Have you ever wondered how parks are made? In the Olmsted Firm, the process of designing a landscape was often long and involved many people. Typically, the design process included the following steps:
The Design Process: Fort Tryon Park Fort Tryon Park: The Client’s Inquiry
Frederick Law Olmsted, Jr. was the senior partner in the Olmsted Firm during the Fort Tryon project.
Olmsted Archives
A new landscape design job at the Olmsted firm always began with a letter from a potential client. Clients wrote to the firm with a particular project in mind. The firm answered inquiries with a cost estimate for a preliminary visit. The firm also typically requested that clients conduct topographical surveys of the site to send to the firm. After a client contacted the firm, the firm assigned them a folder and job number.
John D. Rockefeller, Jr. contacted the Olmsted Brothers firm in 1927 to develop a park on his property at Fort Tryon. The property, a Revolutionary War battle site, had been previously owned by Cornelius K.G. Billings. Rockefeller purchased the property and the Billings Mansion in 1917. Overlooking the Hudson River, the property featured scenic views and historic structures.
Oftentimes clients would independently conduct surveys of a site. Clients sent topographical maps to the firm which aided the landscape architects in the design process. Nevertheless, a preliminary visit would be made to the site, usually by a senior partner. The client paid the cost of the preliminary visit. The partner or an assistant would take notes on the site, and general design ideas would begin to be developed. Photography also became an important means of documenting details of the site. Preliminary visits were non-binding, taking place early on in the design process.
Fort Tryon Park: Preliminary Plans
The landscape architect used notes from site visits and topographical surveys to draft a preliminary plan. Certain projects, depending on scale, required several early plans and sketches before the landscape architect and client settled on a design.
The boardwalk has been replaced by a paved surface that will tolerate the storm conditions
Fort Tryon Park: General Plan
The general plan for Fort Tryon Park.
Olmsted Archives, Job #00529
Frederick Law Olmsted and the firm’s later senior partners often did not draft final plans. Rather, they generated broad concepts for landscape designs. General plans were drawn by the firm’s draftsmen.
The Olmsted firm valued accuracy. All plans would be checked twice, by two different employees, before being mailed to a client. Oftentimes, an explanatory report would be sent to clients along with the general plan. This report would explain, in writing, the principles, ideas, and objectives behind the design.
Fort Tryon’s general plan illustrated the general locations of trees and plants, lawns, structures, terraces, promenades, roads, and paths.
Fort Tryon: Architectural and Engineering Plans
The firm’s department of engineering and architecture would draft plans for bridges, fences, and structures to supplement the general plan. These plans were more precise and detailed than general plans.
Plan showing a planting study for Fort Tryon Park.
Olmsted Archives Job #00529
After both the landscape architect and the client had approved a general plan, planting plans were prepared. Where general plans showed the main features of a landscape design and the general arrangement of vegetation, planting plans would show a detailed layout of plantings, and included species names of trees and shrubs and quantities of each. After the approval of the planting plan, the firm would place an order for trees and shrubs. The firm did not directly supply plants or building materials.
The planting plan for Fort Tryon shows a variety of plants and trees including ash, willow, hickory, and peach trees. A note on one section of the planting plan reads, “If interesting vegetation exists[,] take it into account when carrying out this plan. That is[,] leave some of it.” A central component of Frederick Law Olmsted’s design principles was the idea that the natural features and conditions of the land should be preserved where possible. Later partners in the firm adhered to this principle.
The Olmsted firm did not have an in-house nursery. In fact, the firm intentionally did not form partnerships with particular nurseries in order to ensure that the client always got the highest quality and most suitable plants for the project at a fair price
Fort Tryon Park: Construction
The construction of a landscape was carried out by an outside contractor, selected through a bidding process. Because well-executed designs generated business and new clients for the firm, a member of the Olmsted firm would typically oversee construction of large projects to ensure designs were properly implemented. For the construction of Fort Tryon Park, the firm set up a nearby temporary field office.
