Dancing at the Lunatic’s Ball on Blackwell’s Island
City officials had good intentions when they built the New York City Lunatic Asylum, which opened in 1841 on Blackwell’s Island.
Rather than confining city residents who were deemed insane to prison cells (which had long been the preferred course of action), this new institution with the octagon entrance was all about “moral treatment,” explains Stacy Horn in her new book, Damnation Island: Poor, Sick, Mad, and Criminal in 19th-Century New York.
Insanity was to be considered an illness, not demonic possession. And “therapy was focused on the patient’s emotional and spiritual needs,” wrote Horn. That meant exercise instead of shackles, work that would build self-esteem, and recreation to lift spirits.
What kind of recreation? Activities included lectures, concerts, magic lantern shows—and a periodic event dubbed the Lunatic’s Ball.“On special holidays they’d fit up one of the pavilions as a dancing hall and everyone—patients, attendants, and doctors alike—would dance,” . 1865 Harper’s Weekly covered one of these Lunatic’s Balls in an article titled “Dancing by Lunatics”. The Lunatic Asylum on Blackwell’s Island was the scene of a most interesting and remarkable spectacle on the night of November 6,” the article stated.“The completion of the first of a series of four frame buildings was celebrated by a ball, in which the patients of the Asylum were the dancers, ‘tripping the light fantastic toe’ after a fashion even more fantastic than Milton dreamed of in ‘L’Allegro.’”The new buildings were necessitated by an increase in asylum residents, causing overcrowding and making the place much less therapeutic and more dangerous than the city had hoped.1865, Harper’s Weekly covered one of these Lunatic’s Balls in an article titled “Dancing by Lu“A prominent fiddler, himself a patient, is lost in ecstasy in the sounds which he produces, and in their influence upon his fellows. Every variety of ‘pigeon wing’ is being cut by the active dancers. Now and then there darts out one who enchains the attention of all her acquaintance by her excellent execution of the most difficult pas.”“Occasions of this sort no doubt tend in a great degree to relieve the sluggish melancholy which too close confinement or too monotonous surroundings are apt to produce in our institutions for insane people. It is often the case that isolation renders incurable diseases of the mind which a more considerate treatment might ameliorate, or perhaps entirely relieve.”This is the same asylum Nellie Bly would go on to write about in 1887, when the Lunatic Asylum had become women-only and “sluggish melancholy” was the least of the problems residents encountered.Bly’s expose on the terrible conditions there ultimately led to its closing. Residents were relocated to a cleaned-up facility on Ward’s Island, one that didn’t seem to continue the Lunatic’s Ball tradition.[Top image: Lunatic asylum scene in 1868; second image, the Lunatic’s Ball, Harper’s Weekly; third image: NYPL, 1850s; fourth image: Lunatic Asylum in the 1890s; fifth image: Lunatic Asylum, undated]
Ron Crawford’s new print of the Queensboro Bridge is available at the kiosk, a perfect holiday gift, $35-
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
RIHS (C) FUNDING PROVIDED BY ROOSEVELT ISLAND OPERATING CORPORATION PUBLIC PURPOSE GRANTS CITY COUNCIL REPRESENTATIVE BEN KALLOS DISCRETIONARY FUNDING THRU DYCD
TODAY IS THE 80th ANNIVERSARY OF THE ATTACK ON PEARL HARBOR
TUESDAY, DECEMBER 7, 2021
ISSUE #539
BIG BOYS’ TOYS
OF THE
GILDED ERA
STEPHEN BLANK
Detroit Boat Club
Big Boys’ Toys of the Gilded Era
A lot of really big, really famous yachts have been associated with New York City. Why not? So here is a brief overview of some of fanciest early private yachts.
Size doesn’t matter, we are told. A yacht is a boat designed for the express pleasure of its owner, any size, any shape. In the heyday of the Dutch Republic, small, fast boats were sent to chase smugglers, pirates and criminals. Rich ship owners used these small “jaghts” to sail out to celebrate their returning merchant ships. It quickly became chic to use these “jaghts” to take friends out just for pleasure.
We are told that the first organized regatta was hosted by England’s King Charles II in 1661, a 40-mile race on the Thames between Katherine, Charles’s newly constructed yacht and Anne, the Duke of York’s new yacht. Katherine won, and a new sport was born. Soon some of the world’s wealthiest pushed into the Sport of Kings. The first yacht club in the world was the Cork Water Club, in Ireland in 1720, followed by the Starcross Yacht Club in 1772 in England.
Here, yachting began with the Dutch, but the first large, expensive ocean going yacht was American, George Crowinshield’s Cleopatra’s Barge, built in 1815. Crowninshield was the eldest son of an enormously wealthy Salem family. At a time when all American ships were either merchant or naval vessels, the concept of a pleasure yacht was unique and Cleo’s Barge set the bar for luxury and elegance for the grand yachts in the later 19th century.
The first continuing American yacht club, the Detroit Boat Club, was formed in 1839 but it was more of a rowing club. In 1844 John C. Stevens founded the New York Yacht Club – which became the most famous of all yacht clubs. Early on, racing for prize money was the objective. The Club contracted with designer George Steers for a 101 foot schooner christened America, launched on May 3, 1851. America crossed the Atlantic on her own bottom that year and challenged all of England’s fastest yachts to a match race. No yachts were willing to race her. Finally, America joined a free-for-all on Friday, August 22, racing against 15 yachts of the Royal Yacht Squadron in the club’s annual 53-nautical-mile race around the Isle of Wight. Finishing 8 minutes ahead of its closest rival. America won the Royal Yacht Squadron’s “Hundred Guinea Cup“, later called the America’s Cup to honor the yacht that won it.
America, Wikipedia
Watching the race was Queen Victoria, who supposedly inquired, “Which is first?” Told it was America, she asked, “Which is second?” “Ah, Your Majesty, there is no second,” was the reply. So the story goes. The NYYC defended the trophy from 1870 to 1983, the longest winning streak in sports history.
A few years later, yachts became a giant sign of success. “Boys will have their toys,” one article on 19th century yachts opens, “and the boys of the Gilded Age were no different. Only, their toys were behemoths, and cost a small fortune.” America’s Industrial Age captains poured as much money into yachts as they did into “castles.” Nothing exemplified the era’s ostentation more than their yachts. In this, as in their homes, bigger was better.
Yachts were built for ocean going excursions to Europe as well as coastal entertainment, and contained all the luxuries of home—a very rich man’s home. “Ice rooms, hot and cold running water, tiled baths and mahogany paneling, soft, sumptuous upholstered furniture, and electric lights were commonplace. After all, these families wouldn’t think of going abroad on a scheduled steamer of the day.”
This was the very beginning of the era of Atlantic steamships, in the 1890s with rising competition between German and British lines – finer than before, but still looking forward to the grand ships of the early 20th century. These private yachts, built in the early era of steam power, could rival the luxury of the Atlantic trade.
