As the Fifth Avenue blocks just north of Washington Square developed, wealthy attorney and property owner George Wood joined the trend. Henry Brevoort, Jr. had built his grand, free-standing Greek Revival mansion at the corner of 9th Street in 1834. The avenue at the time was desolate, but the presence of the powerful and wealthy Breevorts would soon change that. Within a decade the lower blocks of Fifth Avenue filled with the homes and churches of New York’s richest citizens. George Wood built his mansion, No. 45, at the corner of East 11th Street. The attorney held vast amounts of real estate—including no fewer than 39 houses in Brooklyn, most along Sidney Place, State Street and Joralemon Street; vacant building lots and docks in Brooklyn; 340 acres in Minnesota; a 30-acre farm in Rye, New York; and land in Walde, Texas. To accommodate his carriages and horses, Wood acquired the building lots stretching through the block from 11th to 12th Streets behind his mansion. His “carriage house and stable” was set far back from East 11th Street, possibly to relieve his fashionable neighbors of the unpleasant odors. The Wood family included five daughters—Catharine, Anna, Mary, Julia, Louisa—and two sons Frederick and George. As the threat of civil war rumbled, George Wood would make his opinions on slavery vividly apparent. W. M. Evarts diplomatically called him “a man who loved the Union and the whole Union.” However his comments that the slaves were of an “inferior” race would bristle the ire of many. In 1858, at the age of 69, Wood was afflicted with paralysis. Two years later, at round 1:00 in the morning on Saturday March 17, 1860, he woke with a pain in his arm. Mrs. Wood attempted to help by rubbing his arm; but he broke out in a cold sweat on his forehead and soon after died. A century and a half later, the symptoms point to a heart attack. Wood’s vast estate was divided among his children, now grown and married, and his wife. She kept the Fifth Avenue mansion, “his plate and household furniture,” along with other property in Brooklyn. Apparently well aware of the plights of many Victorian heiresses, the skilled attorney added in his will “The devises to his daughters are to be free from the control of their husbands.” Wood’s funeral was held in the Fifth Avenue mansion, attended by the members of the bar who announced the “by the death of George Wood, the New-York Bar has been deprived of one of its most distinguished ornaments.” When Wood’s widow left No. 45 Fifth Avenue is unclear; however the carriage house somehow became part of an shockingly unexpected scandal within seven years of Wood’s passing. At 11:00 on the night of July 20, 1867 “Sergeant Haggerty, Roundsman Rae, and Officers Barker and Inman, of the Fifteenth Precinct, made a descent upon the disorderly house No. 11 East Eleventh-street,” according to The New York Times the following morning. Somehow George Wood’s carriage house had been transformed into a brothel, squarely in the center of Manhattan’s most exclusive residential neighborhood. Five women, aged 18 to 28, and two men, Marshall Allan, 21 and Robert Baer, 18, were arrested. “The prisoners were all marched off to the Mercer-street Station-house and locked up for examination,” said the article. Respectability came back to the little building when H. Van Rensselaer Kennedy moved into No. 45 Fifth Avenue. His purchase of the house increased the Kennedy presence in the neighborhood, which was already substantial. Robert L. Kennedy lived at No. 99, Rachel L. Kennedy at No. 41 and Mary L. Kennedy lived around the corner at No. 10 East 11th Street. Change comes quickly to New York City neighborhoods and by World War I most of the lower Fifth Avenue mansions, including No. 45, were mere memories. Around the corner on East 11th Street was the Hotel Van Rensselaer and on the corner of Fifth Avenue No. 43 was now an 11-story apartment building. But sitting smugly between the two towering buildings George Wood’s carriage house with its deep grassy approach still clung on. With the disappearance of horses as motorcars took over, the little two-story building had been converted to a garage. David H. Nott who owned the hotel was rightfully concerned about the future of the little garage. Were it to be leveled and a tall building erected, his hotel would lose air and light. And so he bought it. In July 1921 he hired architect C. F. Winkelman to convert the garage into a one-family dwelling, “forming an annex to the Hotel Van Rensselaer,” reported the New-York Tribune on July 28. The architect estimated the renovations would cost about $10,000.
photo NYPL Collection
A year later, in its February 1922 issue, Popular Mechanics marveled at the concept. “A novel extension of the Hotel Van Rensselaer, in New York City, is just being completed,” it announced. “In order to protect the hotel’s light, the company decided to take over and improve this property by building a two-story seven-room house. This house, of distinctive Moorish architecture, is set back 50 ft. from the sidewalk, with a picturesque formal garden, laid out with a flagstone walk and low brick walls in front of it. Tucked away between its tall neighbors, it is almost lost to the view of the casual passer-by.” Because Knott Realty Company owned both the “apartment hotel” at No. 43 Fifth Avenue and the Hotel Van Rensselaer, it had a vested interest In keeping the little house intact. The New York Times made special note of the charming condition of the house on April 16, 1930.
Winkleman deftly transformed the carriage entrance and the hay loft opening into expansive windows — photo by Alice Lum
The newspaper said it “has been famous for many years in the lower Fifth Avenue area as the only house in that locality with an ample front yard…The front yard is laid out with paths and a wide garden plot which is now being prepared for Summer flowers. The yard is protected by a low wooden fence with a neat gate typically suggestive of a well-kept place in the country. It is one of the very few small houses on Manhattan Island with a front garden plot.” That same month William Simmons, “a steamship man,” leased the house; but it appears the deal fell through. A month later stock broker Arthur L. Selig and his family were living here. Selig was a member of the firm Perez F. Huff & Co., Inc. at No. 75 Maiden Lane. Selig, his wife and daughter, settled in to the comfortable home. “Mr. Selig was a familiar figure in the neighborhood,” noted The Times. “His constant companion was an Irish terrier, which he took out for a walk on Fifth Avenue every evening.” But the Great Depression, with its haunting images of stock brokers flinging themselves from office windows, visited the little house on East 11th Street. Family friends reported that Selig “worried over losses in the stock market” and only weeks after moving in, Selig committed suicide by shooting himself with a pistol. The Times reported that “His body, clad in pajamas and a bathrobe, was found in his library…Mrs. Selig and her daughter discovered the body soon after they awakened yesterday morning. It was slumped in an arm chair, the pistol grasped in his right hand. The bullet had entered the right temple, passed through the head, and embedded itself in the library wall.” The broker carefully planned his death, leaving a note for his wife containing information regarding his insurance and other pertinent details, ending with the words “My thoughts are all for you.” The tragedy of Selig’s violent death shared the newspaper’s spotlight with its unusual setting. The Times could not resist mentioning the quaint little residence. “The house has been something of a curiosity to passers-by, for it is one of the few with a front garden in downtown Manhattan. It was well kept, and during the Summer months, was always blooming with flowers.
The original gates and posts (left) survive. The low brick garden wall has been replaced with a more secure fence –photo by Alice Lum
In 1951 the Hotel Van Rensselaer, the apartment building at No. 43 Fifth Avenue, and the house at No. 11 East 11th Street were sold to Samuel D. Bierman as a package
. As the trio of buildings continued to survive with little change, a small Jewish congregation was formed in 1959, Congregation Etz Chaim, the “Tree of Life.” As it gained its bearings, the fledgling congregation held services in the Fifth Avenue Hotel.
A year later Bierman was ready to dispose of his buildings “as part of a plan to reduce his holdings,” said The Times. On October 30, 1960 Freedman & Melcer, Inc. purchased No. 43 Fifth Avenue for about $1 million. Parenthetically, The Times noted “The purchases included a one-story dwelling on a lot 25 by 100 feet at 11 East Eleventh Street. The house, now vacant, adjoins the apartment house.