Fort Tryon Park: Follow-Up Visits
The Olmsted firm often arranged to make follow-up visits to landscapes to ensure that designs had been properly carried out. Where landscapes needed to be altered, expanded, or redesigned, clients often re-hired the Olmsted firm. Some of the firm’s later partners worked on improvements for projects that they had worked on in the early years of their careers. The Olmsted firm’s involvement with some projects spanned many decades.
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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)
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Whales are here and whale watching is a new addition to New York’s list of wonders. Another visitor has shown up, too – seals. We’re likely to see a lot more of them in the near future.
Two types of seals now hang out around here: Harbor Seals and Gray Seals. The Harbor Seal is a small seal, but with a distinctive rounded, short-muzzled head and spotted coat. Its eyes are very large and front flippers short. Nostrils form a wide “V” and ear openings are inconspicuous. The Gray Seal is bigger, and sometimes called “horseheads” because adult males have large, horse-like heads and large, curved noses.
They are both members of the “true” seal family. All true seals have short flippers, which they use to move in a “caterpillar”-like motion on land. They have no external ear flaps.
Harbor and Gray Seals visit New York. Photo by Celia Ackerman/Gotham Whale
Both like cold water, and they are typically found in large numbers in the coastal waters of Canada and south to Nantucket. In Canada, Gray Seals are typically seen in the Gulf of St. Lawrence, Newfoundland, the Maritimes, and Quebec. The largest colony in the world is at Sable Island, Nova Scotia. Harbor Seals are found year-round off the coast of New England, in particular Maine and Massachusetts.
Photo courtesy of the Marine Mammal Center – Two Harbor Seals (Phoca vitulina) resting on a beach
These are not Sea Lions which are not seals – and that’s very important. California Sea Lions range up to 800 pounds, much bigger than the 300-pound Harbor Seal – although Gray Seals are a good deal larger than Harbor Seals. Sea Lions bark and use their front-body (head, neck, shoulders, chest, and front flippers) to swim, and can “walk” on land with their flippers (and clap). Harbor and Gray Seals are relatively quiet and spend more of their time out at sea. They swim primarily with their back-body (lower back, hips, and rear flippers). Though graceful in the water, they move clumsily on land because they can’t rotate their flippers like Sea Lions. Instead, they must flop or wiggle along on their bellies.
Because of their ability to use their flippers on land, Sea Lions often haul themselves out of the water and onto buoys, docks/piers, and sometimes even up onto fishing boats. They become territorial in some ports, taking over piers and docks. Their “seizure” of certain piers in San Francisco has become infamous.
Seals don’t form large groups like Sea Lions. Sometimes, a group will gather at a haul-out site (a haul out site is a waterside spot where seals come ashore to rest or where food can be found). Even when they haul out together, Harbor Seals are wary onshore, and don’t touch each other, unlike Sea Lions who are much more sociable and generally hang out in large groups. Harbor Seals are sensitive and don’t like people getting close.
Seasonally monogamous, Harbor Seals are mostly solitary and don’t form harems. They begin to gather in small, mixed groups in late summer. The loose groups show no hierarchy. Mature seals (about 5 years old) pair up and, in September, swim off to secluded areas where they generally breed in the water. The marginally larger males are opportunistically promiscuous but defend no territory or harem group. Gray seals gather in large groups during the mating/pupping and molting seasons. Outside of this, they often share their habitat with Harbor Seals.
Seals were long residents of our region. In colonial times, there were huge populations of seals. They were driven out by excessive hunting for their oil, meat and skins. Because they ate fish, they were seen as competitors and bounties were paid on all kinds of seals up until 1945 in Maine and 1962 in Massachusetts. One could go into the town hall in Chatham and collect a $5 bounty per seal nose. They were called “seal buttons.” And increasingly polluted waters either drove them away or killed them. From the oil industry in the late 1800s to chemicals like PCBs and dioxins in the 1950s, the filthy waters could not sustain much life. So remaining seals cleared out.
