In 1905, former steel magnate Henry Phipps donated $1 million to construct cleaner, more spacious apartments—”model tenements” as they were known at the time—for poor and working-class New Yorkers.
Henry Phipps’ Fifth Avenue home
At about the same time, he had embarked on another ambitious house-building project: that of his own new Fifth Avenue mansion. It would be across the street from the five-story townhouse he moved into at 6 East 87th Street after relocating to New York City from Pittsburgh a few years earlier, according to Christopher Gray in the New York Times.
The mansion appears to have been completed first. Described by Gray as “a low, broad Renaissance design of marble with a wide garden and driveway,” the magnificent house at the northeast corner of Fifth Avenue and 87th Street sat just four blocks from the colossal mansion of his former partner at Union Iron Mills, Andrew Carnegie.
Like Carnegie’s mansion, Phipps’ house resisted the hideous architectural flourishes of some of the other Gilded Age palaces on Fifth Avenue, such as the ghastly mansion built by mining millionaire and senator William A. Clark ten blocks south at 77th Street.
The mansion’s second floor hallway
Facing away from Fifth, the Phipps house was surrounded by a gated low brick fence, behind which was a circular driveway. The mansion conveyed a sense of elegance but also privacy—perfect for Phipps, a low-key philanthropist who began funding research on tuberculosis after earning a reported $40-$50 million from the 1901 sale of Union Iron Mills, which became U.S. Steel.
Henry Phipps and his wife, Anna, 1910-1915
Not long after the mansion was done, the first of Phipps’ model tenements, 325-335 East 31st Street, was move-in ready. Roughly 800 residents occupying 150 new, airy apartments enjoyed steam heat, hot water, laundry facilities, tub baths, and rooms with windows that opened to the outside. The new flats even had a hedged roof garden, where kids could play.
“Henry Phipps, the millionaire philanthropist whose name has been so prominently associated with the war against tuberculosis, built the tenement as a place of comfortable living and of education,” wrote the New York Times in 1911.
Phipps Houses, East 31st Street, east of Second Avenue
In 1907, another Phipps model tenement went up on West 63rd Street (below), in the impoverished, mostly African-American neighborhood of San Juan Hill. In 1911, a third Phipps building was completed a block away on West 64th Street, according to Mike Wallace’sGreater Gotham: A History of New York City From 1898-1919.
Other Phipps model tenements were planned, but nothing was built until 1931, when the company “put up Phipps Garden Apartments in Sunnyside, Queens, an intelligent and idealistic complex,” wrote Gray. “Rather than trying to solve the housing problem of the inner city—which was the goal in 1905—the Sunnyside apartments sought to draw its residents to an entirely new environment.”
Phipps Model Tenements, 235-247 West 63rd Street
After that, Phipps’ model tenement movement unfortunately fizzled out. As other idealistic builders of model tenements discovered, it seems that middle class folks ended up moving in. Inevitably the rent on a flat would become out of reach for the poor, who are forced back into dank, dark tenements, a Times article from 1912 explains. The nonprofit Phipps Houses still exists, providing affordable housing and other services to low-income New Yorkers.
Phipps house in 1927, destined for the wrecking ball
Phipps’ Fifth Avenue mansion didn’t last very long either. In 1930, the highly respected philanthropist died at 91. His obituary says of his mansion, “it gave way to the apartment house builder four years ago.”
Congregation Shaaray Tefila, 127 West 44th Street. Henry Fernbach, arch. (1869).
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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In our article the other day on Mount Saint VIncent, there was a mention of a small Jewish cemetery located on the site. Here is the history of the Shaaray Tefila Cemetery.
This detail from an 1856 plan for Central Park depicts Shaaray Tefila’s cemetery (denoted as “Jews’ Cemetery”) at 105th Street west of Fifth Ave
In 1845, a group of about 50 English and Dutch members of B’nai Jeshurun seceded from the synagogue to form Congregation Shaaray Tefila (Gates of Prayer). Shaaray Tefila built their first synagogue in 1846 on Wooster Street and continues today at their present temple on 79th Street in the Upper East Side.
The first concern of the new organization was the purchase of property for a burial ground and in January of 1846—before Shaaray Tefila was yet legally incorporated—two founding members, Morland Micholl and John I. Hart (both former presidents of B’nai Jeshurun) acquired land for this purpose. Situated on the south side of 46th Street, between Ninth and Tenth Avenues, the property purchased by Micholl and Hart was quickly found not to be suitable for burials and was resold. On November 24, 1846, Louis Levy (Shaaray Tefila’s first president) purchased another parcel, on 105th Street near Fifth Avenue, that would go on to serve as Shaaray Tefila’s cemetery for the next decade. Levy transferred ownership of the property to the congregation when they received their charter in 1848.
Diagram from an archaeological survey of Central Park, showing the location of the site of Shaaray Tefila’s former cemetery within the modern Conservatory Garden
Shaaray Tefila’s cemetery was located on the south side of 105th Street, west of Fifth Avenue, at the north end of today’s Central Park. The burial ground, 100 x 100 feet, was in the area now part of the Conservatory Garden. Just west of the former cemetery site is the Mount, where the Sisters of Charity established the religious community of Mount St. Vincent in 1847. Construction of Central Park forced both the Sisters of Charity and Shaaray Tefila to abandon their properties here. In 1856, Shaaray Tefila purchased a portion of the land held by its parent congregation, B’nai Jeshurun, at Beth Olam Cemetery in the Cypress Hills area of Brooklyn, and the two congregations decided to administer their burial grounds together. Remains from Shaaray Tefila’s 105th Street Cemetery were removed to their new burial ground at Beth Olam in 1857, at “very heavy expense to the Congregation,” according to an auditor’s report from June of that year.
A notice for the dedication of Morland Micholl’s monument at Shaaray Tefila’s 105th Street cemetery in 1854
It is not known how many members of Shaaray Tefila were interred in the 105th Street cemetery before its closure, but among their number was founding member Morland Micholl (mentioned above). A native of Chesham, England, Micholl was interred at the 105th Street cemetery when he died of a “short and severe illness” at age 56 in 1853. He was a prominent member of the city’s Jewish community for 30 years, and his obituary in The Asmonean asserts “his integrity as a merchant, his uprightness as a citizen, his piety as a religionist, and his charity as a man.” Friends of the late Mr. Micholl assembled at the 105th Street cemetery on October 29, 1854, to dedicate his monument—a 10-foot-tall marble obelisk that faced the cemetery’s entrance. Micholl’s monument would stand for just a few years before the cemetery’s removal to Beth Olam, where he is now laid to rest.
2018 aerial photo of the Conservatory Garden at Central Park; arrow shows approximate location of the Shaaray Tefila cemetery site (NYCThen&Now)
Associated Press Building Completed. Soaring above the entrance to the Associated Press Building is Isamu Noguchi’s News, the first heroic-sized sculpture ever cast in stainless steel.
