GOOD NEWS! THE COLORFUL ADIRONDACK CHAIRS ARE ALL SET-UP AT THE FDR FOUR FREEDOMS PARK. THE CHAIRS ARE MOVABLE AND YOU CAN SIT UNDER THE SHADE OF THE LINDEN TREES. A WONDERFUL WAY TO RELAX IN THE PARK!
TUESDAY, JUNE 7, 2022
695th Issue
New York Drinks
Stephen Blank
We were a serious drinking nation from the start. In 1790, drinking-age Americans consumed an average of 5.8 gallons of pure alcohol each year. By 1830, consumption was up to 7.1 gallons. “By 1770, Americans consumed alcohol routinely with every meal. Many people began the day with an ‘eye opener’ and closed it with a nightcap. People of all ages drank, including toddlers, who finished off the heavily sugared portion at the bottom of a parent’s mug of rum toddy.” (W.J. Rorabaugh, “Alcohol in America”, The OAH Magazine of History) Lots of reasons: Alcohol was viewed as a digestive aid and a source of strength; with risky water in many areas, it was considered a safe alternative; and for many farmers, shipping higher value alcohol made more sense than moving corn or grain.
But Americans were soon deeply divided about drink. In the 1820s and ’30s, a wave of religious revivalism swept over the country, leading to increased calls for temperance. In 1838, Massachusetts passed a temperance law limiting the sale of spirits except for commercial use. The law was repealed two years later, but it set a precedent for such legislation. Temperance societies, typically religious groups, sponsored lectures and marches, sang songs, and published tracts that warned about the destructive consequences of alcohol. They promoted the virtues of abstinence and asked folks to sign pledges promising to abstain from all intoxicating beverages. Maine passed the first state prohibition laws in 1846, followed by a stricter law in 1851. Other states joined in. Even the Federal government responded: In 1862 the US Navy abolished the traditional half-pint daily rum ration for sailors, a ration George Washington had demanded for his troops.
New York City never followed along. Successive waves of immigrants – Irish, Germans, Eastern Europeans – enjoyed their drinks, opened saloons and built breweries. An 1883 map shows one 32-block section of the City bordered by The Bowery, Houston, Norfolk and Broome Streets packed with 242 “lager-beer saloons” and 61 “liquor saloons.”
This demands a bit more investigation. New York cocktail enthusiasts have found a mention of the booze-bitters-sugar “cock-tail” in 1806, in a newspaper from Hudson, New York. In Manhattan, famous bartenders embellished this morning pick-me-up, becoming well known across the country. New York City saloon owner “Professor” Jerry Thomas is considered “the father of American mixology”, because of his seminal work on cocktails, Bar-Tender’s Guide. Many content the City was the true home of the cocktail.
Still, I think the talk about early era cocktails in New York City is a bit high hatting. After all, the City was a beer (and lager) town. Much of this is due to the work of German immigrants, who arrived early in the century and brewed so much beer that it inspired a culture of bustling beer gardens and halls. The 1880s was a wonderful time to be a beer drinker in America. In New York City alone, some 8,000 saloons were open. Bear in mind, however, that while well off patrons could frequent more upscale cocktail bars, most saloons were grim sawdust and spit on the floor joints. And most drinkers, at least in public places, were men.
In New York City, the temperance movement failed to gain traction. In Albany, Republican reformers, speaking for rural and small-town churchgoers, had been trying for years to curb public drunkenness. They were also frustrated about New York City’s lax enforcement of so-called Sabbath laws, which included a ban on Sunday drinking. Finally, in 1896, Albany acted to control the sale of alcohol with the Raines Law. • The cost of an annual liquor license was raised to $800 — three times what it had cost before. • Saloons could not open within 200 feet of a church or school. • The New York drinking age was raised from 16 to 18. • Saloons could no longer serve free lunches. • The sale of alcoholic beverages was prohibited on Sundays except in hotels that served guests drinks as part of complimentary meals.
The Sunday drinking ban was widely loathed. Sunday was the only recreational day for many men who worked six-day weeks. But a loophole punctured the new law: Only lodging establishments that served complimentary meals could sell liquor on Sundays, so saloons obtained hotel licenses and rented out space above their taverns so they could serve alcohol with free sandwiches. Within a year, more than 1,500 new “hotels” had sprung up in New York. They served a cheap, inedible and often recycled creature called the “Raines sandwich.” To Eugene O’Neill it was “an old desiccated ruin of dust-laden bread and mummified ham or cheese” that was never consumed, but lived on, served to many tipplers over many months.
