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TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 30,2021
ISSUE #533
A HIDDEN RESTING PLACE
The 2nd Cemetery of
Congregation
Shearith Israel
72-76 West 11th Street
from: Daytonian in Manhattan
In 1654, fleeing intense religious prosecution in their homelands, 23 Spanish and Portuguese Jews arrived in New Amsterdam. It must have seemed that they had gone from one intolerable situation to another. The colony’s Director-General, Peter Stuyvesant, was openly anti-Semitic and the year the group arrived he wrote to the Dutch West India Company asking that “the deceitful race, — such hateful enemies and blasphemers of the name of Christ, — be not allowed to further infect and trouble this new colony.” Stuyvesant was no doubt crestfallen when the Dutch West India Company allowed them to stay.
The 23 settlers would form the seed of Congregation Shearith Israel. In 1656 they requested permission to establish their own burying ground, rather than share New Amsterdam’s common graveyard. The location of the “little hook of land” granted to the Jews outside of the high wooden wall is unknown today.
In 1683, land was purchased for a new cemetery at what is today named St. James Place. It is known as the First Cemetery of the Spanish-Portuguese Synagogue, or the Chatham Square Cemetery.
By 1804 that cemetery, too, was filled. A plot of land on Greenwich Lane (later Greenwich Avenue) was purchased from John Agnew on May 1. More than a century later, The Sun recalled that the “large burying ground stretched along the upper bank of Minetta Brook.” The cemetery, known as the Second Cemetery of Congregation Shearith Israel, opened in 1805, the first congregant interred being Wolfe Polack.
Ten years earlier, a yellow fever epidemic had broken out in Philadelphia. The disease spread swiftly and eventually 5,000 people, one-tenth of the population, would succumb. In July 1795, the first yellow fever death in New York City came. Within a single week in August twenty-one victims died. Around the time of the cemetery’s opening, panic was such that those who could afford to leave the city did so, moving to the fresh air of remote hamlets like Greenwich Village. The Jewish population was not immune to pernicious disease. The New York Times later reported, “Many interments were made here during 1822, when the number of deaths in the City from yellow fever was very large.”
The famous Commissioners Plan of 1811 laid out the streets and avenues, and placed West 11th Street through the Spanish-Portuguese Cemetery. The thoroughfare that had existed only on paper suddenly became real in 1830. On April 16, the Commissioners of Estimate and Assessment published their appraisal of “the loss and damage sustained by the owners” of the land and properties required for the opening of West 11th Street from Broadway to Greenwich Lane. The Evening Post reported that the opening “took portions of two cemeteries–one belonging to the Jews, and the other to the Presbyterian Church.”
Knowing that the cemetery was soon to be decimated, on June 2, 1829 Congregation Shearith Israel acquired land from Horatio Wilkes on West 21st Street between Sixth and Seventh Avenues for a new burying ground. That cemetery was opened on August 17, 1829 and the first interment, that of Mrs. Judith Lopez, took place on November 6 that year. The last burial in the 11th Street cemetery was that of Israel Phillips, on January 6, 1833.
In the months and weeks before construction of West 11th Street began, many of the bodies in the 1805 cemetery were reinterred in the 21st Street grounds. But, according to The New York Times, others were simply crowded into the remaining little triangular plot. On May 18, 1879 the newspaper recalled, “A great many bodies that were dug up at the opening of the street were reburied in the south-west corner, which is now all that remains of the old burial-ground, and of which every foot is supposed to be occupied by humans remains.”
By the time of that article, the forgotten little cemetery was showing the first signs of neglect. In 1875 The Jewish Messenger noted, “The ground is covered with a sparse growth of grass, and there are a couple of trees. It is in fairly good condition, but by no means presents as nice and clean an appearance as the Oliver Street [Chatham Square] and Twenty-first Street burying grounds.” Interestingly, it was an Irish immigrant rather than the congregation itself, who rescued the neglected parcel. In 1882 the New York Chronicle explained:
All that remains of the second cemetery…is a parcel of ground in the shape of an obtuse triangle, on the south side of Eleventh street, near Sixth avenue. It contains about fifty square feet. In the centre is a pyramidal monument bearing the names of Joshua and Jacob Canter, and the date 1822. It is surrounded by a number of tombstones. The cause of the curious shape of this cemetery is that when Eleventh street was opened all but the southeast corner of the property was cut away. Since then it has been allowed to run to waste, until recently Mr. Callanan, the owner of adjoining property, built a fence around it and fixed up the grounds.
The Joshua Canter mentioned in the article, was a well known portrait and landscape painter and art teacher. He, like Jacob Canter, were most likely victims of the 1822 yellow fever epidemic.
Once sitting in a field, in 1925 the little cemetery was hemmed in by apartment buildings. photographer unknown, from the collection of the Museum of the City of New York
Another grave belongs to German-born Ephraim Hart (originally Hirz, he changed his surname when he arrived in Philadelphia around 1780). Having fought in the Revolution, he became an elector of Congregation Shearith Israel on April 2, 1787. One of New York City’s most successful merchants, he helped organize the Board of Stock-Brokers, today’s New York Stock Exchange. His gravestone reads: “Ephraim Hart / Pennsylvania / Pvt Capt. Henry Graham’s Co. / Rev War / July 16, 1824.”
As Mr. Callanan had done, the Congregation Shearith Israel has refocused interest in restoring the more than two-century-old cemetery. Its West 11th Street Project Committee, formed in 2013, hired architect-conservator firm Rachel Frankel Architecture, as part of the ongoing restoration/preservation effort.