CLARA BELLA, VICKI FEINMEL,LAURA HUSSEY, JINNY EWALD, EL LITCHER & ARLENE BESSENOFF 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 Deborah Dorff All image are copyrighted (c)
Sources
Sources: Plan of Buildings at Mount St. Vincent, Fourth Division—Central Park (Bacon 1856); New York County Conveyances, Vol 467, p520-522, Vol 489 p212-214, Vol 485, p207-208, Vol 668, p256-258 “United States, New York Land Records, 1630-1975,”FamilySearch; “Morland Micholl,” The Asmonean, Apr 22, 1853; “Special Notice,” The Asmonean, Oct 27 1854; “Monument to the late Morland Micholl,” The Asmonean, Nov 3, 1854; “The Cemeteries,” The Asmonean, Feb 22, 1856; “Shaaray Tefilla and the Cemetery Question,” The Asmonean, Jul 4, 1856; “The Cemetery Question,” The Asmonean, Aug 29, 1856; “Auditor’s Report: Congregation ‘Gates of Prayer,’” The Jewish Messenger, Jun 5, 1857; A Preliminary Historical and Archaeological Assessment of Central Park to the North of the 97th Street Transverse…(Hunter Research, Inc.1990); Shaaray Tefila: A History of its Hundred Years, 1845-1945 (Cohen 1945); National Register of Historic Places Nomination Form—Beth Olam Cemetery, Jan 2016; “Prepare for Death and Follow Me:”An Archaeological Survey of the Historic Period Cemeteries of New York City(Meade 2020)
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THE BEST PUBLIC ART INSTALLATIONS IN NYC TO SEE IN AUGUST 2022
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This summer and fall, Thomas Paine Park will host artist Jaime Miranda-Bambarén’s sculpture installation Seeds (13 Moons). Situated in front of courthouses and the Jacob Javits Federal Building are 13 wooden seed sculptures. Interactive in nature, the sculptures invite their viewers to explore their unique crevices with every part of their body.
Raised_The Floating Playground. Courtesy of Eirini Linardaki.
Located at Owl’s Head Park is Eirini Linardaki’s faux-marble sculpture, Raised_The Floating Playground. Through her art, Linardaki brings memories of her childhood to life, creating works that represent lived experiences and feelings that are both unique to her own life and universal in nature as a means of addressing the human condition. Splitting her life between the Grecian island Crete and the New York island Manhattan, Lindarki uses rafts as a metaphorical vehicle to encourage viewers to find new meaning in their everyday lives while also remaining true to their roots.
Created in collaboration with the Hellenic Republic, Ministry of Culture and Sports, The Red Sand Project, and SHIM Art Network, Raised_The Floating Playground reflects on migration by sea over the last century and the inherent nomadic disposition of humanity. The sculpture draws inspiration from Owl Head Park’s position overseeing the New York Bay with its design featuring an assemblage of ambiguous objects ranging from handmade rafts to playground toys. Raised_The Floating Playground can be viewed through April 15, 2023.
Wall of Silence. Photo by Mark Peterson.
Photographer Donna Ferrato, alongside steel fabricator Amanda Willshire and architect Margie Soo Lee, created the sculpture Wall of Silence as a platform to bring awareness to the realities of gender-based violence while simultaneously encouraging viewers to reflect on how they can stand up for individuals who are criminalized for defending themselves against their abusers. The sculpture is strategically situated inside Collect Pond Park, located south of Canal Street between the New York County Family Court and the Criminal Court Building. In having placed the sculpture here, the artists prompt viewers to consider which individuals American institutions were built to protect and who they continue to serve to this day.
Collect Pond Park also encapsulates the feminine spirit in its location: it is nestled among streets where early suffragettes, such as Sojourner Truth, once strolled. Given this characteristic of the public art installation, Wall of Silence can also be viewed as a symbol of the power women and gender-nonconforming people have in mobilizing to enact change within systems of oppression. The art installation was made possible by the support and collaboration of the NYC Mayor’s Office to End Domestic and Gender-Based Violence. Wall of Silence will be on display through November 20, 2023.
Wall of Silence. Photo by Mark Peterson.
Photographer Donna Ferrato, alongside steel fabricator Amanda Willshire and architect Margie Soo Lee, created the sculpture Wall of Silence as a platform to bring awareness to the realities of gender-based violence while simultaneously encouraging viewers to reflect on how they can stand up for individuals who are criminalized for defending themselves against their abusers. The sculpture is strategically situated inside Collect Pond Park, located south of Canal Street between the New York County Family Court and the Criminal Court Building. In having placed the sculpture here, the artists prompt viewers to consider which individuals American institutions were built to protect and who they continue to serve to this day.
Collect Pond Park also encapsulates the feminine spirit in its location: it is nestled among streets where early suffragettes, such as Sojourner Truth, once strolled. Given this characteristic of the public art installation, Wall of Silence can also be viewed as a symbol of the power women and gender-nonconforming people have in mobilizing to enact change within systems of oppression. The art installation was made possible by the support and collaboration of the NYC Mayor’s Office to End Domestic and Gender-Based Violence. Wall of Silence will be on display through November 20, 2023.
Wanderlust. Courtesy of Norah Swartz. For the month of August, the Garment District Alliance will present Wanderlust, a public art exhibition featuring 18 mixed-media works created by Philadelphia-based high school student Norah Swartz. A rising senior at Springfield Township High School, Swartz specializes in mixed-media and 3D compositions including ceramics, sculpture, and glasswork. Her art has been previously exhibited at the Wharton Esherick print show.
Over the course of her junior year, Swartz created the pieces featured in Wanderlust, utilizing various mediums and materials such as glass, ink, glaze, and watercolor. At its core, Wanderlust represents the courage it takes to continue persevering in spite of life’s many hardships. Wanderlust also aims to show its viewers how positive influence from the right group of individuals can have the power to give people the support they need to pursue their dreams. The exhibition can be viewed in a street-level window at 215 West 38th Street until September 2, 2022.
Crochet mural of Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor. Courtesy of Carmen Paulino. Hanging along the fence inside Cherry Tree Park is a crochet mural of Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor, who on August 8, 2009, became the first Hispanic woman to serve in the position. Before ascending to the Supreme Court, Sotomayor also became the first Hispanic federal judge in New York State and the first Puerto Rican woman to serve as a judge in a U.S. federal court. As a tribute to Sotomayor’s historic legacy, artist Carmen Paulino created a crochet mural in her likeness.
The crochet mural is composed of crocheted contributions from over 100 artists from around the world ranging in age from 9 to 91 years old. In combining the efforts of so many people, the project represents the linking of distant communities together one stitch at a time. Besides Sotomayor’s mural, Paulino also creates crocheted artwork as the Hospital-Artist-In-Residence for The Creative Center, a non-profit organization dedicated to bringing the creative arts to people of all ages with cancer and other chronic illnesses. The crochet mural can be viewed until April 11, 2023.
Leaf, Boats, and Reflection. Courtesy of Yvonne Shortt.