The Raines Act had intended to curb public alcohol consumption, but it unintentionally gave countless businesses more freedom to serve liquor, and this sandwich played a part. Ultimately, the loophole became part of a larger social push towards prohibition that led to the 18th Amendment in 1920.
In New York City, the ratification of the 18th Amendment set off a struggle between those determined to resist Prohibition and a dry movement determined to break that resistance. Dry leaders believed that if Prohibition could succeed in New York, it could succeed anywhere.
Many New Yorkers saw Prohibition as a culture war of two differing visions of America, one representing the Protestant values championed by the dry movement, and another that saw a more urban and more ethnically diverse society emerging in the United States. But Prohibition was now enshrined in a Constitutional amendment, and many doubted it could be overturned. By the mid-1920s, attempts to enforce Prohibition had flooded the courts with tens of thousands of liquor cases, and had filled the jails to capacity. Judges expressed frustration and demoralization, and the officers of the NYPD resented being dragged into federal Prohibition enforcement efforts. Bribery and graft inserted themselves into the routine of enforcement, as did outbursts of violence stemming from the illegal liquor trade. But the courts provided no way around the new regime.
Instead, New Yorkers began looking to look for a political path out of the dry experiment. By the mid-1920s, New York would become the headquarters of political resistance to Prohibition as a generation of political leaders took increasingly public positions against the dry amendment. Mayor James J. Walker embodied the cosmopolitan air of 1920s. Governor Alfred E. Smith became the most prominent national political figure to stake his position as an opponent of Prohibition. Smith sought to reign in Prohibition enforcement in New York, most notably repealing the Mullan-Gage Law which called for local law enforcement agencies in New York to work with federal officers to enforce Prohibition. Fiorello LaGuardia rallied the wet cause. Mayor LaGuardia embodied immigrant New York just as much as Walker or Smith. His political leanings differed, as he was a Republican who opposed the Tammany Hall machine with fervor, but like Walker and Smith, LaGuardia was vocal in his opposition to Prohibition.
New Yorkers also voted with their feet, and frequented the increasing number of illegal liquor joints, “speakeasies”. New York saloons and bars did not really close down with Prohibition. They went underground in basements, attics, upper floors, and disguised as other businesses, such as cafes, soda shops, and entertainment venues and many quickly became established institutions. Some said every legitimate saloon that closed was replaced by a half dozen illegal gin joints. Locked doors, passwords and hidden liquor supplies were one of the changes Prohibition brought. Another was the new role of women in this world. They were no longer just decoration – dancers, chorus girls or singers. Having been long banned from the saloons of the past, “regular” women found easy entrance into these new establishments.
Just six months after Prohibition became law in 1920, women won the right to vote, and coming into their own, they enjoyed their newfound freedoms. The Jazz Age marked a loosening up of morals, the exact opposite of what its Prohibition advocates had intended. With short skirts and bobbed hair, they flooded the speakeasies, daring to smoke cigarettes and drink cocktails. Dancing to the jazz tunes of such soon to be famous jazz greats as Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, Bojangles Robinson, and Ethel Waters, their powdered faces, bright red lips, and bare arms and legs displayed an abandon never before seen by American women.
Quickly, both Prohibition and jazz music was blamed for the immorality of women, and young people were attracted to the glamour of speakeasies and began to drink in large numbers. The new era was described by Hoagy Carmichael: “It came in with a bang of bad booze, flappers with bare legs, jangled morals and wild weekends.”
New York City resisted temperance and fought against Prohibition. Eventually, under the leadership of President Franklin Roosevelt, another New Yorker, the 18th Amendment was overturned. And, perhaps, too, the sudsy City was the home of some of the most delicious cocktails and famous bartenders in they world.
Smiling bartenders and customers celebrate the return of legal beer, April 7, 1933.Credit The New York Times
PART OF EAST RIVER PROMENADE BEING RECONSTRUCTED TO BECOME ANDREW HASWELL GREEB PARK
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 Melanie Colter and Deborah Dorff
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To LaGuardia for less than $2.00? What a bargain (senior fare). I decided to check our the new Delta Terminal C at La Guardia. Today is day 1 for the terminal, the second one to be “completed” in this massive reconstruction.