We know something about a few of the most famous. James Gordon Bennett, Jr. was publisher of the New York Herald, founded by his father, and founder of the International Herald Tribune. Bennett indulged in yachts, opulent private railroad cars, and lavish mansions. He was the youngest Commodore ever of the New York Yacht Club. In 1861, Bennett volunteered his newly-built schooner yacht, Henrietta, for the U.S. Revenue Cutter Service during the Civil War. In 1866, he won the first trans-oceanic yacht race. The race was between three American yachts, the Vesta, the Fleetwing and the Henrietta. They started off of Sandy Hook, New Jersey, on 11 December 1866 amid high westerly winds and raced to The Needles, the furthest westerly point on the Isle of Wight.
However, he often scandalized society with his flamboyant and sometimes erratic behavior. In 1877, he left New York for Europe after an incident that ended his engagement to socialite Caroline May. According to various accounts, he arrived late and drunk to a party at the May family mansion, then urinated into a fireplace (some say grand piano) in full view of his hosts.
One of the most opulent was the Atalanta, was owned by Jay Gould, railroad executive, financier, and speculator, an important railroad developer who was one of the most unscrupulous robber barons of 19th-century American capitalism (and New Yorker). Built in 1883, the 235-foot, 3-masted steam yacht boasted a crew of 52, including three cooks and six servants. A New York Times article gushed over its elaborate carving decorations, its main saloon fully the width of the boat and 21 feet long, and the 7 large and handsomely furnished staterooms each with a washstand fitted with a silver plated toilet seat.
Jay Gould’s Atalanta (Library of Congress photo)
In 1886, the even longer 285-foot luxury steam yacht Alva was launched by Alva and William K. Vanderbilt, grandson of transportation tycoon (and New Yorker) Commodore Cornelius Vanderbilt. The yacht had a piano, a library with a fireplace, seven guestrooms and a 10-room suite for the Vanderbilts, and quarters for a crew of 53.
Poor Alva was run down on the Nantucket Shoals by the Metropolitan Line Steamer H. F. Dimock making its way from Boston to New York. Happily the crew of 53 “worked like clockwork” and the Vanderbilt party was safely removed from the distressed yacht.
J.P. Morgan sometimes enjoyed commuting between his Hudson River estate and the office on Wall Street by boat. His second yacht named Corsair, which Morgan owned from 1890 to 1898, was certainly one of the most luxurious commuting vehicles the world has ever seen. During its heyday as Morgan’s luxury vessel, the boat served as the flagship of the New York Yacht Club, of which Morgan was Commodore from 1897 to 1899. The yacht was his pleasure cruiser on which Morgan hosted many social events with famous guests such as Theodore Roosevelt and Thomas Edison, and often took Morgan upstate and to various points on the eastern seaboard.
Many of these yachts served in wartime. When the United States hastily declared war against Spain in 1898, it did so without much in the way of a navy – the Great White Fleet was yet to be created by Theodore Roosevelt. Since war with Spain would necessarily involve naval battles and blockades, in order to bring the Navy quickly up to par, Congress authorized the purchase of more than 100 private yachts and corporate ships, among them: JP Morgan’s Corsair, Ogden Goelet’s Mayflower, J.D. Spreckels’ Fearless, two Standard Oil ships Atlas and Hercules, and Henry Flagler’s Alicia.
Today’s great yachts are owned by sports stars and young corporate magnates. They are often big and very lux, and some are even weird, but to me they lack the style of this early generation of big boys’ toys. And who has silver toilet seats? Sail ho!
TWEED COURTHOUSE LAURA HUSSEY & ARON EISENPREISS GOT IT!
Photography by Michael Rogol, Courtesy of the Art Commission of the City of New York.
The Old New York County Courthouse, better known as Tweed Courthouse, is architecturally one of New York’s greatest civic monuments. Built between 1861 and 1881, it is the product of two of New York’s most prominent 19th-century architects, John Kellum and Leopold Eidlitz. Tweed is a designated New York City landmark and sections of the interior are designated interior landmarks as well. The courthouse has retained its original spatial arrangement, encompassing 30 monumental courtrooms and a central rotunda. Their immense cast-iron structural and decorative elements are unparalleled in any American public building.
In December 1861, John Kellum won the commission to build the “New County Courthouse.” Kellum designed a rusticated basement, monumental Corinthian portico, and a dome, which was never built. On the interior, Kellum created neoclassical-style courtrooms and offices as well as the first two floors of the rotunda. After Kellum’s death, the City commissioned Leopold Eidlitz in 1874 to complete the interior and design a new south wing. Rather than following Kellum’s neoclassical style, Eidlitz incorporated elements of Romanesque architecture, including on the interior polychromed brick and richly-carved stonework as well as a spectacular laylight over the octagonal rotunda-one of the most impressive public spaces in New York City.
Tweed Courthouse is the legacy of Tammany Hall boss William M. Tweed, who used the construction of the building to embezzle large sums from the budget. Boss Tweed was tried in 1873 in an unfinished courtroom in this building and was convicted and jailed. After the Tweed Ring was broken up, work stopped on the building from 1872 to 1876. Construction progressed slowly after the Tweed years, and it was not until 1881 that the building was finally completed.#
In 1999, a comprehensive restoration began to return Tweed to its original grandeur. The front staircase, which had been removed in 1940 to widen Chambers Street, was reconstructed. The restoration also included the reapplication of the historic paint scheme, which includes faux brick painting and gold leaf appliqué.
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
In a city built of glass, brick and stone, wooden houses are hard to spot in Manhattan these days. That said, some wooden houses have survived throughout the years from the 18th and 19th centuries. These houses were built back when the city was mainly farmland. When the city became industrialized, these wooden houses were deemed hazardous and new construction in wood was outlawed in 1866 on the island of Manhattan with the “fire limit” law of 1866. Thus, the few that remain in New York City today are extremely rare. Here are the ten of the most remarkable, charming wooden homes ordered from oldest to youngest that you can still spot in Manhattan:
Dyckman Farmhouse (~1785)
The only remaining Dutch Colonial style farmhouse in Manhattan is the Dyckman Farmhouse. The farmhouse was built around 1785 and originally stood on a 250-acre farm. Now, the farmhouse stands in a small park in the Inwood neighborhood of Upper Manhattan, and the farmhouse serves as a museum that tells the tales of the farmhouses’ residents and rural living.
In the 1660s, Jan Dyckman established a farm near the northern tip of Manhattan that was destroyed during the Revolutionary War. As a result, William Dyckman (Jan’s grandson) replanted the land and built the Dyckman Farmhouse around 1784. Three generations of the Dyckman family lived in this small home, but in 1868 the character of the neighborhood changed from rural to urban and the farmhouse became dilapidated.
Alice Dyckman Dean and Fannie Fredericka Dyckman Welch—the daughters of the last Dyckman to grow up in the house—saved the house from total disrepair in 1915. These women worked to restore the house by furnishing the interiors and landscaping the property. They preserved the historical farmhouse as a museum to showcase New York’s Dutch heritage. This past weekend, Untapped Cities Insiders were treated to a tour of the inside of the house.
The Dyckman Farmhouse is located at 4881 Broadway, New York, NY, 10034.
Bridge Cafe (1792)
Completed in 1792, Bridge Cafe is the oldest surviving tavern and one of the oldest buildings in Manhattan. The building has contained in the past a porter house, a beer-serving grocer, and a brothel on an upper floor.