Until June 17, 2023, MacDonald Park will host Leaf, Boats, and Reflection, a public sculpture created in remembrance of those who have lost loved ones to COVID-related deaths. To create the sculpture, artist Yvonne Shortt, known for other public artworks such as Pavillion Landing and Rigged?, worked in collaboration with artists Mayuko Fujino and Joel Esquite.
Leaf, Boats, and Reflection’s pond is made from a mirrored acrylic pane that reflects the sky above and the individuals looking down to examine its contents. Situated inside the pond is the sculpture of a woman’s head, looking up to the sky with her eyes closed in silent contemplation and prayer. Surrounding the head are various white boats holding candles, serving as a vigil for the dead. Stories collected from the local community by RPGA Studios inspired the ceramic relief tiles attached to the concrete border of the sculpture’s reflection pond. Overall, Leaf, Boats, and Reflection serves as a space for community members to place flowers and silent notes in the hopes of reaching out to lost loved ones.
THE CABIN THAT TYPHOID MARY LIVED IN ON NORTH BROTHR ISLAND LAURA HUSSEY 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
All image are copyrighted (c) Roosevelt Island Historical Society unless otherwise indicated:
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The exclusion of “undesirables” to remote lands has a long history. The shameful attempts by contemporary governments to “solve” the refugee problem in that manner has had precedents.During the mid-1930s Mussolini dumped socialists and anti-fascists in the inaccessible and malaria-ridden southern areas of the country.The use of islands as off-shore detention centers has a parallel history. The government of Charles I locked up its opponents at Jersey, Guernsey, or the Isles of Scilly. Having lost the English Civil War, Charles I himself was incarcerated in Carisbrooke Castle on the Isle of Wight. Faced with continuing sedition and agitation, Charles II sent several former leaders of the Interregnum into island isolation.Cut off from the mainland, prisoners were deprived of contact with family and friends and doomed to a solitary life. Remoteness allowed the authorities to install a hostile regime without legal checks and balances. Island detention became a tool in expelling criminals or political opponents (Robben Island for example) from society. The reputation of Alcatraz Prison until its closure in 1963 was a notorious one. To this day, Rikers Island in the East River remains the location of New York’s main jail complex.In the twentieth century island detention emerged in two different guises, one to quarantine those who were suffering from contagious diseases, the other to intern enemy aliens during two world wars.
Isle of ManAn “enemy alien” is a foreign national coming from a country at war with his/her country of residence. In 1766 William Blackstone published his influential Commentaries on the Law of England in which he stressed that during a time of war “alien enemies have no rights, no privileges.” The Crown exercised absolute power.On August 4th, 1914, Britain declared war on Germany. The next day Parliament passed the Aliens Restriction Act, declaring every citizen born in Germany or Austria-Hungary an enemy alien who was not permitted to mail a letter; travel more than five miles from their local police station; or own a camera or a car. Only suspect aliens were to be detained.That intention changed on May 7th, 1915 when a German submarine torpedoed the British liner Lusitania, killing more than a thousand civilians. Resistance to mass internment vanished overnight.The government announced that all male enemy aliens aged seventeen to fifty-five – naturalized or not – would be locked up for the duration of war. Many of them had settled in Britain years before, some families had been resident for generations. Internment damaged the lives of those detained, breaking up families, and disrupting social networks. It resulted in the destruction of well-established German communities in Britain.How does society deal with large numbers of internees? Due to their natural remoteness, islands have been used as prison sites throughout history, from Patmos to St Helena or Devil’s Island. The British authorities sent the German prisoners across the Irish Sea to the Isle of Man where the tiny village of Knockaloe became a complex of wooden sheds, housing 25,000 internees behind barbed wire.The same policy of interning those civilians who were born in enemy countries on the Isle of Man was followed during the Second World War. When Winston Churchill made his infamous call to “collar the lot,” the British government interned almost 30,000 German and Austrian – mostly Jewish – exiles in May and June 1940.Originally classified as refugees from Nazi persecution who posed no threat to national security, they became victims of a hysterical right-wing press that portrayed them as a potential fifth column of Fascist agents.
Ellis Island
Opened in 1892, Ellis Island served as a stopping point where immigrants were processed. During the first two decades of its existence, the island was not a detention center for unwanted aliens. That changed in 1917 when America entered the First World War. The Justice Department prepared a list of some 480,000 German aliens. Accused of spying for or supporting the enemy, more than 4,000 of them were detained on Ellis Island.On December 8th, 1941, one day after the attack on Pearl Harbor, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt declared war. Immediately afterwards New York’s Mayor Fiorello La Guardia, who also acted as Federal Director of the Office of Civil Defense, ordered Japanese-Americans to be “held in custody indefinitely.” More than 1,000 businessmen and community leaders were arrested and interned on Ellis Island and later at Camp Upton on Long Island.The Mayor directed that Japanese nationals be confined to their homes pending a decision as to their status. Clubs and meeting places were put under police guard. The New York Times reported that officers went to every Japanese restaurant in the city, let diners finish, and then shut the business down. Roosevelt’s Executive Order 9066 was issued on February 19, 1942, and triggered the internment of 120,000 American citizens of Japanese descent in ten different “relocation” camps across the United States.La Guardia knew Ellis Island well. Born in New York into an Italian immigrant family, he had worked from 1907 to 1910 as an interpreter at Ellis Island’s inspection station while attending law school at night. Having qualified, he began representing those who appealed against repatriation. Supporting immigrants gained him the respect of newcomers and their communities. It would launch his political career in a metropolis where more Italians lived than in Naples, more Irish than in Dublin, and more Greeks than in Athens.The Mayor rejected restrictionist policies in a climate of anti-(East European) Jewish and anti-Italian bias. He was less open-minded when it concerned Asian Americans, a group that had long suffered prejudice and discrimination (prevented from buying land or voting). No Japanese-American citizen or Japanese national residing in the United States was ever found guilty of sabotage or espionage.News of suffering at Ellis Island shifted public perception. The New York Times reported that the island’s name had become ‘a symbol for being unwanted by America’. Soon after the war the camp was closed. Acknowledging that mass internment of Japanese-Americans could not be justified, either morally or militarily, President Jimmy Carter eventually apologized for the draconian measure.
Leper Islands
Mass internment of enemy aliens was driven by anxiety rather than evidence. A climate of panic led to a whole group of individuals being treated as guilty, allowing for the creation of legal methods that violated its civil liberties. Islands of exclusion however were not just installed in times of war. Fears of infectious disease also caused calls for sufferers to be banned from society.Leprosy is a chronic infectious disease caused by the “mycobacterium leprae” (identified in 1873 by the Norwegian scientist Gerhard Armauer Hansen). It affects the patient’s nerves, respiratory tract, skin and eyes. The illness causes the deformation of features, especially of the face and limbs. Segregation was recommended for prevention.For thousands of years this “mysterious” disorder had invoked a disturbing imagery of disfigured bodies. The Old Testament identified leprosy as a visible manifestation of a transgression against God, sent by Him as punishment for sin (Book of Leviticus). This portrayal of leprosy contributed to stigma-formation. Persons with the disease were isolated, ostracized, and condemned to a lifetime at the margins of society. Leprosaria were built in remote lands to quarantine patients. Leprosy was dreaded, not because it killed but because it left one alive with no hope or prospect.The bacterium responsible for leprosy is believed to have spread from East Africa, reaching Europe by the late fifth century when the first leper houses were documented. Lepers were treated as pariahs who were quarantined from society until the Church intervened. Managed by religious orders, clerics took care of the afflicted. Lazar houses offered a monastic refuge for the leprosy affected – religious isolation in order words.