” The house would not remain vacant for long. Congregation Etz Chaim found a permanent home and renamed itself The Conservative Synagogue of Fifth Avenue. Half a century later little has changed to C. F. Winkleman’s Mediterranean remake. And, as was true in 1922, “tucked away between its tall neighbors, it is almost lost to the view of the casual passer-by.”
Abstraction by Ilya Bolotowsky – A Work by one of four artists who created murals in the Goldwater Hospital Solariums, for the Federal Art Project (FAP), a subdivision of President Roosevelt’s 1935 Work Progress Administration (WPA). The Bolotowsky had been uncovered and cleaned in 2001 under the Municipal Art Society’s Adopt-a-Mural program. The Swinden and Rugolo were ultimately uncovered from the multiple layers of white hospital paint that hid them from the world, but unfortunately, the Chanase mural was never found. Over the past several years, the three murals have been cleaned and restored, the Bolotowsky by Fine Art Conservation Group and the Swinden and Rugolo by EverGreene Architectural Arts. These murals had their first post restoration exhibition in 2016 before they were returned to new homes on the Cornell Tech Roosevelt Island campus. Ed Litcher
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
VISIT LIGHTHOUSE PARK TONIGHT TO SEE THE LIGHTHOUSE IN RED, WHTE AND BLUE!
FROM THE ARCHIVES
MONDAY, MAY 30, 2022
THE 688th EDITION
RIKER’S ISLAND
STEPHEN BLANK
The Story of Rikers Island Stephen Blank
Many Roosevelt Islanders know that the first major construction on our island (then Blackwell’s) was the Penitentiary, that it was closed, and that the facility was moved to Rikers Island. Like other New Yorkers, we know that Rikers Island is a grim and dangerous place and that conversations have been long underway about closing it down. Those of us who watch Law and Order know that everyone just calls it “Rikers.”
Rikers island is home to one of the world’s largest correctional and mental institutions, with 10 of the NYC Department of Correction’s 15 facilities that can accommodate 15,000 detainees. The complex has an annual budget of $860 million, a staff of 9,000 officers and 1,500 civilians managing 100,000 admissions per year and an average daily population of 10,000 inmates. Most detainees are pretrial defendants, either held on bail or remanded in custody. Rikers Island is therefore not a prison by US terminology, which typically holds offenders serving longer-term sentences. According to a 2021 analysis, it costs the city approximately $556,539 to detain one person for one year at Rikers Island.
But, beyond these basic data, we probably don’t know much about it. Turns out, Rikers island has a very interesting history.
It’s named for Abraham Rycken, who took possession of the island in 1664. The Rycken family was a wealthy Dutch clan. Through Richard Riker (the name was Anglicized), it became deeply linked to our City’s slave legacy. Intermittently, from 1815 to 1838, Riker was the recorder of New York City, a municipal officer who oversaw the city’s criminal court. Accounts tell that he was responsible for judging that many free black men, women, and children were “fugitive slaves”— thereby enabling their kidnapping and sale in the South without trial.
Riker received a kickback from kidnappers and was apparently so renowned for these actions that he and two policemen, whose primary goal then was catching slaves, were labeled the “Kidnapping Club” by local abolitionists. “In accordance with the Fugitive Slave Act, members of the club would bring a Black person before Riker, who would quickly issue a certificate of removal before the accused had a chance to bring witnesses to testify that he was actually free.” (Elizur Wright Jr.’s 19th-century newsletter “Chronicles of Kidnapping.”)
Detail from 1852 map on Page 48 of The Rikers.
During the Civil War, the island was used for military training. The first regiment to use the Island was the 9th New York Infantry, which arrived there on May 15, 1861. The Anderson Zouaves followed on July 15, 1861, commanded by John Lafayette Riker who was related to the island’s owners. Their camp was named Camp Astor after John Jacob Astor Jr. who provided funds for the army and the raising of the Anderson Zouaves.
More interesting (and with some poetic justice), on March 5, 1864, a crowd of over 10,000 New Yorkers watched as 1,000 well-disciplined Union army troops left Rikers Island and marched west to the Hudson River, their dark blue uniforms and crisp white gloves and white leggings glistening in the sunlight. What made this event so unusual was that the soldiers were black. The 20th Colored Regiment was formed by the New York Union League, who hoped to present the black troops as part of the New Society that would take place once the South was defeated and the country united.
The troops received their training at Rikers Island before being sent to Louisiana. The 20th and the 26th Regiments were part of the 180,000 black soldiers and sailors who served the Union cause. These troops were paid less than half of their white counterparts’ salaries, received inferior equipment, and lived in poor conditions.
Near the end of 1864, Rikers Island became a prisoner of war facility for Confederate soldiers.
In 1884, New York City’s Commission of Charities and Corrections purchased the island for $180,000 from John T. Wilson, a Riker family descendant, for use as a workhouse. It became the City’s Municipal Farm where drug addicts were treated, both under sentence and self-committed. Not much information exists about the Farm, but a 1922 report by the Municipal Farm’s resident physician notes: “The drug addict hospital located at the Municipal Farm received and treated 1,898 inmates. Approximately 30%, or 500 inmates were repeaters and about 10% of the 500 repeaters returned for a third treatment…. The daily average number of patients in the hospital was 50 patients, treated at the clinic were 2,000.”
Rikers Island Municipal Farm dorms circa 1910s/1920s.
The same report describes “special work of more than ordinary importance”: • “Installation of complete moving picture equipment, also telephones between the doctor’s residence and main office. • “Erection of new piggery building under construction. • “Addition and alternation to shop building nearing completion. • “Erection of new steel smokestack for steam boiler under main kitchen. • “Installation of new plumbing fixtures and water supply pipes and cement flooring in toilet rooms of dormitory Nos. 5 and 6; also new tubes in steam boilers. • “Renovating and painting main office, mess hall, dormitories Nos. 1, 2, 3 and 4, exterior of doctor’s residence and employees’ cottage. • “Installation of new feeders supplying electric current to dormitory No. 5.”
The Bureau of Education and Recreation reports: “In summer, inmates play baseball on Sunday afternoons. Motion Pictures are shown twice a week during summer and on Sunday afternoons and holidays during winter. On Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year’s Day entertainments were given by inmates.”
The City had other plans for the island. As early as 1925, discussions went on about opening a jail for men on Rikers Island to replace the overburdened Blackwell’s Island facility. It would be the very model of a modern institution, “the highest type of prison that the science of criminology has developed” based on a year-long study of the best prisons in America and Europe. In 1928, Times reporter Virginia Pope described how its construction “would relieve congestion and correct evils of present penitentiary” on Blackwell’s. Rikers was celebrated for its modern architectural design. And with the appointment leaders who were well-known and highly respected for their work on prison reform and commitment to rehabilitation, especially educational initiatives, it was to be the embodiment of a “rehabilitative ideal.”
The transfer of inmates to Rikers was to be gradual and partial. But when a major corruption scandal was uncovered on Blackwell’s and it was closed permanently in 1935, inmates were moved faster than had been planned and shambles began at the very beginning. It would be a history littered with good intentions.
Rikers Island grew over the next years. The first stages of expansion were accomplished largely by convict labor hauling in ashes for landfill. After ocean dumping of garbage was banned in 1922, much of the city’s waste ended up on Rikers Island. Unlike other city landfills, which were filled to a height that usually did not exceed 10 feet above sea level, Rikers Island Landfill was mounted as high as 125 in the eastern fill area. Landfill continued to be added to the island until 1943, eventually enlarging the original 90-acre island to 415 acres.
