respectable women were urged to behave accordingly. ‘Any bold action or boisterous deportment in a hotel will expose a lady to the most severe censure of the refined around her, and may render her liable to misconstruction, and impertinence.’
The Astor House (not Hotel) wasn’t New York’s first hotel, but it was the City’s first luxury hotel. Located at Broadway and Vesey, and opening in 1836 as the Park Hotel, it soon became the best known hotel in the US. Isaiah Rogers was the architect. In 1829, he had designed the country’s first luxury hotel, the Tremont House, in Boston. Astor House was five stories with 309 rooms and servant’s rooms on the sixth floor. It had gaslights – the gas was produced in the hotel’s own plant and bathing and toilet facilities on each floor, with the water pumped up by steam engines.
House, circa 1905. The former City Hall Post Office and Courthouse, on the right, was located at what is now the lower end of City Hall Park. The building was torn down in 1939. Photo: Library of Congress
The Astor House was built by John Jacob Astor, the United States’ first multi-millionaire. Astor had a voracious appetite for land, but not much taste for development. His motto—”Buy and hold. Let others improve”—meant that Astor left few personalized buildings behind when he died, despite owning massive parcels of land throughout the city. One exception to his “Buy and hold” policy: Astor owned a brick townhouse on Broadway between Vesey and Barclay Streets, at the time New York’s most fashionable residential district. In the 1830s, he began buying up his neighbors’ mansions with the intention of building a huge hotel on the site. Associates warned that the site would not work: “It can never be a success. It is altogether too far uptown.”
But it wasn’t too far. Instead, it became a central component of the City’s social life. Guests included practically every prominent figure of the time, including Henry Clay, Jefferson Davis, and Daniel Webster, who, it was said, “would stay at no other hotel.” President-elect Lincoln, on his way to Washington for his first inauguration in 1861, stayed overnight and made an impromptu speech from the top of the entrance portico to a crowd of 40,000, according to Walt Whitman. Eighteen US presidents, from Andrew Jackson to Theodore Roosevelt, stayed at The Astor House, probably the most of any hotel in US history.
Competition followed. The St Nicholas Hotel on Broadway at Broome Street was built for a million dollars and offered the innovation of central heating that circulated warmed air through registers to every room. The Metropolitan Hotel opened in 1852 just north of it, at Prince Street, was equally luxurious. But the new hotel to put all others in the shade was the Fifth Avenue Hotel facing Madison Square.
The Fifth Avenue Hotel was built in 1856–59 by Amos Richards Eno at the cost of $2 million. Eno had made a fortune in dry goods and then real estate. As with the Astor House, critics claimed that the hotel was too far from the city center to be popular – the hotel was called “Eno’s Folly”. But like the Astor House, it became the social, cultural political hub of elite New York, and brought in a quarter of a million dollars a year in profits. The Fifth Avenue Hotel spurred development of additional hotels to the north and west.
The Fifth Avenue Hotel closed at midnight, April 4, 1908, and was demolished. It was reported that patrons of the hotel’s bar spent $7,000 (about $200,000 today!) in drinks during its last day of operation.
Fifth Avenue Hotel, Wikipedia
Well before that, by the early 1870s, the Astor House was viewed as old-fashioned and unappealing and was used mainly by businessmen. But it remained a seeming permanent fixture of New York. It was divided by feuding Astor cousins William Waldorf Astor and Vincent Astor—Vincent owning the southern half and William the northern. On May 3, 1913 signs were posted announcing that the hotel would close on Thursday, May 29. Vincent had sold his share of the property when impending subway excavations threatened its stability. He redeveloped the site as the Astor House Building in 1915-16, which remains today. The rest was demolished in 1926 and the site rebuilt as the Transportation Building.
But this would not be the Astor family’s last involvement with hotels!
PART OF THE PEPSI SIGN IN LONG ISLAND CITY GLORIA HERMAN, ALEXIS VILLAFAN, NNA LUBLIN, HARA REISER, LAURA HUSSY, JINN EWALD GOT IT!!