Located near the marina at 279 Water Street in the South Street Seaport area of Manhattan, the establishment attracted pirates and sailors who often hung out in the brothel drinking beer and whiskey. Besides serving great drinks, Bridge Cafe has gourmet food. In the 19thcentury, the building was described as a grocery, a porterhouse, or a liquor establishment and is one of New York City’s oldest historic taverns. But, beware if you visit this vintage bar, it may be haunted!
The Bridge Cafe is located at 279 Water Street, 11201
Hamilton Grange (1802)
In 1802, Alexander Hamilton’s two-story home—named the Grange—was built. “The Grange” takes its name from Hamilton’s grandfather’s estate located in Ayrshire, Scotland. Hamilton commissioned McComb Jr. to build this 32-acre estate that sat on a hilltop, allowing for views of both the Hudson and Harlem Rivers. This historic house is built in the Federalist-style, as seen from its large windows and long piazzas on each side of the house.
The Hamilton house required 14.5 million dollars of renovation and has relocated two times. In 1889 the house moved to Convent Avenue at 141stStreet where is was used as a place to worship. In 1962 the house became a National Memorial and in 2008, the house was moved to the corner of the north end of St. Nicholas Park. The current location of the estate was part of the original Grange acreage and today free admission and tours of the estate are offered. You can go into the house portion of the Grange on tours through Untapped Cities Insiders as well.
The Hamilton Grange is located at 414 W 141st St, New York, NY 10031.
Charles Street Farmhouse (~1810)
This isolated, peaceful, and secretive farmhouse that has survived for over 200 years was originally located in the Upper East Side on York Avenue and 71stStreet. The farmhouse dates back to the 18th or early 19th century according to the Greenwich Village Historic District Designation Report, and some sources actually date the house back to 1810.
In 1868 Irish immigrants William Glass and his wife bought the house and used it for dairy and eventually they lived in it. They built a small brick house in house in front of the farmhouse which they used as a tea room and in the 1940s the brick building functioned as a restaurant: Healy’s Dining Room. Furthermore, in the 1940s-1950s the author Margaret Wise Brown rented the house. Brown is the author of the children’s book Mister Dog which shows an illustration of this house and she also the author of Goodnight Moon; thus, the house is sometimes referred to as the “Goodnight Moon House.”
The Glasses sold the farmhouse in 1965 to the Archdiocese of New York, but Sven Bernhard (Brown’s ex-fiancé) and his family went to court to save the farmhouse from being demolished to make room for a senior home. The Bernhard’s were successfully at saving the property but this came with the price of relocating the farmhouse because the senior home was being built regardless. Therefore, the farmhouse was moved to 121 Charles Street in Greenwich Village on March 5th 1967. In 1988 Suri Bieler and Eliot Brodsky purchased the farmhouse from the Bernhards.
The Charles Street Farmhouse is located at 121 Charles Street, 10014.
The Grove Street Home (1822)
In the market for a wooden house in Manhattan? Well you are in luck because a rare 200 year old wooden house at 17 Grove St. in West Village with classic clapboard siding is for sale for a soaring price of 12 million dollars.
The carpenter William Hyde built much of this three story home. The first two floors of the property were built in 1822 and the third floor was built in 1870. Additionally this home comes with a two story guest home with a separate address: 100 Bedford St. One of the unique features of this home is the trapdoor that could have functioned as a holding space of a tunnel to hide people escaping slavery as part of the Underground Railroad.
The Grove Street Home is located at 17 Grove Street, 10014.
Rose Hill House (~1837)
In 1747, John Watts bought the Rose Hill House as part of a land purchase, and he developed the property to include a main house, additional houses, outbuildings, orchards, and gardens. The estate took on the name Rose Hill Farm after the property Watts owned in Scotland.
Watts, however, was exiled from New York in 1811 because of his loyalty to England during the American Revolution. The main house on this lot was burned to make room for individual lots. In the 1900s the house served as a junk shop with apartments above it. In 1979 the house was converted to a three-story bedroom apartment.
Today, the original framing and roof are left intact and date the house back to the 1790s. Interestingly, the house is located at 203 East 29thStreet and appears to look as if it is floating in mid air amongst New York’s brick buildings!
412 East 85th St. Wooden Home (~1860)
Located in Upper Manhattan is a rare surviving three story Italianate style wooden house of the pastoral era in Yorkville. It has a raised brick basement, a three-bay façade clad in capboard siding, a porch with a tall stoop, floor-length parlor windows, and a bracketed cornice. This home was built around 1860 just before Manhattan’s “fire limit” law in 1866. This law was extended north to 86thStreet and consequently this house is one of the last wood houses in the Upper East Side. When built, this neighborhood was a wealthy rural area and became the home of many German immigrants during the late 19thcentury.
For 50 years, John Herbst and his family lived in this house and they ran a monument shop there. Despite having many owners, the house always maintained its character. Currently the owners Catherine and Alfredo De Vido restored the house to maintain its history and is actually considered a landmark.
Twin Wood Houses in Turtle Bay (1866)
Just before the New York City passed a law banning wood houses up to 86thStreet, two wooden frame houses at 312 and 314 East 53rdStreet were built in 1866. Two carpenters decided to build these twin clapboard houses in the French Empire style on the Old Eastern Post roadbed. They include mansard roods, bracketed cornices, and round-hooded dormer windows.
The twin wooden homes have survived in Manhattan via industrial change when factories, tenements, and slaughterhouses were being built and for this these sister homes are breathtaking to see.
Blackwell House
This simple well-proportioned house, built for James Blackwell between 1796 and 1804, is the sole surviving building on Roosevelt Island which dates from the period when the island was still privately held property. The Blackwell family owned and farmed the island from the late 17th century until 1828, when it was sold to the City of New York. Blackwell’s Island, as it was long known, had been inherited by Mary Manningham Blackwell from her stepfather, Captain John Manning.
Captain Manning was granted a “patent” on the island by the British Governor Nicolls in 1668, a fortunate circumstance, since five years later, after mismanaging his command of New York’s Fort James during a Dutch attack, he was tried by court martial and publicly disgraced. Manning moved to his island retreat and evidently found solace there. Reverend Charles Wolley, writing in 1701, tells us that he had often gone to Manning’s Island to visit the Captain, “whose entertainment was commonly a bowl of rum-punch.”
In Dutch times the island was known as Varckens Eylandt, which translates to Hog Island. It was purchased from two Indian chiefs by Governor Wouter van Twiller in 1637 and was already being farmed by 1639 under land grants from the Amsterdam Chamber of the West India Company. Jan Alteras, Francois Fyn, Jonas Bronck and Laurens Duyts all farmed the island during the mid 17th century. The last of these by 1658, defaulted on his lease. But Duyt’s misconduct was far worse in the respects- he was banished from the province for “selling his wife into immoral slavery and for gross immoralities committed by himself.” Hog Island was confiscated by the British in 1667. During the Revolutionary War the island was occupied by the British and in 1782, when peace negotiations were in progress, American prisoners of war were quartered there.