Sufferers were kept away from the general public partly because it was believed that the disease was contagious and partly because of the public anxiety associated with the “divinely ordained” condition. The fear of lepers returned during the nineteenth century as increased travel in conjunction with intense colonial activity led to a growing number of infected. It forced governments to take action. When the First International Leprosy Conference took place in Berlin in 1897, it was agreed that isolation was the best method protecting the public from the “scourge.” The island idea re-emerged.In 1865, the Hawaii authorities passed an “Act to Prevent the Spread of Leprosy.” Land on the island of Molokai was purchased to receive the first contingent of leprosy-affected people in January 1866. Between that year and 1905, nearly six thousand patients were exiled into life-long quarantine to leprosaria at Kalawao and Kalaupapa. It was not until 1969 that the legislation requiring involuntary lifetime isolation come to an end.Molokai set a precedent. In Europe the example was followed on Spinalonga, a barren island just of Crete’s coast. Nicknamed the “island of the living dead” or “walking corpses,” it housed a leper community from 1903 until 1957 where, as in all colonies, patients were deprived of all civil liberties.
North Brother Island
With the rapid increase of immigration from Russia, the Middle East and Asia, the number of leprosy cases in America increased. In 1921, the United States Public Health Service took over the state-controlled leprosy hospital in Louisiana (the first known cases of leprosy there were recorded in 1758). It was renamed the National Leprosarium, but became better known as Carville. At its peak, the institution housed four hundred patients.As New York was assimilating huge numbers of immigrants, many were forced to reside in overcrowded and unsanitary living quarters. Contagious diseases spread quickly. The afflicted were removed from the city’s teeming streets and forced into quarantine at Riverside Hospital on North Brother Island, located on a treacherous section of the East River named Hell Gate.
From 1885 until its closure in 1963, the hospital was home to hundreds of patients who suffered from various communicable diseases. One of those was Typhoid Mary Mallon, an Irish immigrant cook who spent over thirty years in quarantine there. Patients lived under poor conditions in tents and huts around the hospital. Life at Riverside was the “black hole of Calcutta.” Those struggling with leprosy were confined to shacks on the perimeter. They were outcasts amongst the shunned.
Stigma & Language
Stigma is a social process characterized by blame, rejection, and – eventually – exclusion of a person or group identified with a particular health problem or mental disorder. It is a “dynamic” process as stigmas can be reduced over time and even eradicated.The advent of effective drugs in the 1940s drastically changed the course of disease and in many countries compulsory patient isolation was deemed no longer necessary. Elsewhere outdated laws remained in force. In the United States leper colonies continued to operate until 1975 when policies of isolation were finally disbanded (Japan revoked mandatory isolation of patients as late as 1996).The “cursed” term leprosy (the L-word) had become a synonym for suffering and isolation. Language plays a fundamental part in the fostering of social stigmas. At the Fifth International Leprosy Congress in Havana (1948), a resolution was unanimously passed recommending that use of the term “leper” be abandoned.Clinicians and professional researchers then insisted that the word leprosy be banished and replaced with “Hansen’s disease.” It was a vital step in changing government policies that would finally lead to the abolishment of leprosaria and the reintegration of patients into the community.
CLARA BELLA, ANYD SPARBERG, M FRANK, LAURA HUSSEY, VICKI FEINMEL, A BESSENOFF ALL HAVE A BROOKLYN CONNECTION
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
Illustrations, from above: view of a PoW Camp, Isle of Man, April 1918 by George Kenner; Ellis Island in 1903 as seen from New York Harbour (New York Historical Society); Omne Bonum, a fourteenth century bishop instructing clerics with leprosy: Medieval depictions of leprosy commonly showed the patient to have red spots by James le Palmer (British Library); The leper (Lazarus clep), 1631 by Rembrandt; the island of Spinalonga and its abandoned leper colony; and abandoned North Brother Island (background) and South Brother Island in the middle of East River, less than a mile from Manhattan.
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Name Werner DrewesBorn Canig, GermanyDied Reston, VirginiaBborn Canig, Germany (now Kaniów, Poland) 1899-died Reston, VA 1985Nationalities American
Werner Drewes was born in Canig, Germany, and began studying art in 1920 at the Stuttgart School of Architecture. A year later he transferred to the Stuttgart School of Arts and Crafts. From 1921 to 1922, he studied with Paul Klee, Johannes Itten, and Oskar Schlemmer at the Bauhaus in Weimar. After visiting the United States in 1924 and 1925, Drewes returned to work at the Bauhaus. In 1930 he came back to the United States, where he was introduced by Wassily Kandinsky to Katherine C. Dreier, a founder of the Societe Anonyme, and exhibited his work in Buffalo, New York. From 1934 to 1936, Drewes taught at the Brooklyn Museum under the auspices of the WPA Federal Art Project. In 1936, the year he became an American citizen, Drewes joined the American Artists Congress, exhibited at Black Mountain College in North Carolina, and helped found the American Abstract Artists group. A member of the faculty at Columbia University in New York from 1937 to 1940, Drewes also served as director of graphic art for the WPA Federal Art Project in New York in 1940. In 1944 he studied printmaking at Stanley William Hayter’s Atelier 17. The following year he taught at Brooklyn College. In 1946 he joined the faculty of the School of Fine Arts at Washington University in St. Louis, where he remained until 1965.
FROM THE ARCHIVES
MONDAY, AUGUST 15, 2022
THE 754th EDITION
WERNER
DREWES
ABSTRACTIONIST ARTIST
Werner Drewes, Pointed Brown and Floating Circles, 1933, oil, pen and ink, and pencil on wood panel, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of Patricia and Phillip Frost, 1986.92.17
Werner Drewes, Black Curve on Yellow Horizontally Connected (Variation), 1938, color woodcut on paper, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of Wolfram U. Drewes, Harald Drewes and Bernard W. Drewes, 1990.105.55
Werner Drewes, Loose Contact, 1938, color woodcut on paper, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of Wolfram U. Drewes, Harald Drewes and Bernard W. Drewes, 1990.105.40
Werner Drewes, Still Life with Bananas, 1952, color woodcut and celloprint on paper, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of Wolfram U. Drewes, Harald Drewes and Bernard W. Drewes, 1990.105.10
Werner Drewes, Industrial, 1961, color woodcut on paper, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of Wolfram U. Drewes, Harald Drewes and Bernard W. Drewes, 1990.105.15
Werner Drewes, Stepping Up, 1984,Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of Wolfram U. Drewes, Harald Drewes and Bernard W. Drewes, 1990.105.27
There are over 200 images of the works of Werner Drewes on the Smithsonian American Art Museum website:
FORMER BANKER’S TRUST BUILDING AT 14 WALL STREET ED LITCHER 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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Caroline Astor, Alva Belmont, Alice Vanderbilt—the names of these famous and formidable women conjure images of Fifth Avenue chateaus, luxurious balls, and other trappings of the Gilded Age good life.