At Roosevelt Avenue exit the subway station into the massive marketplace of shops from all over the world. A few steps from the station is the platform for the Q70 bus to the airport. No fare needed, just hop of the articulated vehicle and in a few minutes you are on the highway and almost at the airport. As you approach the terminals there is a labrynth of roads and intersections.
Soon we are on the lower arrivals lever, with no signs of what airlines are in the terminal above us. It is still a construction site in many ways. We drive right by the new Delta Terminal C and are dropped off about 1,000 feet farther down the road.
We are in front of the old Delta terminal that is now closed. An attendant is there and tells us to walk back to the new terminal C!! Why is the no stop closer to our destination? The answer is that this is a construction site or even better “they haven’t figured out that yet”. Only in New York.
I walk back to terminal.; with all those passengers hauling their luggage.
Inside the news is better…………sort of.
A vast check-In area, nice and quiet on a Saturday afternoon. Acres of empty kiosks. Not a seat to be found if you need to rest or wait for someone.
By the escalator leading up to the security area is a mural “The Travelers’ Broken Crowd” by Rashid Johnson. The work represent 60 agitated faces of travelers with wide eyes and clenched mouths done in mosaics.
The vast security area is broken by a series of screens with ever changing scenes and graphic above the entire length of the waiting area. Something to keep your mind occupied as you snake your way forward. to our friends at TSA.
MY FAVORITE IS THE LIGHTING SCULPTURES MADE FROM RECYCLES SKYLIGHTS
Virginia Overton, Skylight Gems at New York’s LaGuardia Airport. Photo courtesy of the Queens Museum.
From the NY Times:
Known for her sculptures made from recycled materials that respond directly to architectural spaces, Virginia Overton has installed a dozen large and glowing gem shapes crafted from New York City skylights that dangle at varying heights through a three-story atrium in the arrivals and departures hall.
“I wanted to make something that was indicatively New York,” she said. Overton, who grew up in Nashville, remembers her father’s stories of flying in low over New York on business trips and looking down on buildings with dramatic skylights. These days, in her Brooklyn studio, she often finds herself staring up at the skylights. “When you’re inside a building, that’s where you look up and move from ground to sky, which felt like the right gesture for the airport,” she said.Each of her 12 sculptures contains large panes of old-fashioned security glass set into geometrically faceted metal armatures, up to nine feet long, that Overton dragged from salvage shops and sometimes the garbage. She then replicated the mirror half of each skylight to create jewel-like forms that are lit from within. Floating sideways, these gritty and magical beacons come into focus as you approach. “Hopefully it will engage people who’ve just flown in to New York and recognize the skylights from some of the buildings around here,” said Overton, “and encourage people to look up and down.”
On a wall of Delta’s arrivals and departures hall, the artist Ronny Quevedo has mounted a full-scale wooden gym floor fabricated from scratch.Credit…Justin Kaneps for The New York Times
NOW TO CLAIM YOUR BAGGAGE
On the walls of the vast baggage claim area the wall is decorated by: “The Worlds We Speak” by Miriam Ghani has discs that represent the city’s linguistic communities. The small discs each state one language or greeting from the many parts of our city.
NO WHERE TO WAIT AND SIT, ALMOST
The only place to get a cup of coffee is a lone Starbucks in the far corner of baggage claim. There are about 8 seats around phone chargers in the arrivals area.
Got your luggage, exit and walk back to the old “Transportation Center” about 1,000 feet in front of the old terminal. Luckily, the Q70 bus is free and off to Roosevelt Avenue.
COMMENT
First, the artwork is great and the new open look with views out the window is a relief from the dreaded old La Guardia terminals.
I complain about things: one is attitude of architects, designers and airlines have removed many comforts for today’s travelers in the name of security.
To be in a terminal where there are thousands of square feet of vast open floors and not one chair to sit on. Disability access is more than providing a wheelchair, but making all customers comfortable.
There are bathrooms at the far end of each floor, luckily.
There is one Starbucks, no seats here.
I understand there is no money to be made in the arrivals area, no shops, no people waiting to depart.
Just get your bags and leave. It is apparent that customer service is only beyond TSA where people can spend before their flights.
FDR FOUR FREEDOMS STATE PARK READY FOR PRIDE MONTH!