Problems mounted quickly. In a January 18, 1934 report to Mayor La Guardia, the city’s Commission of Accounts found “many irregularities and abuses in the construction of Rikers Island Penitentiary,” largely due to “Tammany Hall Corruption.” The report noted that the architects had been awarded a no-bid contract and that multi-million-dollar construction contracts have “clearly been violated in a number of particulars with a probable loss to taxpayers of more than $100,000,” or nearly $2 million in today’s dollars. The report found “serious cracks” in some of the newly constructed buildings and violations in plumbing and roofing contracts, all of which “constitutes an illustration of the reckless way in which the city’s money has been spent with the approval of the Finance Department of the prior administration.” In 1939, a Bronx court found Rikers to be nearly unlivable. Quarters were cramped, conditions were declared unhygienic.
But one problem was resolved. Robert Moses sorted the garbage mess. He didn’t want the unsightly island to be the backdrop for his carefully landscaped 1939 World’s Fair and pushed to get the island cleaned up and have the city’s garbage sent elsewhere—ultimately to the Fresh Kills Landfill on Staten Island.
MAC_1935: Aerial view of unfinished Rikers Island penitentiary buildings, ca. 1936. Department of Corrections, NYC Municipal Archives Collection.
A Little Something Extra
A drawing by artist Salvador Dalí, done as an apology because he was unable to attend a talk about art for the prisoners at Rikers Island, hung in the inmate dining room in J.A.T.C. (HDM) from 1965 to 1981, when it was moved to the prison lobby in E.M.T.C. (C76) for safekeeping. The drawing was stolen in March 2003 and replaced with a fake. Three correctional officers and an assistant deputy warden were arrested and charged, and though the three later pleaded guilty and one was acquitted, the drawing has not been recovered. Alas, time and space force an ending here. But, as you know, the story doesn’t get better. Stephen Blank RIHS May 27, 2022
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)
In observance of Memorial Day, the newly renovated Lighthouse Tower will be illuminated red, white and blue from Saturday May 28th through Monday, May 30th.
(This is an image from a test lighting a few weeks ago.) Enjoy a happy and safe holiday weekend!
FROM THE ARCHIVES
WEEKEND, MAY 28-29, 2022
THE 687th EDITION
SCOTT JOPLIN
AND
NEW YORK
STEPHEN BLANK
Scott Joplin and NYC
Stephen Blank
Scott Joplin? Of course. You remember the music in The Sting. And maybe you’ve heard the Maple Leaf Rag. And ragtime? Ragtime is a form of music that emerged in the African American community, a precursor of jazz, that was very popular in the late 1800s and early 1900s. Scott Joplin was at the center, the King of Ragtime. But Scott Joplin and New York City? Well, dance on.
Britannica Image
Many famous musicians lived here. Everyone knows that John Lennon, Louis Armstrong, and Duke Ellington were (or became) New Yorkers. But also, Miles Davis, Richie Havens, Woody Guthrie, Buddy Holly, Jimi Hendrix, and Woody Guthrie all had apartments in the City. And no shortage of famous classic composers. Not just Lenny Bernstein – Sergei Rachmaninov, Gustav Mahler, Igor Stravinsky, Charles Ives, Aaron Copland, Benjamin Britten, Astor Piazzolla and John Cage all lived and worked here.
Many musical artists stayed in the same hotel – the Hotel Earle (later Washington Square Hotel) on Waverly Place. Bo Diddley, Chuck Berry, Bob Dylan and Joan Baez, John and Michelle Phillips, Joni Mitchell, Barbra Streisand, and Dee Dee Ramone all stayed there.
Scott Joplin lived in New York, too, and composed many works here.
But a modest detour, just for a moment, to talk about ragtime. (I rely heavily in the next paragraphs on several Wikipedia articles.)
It’s “rag” time because it of its syncopated or “ragged” rhythm. Historians see several roots. Ragtime originated in African American music “descended from the jigs and march music played by African American bands.” But some see a much wider history: “A distinctly American musical style, ragtime may be considered a synthesis of African syncopation and European classical music, especially the marches made popular by John Philip Sousa.”
Scott Joplin brought these various streams together and was centrally identified with ragtime during the early 20th century. Indeed, the Joplin’s style of composition is considered “classic rag” to distinguish his works from other “common” rags. The emergence of mature ragtime is usually dated to 1897, the year in which several important early rags were published. Scott Joplin’s Maple Leaf Rag, more sophisticated than earlier ragtime, was published in 1899, and was widely popular.
Second edition cover of Maple Leaf Rag with Joplin photo Wikipedia
Published is a key word. Ragtime was popular before sound recording was widely available. Like classical music, but unlike jazz, classical ragtime has a written tradition, being distributed in sheet music rather than through recordings or by imitation of live performances. Joplin was trained in musical notation, and his works were carefully prepared for publication. He was able to copyright his works. This is a clue to helping understand Joplin’s self-image and aspirations.
Ragtime quickly established itself as a distinctly American form of popular music. It was the first African American music to have an impact on mainstream popular culture. (Joplin’s Maple Leaf Rag was famous enough for the John Wanamaker department store to include it in a 1904 ad for piano rolls in The New York Times.) Piano “professors” such as Jelly Roll Morton played ragtime in the “sporting houses” of New Orleans. Polite society embraced ragtime played by brass bands and society dance bands. The new rhythms of ragtime changed the world of dance bands and led to new dance steps, popularized by the show-dancers Vernon and Irene Castle during the 1910s. The growth of dance orchestras in popular entertainment was an outgrowth of ragtime and continued into the 1920s. Irving Berlin was the most commercially successful composer of ragtime songs, and his Alexander’s Ragtime Band (1911) was the single most widely performed and recorded piece of this sort, even though it contains virtually no ragtime syncopation.
European classical composers were also influenced by ragtime. The first notable classical composer to take a serious interest in ragtime was Antonín Dvořák. French composer Claude Debussy emulated ragtime in three pieces for piano. Erik Satie, Arthur Honegger, and Darius Milhaud never made any secret of their sympathy for ragtime, which is sometimes evident in their works. Igor Stravinsky wrote a solo piano work called Piano-Rag-Music in 1919 and also included a rag in his theater piece L’Histoire du soldat (1918).
Scott Joplin was born around 1867 and lived in Texarkana. The Joplins were a musical family and Scott studied piano with local teachers. Joplin traveled through the Midwest from the mid-1880s, performing at the World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago in 1893. Settling in Sedalia, Missouri, in 1895, he studied music at the George R. Smith College for Negroes and hoped for a career as a concert pianist and classical composer. He taught and performed in Sedalia and wrote some of his most famous rags there.
The Maple Leaf Rag made Joplin framous and he was again on tour, only this time with much more celebrity and revenue. During the succeeding years, Joplin was a prolific composer with rags spilling from his pen with a pace that even astounded his publisher and the various orchestras clamoring for his latest production. In 1900, Joplin moved to St. Louis.
Joplin wanted to extend his ragtime work beyond popular songs, seeking to combine the ragtime syncopation with the structures and forms of art music genres such as ballet and opera. In 1902, he published his first extended work, Rag Time Dance, a ballet suite using ragtime rhythms, with his own chorographical directions. For much of his life, Joplin soughtto synthesize the worlds of ragtime and opera and in 1903 wrote his first opera, A Guest of Honor, which has, alas, been lost.
In 1907, he moved to New York City, where he first lived in an old brownstone converted to a rooming house at 128 West 29th Street, in the heart of Tin Pan Alley. He published 25 of his 53 works while here, including three significant rags: “Wall Street,” “Pineapple” and “Magnetic.”