Hetty Green, probably around the turn of the century
While all three women flaunted their deep wealth in an era that encouraged ostentatious display, none can claim the title of the richest women in Gilded Age New York City. That honor goes to Hetty Green, a legendary figure in Gotham who was almost the polar opposite of these society doyennes.
Instead of moving into a Manhattan mansion, Hetty lived in unpretentious hotels and boardinghouses in Brooklyn and Hoboken, hoping to avoid paying high property taxes, according to Atlas Obscura. Rather than swanning around in Charles Frederick Worth gowns, she dressed in plain black clothing, reportedly donning the same garments every day. And she turned a family inheritance into a fortune equal to $3.8 billion today with shrewd, long-term investments on Wall Street and in real estate.
Young Hetty Robinson, undated
Hetty’s story isn’t a rags to riches tale. Born Henrietta Robinson in New Bedford, Massachusetts in 1834 into a Quaker family that made millions in the whaling and shipping industries, she took a strong interest in business and finance as a young girl, according to the Library of Congress.
During her teenage years she became her family’s bookkeeper, and she accompanied her father to counting houses and stockbrokers. Her father’s influence was strong: “she shared his pleasure in making money,” wrote Janet Wallach, author of The Richest Woman in America.
Hetty in 1905
After attending finishing schools in New England, Hetty went to New York City to live with the family of Henry Grinnell, her mother’s cousin. Grinnell was “wealthy and well-connected,” stated Wyn Derbyshire in Hetty Green: The First Lady of Wall Street. The plan was for Grinnell, who lived on tony Bond Street, to introduce Hetty to young men suitable for marriage.
But unlike most women of her age and class, Hetty wasn’t interested. She went back to New Bedford, using much of the $1200 her father had given her to buy fashionable clothes to invest in bonds, …
Hetty at 40, in her New York Times obituary in 1916
In 1860, her mother died, and she and her father relocated to a brownstone on West 26th Street in New York City, where her father was now a partner in a shipping firm. He died five years later. How much of his roughly $6 million fortune was left to Hetty seems to be in dispute, but she was awarded at least $1 million or perhaps all of it.
In 1867, Hetty was 33 years old. With her parents gone, she married Edward Henry Green, a 44-year-old millionaire trader introduced to her by her father before his death. Hetty’s father had worried about her status as an unmarried woman, but before his passing, she and Green announced their engagement. Hetty’s father was canny enough to stipulate in his will that Edward Green would receive nothing from his estate. Hetty herself also made her new husband swear off any claims to her fortune.
“It was an odd match: Green was a wealthy silk and tea merchant who’d lived in the Philippines for 20 years,” stated the New England Historical Society. “And he liked to live large. He dressed well, enjoyed clubs, appreciated fine food and tipped generously.” Her husband’s large lifestyle left him in debt some years into their marriage. Hetty used her own money to bail him out, which led to a long estrangement whereby the couple lived apart for several years.
Hetty around 1910, on a stoop of a house she likely did not own
Now a mother of two, Hetty began building her fortune. “She developed a strategy of investing for value, which made her the richest woman in the world,” according to the New England Historical Society. “Hetty Green didn’t buy stocks on margin. She invested in real estate and bonds, railroads, and mines. She bought cheap, sold dear, and kept her head during financial panics.”
Unsurprisingly, New York newspapers began taking note of Hetty, who was so unusual for several reasons, including the fact that she was the rare woman on Wall Street. In 1885, the New York Times dubbed her “the millionaire in hoopskirts.” A few years later, she was called “the queen of Wall Street.” The nickname that stuck throughout her life was “the witch of Wall Street,” thanks in part to her black clothes and the magic she had for making money.
Hetty (left) with her son and daughter, now grown
Stories circulated about her penny-pinching ways. One rumor had it that her son’s leg was amputated after an injury because Hetty wasted precious time searching for a free clinic rather than taking him to a doctor, and gangrene had set in. Another claimed she regularly ate cold oatmeal for lunch at her office at Chemical Bank, where she handled her investments. It was also said that she had no office at all; to save money on rent, she sewed pockets under her skirts and stashed documents there rather than in a desk.
What most New Yorkers didn’t know is that she was generous. Yet she kept her charitable gifts private. “She loaned money at below-market rates to at least 30 churches,” wrote the New England Historical Society. “According to her son, she secretly gave many gifts to charitable causes and supported at least 30 families with regular incomes.” She took care of her husband before he passed away in 1902. She credited her business acumen and simple, frugal lifestyle to her Quaker upbringing.
Hetty Green died in 1916 at age 82 after suffering a series of strokes. At her death, this legendary New Yorker who continues to fascinate us wasn’t just the richest woman in New York—she was the richest woman in America.
JUST ARRIVED KIDS AND ADULT TEE SHIRTS SHOP AT THE KIOSK
COLLEGE OF MOUNT SAINT VINCENT RIVERDALE,BRONX, NEW YORK
LAURA HUSSEY GOT IT RIGHT!
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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EPHEMERAL NEW YORK
Top image: New Bedford Guide; second image: unknown; third image: MCNY, 93.1.1.8934; fourth image: New York Times 1916; fifth image: Bain Collection/LOC; sixth image: NPS]
New York City’s parks are open for all to enjoy year-round but the number of visitors skyrockets in the summer season. Those interested in exploring park histories are invited to research Municipal Archives’ collections for information and inspiration. Of these, the most significant is the Parks Drawings Collection which documents sixty parks, parkways, and playgrounds in Manhattan including more than 1,500 drawings of Central Park.
View at Mount St. Vincent, ca. 1863. Photo courtesy Library of Congress.For the Record has highlighted Central Park drawings in several blogs including Skating in Central Park, The Belvedere Castle in Central Park and Central Park, a Musical Destination for all New Yorkers. This week’s article looks at the area of the park that has the richest history of use and settlement—the quiet and rustic northeastern corner. It is adapted from our book, “The Central Park: Original Designs for New York’s Greatest Treasure.”
Plan of Buildings at Mount St. Vincent, 1856. Parks Drawings Collection, NYC Municipal Archives.Established in 1673, the old Boston Post Road—the original mail-delivery route from New York City to Boston—meandered between two rocky ridges in this area just west of what is now 105th Street and Fifth Avenue. It was here, in the mid-1750s that John Dyckman built a tavern to serve travelers on the road. Not long after, Andrew McGown purchased the land and tavern, running it successfully through the Revolutionary War giving the area its name at the time: McGown’s Pass.