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
Sources: EPHEMERAL NEW YORK
FUNDING PROVIDED BY ROOSEVELT ISLAND OPERATING CORPORATION PUBLIC PURPOSE GRANTS CITY COUNCIL REPRESENTATIVE BEN KALLOS DISCRETIONARY FUNDING THRU DYCD
Jones’s Wood was a block of farmland on the island of Manhattan overlooking the East River. The site was formerly occupied by the wealthy Schermerhorn and Jones families. Today, the site of Jones’s Wood is part of Lenox Hill, in the present-day Upper East Side of New York City.
New York has its very lovely public green spaces, playgrounds, and private parks.But some lucky residents have their own secret interior garden—a lush sanctuary of trees, flowers, and fountains hidden from the street between rows of brownstones and accessible only through the back doors of adjacent neighbors.
One of these magnificent gardens, Jones Wood Garden, lies between Lexington and Third Avenues and 65th and 66th Streets (above) on the same block as St. Vincent Ferrer Church.
The original Jones Wood was a 150-acre tract of high forested land that roughly spanned today’s 65th to 76th Streets from Third Avenue to the East River.
Named for a 19th century tavern owner and owned by prominent families, Jones Wood became a popular picnic and amusement spot. It was even in the running in the early 1850s to be the city’s first major public park. In the post–Civil War years after Central Park edged out Jones Wood, builders cut down the forests and put up blocks of brownstone residences in this Lenox Hill neighborhood, as thy did all over Manhattan. Demand for these private homes soured by the turn of the century, then picked up again after World War I. That’s when Jones Wood Garden got its start.
With well-to-do tenants in mind, developers purchased 12 brownstones (six on the north side of 65th Street, and six on the south side of 66th), then remodeled them by getting rid of their tall stoops and updating the amenities. They also designed a 100 by 108 feet sunken interior garden. “This will be paved with special paving brick and flagging, and will have a fountain with a pool,” explained a New York Times article from 1919. “Back of each house there will be a small and more intimate garden about 20 feet deep, upon which the dining room will open.” Shutters and trellises would be added to the back of each of these homes as well. Unless you live there or know someone who does, Jones Wood Garden is pretty much off-limits to most New Yorkers.
You can catch a glimpse of a few trees from the street, as I did below. But the garden sanctuary is very private, just as it was intended. Occasionally recent photos appear, particularly when one of the homes is up for sale. In 2015, the house at 160 East 66th Street hit the market for $12 million. Curbed has the photos, including one with the open dining room leading to the garden, as described in the 1919 Times piece. But to get a sense of the beauty and lushness of Jones Wood Garden, we have to rely on old images, such as these black and white photos from The Garden Magazine in 1922.
EDITORIAL
For over 30 year my parents lived in an apartment with a partial view of the Jones Wood garden. You could see the fountain in the center and the beauty of a communal area with no fences.
Moshe Safdie’s Habitat 67 in Montreal, Canada. Laura Hussey, Gloria Herman, M. Frank, Ed Litcher & Andy Sparberg got it!!
SOURCES Ephemeral New York
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 FUNDING PROVIDED BY ROOSEVELT ISLAND OPERATING CORPORATION PUBLIC PURPOSE GRANTS CITY COUNCIL REPRESENTATIVE BEN KALLOS DISCRETIONARY FUNDING THRU DYCD
Turns out that our old island has become a game changer in environmentally friendly architecture. Read on.
First, a bit more about Becker + Becker, the company that developed and built The Octagon. The firm’s website states: “Becker + Becker seeks projects that are social and environmental game-changers: restoring underutilized historic buildings and transforming urban sites to enrich and revitalize communities. We pride ourselves on finding creative interdisciplinary solutions to complex urban challenges through a fully integrated design and development process. We believe inspired design and sustainable development must result from a comprehensive understanding of how buildings should function, serve their users and impact the environment.” The key here is sustainability, and Becker + Becker’s rebuilt Octagon was awarded LEEDSilver for sustainability.
Bruce Becker, CEO, Becker + Becker, Credit John Muggenborg for The New York Times
LEED (“Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design”) is a green building rating program sponsored by the US Green Building Council, a non-profit coalition of building industry leaders. It is designed to encourage and reward sustainable design across several metrics—sustainable site choice, energy savings, water efficiency, reduction of CO2 emissions, and indoor environmental quality, among others—all while improving company profitability and employee well-being. LEED Silver is very good but below Gold and Platinum levels.
Why is this important? Buildings are huge consumers of fossil fuel – 40% of the total fossil fuel energy in the US and EU – and significant contributors of greenhouse gases. Diminishing building created GHGs would be a significant step toward dealing with climate change. B+B is viewed as a leader in pushing for more sustainable buildings.
I’ve learned several new terms. The total energy annually used by a Zero Energy Building is equal to the amount of renewable energy created on the site using technology such as heat pumps, high efficiency windows and insulation, and solar panels. The central requirement for Zero Energy status is that 100% of the project’s energy needs must be supplied by on-site renewable energy on a net annual basis, without the use of on-site combustion.
Passive house is a voluntary standard for energy efficiency in a building, which reduces the building’s ecological footprint. These are ultra-low energy buildings that require little energy for space heating or cooling. Passive design is not an attachment or supplement to architectural design, but a design process that integrates with architectural design.
This search for sustainability in buildings has given rise to an important debate between “energy harvesting” and “energy conservation”, that is, between generating point of use renewable energy and diminishing overall energy use. Most zero energy buildings use a combination of these strategies. Since the 1980s, passive solar building design (using direct and indirect sunlight for space heating, solar water heating systems based on the thermosiphon, use of thermal mass and phase-change materials for slowing indoor air temperature swings, solar cookers, the solar chimney for enhancing natural ventilation, and earth sheltering) and passive house have reduced heating energy consumption by 70% to 90% in many locations, without active energy harvesting. Such passive solar designs can be more cost-effective than adding expensive photovoltaic panels on the roof of a conventional inefficient building.