After a century long absence, seals have begun to return in winter to New York City for a little rest and relaxation. They are returning because what drove them away have been sorted. The 1972 Clean Water Act was pivotal: a federal law designed to limit the discharge of pollutants into the nation’s waters and improve the quality of water for fishing and swimming, and our waters are much cleaner. Around the same time, seals’ lives were improved by the Marine Mammals Protection Act of 1972, which made it illegal to harass, feed, capture, collect, kill, import or export any marine mammal. Their traditional environment here is cleaner and safer.
At first seal populations increased slowly (a year after Congress passed the 1972 Marine Mammal Protection Act, a survey of the entire Maine coast found only 30 Grey Seals) but then rebounded from islands off Maine to Monomoy Island and Nantucket Island off of southern Cape Cod. The southernmost breeding colony was established on Muskeget Island with five pups born in 1988 and over 2,000 counted in 2008. According to a genetics study, the United States population has formed by recolonization by Canadian seals. By 2009, thousands of Grey Seals had taken up residence on or near popular swimming beaches on outer Cape Cod, A count of 15,756 grey seals in southeastern Massachusetts coastal waters was made in 2011 by the National Marine Fisheries Service. Grey and Harbor Seals are being seen increasingly in New York and New Jersey waters, and it is expected that they will establish colonies further south.
Gray seals on Cape Cod beach. Photo Credit: Wayne Davis, oceanaerials.com
In New York, we see Harbor Seals that migrate south from arctic waters in Nova Scotia, Maine, and Cape Cod to the warmer waters surrounding our city. They vacation here from about October through April before heading north to breed. Our winter is their summer. As one urban park ranger put it: “New York is like their Miami resort.”
A small pod of Harbor seals spotted resting on a remote sandy island in New York Harbor before Thanksgiving Day
Our Harbor Seal population is now stable at around 600, most near Orchard Beach in the Bronx and on Swinburne Island. The return of the seal is a “bioindicator of ecosystem health,” experts recent wrote. The seals are here in part, they wrote, because there are fish to eat and the quality of food can support them year after year, which represents “a clear example of local fauna reclaiming previous habitat.” Although the seals must watch out for boat traffic and can be stressed by motorized noise, their stability tells us that they and our water are doing better, but it also helps us prepare for more human interactions with seals, which are inevitable.
They’re not Sea Lions. But there are still problems. Anglers claim that seals steal their catch, right off their lines. “Ten years ago, we never saw seals, but now they’re everywhere,” said Willy Hatch, who’s been fishing the Cape and Islands for over 25 years. “They’re at Squibnocket Beach, Vineyard Sound, the Elizabeth Islands, Woods Hole, the Muskeget Channel. Often, the seals hear me anchor up and set up behind my boat. If I manage to hook a fish, a seal takes it right off my line. It gets worse every year as their population increases and their range expands.” As the seal population has increased. Cape Cod and the Islands are ground zero for a growing conflict between striper fishermen and seals. Since stripers are the great goal in New York waters, this conflict may spread here.
A gray seal snatches a striped bass off a fisherman’s line in the Cape Cod Canal. Encounters with seals shadowing anglers have become more common in recent years.
And great white sharks. There’s been a direct correlation between the increasing abundance of seals on the Cape and Islands and the growing presence of great white sharks. But it’s not because there are more sharks. More simply, as the seal population has increased, more great whites are hanging out where the seals are.
A great white shark hunts for gray seals in waters off the coast of Cape Cod. National Geographic/Alamy
And they stink. They eat fish and their plentiful poop is fishy and smelly.
That’s what happens when new folks arrive in the neighborhood. New folks, new adventures, new problems. Isn’t Nature grand?
LAURA HUSSEY, ED LITCHER, ANDY SPARBRG, GLORIA HERMAN 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)
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For the decades the Suggogate’s Courthouse was covered in scaffolding on the exterior. Inside the building was a dingy neglected space that was beyond it ‘s glory days. The Municipal Archives are located in the building and every time I visited, I bemoaned the fate of the builing. Recently the restoration of the interior has been completed and the newly restored interior is worth a visit..