James and Jacob Blackwell, who had inherited the island from their father Jacob, found themselves in financial straits after the Revolutionary War and attempted to sell the property. In an advertisement of 1784 James was able to boast that his 107 acre island, “was about four miles from the city,” included among other amenities, “two small Dwelling Houses, a Barn, Bake, and Fowl House, a Cyder Mill, a large orchard, stone quarries and running springs.” A buyer could not be found, but by 1796 James Blackwell’s financial condition must have improved since it was about this time that the Blackwell House was built.
With the purchase of Blackwell’s Island by the City, its agricultural use gave way to institutional development, beginning in 1829 with the erection of the penitentiary. The Blackwell House became the residential quarters for various institutional administrators. In the late 19th century the warden of the island’s Almshouse lived here. The house was abandoned during the 20th century and by the late 1960’s was in an advanced state of decay, its only hope for survival being complete restoration. The New York State Urban Development Corporation, as part of its redevelopment program for the island, instituted a survey of existing structures.
On the basis of recommendations made by the Landmarks Preservation Commission, a survey by historian Loring McMillen in 1969, and a report prepared the same year by noted architectural historian Henry Russell Hitchcock, the Blackwell House was assessed worthy of preservation and restoration. The well known New York architect, Giorgio Cavaglieri, was commissioned to evaluate the buildings on the island and which were of special interest with a view to preserving them. In 1973, he carried out a complete and highly sympathetic restoration of Blackwell House.
This unpretentious clapboard farmhouse, built in the vernacular style of the late 18th century, now consists of a two-story main section and a one-story kitchen wing, constructed soon after the completion of the main building. A larger addition at the north, of later date, was razed during restoration and a root cellar entrance was constructed at the northeast corner of the main building. On the east, a spacious one story front porch has been restored and rests on the original stone foundations. A simple wood rail surrounds it, and the wood shingled roof rests elegantly on slim Ionic columns. This facade like that on the west, has two windows at each side of the simple central doorway, and five at the second story, all with six-over-six sash. A delicately scaled dentil course appears beneath the eaves of the gabled roof. Pairs of dormers project from this roof at the east and west. On the the west side, the doorway is sheltered by a simple pedimented portico, an addition in the Greek revival style.
The Blackwell House is one of the few farmhouses in New York dating from the years immediately after the Revolutionary War. Now utilized as a community center, it still rests on its original site, now a handsomely landscaped setting , which preserves much of the proper scale and relationship of the building to its surroundings.
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
In a city built of glass, brick and stone, wooden houses are hard to spot in Manhattan these days. That said, some wooden houses have survived throughout the years from the 18th and 19th centuries. These houses were built back when the city was mainly farmland. When the city became industrialized, these wooden houses were deemed hazardous and new construction in wood was outlawed in 1866 on the island of Manhattan with the “fire limit” law of 1866. Thus, the few that remain in New York City today are extremely rare. Here are the ten of the most remarkable, charming wooden homes ordered from oldest to youngest that you can still spot in Manhattan:
Dyckman Farmhouse (~1785)
The only remaining Dutch Colonial style farmhouse in Manhattan is the Dyckman Farmhouse. The farmhouse was built around 1785 and originally stood on a 250-acre farm. Now, the farmhouse stands in a small park in the Inwood neighborhood of Upper Manhattan, and the farmhouse serves as a museum that tells the tales of the farmhouses’ residents and rural living.
In the 1660s, Jan Dyckman established a farm near the northern tip of Manhattan that was destroyed during the Revolutionary War. As a result, William Dyckman (Jan’s grandson) replanted the land and built the Dyckman Farmhouse around 1784. Three generations of the Dyckman family lived in this small home, but in 1868 the character of the neighborhood changed from rural to urban and the farmhouse became dilapidated.
Alice Dyckman Dean and Fannie Fredericka Dyckman Welch—the daughters of the last Dyckman to grow up in the house—saved the house from total disrepair in 1915. These women worked to restore the house by furnishing the interiors and landscaping the property. They preserved the historical farmhouse as a museum to showcase New York’s Dutch heritage. This past weekend, Untapped Cities Insiders were treated to a tour of the inside of the house.
The Dyckman Farmhouse is located at 4881 Broadway, New York, NY, 10034.
Bridge Cafe (1792)
Completed in 1792, Bridge Cafe is the oldest surviving tavern and one of the oldest buildings in Manhattan. The building has contained in the past a porter house, a beer-serving grocer, and a brothel on an upper floor.
Located near the marina at 279 Water Street in the South Street Seaport area of Manhattan, the establishment attracted pirates and sailors who often hung out in the brothel drinking beer and whiskey. Besides serving great drinks, Bridge Cafe has gourmet food. In the 19thcentury, the building was described as a grocery, a porterhouse, or a liquor establishment and is one of New York City’s oldest historic taverns. But, beware if you visit this vintage bar, it may be haunted!
The Bridge Cafe is located at 279 Water Street, 11201.
Hamilton Grange (1802)
In 1802, Alexander Hamilton’s two-story home—named the Grange—was built. “The Grange” takes its name from Hamilton’s grandfather’s estate located in Ayrshire, Scotland. Hamilton commissioned McComb Jr. to build this 32-acre estate that sat on a hilltop, allowing for views of both the Hudson and Harlem Rivers. This historic house is built in the Federalist-style, as seen from its large windows and long piazzas on each side of the house.
The Hamilton house required 14.5 million dollars of renovation and has relocated two times. In 1889 the house moved to Convent Avenue at 141stStreet where is was used as a place to worship. In 1962 the house became a National Memorial and in 2008, the house was moved to the corner of the north end of St. Nicholas Park. The current location of the estate was part of the original Grange acreage and today free admission and tours of the estate are offered. You can go into the house portion of the Grange on tours through Untapped Cities Insiders as well.
The Hamilton Grange is located at 414 W 141st St, New York, NY 10031.
Charles Street Farmhouse (~1810)
This isolated, peaceful, and secretive farmhouse that has survived for over 200 years was originally located in the Upper East Side on York Avenue and 71stStreet. The farmhouse dates back to the 18th or early 19th century according to the Greenwich Village Historic District Designation Report, and some sources actually date the house back to 1810.
In 1868 Irish immigrants William Glass and his wife bought the house and used it for dairy and eventually they lived in it. They built a small brick house in house in front of the farmhouse which they used as a tea room and in the 1940s the brick building functioned as a restaurant: Healy’s Dining Room. Furthermore, in the 1940s-1950s the author Margaret Wise Brown rented the house. Brown is the author of the children’s book Mister Dog which shows an illustration of this house and she also the author of Goodnight Moon; thus, the house is sometimes referred to as the “Goodnight Moon House.”
The Glasses sold the farmhouse in 1965 to the Archdiocese of New York, but Sven Bernhard (Brown’s ex-fiancé) and his family went to court to save the farmhouse from being demolished to make room for a senior home. The Bernhard’s were successfully at saving the property but this came with the price of relocating the farmhouse because the senior home was being built regardless. Therefore, the farmhouse was moved to 121 Charles Street in Greenwich Village on March 5th 1967. In 1988 Suri Bieler and Eliot Brodsky purchased the farmhouse from the Bernhards.
The Charles Street Farmhouse is located at 121 Charles Street, 10014.