FROM A READER
I lived in Yorkville from 1976 to 1989 when Roosevelt Island (and my wife to be) lured me away. I call those my bachelor years. I loved the restaurants, the shopping (remember Gimbels?) and the many movie theaters on 86th Street. Carl Schurz Park, directly adjacent to Gracie Mansion, was a gem – remember the statue of Robin Hood, located in a little glen? 87th Street between York and First was my block association and I organized street volleyball during the warm months. The liquor store on the corner sponsored a softball team, the Sons of Off-Broadway (or the SOBs), which played in Central Park, at the Asphalt Green and on Roosevelt Island, which was my first taste of what would become my home and my obsession. Matt Katz
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
STEPHEN BLANK
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
Ellsworth Huntington, “The Water Barriers of New York City,” Geographical Review, Sept., 1916
FUNDING PROVIDED BY ROOSEVELT ISLAND OPERATING CORPORATION PUBLIC PURPOSE GRANTS CITY COUNCIL REPRESENTATIVE BEN KALLOS DISCRETIONARY FUNDING THRU DYCD
VICTORY ON BENCHES BETTER BENCHES REPLACE MONSTROSITIES
AFTER OUTCRIES FROM THE COMMUNITY, RIOC HAS REPLACED THE BENCHES IN SOUTHPOINT PARK EAST SIDE. WE CANNOT TELL YOU HOW MANY WILL BE REPLACED, BUT THIS IS A VICTORY FOR THE COMMUNITY. MOST WILL FACE INSIDE THE PARK AND NOT THE VIEW OF THE PEPSI SIGN.
FROM THE ARCHIVES
MONDAY, AUGUST 9, 2021
THE 437th EDITION
The Belvedere Castle
in
Central Park
Cynthia Brenwall
Belvedere Castle, ca. 2019. During a 15-month restoration by the Central Park Conservancy new glass windows and doors were added, the structures and terraces were repaired, a new drainage system was put into place, and a newly recreated wood tower was added at the castle’s northwest corner. Photograph courtesy Central Park Conservancy.
The collection of Parks Drawings at the Municipal Archives are often called the “jewel in the crown” within the holdings. It includes hundreds of exquisite plans and designs of parks throughout the city and in particular, Central Park. Originally created to illustrate the park designers’ intentions and to guide those who built the parks, many of these drawings are now considered works of art. Some are again being utilized as “working” drawings, providing essential information for on-going restoration projects in the parks. One of the most visible of the recent projects is the Belvedere Castle.
Study for the Belvedere Castle, 1870. Department of Parks Drawings Collection. NYC Municipal Archives.
Perched atop the high-rising Vista Rock in Central Park, Belvedere Castle has an interesting history. As early as 1859, park designers Calvert Vaux and Frederick Law Olmsted had planned on placing an object of visual interest at “the highest and most remote part of the hill as seen from the terrace.” The men recognized that the location of the rocky outcrop, the second-highest point in the park after Summit Rock, would provide visitors with an overlook that showed off the scenic splendors of the north and south ends of the expanse including the Ramble and the original Croton Reservoir (now the Great Lawn).
Park visitors enjoying Belvedere Castle c. 1885. DeGregario Lantern Slide Collection, NYC Municipal Archives.
Designed in 1865 by Vaux and fellow architect Jacob Wrey Mould as a Victorian folly or “eye-catcher,” the miniature castle would not have been out of place in any European pleasure ground. Built at a three-quarter scale in a Norman-Romanesque style, it worked to create a nostalgia for another place and time, a popular theme in the grand European parks of the day. Belvedere was constructed out of the same gray Manhattan schist that formed Vista Rock. From the Terrace, Belvedere (Italian for “beautiful view”), is a picturesque, arresting nd distant visual focal point. It draws the viewer’s gaze up through the nearby Ramble, which was planted with dark foliage that made bold reflections on the surface of the Lake.
Shelter 1, Belvedere Castle, 1871. The small shelter was Jacob Wrey Mould’s replacement for the planned second stone tower. Department of Parks Drawings Collection, NYC Municipal Archives.
Section and elevations, Belvedere Castle, 1867. Department of Parks Drawings Collection, NYC Municipal Archives.
The Parks Drawings include several original designs of the Belvedere Castle. The earliest plan, dating from 1867, shows two towers on the grounds. The buildings were open structures with no doors or windows, to be used as a venue “for gathering and shelter of a number of visitors in an informal picturesque way at this attractive point.” The foundations for both were dug in that year, but by 1870 only the main building, with its distinctive flag and clock tower, was underway. The Architect-in-Chief, Jacob Wrey Mould (Vaux and Olmsted resigned from the park in 1870 after the new Tweed regime led by Peter Sweeny took over) was determined to finance his recently designed sheepfold buildings rather than the Belvedere.The Board of Commissioners of the newly-formed Department of Public Parks agreed to replace the projected second stone building with a small wooden pavilion of Mould’s design. This saved an estimated $50,000 and was found to be “. . . quite satisfactory to the public.”
NEW YORK ARCHITECTURAL TERRA COTTA FACTORY, NOW LONG GONE SOUTH OF BRIDGE IN QUEENS. ED LITCHER GOT THE LOCATION
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)
MUNICIPAL ARCHIVES OF THE CITY OF NEW YORK
FUNDING PROVIDED BY ROOSEVELT ISLAND OPERATING CORPORATION PUBLIC PURPOSE GRANTS CITY COUNCIL REPRESENTATIVE BEN KALLOS DISCRETIONARY FUNDING THRU DYCD