Olmsted and Vaux’s original Greensward plan for Central Park. Photo courtesy of NYC Municipal Archives.
On March 31st, 1858, Frederick Law Olmsted and English-born designer Calvert Vaux submitted their plans for “The Central Park.” They were a last-minute submission, arriving at the Arsenal Building with their drawings only minutes before the evening deadline. At first, the Greensward Plan didn’t stand out among the 32 other submissions, and the New York City government considered all of its options rather lackluster. Although the City was hoping for grand European designs, they liked the natural beauty of Olmsted and Vaux’s Greensward Plan, and it was accepted in 1859. The hand-drawn maps and sketches have since been preserved and can be found at the Municipal Archives in the basement of another masterwork of the 19th century: the Surrogate’s Courthouse.
The Surrogate’s Courthouse is a stately structure dating from the late-19th century. It was designed by the New York-based architect John Rochester Thomas and constructed between 1899 and 1907 at a cost of more than $7 million. Thomas was extremely prolific for his time, designing over 150 churches, a handful of armories and prisons, and the 1886 New York Stock Exchange. While Thomas would never live to see the completion of his final masterpiece (he died in 1901) the building has lived on largely unchanged. The building’s facade is made of solid granite, mined and transported from Hallowell, Maine, and its interior is clad in yellow-marble. The main entrance is composed of three grand, double-height doorways which lead into a three-story atrium lined with Sienna marble. For the grand staircase in the first floor rotunda, Thomas drew inspiration from the Paris Opera House, which led the building to be called the most Parisian thing in New York at the time it was built. There is a magnificent skylight over the atrium, whose restoration Untapped reported on in 2020.
Modern light bulbs in old-fashioned gas lamp fixtures.
The building that is now called the Surrogate’s Courthouse was originally named the Hall of Records. It was constructed to replace the old Hall of Records building, which was built in 1831. It was always planned that the building would contain more than just the city’s archives and records, and when the new Hall of Records opened in 1907, it housed multiple city departments and courts, one of which was the Surrogate’s Court. By the middle of the 20th century, the building was primarily used by the Surrogate’s Court, which occupied the fifth floor and had offices on many of the lower floors. Thus, the building’s name was changed from Hall of Records to Surrogate’s Courthouse in 1962.
However, the basement has always been used to store archives and records, and now it’s the home of both the New York City Municipal Archives and the Department of Records and Information Services (DORIS). The amount of material in the fire-proof basement collection totals over 200,000 cubic feet, housing more than 285,000 newspapers and 66,000 books. Inside this treasure trove are documents from the original Dutch New Amsterdam government and the initial plans for the Brooklyn Bridge. Some of this material is even publicly accessible through the Municipal Library, which is also located in the basement of the Surrogate’s Courthouse.
Surrogate’s Courthouse main atrium.
Just as Olmsted’s design of Central Park lives on in New York, John Thomas’ Hall of Records building continues to grace New York with its Beaux-Arts beauty. These two classic works of nineteenth century design show the value of adaptive reuse and how buildings can change over time to suit the needs of each generation.
STAIRCASE LEADING TO UNDERGROUND TROLLEY STATION AT FOOT OF Q’BORO BRIDGE.
Text by Judith Berdy Thanks to Bobbie Slonevsky for her dedication to Blackwell’s Almanac and the RIHS Thanks to Deborah Dorff for maintaining our website Edited by Melanie Colter and Deborah Dorff
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A while back we featured the work of Maurice Prendergast. Today, we bring back some favorites and newly discovered works found on Wikimedia Commons.
Maurice Prendergast, Park Scene, ca. 1915-1918, watercolor on paper, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of Mrs. Charles Prendergast, 1968.122A
Born in Newfoundland, studied and lived in Boston and Paris, also visited Venice. Post-Impressionist painter whose oils and watercolors are charming scenes of people enjoying the park, the seashore, and other pleasant places.