The Grove Street Home (1822)
In the market for a wooden house in Manhattan? Well you are in luck because a rare 200 year old wooden house at 17 Grove St. in West Village with classic clapboard siding is for sale for a soaring price of 12 million dollars.
The carpenter William Hyde built much of this three story home. The first two floors of the property were built in 1822 and the third floor was built in 1870. Additionally this home comes with a two story guest home with a separate address: 100 Bedford St. One of the unique features of this home is the trapdoor that could have functioned as a holding space of a tunnel to hide people escaping slavery as part of the Underground Railroad.
The Grove Street Home is located at 17 Grove Street, 10014.
Rose Hill House (~1837)
In 1747, John Watts bought the Rose Hill House as part of a land purchase, and he developed the property to include a main house, additional houses, outbuildings, orchards, and gardens. The estate took on the name Rose Hill Farm after the property Watts owned in Scotland.
Watts, however, was exiled from New York in 1811 because of his loyalty to England during the American Revolution. The main house on this lot was burned to make room for individual lots. In the 1900s the house served as a junk shop with apartments above it. In 1979 the house was converted to a three-story bedroom apartment.
Today, the original framing and roof are left intact and date the house back to the 1790s. Interestingly, the house is located at 203 East 29thStreet and appears to look as if it is floating in mid air amongst New York’s brick buildings!
412 East 85th St. Wooden Home (~1860)
Located in Upper Manhattan is a rare surviving three story Italianate style wooden house of the pastoral era in Yorkville. It has a raised brick basement, a three-bay façade clad in capboard siding, a porch with a tall stoop, floor-length parlor windows, and a bracketed cornice. This home was built around 1860 just before Manhattan’s “fire limit” law in 1866. This law was extended north to 86thStreet and consequently this house is one of the last wood houses in the Upper East Side. When built, this neighborhood was a wealthy rural area and became the home of many German immigrants during the late 19thcentury.
For 50 years, John Herbst and his family lived in this house and they ran a monument shop there. Despite having many owners, the house always maintained its character. Currently the owners Catherine and Alfredo De Vido restored the house to maintain its history and is actually considered a landmark.
Twin Wood Houses in Turtle Bay (1866)
Just before the New York City passed a law banning wood houses up to 86thStreet, two wooden frame houses at 312 and 314 East 53rdStreet were built in 1866. Two carpenters decided to build these twin clapboard houses in the French Empire style on the Old Eastern Post roadbed. They include mansard roods, bracketed cornices, and round-hooded dormer windows.
The twin wooden homes have survived in Manhattan via industrial change when factories, tenements, and slaughterhouses were being built and for this these sister homes are breathtaking to see.
Blackwell House
This simple well-proportioned house, built for James Blackwell between 1796 and 1804, is the sole surviving building on Roosevelt Island which dates from the period when the island was still privately held property. The Blackwell family owned and farmed the island from the late 17th century until 1828, when it was sold to the City of New York. Blackwell’s Island, as it was long known, had been inherited by Mary Manningham Blackwell from her stepfather, Captain John Manning.
Captain Manning was granted a “patent” on the island by the British Governor Nicolls in 1668, a fortunate circumstance, since five years later, after mismanaging his command of New York’s Fort James during a Dutch attack, he was tried by court martial and publicly disgraced. Manning moved to his island retreat and evidently found solace there. Reverend Charles Wolley, writing in 1701, tells us that he had often gone to Manning’s Island to visit the Captain, “whose entertainment was commonly a bowl of rum-punch.”
In Dutch times the island was known as Varckens Eylandt, which translates to Hog Island. It was purchased from two Indian chiefs by Governor Wouter van Twiller in 1637 and was already being farmed by 1639 under land grants from the Amsterdam Chamber of the West India Company. Jan Alteras, Francois Fyn, Jonas Bronck and Laurens Duyts all farmed the island during the mid 17th century. The last of these by 1658, defaulted on his lease. But Duyt’s misconduct was far worse in the respects- he was banished from the province for “selling his wife into immoral slavery and for gross immoralities committed by himself.” Hog Island was confiscated by the British in 1667. During the Revolutionary War the island was occupied by the British and in 1782, when peace negotiations were in progress, American prisoners of war were quartered there.
James and Jacob Blackwell, who had inherited the island from their father Jacob, found themselves in financial straits after the Revolutionary War and attempted to sell the property. In an advertisement of 1784 James was able to boast that his 107 acre island, “was about four miles from the city,” included among other amenities, “two small Dwelling Houses, a Barn, Bake, and Fowl House, a Cyder Mill, a large orchard, stone quarries and running springs.” A buyer could not be found, but by 1796 James Blackwell’s financial condition must have improved since it was about this time that the Blackwell House was built.
With the purchase of Blackwell’s Island by the City, its agricultural use gave way to institutional development, beginning in 1829 with the erection of the penitentiary. The Blackwell House became the residential quarters for various institutional administrators. In the late 19th century the warden of the island’s Almshouse lived here. The house was abandoned during the 20th century and by the late 1960’s was in an advanced state of decay, its only hope for survival being complete restoration. The New York State Urban Development Corporation, as part of its redevelopment program for the island, instituted a survey of existing structures.
On the basis of recommendations made by the Landmarks Preservation Commission, a survey by historian Loring McMillen in 1969, and a report prepared the same year by noted architectural historian Henry Russell Hitchcock, the Blackwell House was assessed worthy of preservation and restoration. The well known New York architect, Giorgio Cavaglieri, was commissioned to evaluate the buildings on the island and which were of special interest with a view to preserving them. In 1973, he carried out a complete and highly sympathetic restoration of Blackwell House.
This unpretentious clapboard farmhouse, built in the vernacular style of the late 18th century, now consists of a two-story main section and a one-story kitchen wing, constructed soon after the completion of the main building. A larger addition at the north, of later date, was razed during restoration and a root cellar entrance was constructed at the northeast corner of the main building. On the east, a spacious one story front porch has been restored and rests on the original stone foundations. A simple wood rail surrounds it, and the wood shingled roof rests elegantly on slim Ionic columns. This facade like that on the west, has two windows at each side of the simple central doorway, and five at the second story, all with six-over-six sash. A delicately scaled dentil course appears beneath the eaves of the gabled roof. Pairs of dormers project from this roof at the east and west. On the the west side, the doorway is sheltered by a simple pedimented portico, an addition in the Greek revival style.
The Blackwell House is one of the few farmhouses in New York dating from the years immediately after the Revolutionary War. Now utilized as a community center, it still rests on its original site, now a handsomely landscaped setting , which preserves much of the proper scale and relationship of the building to its surroundings.
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
If you’re familiar with John Sloan’s Lower Manhattan paintings and illustrations from the first half of the 20th century, then you’ve probably noticed a running theme among them: tenement rooftops.
“Rain Rooftops West Fourth Street,” 1913
Like other Ashcan and social realist artists of his era, Sloan was captivated by what he saw on these roofs—the people he surreptitiously watched; their mundane activities; their delight, despair, and sensuality; and the exquisite vantage points roofs offered of a city on the rise.
“Sunday Paper on the Roof,” 1918
“These wonderful roofs of New York City bring me all humanity,” Sloan said in 1919, about 15 years after he and his wife left his native Philadelphia and relocated first to Chelsea and then to Greenwich Village, according to the Hyde Collection, where an exhibit of Sloan’s roof paintings ran in 2019. “It is all the world.”