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)
JUDITH BERDY NEW YORK TIMES QUEENS MUSEUM
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A premier assemblagist who elevated the box to a major art form, Joseph Cornell also was an accomplished collagist and filmmaker, and one of America’s most innovative artists. When his sister and brother-in-law, Mr. and Mrs. John A. Benton, donated a collection of his works and related documentary material in 1978, the NMAA [now the Smithsonian American Art Museum] established the Joseph Cornell Study Center.
Born on Christmas Eve, 1903, Joseph Cornell was raised in an affluent, closeknit family in Nyack, New York. He attended Phillips Academy in Andover, Massachusetts, as a science major between 1917 and 1921, but did not graduate. While working as a textile salesman in New York between 1921 and 1931, Cornell began exploring the city and its cultural resources, and converted to Christian Science, thereafter a major influence on his life and work. In 1929, his family moved to Flushing, New York, where he lived until his death on December 29, 1972.
His art has been described as romantic, poetic, lyrical and surrealistic. Self-taught but amazingly sophisticated, he created his first collages, box constructions and experimental films in the 1930s. By 1940, his boxes contained found materials artfully arranged, then collaged and painted to suggest poetic associations inspired by the arts, humanities and sciences.
He believed aesthetic theories were foreign to the origin of his art but said his works were based on everyday experiences, “the beauty of the commonplace.” An insatiable collector, he acquired thousands of examples of printed and three-dimensional ephemera — searching the libraries, museums, theaters, book shops and antique fairs in New York and relying on his contacts across the United States and in Europe. With these objects, he created magical relationships by seamlessly combining disparate images.
Cornell was an imaginative and private man who, mingling fantasy and reality, produced works outstanding not only for their originality and craftsmanship but for their complexity and diversity.
Joseph Cornell, Cockatoo: Keepsake Parakeet, 1949-1953, wooden cutout, paper, spring, and found objects in a glass-fronted wood box, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of Donald Windham, 2003.69
In Cockatoo: Keepsake Parakeet, a bird is perched in its white-walled cage; a coiled spring from a watch is its lone companion. Mementos fill the drawer beneath the cage: a pink plastic charm of an Indian drawing a bow, a paper candy box, French music sheets, and other ephemera. Joseph Cornell gave this box to Donald Windham as a token of thanks for writing the forward in his 1949 exhibition catalogue The Aviaries. The show debuted Cornell’s new bird themed boxes, which were inspired by looking into the windows of a pet store.
Cornell’s extensive collection of contemporary periodicals and antique books served as source material for his artwork. The lesser lemon-crested cockatoo in the shadow box is from the nineteenth-century book Parrots in Captivity by W. T. Greene. Cornell had several copies of the book from which he cut out images of birds to glue to wooden supports, some of which were left waiting for future, unbuilt boxes. Although many feature the same bird, no two works are alike.
Americana: Natural Philosophy (What Makes the Weather?) is one variant in a series of collages featuring the young boy in John Singleton Copley’s 1771 painting, Daniel Crommelin Verplanck. Joseph Cornell takes the boy out of his home environment and transposes him into a Western landscape, with the natural wonders of the American frontier just over his shoulder. Cornell considered Copley to be one of the first “American artists who worked out their own style of seeing.” While paying homage to a great artist of the past, Cornell brings weight to the collage by juxtaposing Copley’s boy and the glowing landscape with cutouts from children’s books that illustrate scientific phenomena like rainbows and circumpolar constellations. The collage is a merger of Cornell’s fantasy and reality, and a contemporary response to the technological advancements and exciting discoveries of the Space Age.
Joseph Cornell, Soap Bubble Set, 1949-1950, glasses, pipes, printed paper, and other media in a glass-fronted wood box, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Museum purchase made possible by the American Art Forum, 1999.91
Soap Bubble Set offers a theatrical glimpse into the cosmos. Situated on Earth, the viewer observes the mountains and valleys of the moon, first discovered by Galileo Galilei in 1610. The glasses, holding specimens of land and sea, embody the gravitational pull of the earth, perhaps in relation to the lunar influence on tides. The freely moving sphere rolls between the opposing forces while cutouts of shells, stars, and other references to the natural world float above. Following Edwin Hubble’s confirmation of the rapidly expanding universe in 1929, the metaphor of a swelling soap bubble proliferated in the popular press. For Cornell, who had a long-standing interest in astronomy and stayed abreast of breaking news, this metaphor would have resonated with his own memories of blowing bubbles with clay pipes as a child and the wonder of their creation. Cornell’s series of Soap Bubble Sets, sometimes called planetariums, is a decade-long rumination on the great astronomers of the past and the contemporary discoveries and innovations in space technology.