McGown’s Pass Tavern, Central Park, ca. 1905. Photo Courtesy New York Public Library.The McGown family ran a prosperous business until 1845, when they deeded the land and buildings to the Sisters of Charity of St. Vincent de Paul. The nuns renamed the area Mount St. Vincent’s and within a few years, they established a convent and school. They added a two-story residence for the chaplain to the existing structures, as well as a stately brick convent house that contained a beautiful chapel and large dining rooms. The land also included a small Jewish cemetery. In 1856, before the nuns had consecrated their new chapel, they received word that the city would be acquiring their land for the creation of the new park.
Chapel and buildings at Mount St. Vincent, ca. 1865.The nuns relocated to The Bronx, and their buildings became the early park headquarters. At one point the families of both Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux lived in the premises while the two men had offices in the main building. With the outbreak of the Civil War, the US government took over the complex for use as a hospital for wounded soldiers who were, curiously enough, tended by the same Sisters of Charity who had previously owned the buildings.
Mount St. Vincent Art Museum, 1863. Parks Commission Annual Report, NYC Municipal Library.After the war, the main building returned to its original use when it was leased as a restaurant, while the chapel was transformed into a museum until it burned down in 1881. Two years later, the Mount St. Vincent Hotel, based on designs by Julius Munckwitz, was built on the site. The new building proved to be immediately popular with wealthy New Yorkers, as the New York Times reported in 1886: “No matter how fast the team nor how elegant the equipage a turn ‘on the road’ is not done in proper shape unless it includes a bite or a sip in the Mount St. Vincent
Mount St. Vincent, Central Park, Design for a Refreshment House, 1883. Julius Munckwitz, Architect. Parks Drawings Collection, NYC Municipal Archives.
Mount St. Vincent, Central Park, Design for a Refreshment House, 1883. Julius Munckwitz, Architect. Parks Drawings Collection, NYC Municipal Archives.Now that it was a playground for drinking and dancing for the city’s elite, the Sisters of Charity asked that their name no longer be associated with the establishment. Renamed for the family most associated with the site, McGown’s Pass Tavern remained a popular destination through the turn of the century, but as automobiles replaces horse and carriages the business took a downturn. In 1915, Parks Commissioner Cabot Ward felt that the location would be better suited for a police station. Owner Max Boehm was ordered to vacate the premises and its contents were put up for auction. While the police station was never relocated to area, in 1917 the building was torn down. In more recent history, the location of the former convent, tavern and swanky hotel is now the home of the Central Park composting operations. Throughout the year, fallen leaves and branches are brought here and turned into nutrient-rich compost, which is used for plantings and horticultural projects throughout the Park.Take a few minutes to view some of the exquisite drawings of Central Park in the gallery.
LINCOLN BATHS AT SARATOGA STATE PARK CLARA BELLA AND TRACY ROBIOTTO 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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This article was originally published in Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper on September 21, 1878.
I was awfully glad when a friend proposed a trip to Saratoga. I had been awfully jolly in New York, but New York had gone out of town, leaving nothing but its streets and its tram-cars behind it. In London we have such a perpetual flow of visitors — over one hundred thousand daily — that a fellow doesn’t so much miss the “big crowd” as here, consequently when Saratoga was decided upon I felt extremely pleased indeed. I had heard much of the palatial river steamers, and expected much.
I was down at Pier 41 [at the foot of Canal Street] at an early hour, and found the whole place occupied by one boat. Such a boat! white as the driven snow, and larger than many an English village. The people kept going into her until I imagined some game was up, and that they were stepping out at the other side. No such thing; there was room for all ay, and more.
It was something immense to see the men getting into line for the ticket-office, with as much precision as if they were on parade. No hurry, no crush, the regular “first come, first served” business, not as with us, when the biggest man comes to the front, and muscular Christianity tops over everything. And the luggage! Mountains of it, from enormous nickel-bound boxes, fit to carry Cleopatra’s Needle, to dainty hand-bags, such as Queen Victoria’s take with them when rushing at sixty miles an hour “Upon Her Majesty’s Service.’
It was awfully amusing to see this mountain gradually dissolving, as truck after truck bore its load within the recesses of the palpitating [steamer] Drew. For the first time I made acquaintance with a Saratoga trunk [a large traveling trunk, usually with a rounded top], and from what I see of it, it seems a first class invention — for another man’s wife. Near the gangway stood a handsome, gentleman-like man, whose semi-naval uniform looked as though cut by [the tailor and draper] Smallpage, of Regent Street. This, I was informed, was Captain [Stephen R.] Roe, one of the most courteous and best-respected captains of the sea-like rivers of America. I was instructed by my friend to take a state-room — at home I would have asked for a berth — and, having paid my money, became entrusted with the key of a charming little bedroom, better fitted up than that of my club, and boasting an electric bell.
As I turned out of my newly acquired apartment I was much struck by a very stylishly attired young lady, gotten up to the pitch of traveling perfection, and as new as Lord Beaconsfield’s [recently awarded Order of the] Garter. The man with her was also as if recently turned off a lathe. He carried a couple of hand-bags that had never seen rain or shine before. He hung lovingly around the lady, bending over to her, whispering into her ear, touching her hand, or her dress, or her parasol. “By Jove!” thought I, “this is a brand-new bride and bridegroom, and what a doosid [devilish; confounded; damned] queer place to select for the [honey]moon.” Mentioning this to Captain Roe, with a smile, he ordered a portly colored stewardess to open a door tight opposite to where I stood. “This,” he said, “is the bridal chamber — we have two on board. As the pink one happens to be occupied, I can show you the blue.”
Availing myself of the captain’s kindness, I entered the [room], which is a symphony in blue and white, with a ceiling resembling a wedding-cake. It is sixteen feet long, twelve broad, and nine feet high, and piquante as a boudoirette in Le Petit Trianon [a chateau at the Palace of Versailles which served as a retreat for Marie Antoinette]. The walls are white, supported by fluted pillars with gilt capitals; the cornices of gold, and in each corner stands a statuette of Cupid. The ceiling is a perfect [em]broidery of white and pink and gold, frozen lace-work, ornamented with medallions representing appropriate scenes in mythological history. Wreaths of orange blossoms entwined with forget-me-nots decorate it, within which are amorous love-birds, while in the center of the ceiling, in relief, a pair of turtle doves bill and coo upon a perch composed of hymeneal torches, and the new spent arrows of the rosy god [Cupid].
The chamber is lighted by two windows, hung with blue satin curtains trimmed with gold fringe, the inner curtain being of lace. A mirror, whose gilt frame is composed of Cupids and orange-blossoms, extends from floor to ceiling; an inlaid table upon which is placed a richly chased tray, with ice pitcher and goblets, an easy-chair a caressing lounge, a rosewood toilet-stand fitted n blue, and the bed, constitute the furniture of this fairy-like apartment. Such a bed! rosewood, gilt to the carpet, with a blue satin spread covered with real lace, pillows to match, and a rug as soft as the tenderest sigh ever breathed by love-stricken swain. The president of the company, too, is the happy possessor of a special room fitted up in the extremity of good taste.