Roof Chats,” 1944-1950
“Work, play, love, sorrow, vanity, the schoolgirl, the old mother, the thief, the truant, the harlot,” Sloan stated, per an article in The Magazine Antiques. “I see them all down there without disguise.”
Pigeons,” 1910
His rooftop paintings and illustrations often depicted the city during summer, when New Yorkers went to their roofs to escape the stifling heat in tenement houses—socializing, taking pleasure in romance and love, and on the hottest days dragging up mattresses to sleep.
“I have always liked to watch the people in the summer, especially the way they live on the roofs,” the artist said, according to Reynolda House. “Coming to New York and finding a place to live where I could observe the backyards and rooftops behind our attic studio—it was a new and exciting experience.”
Red Kimono on the Roof,” 1912
Rooftops were something of a stage for Sloan. From his seat in his Greenwich Village studio on the 11th floor of a building at Sixth Avenue and West Fourth Street, Sloan could watch the theater of the city: a woman hanging her laundry, another reading the Sunday paper, a man training pigeons on top of a tenement and a rapt boy watching, dreaming.
Sloan described his 1912 painting, “Sunday, Women Drying Their Hair,” as “another of the human comedies which were regularly staged for my enjoyment by the humble roof-top players of Cornelia Street,” states the caption to this painting at the Addison Gallery of American Art.
“Sunday, Women Drying Their Hair,” 1912
Of course, roofs also meant freedom. In the crowded, crumbling pockets of Lower Manhattan filled with the poor and working class New Yorkers who captured Sloan’s imagination, roofs conveyed a sense of “escape from the suffocating confines of New York tenement living,” wrote the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston.
Sunbathers on the Roof,” 1941
In the early 20th century, many progressive social reformers preferred to see these roof-dwelling New Yorkers in newly created parks and beaches, which were safer and less private.
But “Sloan embraced what he called ‘the roof life of the Metropolis’—as he did its street life—as a means to capture the human and aesthetic qualities of the urban everyday, a defining commitment of the Ashcan School,” wrote Nick Yablon in American Art in 2011.
THURSDAY PHOTO OF THE DAY HELLGATE BRIDGE UNDER CONSTRUCTION ANDY SPARBERG, ARON EISENPREISS, JAY JACOBSON, EL LITCHER AND HARA REISER 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 Melanie Colter and Deborah Dorff
All image are copyrighted (c) Roosevelt Island Historical Society unless otherwise indicated
EPHEMERAL NEW YORK
Tags: John Sloan Chelsea, John Sloan Greenwich Village, John Sloan paintings NYC, John Sloan Pigeons, John Sloan Red Kimono on the Roof, John Sloan Roof Chats, John Sloan Sunday Women Drying Their Hair, tenement roofs Posted in art, Chelsea, Lower Manhattan, West Village |
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Marinus Willet, Tammany Hall & The Treaty of New York
by James S. Kaplan
NEW YORK ALMANACK
Marinus Willet, Tammany Hall & The Treaty of New York
November 28, 2021 by James S. Kaplan
(Marinus Willett painted by Ralph Earl, oil on canvas, ca 1791 Metropolitan Museum of Art )
Every year in October the Lower Manhattan Historical Society holds its Saratoga/Yorktown celebration in Trinity Churchyard to celebrate the American victories at the Battles of Saratoga and Yorktown.
At that ceremony wreaths are lain on the graves of Revolutionary War figures associated with those battles — Horatio Gates, Alexander Hamilton and Marinus Willett.
Of these Revolutionary War heroes on whose grave a wreath is lain, Marinus Willett is the least well-known of the three. However, Willett is arguably of equal if not more importance to the history of the City of New York, as General Gates or perhaps even Alexander Hamilton.
Today Willett is better known for his relatively brief time at the Battle of Fort Stanwix (where the Marinus Willett Visitor Center greets you to the National Park Service facility) and his later defense of the Mohawk Valley during the Revolution. He was also an important politician and diplomat who played a critical role in the history of the nation and the City for almost fifty years after the Revolution.
Probably his most historically important achievement was his successful efforts in 1790 to negotiated the Treaty of New York with 27 Muscogee Creek. This treaty, which was one of the few treaties negotiated in the city of New York, was one of the early diplomatic triumphs for the nascent American government, and in certain respects would have major implications for the city’s future.
Willet’s Early Life and Role During the Revolution
Willet was born in what today is the Borough of Queens in 1740 to a somewhat prominent old line family of landowners, which is sometime described as having seen better days. He became a cabinet maker by trade and as a young man growing up in New York he became a member of the Sons Of Liberty.
After hostilities broke out in Boston, an incident occurred on June 6, 1775 when a convoy of British soldiers led heavy arms to Boston to join the Battle of Bunker Hill. Willett came out of a local bar and jumped unarmed in front of the armed line of British soldiers. He protested that only light arms, not heavy arms, were authorized by the City’s ruling council to be brought up to Boston.
Other members of the Sons of Liberty soon gathered on Broad Street to stop the convoy and the British authorities (presumably fearing another Boston Massacre) backed down and returned the heavy arms to the armory. As a result of what he would later call “the Broad Street incident,” Willett became a local patriot who would serve in the Continental Army and later in the New York and Federal governments for the next fifty years. ***see Image 1 As active hostilities broke out, having served with the militia in the French and Indian War, Willett became an officer in New York’s militia. He was later assigned to Fort Stanwix near Rome, New York in 1777 as British troops under General John Burgoyne were driving down from Canada to split the colonies in two.
The British plan included sending troops under Barry St. Leger to take Fort Stanwix and attack the Revolutionaries from the west. St. Leger’s superior force of British regulars and Native allies besieged Fort Stanwix, and some 700 troops under the command of Peter Gansevoort.
Gansevoort sought and obtained reinforcements from Philip Schuyler near Albany and their arrival under Gen. Ebenezer Learned forced St. Leger to abandoned his attack from the west, helping to pave the way for victory at the Battles of Saratoga.
Willett took part in the Battle of Monmouth and would hold senior military positions in Upstate New York during the Revolution where he gained experience fighting Britain and her Indigenous allies, including during the punitive Sullivan-Clinton Campaign (1779) where he was second in command at the attack on the Onondaga in April, 1779. He would later express doubts about the wisdom of the United States policy of subduing Native People in bitter military actions.
Willett also presided over the trail of Walter Butler, a hated and feared Loyalist tried as a spy, found guilty and sentenced to death. On November 11, 1778 the son of John Butler (a wealthy Indian Agent associated with Sir William Johnson) had commanded the Loyalist and Seneca sack of Cherry Valley.
Willett commanded about 400 men, which he positioned at Saratoga, Ballston, German Flatts, Canajoharie, Fort Hunter, Catskill, Johnstown, and Schoharie. He led the militia in an ambush Loyalists and Indian allies at Sharon Springs and again at the Battle of Johnstown. Afterward, he led his troops to in pursuit of the Loyalists, during which Walter Butler was killed.