The first edition cover of “Pine Apple Rag”, composed and released by Scott Joplin in 1908. Wikipedia
He also wrote an instruction book, The School of Ragtime, outlining his complex bass patterns, sporadic syncopation, stop-time breaks, and harmonic ideas, which were widely imitated. Written in the style of an art music treatise, The School of Ragtime demonstrates how serious Joplin was about ragtime. He warned that not all syncopated music “that masqueraded under the name of ragtime” was genuine. Only by giving each note its proper value and by “scrupulously observing” the music’s markings could a pianist achieve the correct effect. Above all, he cautioned, “never play ragtime fast at any time.” “Joplin ragtime,” as he termed his style, would be destroyed by careless interpretation.
In New York, Joplin spent much of his time looking for funding for another opera he had created, Treemonisha, a multi-genre three-act opera which told the story of a rural African American community near Texarkana. No one was interested – even Irving Berlin, it is said, turned him down. The Opera’s first performance, poorly staged with Joplin accompanying on the piano, was “disastrous” and was never performed again in Joplin’s lifetime. The score was lost for decades, then rediscovered in 1970, and a fully orchestrated and staged performance took place in 1972.
Joplin continued to work on various musical forms and formed his own publishing company with his third wife, Lottie Stokes, in 1913. His final address in New York was in Harlem, at 163 W. 131st St., just west of Adam Clayton Powell Jr. Boulevard (a plaque there says that this was the last residence of the great ragtime pioneer Scott Joplin). He lived there with Lottie when he died on April 1, 1917. By this time, he had already established his place in the pantheon of American music, but he never had enough money and struggled with health and financial issues.
Treemonisha (1911) Wikipedia
By 1916, he had started to succumb to the ravages of syphilis, which he was thought to have contracted years earlier, and was later hospitalized and institutionalized. Joplin died on April 1, 1917. He was buried in an unmarked community grave at St. Michael’s Cemetery in East Elmhurst, Queens. In 1974, the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers placed a plaque at the grave site.
Joplin and his fellow ragtime composers rejuvenated American popular music, fostering an appreciation for African American music among European-Americans by creating exhilarating and liberating dance tunes. “Its syncopation and rhythmic drive gave it a vitality and freshness attractive to young urban audiences indifferent to Victorian proprieties…Joplin’s ragtime expressed the intensity and energy of a modern urban America.”
Ragtime would enjoy a resurgence during the 1940s, and then in the ’70s became a hugely popular genre that also entered the US consciousness via film—The Entertainer became the theme song for The Sting, starring Paul Newman and Robert Redford. Joplin’s Treemonisha was also fully staged in 1975 on Broadway. The following year, Joplin received a special posthumous Pulitzer Prize, honoring the man who shaped a genre that influenced decades of music.
NEW YORK LIFE BUILDING ON MADISON SQUARE ARON EISENPREISS, ANDY SPARBERG, ED LITCHER, LAURA HUSSEY, GLORIA HERMAN ALL GOT IT RIGHT!
Text by STEPHEN BLANK
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)
In observance of Memorial Day, the newly renovated Lighthouse Tower will be illuminated red, white and blue from Saturday May 28th through Monday, May 30th. Enjoy a happy and safe holiday weekend!
FRIDAY, MAY 27, 2022
The 686th Edition
The Eternal Light
Flagstaff
Madison Square
from DAYTONIAN IN MANHATTAN
Nearly two years after the end of World War I, New York Legislative Documents noted, “No progress has been made during the past year toward a conclusion as to the form of New York City’s great war memorial.” The two favored ideas being considered were a “Liberty Bridge” over the Hudson River, and the conversion of Madison Square Garden into Liberty Hall, proposed “to become the largest convention hall in the world, with a seating capacity of 20,000 people, containing a sacred Gothic Chapel and an organ that should be the greatest yet built.” The document added, “As a third alternative they recommended a Liberty Arch in the heart of the city.”
As it turned out, none of those ideas would earn the approval of millionaire department store mogul Rodman Wanamaker, Chairman of the Mayor John Francis Hyland’s Committee on Permanent Memorial. (Wanamaker almost undoubtedly achieved the position through his former employee, Grover Whalen, who had been appointed Commissioner of Plants and Structures in 1918.)
Wanamaker felt strongly that the monument “should stand out by its simplicity”–the very antithesis of the three popular ideas. It may have been that conflict that resulted in his personally footing the $25,000 bill for the project–more than $360,000 today.
Wanamaker’s committee eventually approved the design submitted by Thomas Hastings, of the esteemed architectural firm Carrere and Hastings. The Eternal Light Monument would take the form of a 125-foot tall wooden flagstaff formed from a century-old tree cut in “the virgin forests of Oregon and transported over the Rocky Mountains,” according to The NYC Department of Parks. Hastings designed a monumental pink granite pedestal that upheld the grand bronze pole base. Paul Wayland Bartlett, who had studied under Auguste Rodin, executed the sculptural elements.
Atop the flagpole was a seven-pointed electrified star. It was first illuminated on Armistice Day, November 11, 1923, and the m0nument was formally dedicated on June 7, 1924. The names of significant French battles were engraved on the east and west faces. On the north was carved, “In memory of those who have made the supreme sacrifice for the triumph of the free peoples of the world,” and on the south, in part, “Erected to commemorate the first homecoming of the victorious Army and Navy of these United States.”
The Eternal Light Monument was the terminus of the annual Armistice Day parades, when tens of thousands of veterans marched from City Hall to the Madison Square. (Armistice Day marked the day and hour World War I ended–the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11 months in 1918.)
photo via the NYC Dept of Records & Information Services
The monument was also used by the city to honor distinguished guests. In June 1927 the Broadway motorcade of Charles Lindbergh stopped so the famous flier could lay a wreath at its base. And a month later, on July 18, The Daily Worker reported, “Clarence Chamberlin, Richard E. Byrd and the three men who flew with Byrd to Paris came back to New York yesterday…The fliers were met at the City Hall by Mayor Walker and received the city’s medals of valor. At the eternal light in Madison Square, William H. Woodin welcomed them to the state in the absence of Governor Smith.”
The Eternal Light Monument turned political around 1930, when socialists adopted it as their own symbol. It may have started with the May Day observations in Union Square that year. Army veterans planned a counter-protest. The Socialist newspaper The Daily Worker wrote, “If the Veterans of Foreign Wars can scrape together enough sluggers, boss-bellycrawlers and thugs they will start their march from the Eternal Light in Madison Square.”
Members of the Women’s Overseas Service League pose before the monument around 1924. from the collection of the New-York Historical Society
In 1932 veterans marched on Washington D.C. to demand government promised pension money. Two of them, Eric Carlson and William Hushka were shot dead by D.C. police. The deaths enraged Socialists, who organized “Huska-Carlson Day” the following year. On July 27, 1933 protestors assembled at Rutgers Square. The Daily Worker advised, “From there, a parade will leave for Madison Square (23rd St.) at the Eternal Light.”
Every year the antithetical groups would use the monument for their widely disparate purposes. The annual Armistice Day parades and subsequent ceremonies went on in November, while the Socialists embraced the memorial in the spring months. On March 6, 1934 The Daily Worker announced, “The youth section of the American League Against War and Fascism will hold an anti-war parade starting at the Eternal Light in Madison Square, where a wreath will be laid.” The banner on that wreath read, “We Will Not Support the Government In Any War It May Undertake.”