Joseph Cornell, Untitled (Oriental painting of bird with cherry blossoms), 1964, collage, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of The Joseph and Robert Cornell Memorial Foundation, 1991.155.49
Joseph Cornell, Untitled (unidentified 17th century Dutch portrait of a young blond girl in a green dress), n.d., collage, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of The Joseph and Robert Cornell Memorial Foundation, 1991.155.189
Joseph Cornell, Untitled, mixed media: wood: stained, paper, paint, decal…, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of The Joseph and Robert Cornell Memorial Foundation, 1985.64.51
Joseph Cornell, Untitled (astrological sign for Pisces), 1970, collage, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of The Joseph and Robert Cornell Memorial Foundation, 1991.155.282
Joseph Cornell, Untitled (female in three-quarter pose wearing beaded earrings), n.d., collage, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of The Joseph and Robert Cornell Memorial Foundation, 1991.155.131
FREEDOMLAND, FORMER AMUSEMENT PARK IN THE BRONX, NOW THE SITE OF CO-OP CITY. ED LITCHER GOT IT!!
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
SMITHSONIAN AMERICAN ART MUSEUM
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Jackson Heights is an early-20th-century neighborhood in central Queens, composed of low-rise garden apartments and houses as well as institutional and commercial buildings. It was the first and remains the largest garden-apartment community in the United States— the product of both the early 20th-century model tenement and the Garden City movements. Starting in the late 19th century, poor living conditions in city slums resulted in reform efforts to improve urban housing. As a result, light, ventilation and open green space became key pieces in the design of new developments. This is particularly evident in Jackson Heights.
Queens grew rapidly in the early 20th century, beginning with the opening of the Queensboro Bridge in 1909 and accelerated by the arrival of the elevated subway in 1917. These transportation routes established fast, direct connections between Jackson Heights and Manhattan and the thriving industrial area of Long Island City. Beginning in 1910 the Queensboro Corporation started developing former farmland into an idyllic residential alternative to crowded Manhattan. Development continued until 1950, by which time all of the vacant land in the area was built up.
The Queensboro Corporation required that builders and developers not otherwise affiliated with the corporation adhere to strict design requirements. The picturesque residences were designed in Georgian, Tudor, Gothic, Italian Renaissance and Spanish Romanesque styles. Decorative brickwork, loggias and slate roofs are quintessential design elements found in the architecture. Institutional and commercial buildings were produced to match the residential. The continuity of design throughout Jackson Heights is its most defining feature, but the community is home to many other innovations, including some of the first purpose-built cooperatives in New York City for the middle class. The first passenger-operated elevator in the world debuted here in 1922. Most importantly, Jackson Heights was the first community in the United States where green space was provided as part of the architecture—a “garden city.”
The development of Jackson Heights reversed many of the traditional architectural and planning concepts of the time. Entire city blocks were designed as a whole, as opposed to developing lots individually. Additionally, only 40% of each block was built up, leaving the remaining 60% for open green space. By contrast, it was commonplace in Manhattan to build as densely as 90% on a block, to reap as much profit as possible. In Jackson Heights, structures were typically built around the perimeter of a city block, and they enclosed landscaped gardens at the center, giving the buildings the name of “garden apartments.” Apartments had views of both the street and the interior courtyard, allowing light and breezes in and creating a sense of openness.
Jackson Heights was designated as a New York City historic district in 1993, and an extension of those boundaries, which would meet those of the 1998 National Register Historic District, is currently being sought. This would include buildings that, due to the restrictions placed upon them by the Queensboro Corporation, possess the same quality design, materials and scale of the earliest buildings creating historic Jackson Heights.
ENGLISH GARDEN HOMES
33–18 to 33–44 83rd Street Alfred H. Eccles 1928
Along 83rd Street there are 13 English Garden homes, each three stories high. The houses in the middle have slate mansard roofs, while those on the ends have front facing gabled roofs with side-facing dormers. All of these structures have continuous brick band courses under the second-story windows and feature cast-stone window boxes with brick brackets under the first-floor windows.