In 1781, from his headquarters at Fort Plain he wrote of his militia that “I don’t think I shall give a very wild account if I say, that one third have been killed, or carried captive by the enemy; one third removed to the interior places of the country; and one third deserted to the enemy.”
He was later assigned to take Fort Ontario, but withdrew when his movements were discovered. He was also assigned to build roads and improve access to Oneida Lake.
The Treaty of New York
After the war, Willett returned to the city of New York where he quickly became one of the leaders of the newly established post-Revolution government. In 1784 he was appointed Sheriff of the city, in which capacity he was in charge of restoring order and police functions, and also redistributing forfeited Loyalist lands. (In 1787, he took part in suppressing Shays’ Rebellion).
The City’s policy of redistributing land belonging to Loyalists soon met considerable opposition from former Tories, represented by lawyers such as Alexander Hamilton and John Jay. They claimed that the Treaty of Paris which had ended the war guaranteed that the rights of Loyalists to their pre-war property, thus nullifying New York’s laws that called for the forfeiture of all land belonging to those who had sided with the British. Ultimately the U.S. Constitution would uphold these Tories’ claims in its clause that stated the “No State shall impair the Obligation of Contract.”
It was for this reason that Willett would become a staunch Anti-federalist and ally of George Clinton who unsuccessfully opposed the ratification of the U.S. Constitution. When the Federalist, led by Alexander Hamilton, his father-in-law Philip Schuyler, and John Jay, became ascendant in New York City politics, Willett lost some of his political power. He joined with the Tammany Society, originally a patriotic civic association which became the center of the Anti-Federalist opposition in the City’s politics.
The Tammany Society was primarily a group of disaffected Revolutionary War veterans who sometimes dressed in Native American outfits and held July 4th celebrations. They were opposed to the increasingly aristocratic Federalists who they viewed as betraying the ideals of the Revolution. The Tammany Society was said to be named after Chief Tammany of the Delaware, who supposedly had signed the peace treaty in 1683 with William Penn that established the City of Philadelphia. Chief Tammany (Tamanend) who was said to have believed in democratic ideals and peaceful and cooperative relations between Native People and Europeans.
After the formation of the Federal Government in 1789, New York City was briefly the nation’s capital (which as part of the deal forming the Constitution was later moved to Philadelphia and Washington DC). At the time, the federal government (then headquartered in what today is Fraunces Tavern) had a number of significant problems, not the least of which was its relationship with the Muscogee Creek, who had controlled most of what is today South Tennessee, Alabama, Western Georgia, and parts of Northern Florida.
Although all territory east of the Mississippi had been ceded over to the United States in the Treaty of Paris, the very powerful Muscogee had allied with the British. After conflicts with white settlers on their territory, Georgia officials insisted that the federal government send troops to protect white settlers and remove the Muscogee. George Washington and his Secretary of War Henry Knox believed the federal government did not have the capability of doing this and from their point of view a better solution would be to reach an accommodation.
After a delegation in 1789 led by General Benjamin Lincoln failed to achieve this goal, Washington and Knox reached across the aisle to Marinus Willett. Even though Willett was a stanch Anti-Federalist, he had a reputation for having dealt with Native People at the end of the Revolutionary War, and Washington reportedly thought highly of his service during the War.
Willett, who was about 50 at the time, accepted the assignment and gathered an experienced guide to undertake the mission to the Creek. He met with Alexander McGivillray (1750 – 1793, also known as Hoboi-Hili-Miko), son of a Muscogee mother and a Scottish father, an influential and controversial Muscogee Creek leader.
Willett informed McGivillray that he had come as the special representative of George Washington and that they should understand that the American government wanted peace and not war. He reportedly said that contrary to what they may have heard, the Americans were a peaceful people. Unlike the British who had in effect sold the Muscogee out in the Treaty of Paris, they could trust them to live with the Muscogee in peace for the mutual benefit of both groups.
Willett invited McGivillray to visit the American capital in New York to see how the people lived and perhaps meet with Washington. This proved persuasive and shortly thereafter a delegation of 27 Muscogee Creek traveled to New York. They reportedly received a warm reception in cities such as Baltimore and Philadelphia. In New York City, the Tammany Society members were allegedly out in force to greet them in their best Native attire, and there were a number of dinners and receptions in which the Society members assured them of their great interest and respect for their customs and traditions.
As skepticism and hostility began to fade a treaty was negotiated by Willett and his Tammany Society compatriots that secured rights to the ancestral lands of the “Upper, Middle and Lower Creek and Seminole composing the Creek nation of Indians,” but also allowed white settlers to enter and live in their territory.
The Muscogee Creek men also ceded a large area of their hunting grounds to the Oconee River, and agreed to surrender runaway slaves to Federal authorities (McGillivray had a plantation with as many as 60 enslaved people). The United States granted the Creek the right to deal with non-Indian trespassers, but were required to turn over non-Indians who committed crimes on Muscogee lands to white authorities. Secretly, McGillivray was rewarded with a commission as a Brigadier General in the U.S. Army, including an annual salary of $1,500, and he was allowed to import goods through the port of Pensacola, then still ruled by the Spanish, without paying American import duties. He also received $100,000 as compensation lands that had been seized from his father.
This treaty, known as the Treaty of New York, was a significant triumph for the new United States – Washington and Knox were delighted.
Legend has it that at a final meeting of the Muscogee leaders and Tammany Society, McGillivray raised his glass and said:
“I see you gentlemen call yourselves the Tammany Society. I assume you know it was Chief Tammany of the Delawares who in 1683 signed the peace treaty with William Penn that formed the basis for the Pennsylvania colony and the City of Philadelphia. Chief Tammany firmly believed in peace between native Americans and white men and that if Native Americans and white men could work together in peace and respect their cities could be among the most important and wealthy in the world. It was for this reason that the City of Philadelphia became the most important city in the Colonies, more so than other colonies in which there were wars between our peoples. Although perhaps these principles have not always been followed, it was Chief Tammany’s dream that one day there would be a City in which the government and people would more closely adhere to his vision and that such a City would one day be the largest, wealthiest and most important and powerful in the world.”
With raised glasses they toasted to Chief Tammany’s dream.
Of course the Treaty of New York was broken some years later by the State of Georgia and ultimately the Muscogee Creek were driven from their land along the trail of tears by Andrew Jackson’s enforcement of the Indian Removal Act.
In New York City, the Tammany Society however grew in political influence and importance. In the elections of 1800 led by celebrity candidates such as General Horatio Gates and Governor George Clinton (with political strategist Aaron Burr), they defeated the Federalists led by Alexander Hamilton, John Jay and Phillip Schuyler, and supported the election of President Thomas Jefferson, forming the modern Democratic Party in the city. Marinus Willett would decline George Washington’s request for a commission to lead the American Army against the Native People in Ohio, preferring to stay in New York City as Sheriff. It’s said he opposed the use military force to drive Native Americans from their land in the Ohio valley.
In 1807 Willett was elected Mayor of the city of New York. In 1814 at the age of 74 in a stirring speech from the steps of New York’s newly constructed City Hall he would rally the New York militias against a prospective British invasion. He died in 1831 at the age of 91. His funeral at Trinity Church included an estimated 10,000 mourners, one of the largest in the city’s history.