Becker + Becker’s buildings seek to meet net-zero energy standards. A recent project involves converting an office building into what could be the most energy-efficient hotel in the country. This $50 million project aims to revive the long-vacant Armstrong Rubber Company headquarters, a distinctive concrete box in New Haven designed by the Modernist architect Marcel Breuer in the late 1960s, as a 165-room boutique hotel to be called the Hotel Marcel.
The former headquarters of Armstrong Rubber in New Haven, Conn., is undergoing renovations to become a hotel that meets net-zero energy standards. Credit John Muggenborg for The New York Times In 2019, Becker + Becker bought this local landmark and registered Historic Place for $1.2 million to realize their vision of a net-zero hotel — believed to be the first of its kind in the US. Bruce Beeker says that he recognized the structure’s compact shape as a naturally efficient envelope — the ratio of surface area to interior space is low, a plus for minimizing heat gain in the summer or heat loss in the winter. “It’s hard to make buildings that meander efficient…But with a highly efficient envelope and building systems, we’ll be able to use about 80 percent less energy than a typical hotel building.” “You have to reuse, recycle and reinvent existing buildings to be truly sustainable,” Becker says. “The culture we have of tearing down and building new is really inefficient, and particularly when you have a building like (this one) which has such a great structure and that’s built to last for another century, not to repurpose it would have been a real shame.”
Solar canopies over the parking lot and rooftop solar panels are to supply all of the building’s electricity, and high-efficiency air-source heat pumps will be used for heating and cooling. Other efficiency measures will include triple-glazed windows, high-efficiency insulation, an all-electric heat pump HVAC system, and heat and energy recovery systems. These methods should help the hotel meet passive house standards, a set of design principles aimed at creating ultra-low-energy buildings. For Becker, building “green” just makes plain sense. “It seems like an obvious for a developer,” he says, emphasizing the importance of designing in energy efficiency from the beginning. “You have to live with the results of your design,” he emphasizes. “Most hotels are not built to operate with energy efficiency in mind.”
B+B has developed other high-efficiency projects, One is a Modernist office building in Hartford transformed into a 27-story apartment tower called 777 Main Street, powered like The Octagon with a fuel cell and a solar array and winning LEED Platinum.
Built in 1967, 777 Main Street is a prominent example of Mid-Century Modern architecture, designed by Welton Becket, and listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2014. The building is Connecticut’s first microgrid. Clean, combustion-free renewable energy to power and heat the building is created on-site from 336 Rooftop Solar panels and a 400 kilowatt fuel cell. These clean energy sources also power the 31 electric charging stations in the building’s garage, helping to bolster clean commuting.
360 State Street, another B+B project, revitalized a long-underutilized 1.5-acre site in a prime downtown location in New Haven. It is the largest private construction project ever built in New Haven and the greenest large-scale residential building in Connecticut and the largest apartment in Connecticut. The building received LEED Platinum, and includes the first fuel cell in an apartment building in the world. Energy efficiency is 60% more than energy code requirement. Smart metering with energy and water tracking webpage for each resident; electric-car charging stations; 1/2-acre green roof; recycled and local construction materials and finishes; low-emitting materials
Remember, B+B’s Octagon isn’t the only green break-through building on our Island. The House at Cornell Tech – the 26-story, 352-unit residential high rise that can house about 530 graduate students, faculty, and staff – is now considered the tallest Passive House in the world. Specifying a building envelope that would meet Passive House criteria and withstand very high wind loads was a challenge.
The House Courtesy Pavel Bendov
Critics have complained about the House’s bland design. Blake Middleton, the Handel Architects partner (and Cornell grad) who designed the House, says two reasons forced the streamlining: a budgetary imperative to make the building’s 352 rental units affordable for graduate students and a goal of building one of the most energy-efficient high-rises in the world. Both of those aims were met in the autumn of 2017, with a LEED Platinum certification bagged along the way too.
Reviews, blandness notwithstanding, acknowledge the story behind the wan exterior: Those walls are extraordinary in function. The Passive House Institute (PHI), based in Darmstadt, Germany, offers its certification only to structures that pass a stringent on-site “pressure test.” These buildings must be sealed airtight, with no leaky windows or building joints, to preserve indoor temperatures and hushed acoustics. Prefabricated, highly insulated panels (each one story tall) fitted with triple-paned windows were assembled in York, Pennsylvania, then hauled by barge to Roosevelt Island for build-out.
So committed were the building teams to this airtight-envelope concept (the general contractor on the project, Monadnock Construction, supported staff training in PHI standards) that when it came time to source a door for each floor’s heating/cooling condenser room, they purchased and installed actual walk-in-freezer doors: big thick white ones, complete with hand levers. So, big surprise, our Island, well known for its elderly buildings, is now at the very forefront of the most modern, green, sustainable architecture. Hooray for us.
SAKS FIFTH AVENUE HARA REISER, GLORIA HERMAN, THOM HEYER, ANDY SPARBERG, ED LITCHER AND CLARA BELLA GOT IT!
PENNIES FOR PRESERVATION WE ARE COLLECTING PENNIES (AND OTHER COINS) AS A DONATION TO THE R.I.H.S. AND TO HELP RESOLVE THE ACUTE COIN SHORTAGE DROP YOU DONATION OFF AT THE RIHS VISITOR CENTER OR JUDITH BERDY, 531 MAIN ST. #1704 (RECEIPTS UPON REQUEST)
Funding Provided by: Roosevelt Island Corporation Public Purpose Funds Council Member Ben Kallos City Council Discretionary Funds thru DYCD Text by Judith Berdy
Edited by Deborah Dorff ALL PHOTOS COPYRIGHT RIHS. 2020 (C) PHOTOS IN THIS ISSUE (C) JUDITH BERDY RIHS
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
JUDITH BERDY
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“Washington Market, New York, Thanksgiving Time” is the straightforward name of this hand colored wood engraving. Drawn by French artist Jules Tavernier, the richly detailed image ran in Harper’s Weekly in 1872.