HILLCREST COURT
70–35 Broadway S. L. Malkind 1926
This six story apartment building has its primary entrance on Broadway, making it the only structure in the historic area located on that thoroughfare. Hillcrest Court is on an unusual triangular lot and features five towers, each connected by a recessed wing located in the middle of the building. Highlights include brickwork that simulates quoins and colonnaded loggias that top the Broadway towers.
SPANISH TOWER HOMES
34–30 to 34–52 75th Street J. Case & Peter Schreiner 1927
The Spanish Tower Homes include 10 three- and four-story detached tan brick houses. The first floors of these dwellings have no windows and instead feature French doors that open on to wrought-iron balconettes. Some windows on upper floors have original wood shutters, and the corner houses feature fourth-floor loggias. These houses have shared driveways with detached garages in the rear.
THE TOWERS
33–15 to 33–51 80th Street and 33–16 to 33–52 81st Street Andrew J. Thomas 1924
The Towers are composed of eight freestanding U-shape buildings, four on 80th Street and four on 81st Street. The buildings are placed back-to-back and enclose an interior garden that is accessed by gated entrances located between the buildings. The yellow-brick apartment design is inspired by Italian Romanesque and Renaissance architecture; highlights include red-tile roofs, arcaded sixth-story loggias and tower belvederes.
WASHINGTON PLAZA
73–12 35th Avenue Sylvan Breine 1940
Washington Plaza consists of seven buildings: six, six story apartment buildings and a single-story gatehouse. These Art Deco buildings are red brick and feature decorative geometric banding and round-cornered fire escapes. The most intriguing part of this apartment complex is Washington Plaza Park, designed by the architect in 1941. The .54-acre park begins behind the gatehouse, where a path divides to surround a cascading pool before leading to a separate pool at the top of the complex. Stepped paths surround each pool and are accompanied by many gardens. Some of the plantings found in the park include silver birch, flowering crabapple and white dogwood trees, rhododendrons, red and pink azalea, roses, forsythia, pink mountain laurel and hydrangea. There is also an herb garden of basil, parsley, chive, dill and rosemary.
Built to house the 1939 New York City World’s Fair Pavilion by Aymar Embury III, one of Robert Moses’ favorite designers in a modern classical style. After the first fair, the building housed the General Assembly of the newly formed United Nations, from 1946 to 1950.The building was again used, during the 1964 World’s Fair, to house the New York City Pavilion, and finally in 1972 the building was given to the Queens Museum of Arts and Culture, which is currently called the Queens Museum. ED LITCHER
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Ella Fitzgerald, America’s “First Lady of Song” (born in 1917 in Newport News, Virginia), got her start as a teenager by winning an amateur singing contest at the Apollo Theater in Harlem. She made her first recording in 1936, and in 1938 found fame with a hit rendition of “A-Tisket, A-Tasket,” recorded with the Chick Webb Orchestra. Fitzgerald was a tireless performer, beloved and admired by audiences for her remarkable vocal range and indelible personal style. Nevertheless, she kept her personal life quite private. After a brief first marriage that ended in annulment, Fitzgerald married renowned jazz double bassist Ray Brown in 1948. Their marriage lasted only four years, during which time they lived in this impressive Tudor Revival style house. Fitzgerald later resided in a home in the Addisleigh Park Historic District in eastern Queens until 1967, and died at her Beverly Hills home in 1996.
BILL KENNY HOME
109-04 31st Avenue c. 1925
This American Craftsman style residence was home to William Francis Kenny, Jr., known professionally as Bill Kenny, a pioneering tenor vocalist with the Ink Spots, a popular vocal group that prefigured doo-wop and rock and roll. Kenny, whose vocal range spanned four octaves, joined the Ink Spots in 1939 at the age of 17, and sang on the group’s first hit, “If I Didn’t Care,” with fellow East Elmhurst resident Orville “Hoppy” Jones. Kenny shared the home with his wife, Audrey, and their daughter. Kenny, as one of the Ink Spots, was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1989.