The Tammany Society and the Democratic Party would be a major force in New York politics for the next 160 years. It was sometimes stained with corruption, but its bedrock insistence on upholding Chief Tammany’s vision (real or imagined) of democratic ideals and supporting the immigrant poor and the full participation of all ethnic groups in New York politics would frequently lead it to electoral victory.
Illustrations, from above: Marinus Willett painted by Ralph Earl, oil on canvas, ca. 1791 (courtesy Metropolitan Museum of Art); “Cantonment of His Majesty’s forces in N. America… dated at New York 29th March 1766” (Library of Congress); “The Treaty of Penn with the Indians” by Benjamin West, depicting Penn negotiating with Tamanend; and the Willett Memorial in Albany’s Washington Park (placed 1907, relocated 2006).
Image 1 Fort Stamwix
Treaty of Penn with the Indians
Eastern state map
Plaque in Albany’s Washington Park
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Text by Judith Berdy Thanks to Bobbie Slonevsky for her dedication to Blackwell’s Almanac and the RIHS Thanks to Deborah Dorff for maintaining our website Edited by Deborah Dorff All image are copyrighted (c) Roosevelt Island Historical Society unless otherwise indicated
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We wrote about LaGuardia a while ago. Time for catch up on JFK. JFK is the busiest international air passenger gateway into North America (the three busiest international passenger gateways are Dubai International, Amsterdam Schiphol and London Heathrow), the 20th-busiest airport in the world, and the sixth-busiest airport in the United States, handling over 62.5 million passengers in 2019. More than 90 airlines operate from the airport, with nonstop or direct flights to destinations in six continents.
Beginnings – On the golf course
JFK sits on an old recreation spot for residents of Long Island, particularly for the wealthy, known as Idlewild. In November 1929, 300 acres of Jamaica Bay meadow land was assembled for the developer Nathan D. Shapiro, who owned the Idlewild Beach Company. He planned a colony of year-round houses overlooking the bay with two golf courses behind them which he expect to finish by early July 1930.
As war intensified in 1941, Mayor La Guardia said that New York was not adequately equipped with airfields either for the war or after the war. La Guardia said the federal government was “very anxious” to get on with construction at a third airport facility, after the newly opened La Guardia and Floyd Bennett Field which had been taken over by the Navy, and that Idlewild looked like “the most favorable both as to location and layout.” By the end of the year, title to the property had been conveyed to the city, the City Council had allocated $750,000 for payment to the 200 or so property owners on the land who had been notified to leave. “The work of clearing the property,” said the presiding justice in the case, “will be done by Park Commissioner [Robert] Moses. He will be in there with shovels and excavators, and you know he does things fast. You will have from two to four weeks to move.”
The airport opened with its first flight on July 1, 1948. The Port Authority canceled foreign airlines’ permits to use LaGuardia, forcing them to move to Idlewild during the next couple of years.
Name – Idlewild no matter what
No one could agree on what to call the airport. In 1941, a resolution had been put before the City Council to call it the Colin Kelly Airport after an Air Force captain of World War II, but nothing came of it. Two years later, Mayor LaGuardia declared it “Idlewild,” but the City Council said he couldn’t unilaterally name it and voted to call it the Major General Alexander E. Anderson Airport, after a World War I and II hero. Nonetheless, the airport was still called “Idlewild”. In March 1948, the City Council changed its official name to New York International Airport, Anderson Field, but the common name remained “Idlewild” until December 24, 1963 when it was renamed John F. Kennedy International Airport a month and two days after the assassination of President Kennedy.
Jets – Canada first Canada’s Avro Jetliner was the first jet airliner to land at Idlewild on April 16, 1950 on a well-publicized tour to New York City, to coincide with a Society of Automotive Engineers convention. Only in May 1957 did another jet fly in, a French Sud Aviation Caravelle prototype. US airlines began scheduling jets to Idlewild in 1958–59. (LaGuardia did not get jets until 1964.) Much of Newark’s traffic moved to Idlewild (which averaged 242 daily airline operations in 1952) when Newark closed in February 1952. L-1049 Constellations and DC-7s appeared between 1951 and 1953 and did not use LaGuardia for their first several years, bringing more traffic to Idlewild. By 1954, Idlewild had the highest volume of international air traffic of any airport globally.
Terminals – Many The Port of New York Authority originally planned a single 55-gate terminal, but the major airlines weren’t pleased, arguing that the terminal would be far too small for future traffic. A new plan would allow each major airline to be given space to develop its own terminal. This scheme made construction more practical, made terminals more navigable, and introduced incentives for airlines to compete with each other for the best design. The revised plan was approved by airlines in 1955; seven terminals were initially planned involving some of the biggest architectural names in the country.
The International Arrivals Building, designed by Skidmore, Owings, and Merrill, was the first new terminal at the airport, opening in December 1957.
American Airlines opened Terminal 8 in February 1960 designed by Kahn and Jacobs with a 317-foot stained-glass facade designed by Robert Sowers, then the largest stained-glass installation in the world.
Pan American World Airways opened the Worldport in 1960, designed by Tippetts-Abbett-McCarthy-Stratton that featured a large, elliptical roof suspended by 32 sets of radial posts and cables; the roof extended 114 feet (35 m) beyond the base of the terminal to cover the passenger loading area. It was one of the first airline terminals in the world to feature Jetways that connected to the terminal and that could be moved to provide an easy walkway for passengers from the terminal to a docked aircraft.
National Airlines’ Sundrome by I.M. Pei featured an all-glass facade and a clear-span interior achieved by glass mullions with glass walls suspended from them. Built in 1970, it was one of the first such designs in the U.S. I.M. Pei’s Terminal 6
Trans World Airlines opened the TWA Flight Center in 1962, designed by Eero Saarinen with a distinctive winged-bird shape.
Cargo – Much
Those of us who frequent JFK as passengers may be surprised that it is also a very important cargo port.
Indeed, when ranked by the value of shipments passing through it (as opposed to volume), JFK is the third or fourth ranking freight gateway in the United States (after the Port of Los Angeles, the Port of Long Beach and the Port of New York and New Jersey), and the number one international air freight gateway in the United States. In fact, while most of the nation’s airports, seaports and border crossings saw their trade plummet, particularly in April and May 2019, JFK’s trade did the opposite. For one month, April 2019, JFK was the nation’s leading port, ahead of perennial No. 1 Port of Los Angeles.
Why did it briefly occupy the top spot?
The reason was gold. With transatlantic passenger flights shut down because of the coronavirus spreading across the world and with rising uncertainty in the U.S. and global economies, the price of gold rose at the same time the need to have physical gold in New York, the world’s financial capital, ratcheted up to meet demand. In May 2019, gold was actually the top US import, ahead of oil, passenger vehicles, cell phones and computers. In 2019, $25.1 billion in gold was imported into JFK, 74% of the country total of $33.8 billion. More than $16 billion of the U.S. total, just under half, was in the months of April and May alone.
We travelers are pretty lucky. We can get to LGA and JFK without bridges or tunnels, and we can enjoy nonstops to most (or at least many) of the places we want to go. But remember what Elaine Benes said, “No one has ever beaten the Van Wyck!” Up in the air, senior birdmen.
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