Charles Sullivan, ed American Beauties: Women in Art and Literature (New York: Henry N. Abrams, Inc., in association with National Museum of American Art, 1993)
Maurice Prendergast was born in St. Johns, Newfoundland, but with the failure of his father’s subarctic trading post the family moved to Boston. There young Maurice was apprenticed to a commercial artist and at the outset was conditioned to the brightly colored, flat patterning effects that characterized his mature work. For many years thereafter loosely handled watercolor remained his favored medium and gave his work vibrant spontaneity.
A shy and retiring individual, he remained a bachelor throughout his life, closely attached to his artist brother Charles, who was also a successful frame maker. For three years Maurice studied in Paris at the Atelier Colarossi and the Académie Julian. During one of his early stays in Paris he met the Canadian painter James Morrice, who introduced him to English avant-garde artists Walter Sickert and Aubrey Beardsley, all ardent admirers of James McNeill Whistler. Prendergast’s aesthetic course was set. A further acquaintance with Vuillard and Bonnard placed him firmly in the postimpressionist camp. He developed and continued to elaborate a highly personal style, with boldly contrasting, jewel-like colors, and flattened, patternlike forms rhythmically arranged on a canvas. Forms were radically simplified and presented in flat areas of bright, unmodulated color. His paintings have been aptly described as tapestry-like or resembling mosaics. A trip to Venice in 1898 exposed him to the delightful genre scenes of Vittore Carpaccio and encouraged him toward even more complex and rhythmic arrangements. He also became one of the first Americans to espouse the work of Cézanne and to understand and utilize his expressive use of form and color.
In 1907, Prendergast was invited to exhibit with the Eight, colleagues of Robert Henri and exponents of the Ashcan school. Prendergast and the romantic symbolist Arthur B. Davies seem oddly mismatched to these urban realists, but all were united in an effort to stir the American art scene out of its conservative lethargy.
In 1913 he was invited to participate in the famed Armory Show, which was largely arranged by his friend Davies. Not surprisingly, Prendergast’s brilliantly unorthodox offerings were decried as resembling “an explosion in a paint factory.” On the same occasion Marcel Duchamp’s Nude Descending a Staircase (1912) was similarly deplored as “an explosion in a shingle factory,” suggesting either a failure of critical imagination or a case of collegial plagiarism. But of the Americans represented there, Prendergast’s works were the most thoroughly modern and postimpressionist.
Who can now pass a playground teeming with brightly dressed children or wander through a public park where the varicolored garb of its occupants does not call to mind the stirring images Maurice Prendergast has left us? As Oscar Wilde once ventured, “Life imitates art far more than art imitates life.”
Emery Battis Artist Biographies for the exhibition American Impressionism: Treasures from the Smithsonian American Art Museum (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian American Art Museum, 2000)
Maurice Prendergast, Holiday in New England, ca. 1910-1911, watercolor, pastel and pencil on paper mounted on paperboard, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of Eugenie Prendergast, 1984.27
WORKS ON WIKIMEDIA COMMONS IN THE PUBLIC DOMAIN TO SEE MORE WIKIMEDIACOMMONS.ORG
Castle Garden, New York, venue of Lind’s first American concerts M.FRANK, LAURA HUSSEY, ANDY SPARBERG & ARON EISENPREISS 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
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In the 1850s, while the crisis over the future of slavery and of “these” (not yet “the”) United States deepened, much of the country enjoyed an economic boom – or more precisely, a wealthy class had emerged in major cities supported by a new upwardly mobile middle class. In New York City, this transformation was colored by the beginning of more modern theater and of a culture hunger (recall P.T. Barnum’s American Museum). With cheap newsprint competing for readers, New Yorkers were enthralled by famous and talented (and of course, often scandalous) women. And we were most fascinated by European imports. In this brief piece, I’ll introduce you to two of the most illustrious of these imported flowers – Jennie Lind and Sara Bernhardt – who graced our city’s stages and won New York’s heart.