Our Thanksgiving wishes to all, Share the day, weekend or time with your family and friends,. Eat well and be prepared to shop at the RIHS kiosk on Friday and the weekend.
A SPECIAL THANKSGIVING MEMORY
MIKE AND PAT SCHWARTBERG, THANKSGIVING 2011 MIKE PASSED AWAY ALMOST A YEAR AGO. HIS FUN LOVING SPIRIT AND COURAGE ARE FONDLY REMEMBERED
LAST THURSDAY’S PHOTO OF THE DAY
M. FRANK WAS THE ONLY PERSON WHO KNEW THE WISCONSIN CAPITOL.
WEDNESDAY PHOTO OF THE DAY
RIVERSIDE CHURCH NINA LUBLIN WAS THE EARLY BIRD WHO KNEW THE IMAGE. ALSO ARON EISENPREISS AND HARA REISER!
PENNIES FOR PRESERVATION
BRING YOUR PENNIES, NICKELS DIMES AND QUARTERS TO THE 531 DOORSTATION TO THE ATTENTION OF JUDY BERDY.
WE HAVE ALREADY COLLECTED $800+
THE PENNIES WILL BE SUPPORTING THE R.I.H.S. AND HELP RE-CIRCULATE COINS.
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
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The Wild West-inspired apartment house designed for urban cliff dwellers
November 22, 2021
In Gilded Age New York, a new term popped up to mock a certain type of Manhattanite: cliff dweller.
“By about 1890 the growing number of residents in apartment houses were sardonically called cliff dwellers, after the image of the cliff-dwelling Native Americans in the Southwest,” wrote Irving Lewis Allen in his 1995 book, The City in Slang.
Inspired by the new slang term as well as Southwestern images and motifs, a new residential building opened its doors on Riverside Avenue and 96th Street in 1916: the aptly named Cliff Dwelling.
The 12-story Cliff Dwelling, situated on a flatiron-shaped plot only roughly eight feet deep on one side, opened as an apartment hotel high up over Riverside Park on posh Riverside Drive.
Unlike the restrained elegance that characterized similar new buildings on the Drive, the Cliff Dwelling had a playful, inventive facade unique in New York City.
Buffalo or cattle skulls, two-headed snakes, and mountain lions in terra cotta decorate the front of the building, along with images of corn, spears, and masks. Raised bricks form geometrical patterns and zigzags that mimic Aztec and Mayan design motifs.
The 12-story Cliff Dwelling, situated on a flatiron-shaped plot only roughly eight feet deep on one side, opened as an apartment hotel high up over Riverside Park on posh Riverside Drive.
Unlike the restrained elegance that characterized similar new buildings on the Drive, the Cliff Dwelling had a playful, inventive facade unique in New York City.
Buffalo or cattle skulls, two-headed snakes, and mountain lions in terra cotta decorate the front of the building, along with images of corn, spears, and masks. Raised bricks form geometrical patterns and zigzags that mimic Aztec and Mayan design motifs.
By 1932, the Cliff Dwelling was converted to apartments, according to Carter Horsely at cityrealty.com, with kitchens added to the already small rooms. Since 1979, the building—which lost its marquee at some point, visible in the above 1939 photo—has been a co-op.
I’ve never been inside the Cliff Dwelling, but I imagine there’s still a sense of living high above an urban canyon, with a view to the Hudson and perhaps the New Jersey Palisades.
One recent change, however, may make the Cliff Dwelling feel more like a typical squeezed-in city structure: In the early 2000s, a new residential building was built inches away from the Cliff Dwelling’s eastern facade.
At least the western facade still has those wonderful tongue-out faces at eye level.
[Third image: NYC Department of Records and Information Services]
ephemeralnewyork
Tags: 1916 Apartment Buildings NYC, Cliff Dwelling Apartment Building NYC, Cliff Dwelling Riverside Drive, Cliff Dwelling Upper West Side, Riverside Drive Apartment Buildings, Upper West Side Apartment Buildings
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DAN KILEY NICOLAS QUINNELL/QUINNELL ROTHSCHILD ZION BREEN
(c) RIHS
Called Blackwell Island beginning in the 18th century, this 147-acre, two-mile-long island in the East River was sold to the City of New York in 1828. It became home for the city’s poor, housed within quarantined hospitals, alms houses, a lunatic asylum and a penitentiary, warranting the name Welfare Island in 1921. By 1961 the island was desolate, and Victor Gruen proposed an urban renewal scheme to transform the neglected island into a residential enclave.
In 1969 the city established a 99-year lease with the New York State Urban Development Corporation (UDC), who adopted a master plan devised by Philip Johnson and John Burgee. The plan envisioned a new town model of two medium-density residential clusters – Northtown and Southtown – interspersed with public spaces, and also addressed infrastructure, transportation, retail areas, civic institutions, schools, and hospitals.
The Office of Dan Kiley and Zion & Breen were hired to study roads and open space in the pedestrian-focused scheme. The plan was completed within eight years, and included mid- and high-rise apartment and commercial blocks designed by well-known architects.
Parks were integral to the overall plan, with Blackwell Park designed by Kiley, the Promenades designed by Zion & Breen, and Lighthouse Park designed by Nicholas Quennell Associates. Several nineteenth-century landmarks were also restored and preserved. In 1973 the island was renamed for Franklin D. Roosevelt, during which time Louis Kahn was commissioned to design a memorial park honoring Roosevelt’s four freedoms speech, which was not completed until 2012. Today, the island is home to more than 14,000 residents.