Ernst Thaelmann, the leader of the Communist Party of Germany, was arrested by the German Government in 1933. Reaction in the form of rallies and protests among the Socialist and Communist communities in America was swift. On the night of June 13, 1934 Jack Corrigan shimmied to the top of the Eternal Light flagpole and hung a massive red banner demanding “FREE ERNST THAELMANN.” He and his comrades assured that it would remain there as long as possible by greasing the pole upon his descent and cutting the pole ropes. On June 15 The Daily Worker reported, “While crowds gathered to watch the sight, police squads desperately tried to get up the pole, but it was greased too well for them.”
In 1965 the participants in the annual ceremonies–originally composed of thousands–had greatly diminished. photo via the NYC Dept of Records & Information Services
In 1954 Armistice Day was changed by Congress to Veterans Day, in order to honor the deceased veterans of all wars.
In 1976 the wooden flagpole was replaced with a metal version. By then the once massive Veterans Day ceremonies had greatly diminished. On November 13, 1979 Judith Cummings, writing in The New York Times, said “Few New Yorkers marched in the annual Veterans Day parade yesterday on Fifth Avenue and almost as few bothered to watch it, deciding instead to take advantage of department store sales.” She went on, “Ceremonies at the parade’s terminus at Madison Square Park drew several dozen onlookers, who stood quietly in chill wind to hear the speakers in front of the graffiti-scarred Eternal Light monument near 24th Street.”
Part of the meager turnout was blamed on anti-Vietnam War sentiments. But numbers grew in 1981 when national patriotism swelled with the return of American hostages from Iran. Mayor Edward Koch announced, “Now we must not rest until they [the Vietnam MIA’s] are likewise returned.”
The Veterans Day ceremonies saw another increase of numbers in 1983. Gannett Westchester Newspapers wrote on November 12, “About 2,000 present and former servicemen marched under cloudy skies in New York City’s Veterans Day parade to pay tribute to America’s fallen heroes, especially those killed recently in Lebanon and Grenada. They stepped smartly down Fifth Avenue to the Eternal Light Monument in Madison Square where 32 wreaths were placed in memory of the fighting men and women of the United States.”
But the numbers had waned again in 1986, when The New York Times reported “The sparse crowds at recent Veterans Day parades in Manhattan were generous compared with the smattering that turned out yesterday.” It was, nevertheless, a groundbreaking event. The article noted, “for the first time, homosexual veterans joined the march under their own banner.” It was not entirely a welcomed change. The article noted, “As the Gay Veterans entered the parade from 39th Street, a man slashed the banner with a knife and fled.”
The luminaire, or lighted star, at the top of the flagstaff was refurbished in 2017. Thomas Hastings’s magnificent base, described in 1979 as “graffiti-scarred,” has been restored. And the Eternal Light monument continues to be the site of the annual Veterans Day ceremonies after nearly a century.
HOW TO FIND THE NEW 42 STREET/BRYANT PARK – TIMES SQUARE PASSAGE.
IT SEEMS A LITTLE COMPLICATED TO FIND THE PASSAGE AT TIMES SQUARE.
FOLLOW THE SIGNS TO THE SHUTTLE TO GRAND CENTRAL.
ONCE YOU ARE ON THE SHUTTLE PLATFORM WALK TO THE END AND GO THRU THE DOORS INTO THE PASSAGE.
IN ABOUT 5 MIUTES YOU WILL BE AT THE PLATFORMS FOR THE B D M & F TRAINS.
THE PLATFORMS AT BRYANT PARK/42 ST. ARE NOT DISABLED ACCESSIBLE.
THE PASSAGE IS GREAT AND WORTH THE WALK OR JUST TAKE IT TO THE THE GREAT MOSAICS.
Base of flagpole at Madison Square. ED LTICHER, HARA REISER AND LAURA HUSSEY 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:
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DAYTONIAN IN MANHATTAN TOM MILLER, AUTHOR AND PHOTOGRAPHER
RIHS (C) FUNDING PROVIDED BY ROOSEVELT ISLAND OPERATING CORPORATION PUBLIC PURPOSE GRANTS CITY COUNCIL REPRESENTATIVE BEN KALLOS DISCRETIONARY FUNDING THRU DYCD
Left, Cristina Iglesias, preparatory sketch of Landscape and Memory (2022) in Madison Square Park, from 2020. Right, detail from Egbert L. Viele’s “Sanitary and Topological Map of the City and Island of New York,”1865. (Left, courtesy the artist/Right, courtesy of The New York Public Library)
From THE ARCHITECTS NEWSPAPER
Landscape and Memory will bring Madison Square Park’s buried history to the surface
Spanish artist Cristina Iglesias, known for her large-scale, site-specific sculptures, will dig (literally) into the history of Madison Square Park in May of 2022. Manhattan is crisscrossed by streams and rivers that have since been buried but continue to flow, flooding their banks and the basements above when it rains. For Landscape and Memory, Iglesias will exhume an impression of Cedar Creek, which once flowed beneath where the park now stands today.
“Cristina Iglesias is renowned for sculpture and installation that engage closely with the spatial, cultural, and historical qualities of the spaces where they’re sited. With Landscape and Memory, Iglesias brings a new level of exploration to our commissioning program, creating sculptural cracks in the lawns that reveal an unseen element of the park’s natural history,” said Brooke Kamin Rapaport, deputy director and Martin Friedman Chief Curator of Madison Square Park Conservancy, in the announcement. “Visitors who encounter the work will do so almost as archaeologists witnessing a living artifact from a centuries-old New York City, untouched by the present-day urban landscape.”
Iglesias will, as Rapaport mentioned, dig into the park’s lawns to create five unique sculptural pools made of bronze, each with water continuously flowing over cracks and crags and into interpretations of what Cedar Creek could look like today. Each piece of Landscape and Memory will align in a sequence leading to the park’s central Oval Lawn, creating a continuous flow over the real path of the creek.
To “raise” Cedar Creek, Iglesias studied antique maps of the area prior to Madison Square Park’s founding and overlayed it with modern surveys. Much of New York’s rocky landscapes and waterways were carved by the retreat of glaciers about 18,000 years ago at the end of the last Ice Age, and what took millions of years for nature to create was quickly terraformed by humans in the name of production. Cedar Creek is just one of the numerous waterways buried during the mass industrialization of the 19th century,
Landscape and Memory will attempt to, at least for a little while, bring that history to the surface. The installation will be on view throughout Madison Square Park from May 23, 2022, through December 4, 2022
Landscape and Memory Evokes Park’s Buried Topography With Five Large-Scale Bronze Sculptures Set into Landscape and Flowing with Water
Fala, President Roosevelt’s terrier HARA REISER, JAY JACOBSON, LAURA HUSSEY AND ALEXIS VILLAFANE GOT IT RIGHT
Text by Judith Berdy Thanks to Bobbie Slonevsky for her dedication to Blackwell’s Almanac and the RIHS Thanks to Deborah Dorff for maintaining our website Edited by Deborah Dorff All image are copyrighted (c)
Sources
Madison Square Park Conservancy
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Recently, a crowd gathered on an Estonian island to pay tribute to Louis Kahn, a native son who was one of the twentieth century’s leading architects. As the ceremony unfolded, events past and present served as reminders that architecture does not operate in isolation from the world around it.
Those attending came from far and near to Kuressaare Castle, the childhood inspiration of an architect whose final built work, Four Freedoms Park, is located on New York’s Roosevelt Island.
Kahn was born in 1901 on Saaremaa, a Baltic Sea island, when Estonia was part of the Russian Empire. He lived in the town of Kuressaare with his family, until they emigrated to the United States when he was five years old for better economic opportunities and so that his father could avoid being recalled to military service.