Soprano Jenny Lind by Eduard Magnus, 1862 Johanna Maria “Jenny” Lind was the first of these European visitors who swept into the City. Born in Stockholm 1820, Lind was an illegitimate child of a bookkeeper and a schoolteacher. She began to sing onstage when she was 10 and became famous throughout the country; at 20, she was a member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Music and court singer to the King of Sweden and Norway. Known as the “Swedish Nightingale”, Lind was one of the most highly regarded singers of the 19th century, performing opera in Sweden and across Europe. Among her early admirers were Robert Schumann, Hector Berlioz and Felix Mendelssohn – and, after a concert in Copenhagen, Hans Christian Anderson. Queen Victoria attended every one of Lind’s sixteen debut performances in London in 1847.
In 1849, when Lind was in the middle of her third triumphant London season, P. T. Barnum learned of the large audiences she attracted. He had toured Europe in 1845 and 1846 with General Tom Thumb, always searching for new attractions. Barnum had never seen Lind (he had no idea what she looked like) or heard her sing, but he believed sponsoring this Swedish musical star – with, moreover, a reputation for philanthropy – would be a hit in New York.
Lind finally accepted Barnum’s offer of $1,000 a night (plus expenses) for up to 150 concerts in the United States. All told, Barnum committed to $187,500 (approximately $5,833,000 today) to bring Lind and her musical troupe to America. Her tour began in September 1850 and continued to May 1852.
Barnum’s publicity blitz didn’t wait for Lind’s arrival. He made her a celebrity before anyone in New York had seen or heard her – what the press called “Lind Mania”. Tickets for her first concerts were in such demand that Barnum sold them by auction. Barnum marketed all sorts of Jenny Lind-branded products, including songs, clothes, chairs and pianos. Soon, others jumped in– Jenny Lind shirts, Jenny Lind cravats, Jenny Lind gloves, Jenny Lind pocket handkerchiefs, Jenny Lind coats, Jenny Lind hats, and even Jenny Lind sausages.
The New York Herald reported on “the spectacle of some thirty or forty thousand persons congregated on all the adjacent piers” when her ship docked. (Ten times more than met the Beatles in 1964.) Lind kissed her hand to the US flag and exclaimed, “There is the beautiful standard of freedom, which is worshipped by the oppressed of all nations.” She further endeared herself to the crowd by stopping Barnum’s coachman from clearing a path through the throng with his whip.
Almost 5000 tickets were sold for the first concert at a total price of $24,500, with the theatre “packed to its utmost capacity”. When Lind realized how much Barnum stood to make, she renegotiated their contract, giving her now the original $1,000 per concert agreed to, plus the remainder of each concert’s profits after Barnum’s $5,500 concert management fee was paid. Her interest in increasing her earnings was, it seems, genuinely motivated by her determination to accumulate as much money as possible for her chosen charities.
Jenny Lind the Swedish Nightingale. Poster from the collection of the University of Sheffield. Wikipedia
After her performances in New York, Lind’s party toured the east coast of America (in the first private rail car), and on to Cuba, the Southern US and Canada. By early 1851, Lind had become uncomfortable with Barnum’s relentless marketing, and she invoked a contractual right to sever her ties with him; they parted amicably. She continued the tour for nearly a year, under her own management, until May 1852. Under Barnum’s management, Lind gave 93 concerts in the US earning about $350,000 ($10.9 million in 2021 $). She donated her profits to various charities, including free schools in Sweden and some US charities.
Lind was the first of the European transplants. Her soprano voice resonated across the country. She was known for her philanthropy and generous spirit; Church leaders praised her. Our second European visitor, Sarah Bernhardt, could not have been more different. Priests gave sermons denouncing her. While Lind devoted herself to good causes, Bernhardt’s scandalous life screamed from the press around the world. Lind married and lived quietly, while Bernhardt reinvented herself as a public icon, allowing the romances and tragedies of her stage heroines to reflect her own life.