ROCKEFELLER UNIVERSITY CAMPUS LANDSCAPING BY DAN KILEY
DAN KILEY
BLACKWELL PARK RIVERCROSS LAWN
DAN KILEY
Kiley was born in Roxbury, Boston, Massachusetts, where his father was a construction manager, grew up in West Roxbury, Boston, and in 1930 graduated from high school in Jamaica Plain. In 1932, he began a four-year apprenticeship with landscape architect Warren Manning, working without pay for the first year, then at 50 cents per hour, during which he learned the fundamentals of office practice and developed an interest in the role of plants in design, sparking his later creative and innovative use of plants in the landscape.
From 1936 to 1938, Kiley was a special student in the design program at Harvard University, while continuing work with Manning for 30 hours per week. Among his classmates and friends were Garrett Eckbo and James C. Rose, who also became influential landscape architects. After two years at Harvard, upon Manning’s death and the dissolution of his practice, Kiley left without graduating. He worked briefly for the National Park Service in Concord, New Hampshire, and later the United States Housing Authority, where he met architect Louis Kahn. On Kahn’s advice, Kiley left the Housing Authority in 1940 to become a licensed practitioner of architecture.
From 1943 to 1945, Kiley served in the U.S. Army as Captain in the Presentations Branch of the Office of Strategic Services, becoming its director after architect Eero Saarinen stepped down. At the end of World War II, Kiley designed the courtroom where the Nuremberg Trials were held.
While in Europe, he visited Chateau de Villandry as well as the work of André Le Nôtre at Sceaux, Chantilly, Versailles, and Vaux-le-Vicomte, whose formality and geometric layout shaped his future Classical Modernist style. Following the war, Kiley found himself one of the only modern landscape architects in the postwar building boom. In California, his friend Garrett Eckbo, Thomas Church and others were developing and practicing the modernist style. Kiley re-established his practice in Franconia, New Hampshire, and later moved it to Charlotte, Vermont.
In 1947, in collaboration with Saarinen, Kiley entered and won the competition to design for the Gateway Arch National Park (then known as the Jefferson National Expansion Memorial), a high-profile job that launched his career as a landscape architect. Kiley’s first essentially modern landscape design was the Miller Garden in 1955, which is now owned by the Indianapolis Museum of Art and known as the Miller House and Garden. Among his other masterworks are the Fountain Place in Dallas, Texas; the NationsBank Plaza in Tampa, Florida; the United States Air Force Academy; the Oakland Museum; Independence Mall in Philadelphia; and the Dallas Museum of Art.
He completed more than 900 projects, which received countless awards. In 1997, he was presented with the National Medal of Arts. In his office, he hired and inspired designers such as Richard Haag, Peter Hornbeck, Peter Ker Walker, Peter Schaudt and Ian Tyndal. The unique geometric layout of allees, bosques, water, paths, orchards, and lawns characterize Dan Kiley’s design. To Kiley, regular geometry lay at the heart of his design. Like his predecessors, Le Corbusier and Le Nôtre,
Kiley believed that geometry was an inherent part of man. It was the structure man could use to gain comprehension and create stabilization of his surroundings. He also firmly believed that man was a part of nature, rather than being separate from it. Rather than copying and trying to imitate the curvilinear forms of nature he asserted mathematical order to the landscape. Kiley’s landscapes overstepped their boundaries rather than ending elements neatly on a suggested edge. He called this approach, slippage, or an extension beyond the implied boundary, creating ambiguous relationships in the landscape.
Dan Kiley was a landscape architect made famous by his hundreds of distinguished works of landscape design, and inspires many students and professionals in the field of landscape architecture
PLAY AREA OUTSIDE FORMER PS 217
BLACKWELL PARK FACING QUEENS
SEATING AREA BETWEEN BASKETBALL COURTS
MEDITATION STEPS OVERLOOKING THE RIVER AND MANHATTAN
As I walked around Blackwell Park recently with a RIOC staff member, we looked at the deteriorated state of the park in back of Blackwell house. After over 45 years of use, abuse, neglect and patching up the park is in sorry shape. The steps leading down the hill thru an arcade of ginkgo trees is paved with bricks that are falling out of the ground. Not a good place to step down.
The red covered shade area between the basket ball courts are rotted out and the pergola makes a great place to climb.
As you approach the sidewalk outside of the north of Blackwell House, be careful the pavers are lifting and hazardous.
On the west side of Main Street the Rivecross lawn is full of dips and bumps. The entire lawn needs to be rebuilt.
The good news is the Meditation Steps are in great shape. After years of rebuilding them with junk pine, they were rebuilt about 5 years ago with Brazilian wood that does not rot. The steps are great, but the brick walls next to them are deteriorating as are the railings.
Maybe in the near future the Blackwell Parks will have a thoughtful rebuild and not another Band-Aid patch.
Re-imagining Dan Kiley’s work will be a challenge for whomever will take on the chore. Read the adjoining article and see how many of Kiley’s landmark design ideas you can find in out parks.
Mid-century design constantly gets lambasted. Go across the river to Rockefeller University campus and see how wonderful the mid-century Dan Kiley landscape looks!
QUINNELL ROTHSCHILD
LIGHTHOUSE PARK NORTHTOWN PARK/CAPOBIANCO FIELD
NICHOLAS QUINNELL
Born in London in 1935, Quennell earned his diploma in architecture from the Architectural Association in London in 1956 and then worked for architect Leonard Manasseh and for the housing division of the London County Council.
In 1961 Quennell arrived in New York City, but soon settled in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where he worked for Josep Lluís Sert (of Sert, Jackson & Gourley). One year later Quennell joined the San Francisco firm of Lawrence Halprin & Associates and was assigned to work on Ghirardelli Square almost immediately. While at the firm, he flirted with the idea of being an artist and returned to New York City in 1967,
living in the storied Chelsea Hotel. To support his artistic ambitions, Quennell took a job with Vollmer Associates and then earned his M.L.A. from Harvard’s Graduate School of Design in 1969. He then established his own landscape architecture practice before teaming with Peter Rothschild to found Quennell Rothschild Associates in 1979 (renamed Quennell Rothschild & Partners in 1998).