KURESSAARE CASTLE ON SAAREMAA IN ESTONIA
They settled in Philadelphia, where Kahn lived the rest of his life and made a career as a practicing architect and professor at his alma mater, the University of Pennsylvania. He died in 1974 in New York’s Penn Station on his way home from a business trip to India.
He is remembered for reconciling Modernism with ancient influences and his notable works include the Salk Institute in San Diego, Kimbell Art Museum in Fort Worth, the Yale University Art Gallery, and the National Assembly complex in Bangladesh. The latter, which many consider his masterpiece, serves as a cherished symbol of democracy in one of the world’s poorest nations.
Beginnings were an important theme for Kahn and on May 5th his own origins were celebrated. Officials from the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission, the Louis Kahn Estonia Foundation, and the local municipality unveiled a historical marker with text in English and Estonian next to the castle.
Photo by Nic LeHoux, courtesy of the Kimbell Art Museum
The dedication ceremony was followed by a reception at a nearby cultural center which included the opening of “Silence and Light,” an exhibition about Kahn originally displayed in Zurich.
Besides architectural history, geopolitics provided a subtext that was implicit but unmistakable in light of present circumstances. Officials representing Estonia, the U.S., Norway, and Switzerland saluted Kahn but also highlighted ties among their countries.
“During the twentieth century, control of Estonia changed hands five times: Czarist Russia, the Republic of Estonia, the Soviet Union, Nazi Germany, the Soviet Union again and then the restored Republic of Estonia,” noted Toivo Tammik, head of the Foundation. “Would Kahn have survived all those changes here as a Jewish architect, and been able to work even in the 1970s? Impossible. Are we in Estonia proud to claim him? Of course!”
Tammik also read a letter from Alexandra Tyng, one of Kahn’s three children, which tied her father’s work on Four Freedoms Park, a memorial to President Franklin D Roosevelt, to current times. “I know that my father, who revered Roosevelt and what he stood for, would in this moment be very proud of his birth country, Estonia: a small nation with a powerful voice for Democracy,” she wrote.
Photo by Elizabeth Felicella, courtesy of Yale University
Several others spoke during the day’s festivities, including Per Olaf Fjeld, a Norwegian architect who studied with Kahn at Penn a half-century ago and has written about Kahn and his Nordic connections in collaboration with his wife Emily Randall Fjeld.
The marker includes a quote from Kahn acknowledging his homeland’s influence on him. “I was born on an island with a castle on it,” which apparently planted a seed in a young child’s imagination that would flower into structures built around the world.
Photo by B. Koch, Four Freedoms Park Conservancy
This calls to mind another quote from Kahn about the impact of the built environment on the young. “A city should be a place where a little boy walking through its streets can sense what he would someday like to be,” he wrote in 1973.
In the same spirit, Nancy Moses, the Chair of the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission observed, “we can imagine the grandchildren of our grandchildren stopping by this historical marker. They will read about Louis Kahn, a beloved son of Estonia and Pennsylvania. They will be inspired by his example.”
TUESDAY PHOTO OF THE DAY ANDY SPARBERG AND ED LITCHER GOT IT RIGHT.
FROM ED: From 1918 to 1955 the Blackwell Island Elevator Storehouse was the island’s only means of vehicular access. The Elevator Building gave access to the island from the Queensboro bridge for cars, trucks and passengers of the QB bridge trolley. The importance of the elevator was overshadowed by the opening of the Welfare Island Bridge in 1955, which was the same year that Metropolitan Hospital moved to the upper east side. Shortly after the opening of the WI bridge, the trolley service ceased operation and the building was finally demolished in 1970.
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:
UNTAPPED NEW YORK
JEFF REUBEN
This entry was posted on May 16, 2022 at 5:07 am and is filed under Music, art, theater. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
RIHS (C) FUNDING PROVIDED BY ROOSEVELT ISLAND OPERATING CORPORATION PUBLIC PURPOSE GRANTS CITY COUNCIL REPRESENTATIVE BEN KALLOS DISCRETIONARY FUNDING THRU DYCD
Stereopticon view of the Grand Hotel shortly after completion – NYPL Collection
A year before Peter Gilsey completed his elaborate Gilsey House Hotel two blocks to the south, Elias S. Higgins had built the Grand Hotel at Broadway and 31st Street. Higgins, a highly successful carpet manufacturer, commissioned Henry Engelbert in 1868 to design the hotel. Located just ahead of the northbound urban migration, it would also be conveniently near the 23rd Street entertainment district. German-born Engelbert established a reputation for creating striking buildings in the French Second Empire style.
photo NYPL Collection
For the Grand Hotel he followed suit. Turning to the new, fashionable hotel particuliers that began lining the streets of mid-19th Century Paris, he created five stories of white marble, resting on a ground floor of slender-pillared cast iron with wide glass shop windows, and topped by a two-story mansard roof. Engelbert chopped the corner off his hotel, creating a chamfer with one window per floor that allowed guests a view up Broadway.
Unlike Gilsey’s hotel, Higgins intended The Grand to be a residential hotel or family hotel. These were, essentially, apartment houses for tenants who had no intention of cooking for themselves, but would eat in a large, communal dining room. There was, therefore, no need for kitchens nor dining rooms in the apartments. Later, as the theatre district moved north towards Times Square it became financially sensible to convert it into a guest hotel.
In 1870 Henry Milford Smith leased and managed the hotel. In his 1884 New York’s Great Industries, Richard Edwards praised Smith as “the popular and enterprising proprietor of the Grand Hotel” and added “His son, Mr. Dinwiddie Smith, is a thoroughly practical hotel man, and actively associated with his father in the management of this magnificent hotel which has two hundred and thirty-three rooms.”
In 1904 the Grand was renamed The New Grand Hotel under the ownership of George F. Hurlbert, who owned two other hotels, one in Jamestown and another in Sharon, Pennsylvania. His thorough redecorating of the interior reflected an updated “Moorish” décor.
In 1920 daily room rates were advertised as:
Room with Running Water (for one) $2.00-$2.50 Double Room with Running Water (for two) $3.00-$3.50 Room with Bath (for one) $3.50-$4.00 Double Room with Bath (for two) $5.00-$5.50
The updated “Moorish Lounge” — early 20th Century postcard view (author’s collection)
Around World War II, however, Broadway around 31st Street had changed. The once grand neighboring hotels became commercial loft buildings. The Grand was now The Milner Hotel with fleabag rates of $1.00 to $1.50 a night. In 1957 the entire ground floor was remodeled and the wonderful cast iron and glass entrance was demolished.
By the 1980s the once proud Grand Hotel was a single occupancy hotel owned by Mocak Enterprises. Despite its 1979 landmark designation the owners painted the marble façade and the slate roof in 1987 without prior authorization by the New York Landmarks Preservation Commission – which doubtlessly would not have been forthcoming.
Robert Tincher, vice president of Mocak explained to The New York Times in 1993 “we painted the building to protect it.” The problem now was how to correct the violation. Leaving the paint on the marble could seal in moisture, causing the face of the stone to pull away. On the other hand, removal of the paint could damage the marble and the slate. The Landmarks Preservation Commission retained Building Conservation Associates to supervise spot testing of the face to determine the extent of damage removal of the paint would cause.
Today Elias Higgins’ Grand Hotel is owned and managed by 1234 Broadway LLC as the Clark Apartments. In 2010 netting and scaffolding covered the building as KRA Associates headed up restoration efforts of the facade. Slowly, inch by inch, the white marble and the black slate of the roof are re-emerging and the Grand Hotel sits waiting for its former glory to be rediscovered.