A gong sounded for dinner, and, following a strong lead, as we do at whist, I found myself in a large, brilliantly-lighted apartment, set with several tables. The menu was extensive enough to meet the requirements of the most exacting appetite, while the viands bore witness to skillful cookery. After dinner I went for a stroll, yea, a veritable stroll — always striking against the bride and bridegroom — in a saloon picked out in white and gold, the chandeliers burning gas, and the motion being so imperceptible that the glass drops did not even waggle — on a carpet fit for Buckingham Palace, and in a grove of sumptuous furniture; then forward, where many gentlemen in straw hats were engaged in discussing the chances of General [Ulysses S.] Grant for something or other, I know not what [Grant was considered a candidate for a third term as President in the coming 1880 election]; then aft, where many ladies sat in picturesque traveling attitudes, gazing at the soft outlines of the shore on either hand, some alone and some doing the next best thing to flirting.
What a sleep I had! No more motion than if I was at the club. No noise, no confounded fume of train-oil and its rancid confrères. I slept like a humming-bird, and next morning found myself at Albany. This place is on a hill, surmounted by a white marble building, and Capitol, which, when competed, will be an awfully imposing affair. I took the train for Saratoga — a drawing-room car — and such a boudoirette on wheels! — I felt as if I was in a club-window all the time.
Saratoga is awfully jolly. It is the best thing I have seen, with its main street as wide as the Boulevard Malesherbes or Haussman [in Paris], and lined for a mile and a half with magnificent elms, which shade hotels as big as some European towns. It is always thronged with carriages just like Rotten Row [an upper-class riding ground in London’s Hyde Park] in the season, and lots of people on horseback. The piazzas of the hotels are crowded with stunningly pretty girls, dressed, all over the place. Overhead is an Italian sky, blue as sapphire, and a golden tropical light falls around, picking out the shadows in dazzling contrast.
“I guess,” as the Americans say, I’ll drive my stakes pretty deep here.
Illustrations, from above: Steamboat “Drew” underway; and Steamer “Drew” courtesy Donald C. Ringwald Collection, Hudson River Maritime Museum.
Thanks to Hudson River Maritime Museum volunteer researcher George A. Thompson for finding and transcribing this article. If you enjoyed this post and would like to support the Hudson River Maritime Museum become a member or make a contribution.
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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A circa 1940s postcard shows Eastern Parkway. Acacia Card Company, collection of Susan De Vries
Developed in the early 20th century, a time when the apartment house was coming into its own, Eastern Parkway is a panorama of grand apartment buildings.This was something of an accident. The area was originally intended by the city of Brooklyn to become Prospect Park and then, when that didn’t pan out, a Parisian-style boulevard lined with mansions on spacious grounds. But litigation prevented development in the area until World War I.The Park That Wasn’t.In 1858, the new Brooklyn parks commissioner, James Stranahan, hired engineer Egbert Viele to design a public park that would surpass Manhattan’s new Central Park in every way. Viele, who was muscled out of designing Central Park by the superior talents of Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux, was eager to prove himself in Brooklyn. He envisioned a large park bisected by Flatbush Avenue that included Mount Prospect and its city reservoir to the east and the Revolutionary War’s Battle Pass to the west, both the highest points in Brooklyn
Grand Army Plaza and the entrance to Prospect Park, with Eastern Parkway in the background, in a circa 1901 photograph. Detroit Publishing Company photograph collection, Library of Congress
The city bought the land needed, but before work could begin, the Civil War started. Viele went off to design battlements for the Union Army. While he was gone, Stranahan had Olmsted and Vaux look over the plans. The pair totally changed the placement and configuration of the park, moving it completely to the other side of Flatbush Avenue. When Viele came home, they had upstaged him again.
Changing the park’s location left the city with a lot of newly acquired land it no longer needed. The city kept the area around Mount Prospect, but sold off the rest, which became most of today’s neighborhood of Prospect Heights.
Olmsted and Vaux’s plans for the park included Grand Army Plaza and two new, European-style boulevards lined with trees and equipped with service lanes, Ocean Parkway and Eastern Parkway. They were to be Brooklyn’s Champs-Élysées.
Work started on Eastern Parkway in 1870 and was finished in 1874, meant to coincide with the opening of Prospect Park. Both the designers and Stranahan intended that Eastern Parkway, especially near the park, would soon be lined with large mansions on spacious grounds, making it the wealthiest and most desirable address in Brooklyn.
Architects Shampan & Shampan added Gothic flair to their 1924 Art Deco-style building The Woodrow Wilson
But it didn’t happen. Litigation over property that had been seized by eminent domain caused the land across from the reservoir to remain undeveloped into the 20th century. Prospect Heights developer William Reynolds planned a huge mansion for himself on the corner of Underhill Avenue, well touted in the papers, but seemingly never constructed. The areas between Grand Army Plaza and Washington Avenue remained empty scrub land as the new Brooklyn Institute of Arts and Sciences, designed by McKim, Mead & White, rose next to the reservoir.
A New Subway Line Heralds Apartment Construction.
It took the 1903 announcement of a new subway line under the parkway to finally jumpstart the first development. And that development was not across from the museum; it was farther east in what was being called the “Eastern Parkway District.”
Several large development companies began building limestone row houses and flats buildings along the parkway, especially on the north side of the street between Franklin and Utica avenues. Soon, medium-sized walk-up apartment buildings followed, most four stories tall. As the open-trench subway construction stepped up, more and more of these apartment buildings rose in anticipation of thousands of new middle-class renters. Advertisements abounded in the papers touting apartments of four to five rooms, with “cedar wardrobes, parquet floors, electric lights, vacuum cleaner, maid’s toilet, heat and hot water.” They were just a precursor of the splendor to come.
Eastern Parkway’s First Luxury Elevator Buildings.
In 1916, the Martinique Apartments at 163 to 169 Eastern Parkway opened for business. The complex was built and owned by the Taggart Building Company and was designed by Clarence L. Sefert. Located directly across from the museum, the Martinique was the forerunner of the many buildings to follow. Clad in white limestone, this six-story Renaissance Revival elevator building was elegantly festooned with ornamental columns, swags, and cartouches.
Standing alone on the block, the Martinique complemented the museum and exuded class and good taste. Advertisements for the building noted that the apartments were divided into suites of “three, four, and six rooms, which may be connected in a way, making nine, 10, and 12 rooms. In finish and details, nothing has been overlooked.” There were no prices listed — if one must ask, then one obviously can’t afford it.
The building filled up quickly, with many of the renters mentioned in Brooklyn’s society pages. The success of the Martinique was a permission slip to other developers, who eagerly began building six-story or higher elevator apartment buildings along Eastern Parkway, on Lincoln Place and around the park oval. Many of the developers built multiple buildings here.
By 1929, the Belcher Hyde map of this area shows wall-to-wall apartment buildings lining the parkway and surrounding streets. Some buildings were enormous, others much more modest, all catering to those of middle-class income up to the wealthier individuals who would have purchased houses on the Gold Coast of Park Slope a generation before.