Can you identify this and the location. E-Mail Jbird134@aol.com Winner will receive a book from the kiosk.
WEEKEND MYSTERY PHOTO
Did you guess this location? It is the entrance to the Queensbridge apartment houses. Just across Vernon Blvd. With over 3000 units, built in 1939 it has been called the largest public housing development in the U.S.
EDITORIAL
Maybe many of us will appreciate our green spaces,more than ever this year since we are all spending lot of time walking the island.
Today I visited the kiosk for it’s weekly check. Outside I found life in full bloom and about to burst forth.
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 Dottie Jeffries
Just completed, Blackwell Park from the corner south of the house to the NYPL has just received a long needed restoration. The plaza outside the house has preserved its linear tree patter with a new smaller paver design. The are looks and feels larger and more open.
A wide open sidewalk
The area in the back (originally the front of the house which faces Queens) has new paving a great approach to the disabled accessible ramp the to the house and new signage.
The ramp offers a seamless entry into the house.
The ramp has extended grab rails making it easier for persons using assistive devices.
A sign clearly indicates the ramp entry.
EDITORIAL
This project’s first phase has been completed. There are many more improvements needed in our almost 50 year old Blackwell Park. With the new area next to the library, open space has been preserved.
Even the fountain is working again, after a long hiatus.
There is another fountain next to Blackwell House that hopefully will be restored or removed in the next phase.
Hopefully, RIOC will maintain these areas and not let them become neglected.
MONDAY PHOTO OF THE DAY
A NEW FLEET OF TRUCKS HAS ARRIVED AT THE VISITOR CENTER NO DOUBLE PARKING FOR THESE, FROM CANDYLAB $18- EACH
WEEKEND PHOTO OF THE DAY
CITY, FORMERLY CHARITY HOSPITAL, DEMOLISHED IN 1992. GLORIA HERMAN AND ED LITCHER GOT IT!
TOMORROW ROOSEVELT ISLAND PARK DESIGNS FROM MAY 11, 2020 ISSUE
NOVEMBER 22, 1963
SOURCES
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 FUNDING PROVIDED BY ROOSEVELT ISLAND OPERATING CORPORATION PUBLIC PURPOSE GRANTS CITY COUNCIL REPRESENTATIVE BEN KALLOS DISCRETIONARY FUNDING THRU DYCD
Let’s look at another architect who has shaped our Island.
The Octagon, the reconstructed Pauper Lunatic Asylum at the north end of our island, has been viewed as a singular achievement in design and construction. The developer and builder was Becker + Becker, founded in 1950 and directed since 1988 by Bruce Redman Becker. The firm’s website states: “Becker + Becker seeks projects that are social and environmental game-changers: restoring underutilized historic buildings and transforming urban sites to enrich and revitalize communities. We pride ourselves on finding creative interdisciplinary solutions to complex urban challenges through a fully integrated design and development process. We believe inspired design and sustainable development must result from a comprehensive understanding of how buildings should function, serve their users and impact the environment.”
We’ll look at the creation of The Octagon, but first, let’s talk briefly about the Lunatic Asylum.
Alexander Jackson Davis (1803–1892), widely considered America’s greatest mid-nineteenth century architect, designed the original Asylum. Davis is seen as an extraordinary figure in American architecture, introducing and developing new ideas and forms while producing some of the finest buildings of his time.
The Blackwell’s island Asylum was a new idea. It was the first municipal mental hospital in the country as well as the first in what became a large system of New York City Asylums comprised of hospitals on several New York islands. Before 1825, the City’s insane were housed in the city almshouse or at the Bloomingdale Asylum. Then they were moved to the basement and first floor of the General Hospital on Blackwell’s Island. Here the mentally ill remained in conditions described by the very commissioners in charge of the hospital as “a miserable refuge for their trial, undeserving of the name Asylum, in these enlightened days”. Only in 1834 did the city approve the construction of a separate institution for the insane on the island.
Designs for the Asylum were prepared by Davis in 1834-35, and the building was opened in 1839. Davis’ design was influenced by the Panopticon idea developed by Jeremy Bentham (1742-1832), a British philosopher interested in prison reform. In this design, jailers in a central structure would monitor inmates housed in radiating wings.
The RIHS article on the Asylum notes that construction had barely begun when disagreements with the City Council over the design halted work. In 1837, work resumed, but Davis’ signature “Tuscan Style” plan for two octagon structures within a U-shaped complex, ordered around a central rectangular pavilion was reduced to a single octagon joined to a single east-west wing. The upper portion of the octagon was altered to include a crenelated cupola and the architectural detail was changed to the Greek Revival style. In 1847-48, a north-south wing was built repeating the style of the earlier east-west wing. Architect Joseph M. Dunn was commissioned in 1879 to alter the Asylum. He raised the wings one story in height and, to retain the visual prominence of the Octagon, added a dome-like convex mansard roof with Neo-Greco detail. This is the structure that was later recreated by B+B.
In 1895, the Lunatic Asylum was renamed Metropolitan Hospital and became a general hospital with special emphasis on the treatment of tubercular patients, and the Metropolitan Hospital School of Nursing opened in 1902. The Metropolitan Hospital left the island around 1950 and, after that, the building was barely used. In the 1960’s, New York State took over much of what had become Roosevelt Island. The Asylum structure fell into disrepair and in the 1970s two 4-story wings flanking the octagon building were deemed too blighted for reconstruction and were razed. In 1982 and 1999, fires destroyed about 90% of the octagon building
After the first and second fires, 1982 and 1999
In 2004, after long negotiations, architect-developer Bruce Redman Becker started construction on a new 13-story apartment complex with 500 rental units, connected to a rebuilt octagon structure, which would be used for the main entry area, offices and common rooms. The firm replaced the 4-story wings with 14-story wings containing a total of 400 market-rate apartments and 100 affordable units and rebuilt the octagon structure using some of the original stone. This complex became The Octagon.