Today a wonderful restoration shines and the hotel is in full operation.
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
Sources
DAYTONIAN IN MANHATTAN
FUNDING PROVIDED BY ROOSEVELT ISLAND OPERATING CORPORATION PUBLIC PURPOSE GRANTS CITY COUNCIL REPRESENTATIVE BEN KALLOS DISCRETIONARY FUNDING THRU DYCD
FOR A FEW YEARS DEBORAH DORFF, OUR WEBMASTER, LIVED IN YONKERS AND I WOULD LOVE TO VISIT THE METRO-NORTH STATION. IT HAS A TOUCH OF THE PAST AND ALSO IS SO WELL PRESERVED, INCLUDING ITS’ GUASTAVINO CEILINGS!
As you pull into the Yonkers train station, you couldn’t feel farther from Grand Central Terminal. A few sleepy platforms greet you as you exit the train. Step down the stairs, however, and you’ll enter a vaulted space with arched windows and decadent chandeliers. Hiding beneath the two elevated platforms you’ll find an elaborate station that not only predates construction of Grand Central Terminal, but was built by the same firm, Warren and Wetmore. Renovated in 2003, you’ll see well-preserved features of the original 1911 construction, which some believe to be a “testing ground” for characteristics later incorporated into the renown Manhattan terminal.
Unlike its Manhattan counterpart, this station is low profile, with a portion of the station built under the very rail bridge used for the boarding platform. Areas of the station used for ticket machines, vending, the MTA Police Station, and the original location of the taxi stand are under the bridge, evident by the exposed steel beams in the ceiling. The front portion of Yonkers Station is the only roof to rise above the elevated track beds, offering arched ceilings, chandeliers, and double-pained glass windows, much like those found in Grand Central. The ticket windows are also designed in a similar style to those found in Grand Central, although more brick is used.
The insight into the origins of Grand Central’s design is not the only significance of Yonkers Station. 62 years before its construction, the New York Central Railroad began operation. While quickly putting the local stage coaches out of business, it wasn’t until the 1880’s that steamboats fell to the railroads. Until that time, steam travel was reliable and comfortable, offering no major incentive for waterway passengers to change their habits. However, one particularly foggy morning, as commuters waited on the docks, the ship failed to port. The train would normally halt only briefly, but today, perhaps seeing the frustration on the faces of the lingering steamboat customers, he waited. One by one, the dock-bound customers grew impatient. Eventually, the entire crowd abandoned the dock in favor of the train. That morning, an hour after the New York Central train arrived at Grand Central, the steamboat made port in Yonkers. From that point on, steam travel in the area flatlined.
The station has more stories to tell, and has seen many famous residents pass through it, from Ella Fitzgerald, to the inventor of plastic, and the broadcaster of first FM radio transmission. For those looking for more on the station itself, take a tour through the photographs below.
The stairs to the Poughkeepsie-bound platform. The station area under the tracks offers moody, dim lighting, in stark contrast with the midday sun, as well as the main waiting area, which is flanked with large windows.
The rear entrance (exiting to the River) was only later added with the renovations, and exits to the recent housing developments, and ferry landing.
Just one of the many details around the station, offering the New York Central Railroad logo. Similar relics of this now defunct company can be found at other stations, including the Poughkeepsie station, the northern terminus of the Hudson Line.
The clock above the ticket counters. There is another clock above the exterior, which is more reminiscent of the iconic clock of Grand Central.
The two platforms of Yonkers Station, which service both Metro North and Amtrak trains. This photo looks North, with the Hudson River about 200 feet to the left. The smoke stack-looking tower in the background is mimicked by a smaller version at the rear entrance of Yonkers Station. Just visible in the rear right of the background is the Kawasaki Factory, where some previous subway cars are made for the MTA, as well as upcoming PATH models.
TOP OF IONIC COLUMN FROM METROPOLITAN HOSPITAL(OCTAGON ) ORIGINAL STAIRCASE
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
UNTAPPED NEW YORK
BEN HELMER
Edited by Deborah Dorff ALL PHOTOS COPYRIGHT RIHS. 2022 (C) PHOTOS IN THIS ISSUE (C) JUDITH BERDY RIHS
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I attended a wonderful Met performance of Madame Butterfly on Saturday, and when I read through the Playbill, I was surprised to learn that Puccini’s opera was based on a play written and directed by David Belasco. (I assume for many, dear readers, this is no surprise. It was to me.) The Met’s Program Note says, “In the summer of 1900, in London, Puccini saw the American playwright and director’s Madame Butterfly. He went backstage and begged for the rights. ‘I agreed at once,‘ Belasco wrote, ’[though] it is not possible to discuss business arrangements with an impulsive Italian who has tears in his eyes and both arms around your neck.’”
My thoughts turned again to the American theater, and I decided it would be fun to pursue Mr Belasco, whose name had come up in several pieces I recently wrote. Reader alert: a ghost appears in this article.
David Belasco was one of the outstanding personalities of the American theater. His career spanned the turn and rise of a new century – from the 1880s to his death in 1931 – and fundamental changes in American entertainment, in live theater, in radio and in films. Belasco, like Ziegfeld, was a theater builder and was also deeply involved in creating the modern “Broadway” around what would become Times Square (Longacre Square until 1904). From 1901 to 1920, forty-three theaters were built around Broadway in Midtown Manhattan, including the Belasco’s Stuyvesant Theatre (renamed the Belasco Theatre in 1910). The Belasco Theater is still there – on west 44th between 6th and 7th.
David J. Belasco Wikipedia
Born in San Francisco on July 25, 1853, to Portuguese-Jewish parents who had emigrated from England, Belasco, whose father had been on the London stage, began acting as a child. He acted and worked in theaters in San Francisco and then moved to New York in 1882 to manage the Madison Square Theatre. (At the moment, this was a big deal job – controlling every aspect of a theater.) Seeking greater freedom, he became a freelance playwright and director and by 1895, he was so successful that he was considered America’s most distinguished playwright and producer. During his long creative career, Belasco either wrote, directed, or produced more than 100 Broadway plays, making him the most powerful personality on the New York City theater scene. He also helped establish careers for dozens of notable stage performers, many of whom went on to work in films. (One line I particularly like: “I’m David Belasco! I can make a telegraph pole look good!”)
Belasco’s most important contributions to the theatre came in the field of design and technology. his elaborate, realistic scenic displays using the latest mechanical inventions and experiments in lighting. As Ibsen and Strindberg were gaining prominence as realistic playwrights, Belasco took this naturalism to the extreme, reproducing detailed, operational apartments, a Child’s restaurant, and a laundromat on stage – or sometimes going so far as to buy an actual room and place it on stage, one wall removed, as his set. Belasco wanted his theatre to be like a living room in which audiences could watch actors behaving onstage exactly as they would in real life, down to the barest detail.