Sarah Bernhardt [1844—1923] was the daughter of a Dutch courtesan who catered to a wealthy clientele. In a career spanning over 60 years, she was viewed as one of the greatest actresses of all time and the first international stage star. Bernhardt performed in Europe, the United States, Canada, South America, Australia, and the Middle East. She managed several theaters in Paris. Mark Twain said of her, “There are five kinds of actresses: bad actresses, fair actresses, good actresses, great actresses, and Sarah Bernhardt.” In France, she was viewed as a national institution – “to criticize her is like criticizing the tomb of Napoleon.” Oscar Wilde cast an armful of lilies at her feet and hailed her as the “Divine Sarah.”
As a young woman, she was encouraged by family friend Alexandre Dumas and supported by her mother’s lover, the Duc de Morny, to join the theater and soon found success. Thin, with a boyish figure, she did not meet the voluptuous standards of the era. Other actresses were more beautiful, but Bernhardt’s presence transcended her art.
Sarah Bernhardt poses next to a bust of herself sculpted by Mathieu-Meusnier in 1869. Melandri/Getty Images
“She possessed an aura of power equaled by no other monstre sacré before or since. Her bizarreries, her scandalous entanglements, enhanced the legend. Her motto, embroidered on her linens, printed on her visiting cards, and engraved on her richly embossed revolver, was Quand Même, which means ‘in spite of everything’ and suggests a defiant ‘damn the consequences.’”
She toured around the world for decades, first performing in New York City in 1880. In New York, advance publicity stirred enormous interest in this woman who was said to keep a tiger cub as a household pet and sleep in a satin-lined coffin (one true, the other not). Anonymous pamphlets appeared—one, “The Love Affairs of Sarah Bernhardt”, accused her of bearing four bastards sired by the czar of Russia, Emperor Napoleon III, Pope Pius IX, and a man guillotined for murdering his father. “Absurd,” Bernhardt remarked, “but it would be better than to have four husbands and no children, like some women in this country!” Clergymen denounced this “monster of the Apocalypse” and threatened theatergoers who saw her with eternal damnation. In Orange, New Jersey, mothers convened to mount a campaign “against this European courtisane who is coming over to corrupt our sons.”
With seats priced at the then outrageous rates of ten, fifteen, and twenty-five dollars, lines to the Booth Theater at Sixth Avenue and Twenty-third Street circled the block. Long before curtain time on opening night the house was sold out. Her most famous role was as the tuberculous courtesan Marguerite Gauthier in Alexandre Dumas fils’s La Dame aux Camélias. She portrayed Marguerite first in New York on November 16, and thereafter some three thousand times.
Throughout Europe, Russia, and North and South America, Bernhardt received from the public (if not the clergy) the kind of homage usually reserved for royalty. Today it may seem inconceivable that a stage actor could attain this level of fame, but in the 19th century theater was the only game in town. Rich and poor alike attended live performances several times a week. London, New York, and Paris drew up to 18 million theatergoers a year. Small towns had theaters too, and the biggest stars traveled to them. One of Bernhardt’s tours included a stop in Muskogee, Oklahoma. In March 1906 she performed in a huge tent seating 5000 in Kansas City, Missouri, and in Dallas and Waco, Texas. She performed for the prisoners at San Quentin Prison.
Sarah Bernhardt by photographer Sarony, 1880 – WikiCommons
She did not back down. When J. P. Morgan learned of Bernhardt’s impending visit to his library on New Year’s Day 1911, he growled, “Actresses are not welcome,” and stalked out. Bernhardt was still there when Morgan returned. She seized him by the necktie and declared, “When I speak, men listen.” The old titan melted, and they remained friends until his death two years later.
Other Europeans would follow – Garbo, Dietrich – but none would turn New York upside down like Lind or Bernhardt.
Stephen Blank RIHS April 21, 2022
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