JOHN BIRKS “DIZZY” GILLESPIE HOME / LOUIS
ARMSTRONG HOUSE105-19 37th Avenue, 1921-22 34-55 107th Street, Robert W. Johnson, 1910
Located only a block apart are the residences of two jazz legends: great friends and nominal musical rivals John Birks “Dizzy” Gillespie and Louis Armstrong. In the 1940s Gillespie (born in 1917 in South Carolina), made a name for himself as a trumpeter and bandleader in the New York City jazz scene, and is regarded today as one of the fathers of bebop. Gillespie owned and lived in this three-family Colonial Revival style building from 1952-66. Cornetist Louis Armstrong (born in 1901 in New Orleans) lived in this Renaissance Revival style rowhouse with his wife Lucille from 1943 until his death in 1971.
Over four decades the Armstrongs left their mark on the house, which remains virtually the same as they left it—from the flamboyant 1970s decor, to the musical memorabilia, to the outdoor bar they installed in the garden for entertaining. After Lucille passed away in 1983, the house was donated by the Louis Armstrong Educational Foundation to the NYC Department of Cultural Affairs. In 2003 the house opened to the public as a museum, still owned by the city but managed by Queens College.
The house next door at 34- 52 107th Street serves as the museum’s administrative building. It was bequeathed to the museum by Selma Heraldo, a good friend to the Armstrongs, after her death in 2011. Honoring Heraldo’s gift, the NYC Department of Design and Construction is restoring the house and renovating the interior to better serve the museum.
The Louis Armstrong House is an Individual Landmark and listed on the State and National Register of Historic Places.
LANGSTON HUGHES COMMUNITY LIBRARY AND CULTURAL CENTER
100-01 Northern Boulevard Davis Brody Bond 1999
Now part of Queens Library, the Langston Hughes Community Library and Cultural Center was established in 1969 in response to local efforts to create a library and community center focused on the history and needs of the area’s African-American community. Local residents, including former Queens Borough President Helen M. Marshall, who served as the library’s first executive director before entering the political sphere, formed the Library Action Committee of Corona- East Elmhurst, Inc., which staffed the library from its opening until 1987 and is still responsible for operating the library’s Homework Assistance and Cultural Arts Programs. This purpose-built structure is the institution’s second home; its first was located in a former Woolworth’s department store on Northern Boulevard—the site of a civil rights struggle to break the color barrier for hiring in Queens. The library opened two years after Hughes’ death and includes a large collection of materials by and about the poet. The new building includes gallery, auditorium, research, archival and children’s spaces to hold its many performances, lectures and events celebrating black history and culture. The library is home to the Black Heritage Reference Center of Queens County, housing New York State’s largest public circulating collection of materials on the black experience, estimated at roughly 45,000 titles and including approximately 1,000 theses and dissertations on black literature. The institution is a touchstone in the community and an important reminder of the importance of advocacy and activism.
MALCOLM X, EL-HAJJ MALIK EL- SHABAZZ HOME
23-11 97th Street, Malcolm X Place 1925
Malcolm X, civil rights leader and former figurehead of the Nation of Islam, lived in this bungalow with his family from 1959 to 1965. Born Malcolm Little in Omaha, Nebraska, in 1925, by the 1940s he was living in Boston, where he was arrested for robbery and sent to prison. During his incarceration, Little was introduced to the religious and political movement known as the Nation of Islam (NOI), and corresponded regularly with its leader Elijah Muhammad. Before his release in 1952, Malcolm joined the NOI and changed his name to “Malcolm X”. In 1960, Malcolm established Nation of Islam Temple 7B at 105-01 Northern Boulevard, just blocks from the original Langston Hughes Community Library and Cultural Center. It is now the Masjid Nuriddin & Clara Muhammad School. In March of 1964, Malcolm X publicly announced his break from the NOI, and in April, flew to Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, at the start of his Hajj (pilgrimage to Mecca). He thereafter became known as el-Hajj Malik el-Shabazz. Upon his return he expressed that seeing Muslims of all races and backgrounds interacting as equals led him to see Islam as a means by which racial problems could be overcome. After his break with the organization, the NOI began eviction proceedings to remove Malcolm X and his family from the house on 97th Street, although Malcolm Little was the signature on the deed. On February 14, 1965, the home was set ablaze by Molotov cocktails. The family escaped the fire and was given refuge by neighborhood residents. One week later, on February 21, 1965, Malcolm was assassinated while making a speech at the Audubon Ballroom in Harlem. Malcolm X’s presence is still felt in the community and he is a revered local figure. In 2005, the street in front of the house was renamed Malcolm X Place.