His new theater was outfitted with the most advanced stagecraft tools available including extensive lighting rigs, a hydraulics system, and vast wing and fly space. Tiffany Studio designed lighting fixtures throughout the theater. Belasco produced or directed almost 50 productions at the theater over the next two decades; the majority ran for at least a hundred performances
Belasco theater, Wikipedia
Historians are divided over his plays. “His writing, in a time when lbsen, Strindberg, and Chekhov were introducing realism, “one notes, “remained filled with sensational melodrama or maudlin sentiment. His plays have virtually no lasting value.” Another says, “As an author, Belasco was prone to use the stock format he had learned as an actor in San Francisco. The Hero, Villain, and Damsel in Distress were the characters of importance and any ‘scandalous’ situations which might arise in the telling of their story were always resolved with the highest of proper Victorian morals intact and in the melodrama of the day, there was always a little scandal. In all things, ’virtue’ must triumph.” A reviewer complained of seeing “the same sugary sentiment, the same hollow pathos, the same forced style…. “
Others praise his work: “What Mr. Belasco has done has been to write pieces for the play-house, not criticisms of life . . . he has bent his mind to devise them with all possible air of probability and with all possible fidelity of pictorial setting. Especially in the latter respect he has succeeded as no other man of our time has.” A more serious academic examination gives Belasco credit for “helping to refashion melodrama” by strengthening the role of women. He “redefined the traditional gender roles, so that the formerly innocent and ignorant ingenue gains strength and autonomy and, above all, a sexual identity of her own.” A recent biography says that the content of the plays Belasco produced mattered less to him than the quality of their presentation. And in any case, audiences loved it, and his shows ran for hundreds of performances. Many of his plays were transformed into films in the early era of the silents.
Belasco theater, Wikipedia Belasco is said to watch plays and rehearsals from the balcony.
His last two decades saw his influence decline, eclipsed by the rise of a new generation of American playwrights such as Eugene O’Neill, and a new kind of theater. But Belasco had brought a fresh realism to theater production and was the most successful man of the theater in turn-of-the-century America where spectacular and emotionally wrenching melodramas were in vogue.
Personally, Belasco seems to have been rather weird. He dressed in a black suit and collar like a priest – and was known as the “Bishop of Broadway.” It is said that he was an egomaniac who insisted on total obedience to his direction. On the other hand, in an era when productions were hurriedly patched together, Belasco took time to perfect his work; even his most severe critics admit a “tidiness” not often found on the American stage. He excelled in creating a mood and tension in his crowd and mob scenes. Moreover, whatever was seen on stage was Belasco and the other artists were the instruments of his will.
He was married just once, to Cecilia Loverich from 1873 until she died in 1925. They had two daughters, but none lived in the limelight.
In an era of palatial homes, Belasco lived above the store – although grandly. Belasco added a ten-room duplex apartment to the Belasco theater in 1910 – with a private elevator, and a living room with a 30-foot ceiling. The duplex contained eccentric items including a collection of ancient pieces of glass; a room containing Napoleon memorabilia, such as a strand of Napoleon’s hair; and a bedroom designed with Japanese furnishings. Belasco had a collection of erotica and medieval art in a hidden Gothic-style room. Scattered across the duplex were banners, rugs, books, and what one biographer called “a vast, confusing medley of collectors’ treasures”.
Unlike Ziegfeld, there’s little memory of scandal. Belasco liked women and was associated with many glamorous actresses.
It is said that “the Bishop…. certainly didn’t act the part in private,” that he was a serial seducer: “There are many lurid tales of the gothic canopied bed and the chamber that adjoined his office.” He is said to have had peculiar sexual tastes. Wearing his priestly garb, he would bring the leading lady to his apartment and usher her into a confessional in the front hallway. For each sin confessed, the actress would remove an article of clothing. Belasco may have invented the “casting couch” (Belasco’s “original casting couch” is now located at Ten Chimneys, the home of Broadway actors Lynn Fontanne and Alfred Lunt at Genesee Depot in Wisconsin). But if so, the lurid tales remain fairly well hidden, and Belasco avoided the newspaper tumult generated by the indiscretions of peers Flo Zeigfeld and others.
But there must be a ghost. The ghost of impresario David Belasco has long been said to haunt the theater he built on West 44th Street, dressed in the same type of clothes he wore in life – a cassock and a clerical collar. Belasco’s ghost started to appear at the theatre immediately after his death. Sightings have been numerous and consistent in terms of what people describe. Over the years, actors have reported hearing moans in the wings after a particularly bad show. Dressing rooms have been ransacked during performances. Stagehands have sworn they’ve heard the chains rattling in a private elevator that goes straight to Belasco’s once-sumptuous apartment above the theater — even though the elevator hasn’t worked in years.” It’s no surprise that the Rocky Horror Show opened there in March 1975.
In the great history of arts, David Belasco for all that he did for the American theater, may be best remembered for providing Puccini with the play, Madame Butterfly.
LATE 1930’S IMAGE OF THE ISLAND SHOWING GOLDWATER HOSPITAL, QUEENSBORO BRIDGE, ELEVATOR STOREHOUSE, STEAMPLANT, CENTRAL NURSES RESIDENCE.
A NYC Department of Hospital’s postcard printed during the tenure of Dr. Sigmund Goldwater, MD (1934 to 1940) showing Blackwell’s Island around 1939, with the Central Nurse’s Residence, the Power House, the Elevator Building the Queensboro Bridge and The Welfare Hospital for Chronic Disease that was was renamed Goldwater Memorial Hospital shortly after the death of Dr. Goldwater in 1949. ED LITCHER GOT IT!!
Text by Judith Berdy Thanks to Bobbie Slonevsky for her dedication to Blackwell’s Almanac and the RIHS Thanks to Deborah Dorff for maintaining our website Edited by Deborah Dorff All image are copyrighted (c)
All image are copyrighted (c) Roosevelt Island Historical Society unless otherwise indicated
The Lighthouse Tower, designed by architect James Renwick, has been a prominent historic feature of Roosevelt Island since its construction in 1872. The Lighthouse was partially restored in the 1940s, complete with a low pitch 10 – sided lantern and was inducted into the National Register of Historic Places and designated a New York City Landmark in 1972 and 1976 respectively. In 2019, Thomas A. Fenniman Architects was hired to create construction documents to increase the useful life of the structure, eliminate potentially unsafe conditions, and reduce operating and maintenance expenses.
The exterior and interior restoration of the tower, included masonry restoration, concrete bracket and platform repair, railing restoration, replacement of spiral staircase, door and window restoration, as well as electrical and site work. These repairs remediated the many life and safety issues addressed for long-term use and will additionally decrease the operation and maintenance costs associated with the tower. “It is truly an honor to have rehabilitated this historic landmark for the Roosevelt Island community and visitors alike to enjoy. The Lighthouse Tower is a cornerstone and simply one of Roosevelt Islands treasures. I would like to thank our RIOC team, the architect and contractor for their work on this project.”, said Shelton J. Haynes, President and CEO of the Roosevelt Island Operating Corporation (RIOC).
The restoration aspects and new lantern design were approved by the Office of Parks, Recreation and Historic Preservation and the Landmarks Preservation Commission. “I am thrilled for the community to see the colored up-lighting on the tower and enjoy this space again. The conclusion of this project marks the last phase of our renovations to the northern tip of the Lighthouse Park that began with the renovations of the foot bridges in 2019.”, expressed Prince R. Shah, Assistant Director of Capital Planning and Projects at RIOC.
With the implementation of the required design measures, the Lighthouse Tower becomes a transformative symbol that all of New York will be able to identify as Roosevelt Island. “Our goal in the restoration of this historic lighthouse was to balance two factors: The preservation of the original masonry structure and to pay homage to the long-lost unique lantern designed by Renwick and removed sometime in the 1930’s” said Thomas A. Fenniman, Project Architect. “I am extremely proud of the accomplishments and commitment to quality by the entire team in restoring what I believe will be a true beacon at the northern tip of the island.” The northern end of Lighthouse Park will provide safe outdoor space for all to enjoy for many years to come.
RIHS (C) FUNDING PROVIDED BY ROOSEVELT ISLAND OPERATING CORPORATION PUBLIC PURPOSE GRANTS CITY COUNCIL REPRESENTATIVE BEN KALLOS DISCRETIONARY FUNDING THRU DYCD
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