B+B conceived The Octagon to be eco-friendly from the start. The Octagon was to be 35% more energy efficient than New York State building code standards. With low-E argon-filled windows, insulated walls, high efficiency heat pumps and occupancy sensors in hallways and stairs and heat recovery units to capture energy from exhausted air and heat from waste water, it was constructed to consume far less energy than a traditional apartment building. The largest rooftop photovoltaic array of any Manhattan building was planned, producing 50 kilowatts of power – enough for all of the community’s common areas. It was to be one of the first in the world to be heated and cooled by a 400 kW fuel cell (which came online in 2011), and, contains low-VOC finishes, improved indoor air quality, and Energy Star appliances and lighting to help reduce utility bills.
Green Features promised by B+B
Over 50% of the construction materials were manufactured within 500 miles of the site, minimizing energy expended in transport; most construction waste was recycled.
400KW fuel cell provides green power and heat.
The Octagon and its sister building, 360 State in New Haven, CT are the first and only apartment buildings in the world to be powered and heated by a fuel cell.
Free of materials containing formaldehyde or volatile organic compounds
Regular testing of indoor air ensures strict quality standards
Manhattan’s largest array of photovoltaic panels
Energy Star appliances and lighting
Eco-friendly lifestyle and recreational atmosphere:
Five miles of bike paths, walking paths, and waterfront promenades
2-acre ecological park with indigenous plants
Underground parking keeps green space to a maximum
In 2008, the U.S. Green Building Council awarded The Octagon LEED-Silver Certification for excellence in sustainable design and environmentally conscious construction. Other awards include HGTV Restore America Grant; ABC 2006 Excellence in Construction Award for Historic Restoration; Connecticut Trust for Historic Preservation Harlan Griswold Award for Historic Preservation; CEDAS – EDDY Award for Economic Development in a Community Project. The Octagon received the largest initial award of New York State Green Building Tax Credits and was recognized in the first New York City Green Buildings Competition with the “Green Apple Award” for leadership in applying sustainable design principles to residential development.
Thoughts: Design
First, for what it’s worth, The Octagon today embodies very little of what Davis first planned – but to be fair, the complex hasn’t retained much of Davis’ influence since the very first days. It recalls, instead, the 1879 rebuilding.
I’m not able to judge how green The Octagon is now. Hopefully, promises have been kept. The site has glorious river views, but the vaunted “ecological park” doesn’t exist. The Octagon sits on a very tight site. The interior decoration of the octagon building is modern, retaining little of the original style. The famous staircase has not been rebuilt but a good effort was made to create a modern version.
Stairway old and new
The 1879 mansard tower represents a brief romance with this style in New York architecture, and one wonders if an earlier version of the octagon building might have been more suitable in terms of Island history. But most of all, the huge 14 story wings overshadow the octagon building, including the mansard tower. Clearly, B+B had to build enough apartments to make the project viable, and an effort was made to tie the pieces together by using the same stone on the lower levels of the wings. But truly, it is a disagreeable compromise.
The apartment rooms are small – like everywhere else—and it’s a long haul to public transportation. But all in all, The Octagon has to be seen as a remarkable achievement on our Island.
HERALD SQUARE / GREELEY SQUARE LAURA HUSSEY AND ARON EISENPREISS GOT IT
SOURCES
BECKER +BECKER RIOC NY TIMES FULL LIST ON REQUEST
Funding Provided by: Roosevelt Island Corporation Public Purpose Funds Council Member Ben Kallos City Council Discretionary Funds thru DYCD Text by Judith Berdy
Edited by Deborah Dorff ALL PHOTOS COPYRIGHT RIHS. 2020 (C) PHOTOS IN THIS ISSUE (C) JUDITH BERDY RIHS
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
It happened on Broadway and 31st Street in room 84 of the Grand Hotel, in the middle of the Tenderloin—Gilded Age New York’s vast vice playground of brothels, dance halls, theaters, and gambling dens.
After knocking on the door several times on the morning of August 16, 1898, a chambermaid entered the room and found the corpse of a pretty young woman, her head in a pool of blood and her clothed body spread out on the floor.
The stylishly dressed woman “had been bludgeoned with a lead pipe to the skull, her neck was broken, and one of her earlobes was torn by the violent removal of an earring,” wrote John Oller in Rogues’ Gallery:The Birth of Modern Policing and Organized Crime in Gilded Age New York.
“Her clothing was undisturbed, the bed linens fresh and unmussed,” wrote Oller. “On a table in the center of the room stood an empty champagne bottle and two glasses.”
Police in the Tenderloin were used to gruesome crime scenes, and they were summoned to the hotel to piece together evidence.
The details were intriguing. Though the woman had signed into the hotel as “E. Maxwell and wife, Brooklyn” and was then seen by hotel staff meeting a man in a straw hat, her real identity was Emeline “Dolly” Reynolds, a petite 21-year-old who two years earlier left her well-off parents in Mount Vernon to try to make it as an actress in Manhattan.
Reynolds wasn’t getting anywhere as an actress however. For a time she sold books, then met a married man named Maurice Mendham (above). This wealthy stockbroker helped set her up in an apartment on West 58th Street, bought her jewelry, and lived with her “as man and wife,” as a prosecutor later put it.