CLARIFICATION THE NEUSTADT ARTICLE MENTIONS TOURS OF THE ARCHIVE. THE TOUR LISTED WAS FROM LAST YEAR, PLEASE CHECK THEIR WEBSITE FOR INFORMATION ON TOURS AND THE EXHIBIT AT THE QUEENS MUSEUM.
KEHINDE WILEY, GO 2020 IN MOYNIHAN TRAIN HALL LAURA HUSSEY, VICKI FEINMEL, ALEXIS VILLAFANE ALL GOT IT !!!
Text by Judith Berdy Thanks to Bobbie Slonevsky for her dedication to Blackwell’s Almanac and the RIHS Thanks to Deborah Dorff for maintaining our website Edited by Deborah Dorff All image are copyrighted (c)
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Tucked inside an unmarked warehouse in Long Island City, there is a priceless assortment of Tiffany glass, a colorful assemblage of odds and ends that make up part of the largest Tiffany collection ever assembled. Brilliant pieces of flat glass in sheets and shards and beguiling glass “jewels,” more than a quarter of a million pieces in total, are stored in towering rows of shelves and drawers. These pieces were salvaged from the Tiffany Studios in Corona, Queens when it shut down in 1937, and were acquired by a Dr. Egon Neustadt in 1967. While pieces of Neustadt’s collection are on display in the Queens Museum, the New-York Historical Society and in travelling exhibitions, the Glass Archives have remained largely unseen by the public. Untapped New York recently got to explore inside the Archive, and a select, lucky few can do the same each month on one of the Archive’s new behind-the-scenes tours. These tours are only offered to six people at a time, but if you are an Untapped New York Insider, you can join us on one of two, free, members-only tours on November 8th. Not a member yet? Become an Insider today to gain access to free behind-the-scenes tours and special events all year long! Take a look inside the Archives to see what treasures you will discover.
Dr. Egon Neustadt and his wife Hildegard started their Tiffany collection in 1935 when they purchased a Tiffany lamp for their Flushing apartment at a second-hand shop in Greenwich Village for $12.50. As Dr. Neustadt’s professional career as an orthodontist and real estate developer flourished, they began to collect even more variations of Tiffany work, such as windows and bronze desk sets. When the Tiffany Studio in Queens shut down in 1937, its remaining stock was liquidated. In 1967, the Neustadts came into possession of these pieces.
The Neustadt’s collection provides an invaluable resource for the study of Tiffany’s legacy. The Glass Archive contains examples of nearly every color and technique employed in Tiffany designs. From the elegant and three-dimensional drapery glass that mimics the look of fabric, to the multi-colored “Foliage” glass or “confetti” glass used to depict dense vegetation, the Archive illustrates the mastery Tiffany achieved within the craft of glassmaking and the many creative ways he bent the medium to the artistic goals of his Studio.
Since the 1960s, The Neustadt has been incorporated as a non-profit organization. The museum works to preserve, study and share the collection’s history and beauty with the public. In addition to caring for the collection, The Neustadt is also gathering oral histories from the families of former Tiffany employees in order to record and preserve the names and stories of the people who played an important role in Louis C. Tiffany’s success. Over the years, The Neustadt collection has been expanded through purchases and gifts of artwork, archival materials and ephemera.
The Neustadt now offers monthly tours for small groups of just six visitors at a time. If you are an Untapped New York Insider, you can join us on one of two members-only tours on Friday, November 8th, for free! The tours will be led by Lindsy Parrott, the Executive Director and Curator of The Neustadt Collection of Tiffany Glass. On this tour, guests will see the collection come to life with dazzling lighting demonstrations and an up-close at the stunning glass pieces. Participants will learn the secrets behind Tiffany’s groundbreaking innovations in glassmaking and his revolutionary contributions to the art of stained glass.
VICKI FEINMEL, GLORIA HERMAN, ED LITCHER, JAY JACOBSON ALL GOT IT RIGHT!
Text by Judith Berdy Thanks to Bobbie Slonevsky for her dedication to Blackwell’s Almanac and the RIHS Thanks to Deborah Dorff for maintaining our website Edited by Melanie Colter and Deborah Dorff
All image are copyrighted (c) Roosevelt Island Historical Society unless otherwise indicated:
UNTAPPED NEW YORK NEUSTADT COLLECTIION
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