Just as interesting to detectives was the check that fell out of her corset during her on-scene autopsy. “It was made payable to ‘Emma Reynolds’ in the amount of $13,000,” wrote Oller. “Dated August 15, 1898, the previous day, it was drawn on the Garfield National Bank, signed by a ‘Dudley Gideon,’ and endorsed on the back by ‘S.J. Kennedy.’”
Investigators soon learned that Mendham had an alibi; he was in Long Branch at the time. They also discovered that ‘Dudley Gideon’ didn’t exist. But S.J. Kennedy did, and they began taking a closer look at this 32-year-old Staten Island dentist who practiced on West 22nd Street and was introduced to Reynolds by Mendham.
“Reynolds’ mother told police that about a week before the murder, Dolly told her that Dr. Kennedy (above) volunteered to put $500 on a horse race for her,” according to Strange Company. “She had drawn the money from her bank, and would meet him on the evening of August 15 to deliver what he promised would be a highly profitable investment.”
Police arrested Kennedy five hours after Reynolds’ body was discovered.
After denying he knew Reynolds, Kennedy then admitted to being her regular dentist, according to Oller, and that he saw her in his office the previous week. He insisted their relationship was professional and that he did not place any bets for her, had never been to the Grand Hotel, and his signature on the $13,000 check was forged.
Still, hotel employees ID’d him as the man in the straw hat they saw with Reynolds the day before her body was found. Kennedy also could not explain his whereabouts at the time of the murder, estimated to be at 1 a.m. He thought he’d been to Proctor’s Theatre on West 23rd Street (above), but he couldn’t recall the name of the play he’d seen, wrote Oller.
Police and prosecutors came up with a theory to connect Kennedy to Reynolds. “According to the theory, Dolly was just one of the ‘lambs’ that Kennedy, a feeder for a group of confidence men, was tasked with separating from their money,” explained Oller. But there were some holes, such as why the check was for $13,000, and why the dentist murdered her so viciously.
The March 1899 trial riveted New York City, and newspapers printed lurid front-page headlines with illustrations of the courtroom. Hotel staff and guests (like Mrs. Logue, above) took the stand; Kennedy did not. The jury quickly convicted Kennedy and sentenced him to die in Sing Sing in the electric chair.
But then, the convicted dentist got a lucky break, when in 1900 the Court of Appeals granted him a new trial due to “hearsay” that was used as evidence in the first trial.
The second time, the jury deadlocked, with 11 voting to acquit. At a third trial, Mendham testified, and “his evasiveness about the extent of his relationship with Dolly Reynolds fed the defense’s insinuation that he was somehow behind the murder,” wrote Oller.
While crowds sympathetic to Kennedy rallied outside the courtroom, the jury couldn’t agree on a verdict once again. The city declined to try the case a fourth time. Kennedy was released from the Tombs and returned to Staten Island to a hero’s welcome.
“He resumed his dental practice and lived quietly in New Dorp, dying at age 81 in August 1948, almost 50 years to the day after the murder of his patient Dolly Reynolds,” wrote Oller.
[Top image: San Jose Mercury News; second image: MCNY X2011.34.35; third image: New York World; fourth image: The Scrapbook; fifth image: MCNY 93.1.1.15639; sixth image: New York World; seventh image: New York Journal]
THURSDAY PHOTO OF THE DAY WISCONSIN STATE CAPITOL, MADISON
Construction of the present capitol, the third in Madison, began in late 1906 and was completed in 1917 at a cost of $7.25 million. The architect was George B. Post & Sons from New York. Because of financial limitations and the need for immediate office space to house state government employees, the construction of the new building was extended over several years and emphasized building one wing at a time.
The Capitol is 284 feet, 5 inches tall from the ground floor to the top of the Wisconsin statue on the dome.
The Wisconsin statue on the dome was sculpted during 1920 by Daniel Chester French of New York. Its left hand holds a globe surmounted by an eagle and her right arm is outstretched to symbolize the state motto, “Forward”. It wears a helmet with the state animal, the badger, on top. It is made of hollow bronze covered with gold leaf. Wisconsin is 15 feet, 5 inches tall and weighs three tons. The statue is commonly misidentified as Lady Forward or Miss Forward, which is the name of another statue on the capitol grounds.
The capitol ceiling, visible from the center of the building, features “Resources of Wisconsin”, a mural by Edwin Howland Blashfield. Due to the domed shape of the ceiling, the mural was painted in pieces and was assembled similarly to a jigsaw puzzle. It features a woman sitting on a throne of clouds, representing Wisconsin. Wisconsin is surrounded by other women, wrapped in a large American Flag, who are reaching for goods such as tobacco, lead, and fruits.
The capitol was constructed of 43 types of stone from six countries and eight states. The exterior stone is Bethel white granite from Vermont, making the exterior dome the largest granite dome in the world. The corridor floors, walls and columns are of marble from the states of Tennessee, Missouri, Vermont, Georgia, New York, and Maryland; granite from the states of Wisconsin and Minnesota; and limestone from the states of Minnesota and Illinois. Marble from the countries of France, Italy, Greece, Algeria and Germany, and syenite from Norway are also represented. Other Wisconsin granites are located throughout the public hallways on the ground, first, and second floors.
The building was designated a National Historic Landmark in 2001. A 1990 state law prevents any building within one mile of the capitol from being taller than the base of the columns surrounding and supporting its dome.[
EPHEMERAL NEW YORK Tags: Dolly Reynolds Murder Trial, Dolly Reynolds S.J. Kennedy, Gilded Age Murders NYC, Gilded Age NYC Murder Dolly Reynolds, Grand Hotel NYC, Murder of Dolly Reynolds NYC, Murder of Emeline Dolly Reynolds, Tenderloin Grand Hotel NYC Posted in Chelsea, Disasters and crimes, Sketchy hotels
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