The 1920s are often seen as a golden age for New York City apartment buildings. Advances in steel construction and building technology made it possible to build larger and taller. Real estate sections of the paper that once touted fine townhouses in the best neighborhoods now shouted out the glories of apartment living. Every building offered features and amenities making their address the best of the best. Many of these ads were specifically written to lure Manhattanites back to Brooklyn.
At 61 Eastern Parkway, The Abraham Lincoln’s exaggerated neo-classical details stand out in white against a red brick facade
Most of these buildings were developed and designed by first-generation success stories, men who knew what the majority of their customers – people just like them – wanted. The apartments had everything: large rooms, the latest in modern conveniences, full concierge service, maid’s quarters, elevators and impressive marble-filled lobbies.
The names of the buildings were impressive too. Past U.S. presidents, their wives and swanky upper-class-sounding monikers abounded, all harkening to the realization of the American Dream: The Woodrow Wilson, George Washington, Martha Washington, Coolidge, Harding and four named after Abraham Lincoln. There was also the Traymore, Gray Court, Vassar Hall, Vassar Court, the Park Lane and the Copley Plaza Apartments. And then there was the grand Turner Towers.
Turner Towers: The Ultimate Eastern Parkway Apartment Building.
Turner Towers was the brainchild of the Turner Brothers Building Company, whose president was Samuel Turner. Previously, the firm was responsible for modest apartment buildings in East New York, Brownsville, and Flatbush. Turner was “moving on up” himself. The complex was built in 1927, a relative latecomer, and was designed by Morris Henry Sugarman and Albert Berger, both born in Eastern Europe. They also designed the Plaza Lane and Park Lane Apartments located nearby.
While Turner Towers didn’t have a posh name draw, it certainly became one. It was huge at 15 stories with four wings. It initially had 181 apartments ranging from three rooms to nine rooms, the latter with five bathrooms and 13 closets! It was touted in newspaper headlines as “Bringing Park Avenue Ideals to Brooklyn Home Seekers.”
A cast stone detail with a foliate border and head from Turner Towers. Image via Brooklyn Museum
Turner explained, “While in Manhattan there is also an adequate supply of the truly luxurious kind of apartments such as you see on Park Avenue, there are none such in Brooklyn…The people who come to us…are people who seek a degree of luxury, an amount of space, and the kind of service which, until our building opens, will have been unknown in the history of Brooklyn.”
He thought his building would draw not only Manhattanites but Brooklynites as well. He was right. Some of the first new tenants were wealthy people from Park Slope who abandoned their townhouses for apartment living. The society pages announced every new arrival. They also printed sketches of the lobby and entrance and ran stories about some of the more colorful residents.
The story of the battle between Turner and residents Mr. and Mrs. James W. Samuels ran in several papers in 1928. They couple had a pampered Pomeranian named Peggy. Building policy said dogs were not allowed in the passenger elevators because of complaints from other tenants. The Samuels, who lived on a high floor, refused to use the service elevators like other dog owners and sued Turner. Mrs. Samuels, who told reporters that she was a countess and a member of the Romanov family, and her husband, who bragged of being the nephew of a British peer, were apoplectic. “I won’t ride in the service elevator,” he said. “I am not a servant.”
The case finally went to a judge, who told the Samuels that the dog could ride in the passenger elevator with them only if they held her. Her feet could not touch the ground. The papers ate it up.
Eastern Parkway apartment living may have arrived late, but it certainly did arrive. Today, Turner Towers is still one of the most desirable addresses on Eastern Parkway on a street of desirable addresses.
As the 20th century advanced, many of these same Eastern Parkway addresses changed demographics, as the post-World War II mass exodus to the suburbs left a lot of vacancies along the parkway. The Martinique became a popular striver’s row-type destination for immigrants from Martinique, coincidentally, and other Caribbean countries. The parkway’s annual Labor Day weekend West Indian Day Parade is a reflection of the large Caribbean American presence in Crown Heights and beyond.
The Lubavitch Hasidic community is centered around its world headquarters at 770 Eastern Parkway, near Kingston Avenue. That community has expanded along the parkway and the adjacent streets, and in addition to apartment buildings and homes, includes the modern Jewish Children’s Museum and several large yeshivas and meeting halls on Eastern Parkway.
In 2017, Prospect Heights residents proposed the Prospect Heights Apartment House District, whose southern border includes blocks on Eastern Parkway. The parkway itself was designated one of New York’s few scenic landmarks in 1978. Today, the thoroughfare Olmsted described as a “shaded green ribbon,” despite automobile traffic, remains an elegant and bucolic approach to the heart of Brooklyn’s cultural institutions and Prospect Park.
[Photos by Susan De Vries unless noted otherwise]
Editor’s note: A version of this story appeared in the Fall/Holiday 2021/22 issue of Brownstoner magazine.
WEDNESDAY PHOTO OF THE DAY
TUESDAY PHOTO OF THE DAY
Cooper Hewitt Museum Arlene Bessenoff, Ed Litcher, Hara Reiser & Ellen Jacoby 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:
The Brownstoner
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Harriete Estel Berman uses post consumer, recycled materials to construct jewelry, Judaica to sculpture with social commentary. Berman’s art work has been exhibited throughout the United States, Europe, and Africa. Her work has been acquired for the permanent collections of 16 museums including the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, the Detroit Institute of Art, Philadelphia Museum of Art and the Minneapolis Institute of Art.
Jewelry uses post-consumer recycled materials to reflect the values of our consumer society.
Judaica by Harriete Estel Berman focuses on the concept of Tikkun Olam “repair the world” with the use of post-consumer recycled tin cans.
Sculptures include domestic appliances remarking on the roles of women, the influence of advertising and commentary about our consumer society. Environmental commentary issues include the impact of lawns, and plastic waste in our oceans. Social commentary includes sculptures about our K-12 educational system.
“For nearly three decades, Harriete Estel Berman has made it her sacred mission to create work that addresses cultural issues and political hot buttons.” *
Harriete’s artwork turns ordinary materials from the waste stream of our society and recycles it into something extraordinary.
“Using every last scrap as a source of energy and inspiration she up-cycles her materials in uber-crafted, intens-ellectual objects of art and social commentary that are the ultimate expressions of sustainability.”*
Berman’s jewelry examines value and identity in our consumer society. Grass/gras‘ is a nine-foot square lawn about the unsustainable green lawn. Measuring Compliance and Pick Up Your Pencils, Begin critiques our educational system built on standardized testing. A new Judaica series is about the10 Modern Plaques.
An ongoing series of necklaces about identity in our consumer society using thin lines of black and white plastic made to look like a UPC code around your neck.
The Identity Collection uses colors, patterns, and UPC Bar Code as a commentary about how we create an identity in our consumer society by what we buy and why we buy it.
Since 1988, I have decided to use recycled materials diverted from their destiny as trash. Sculpture social commentary includes women’s roles in society, identity in our consumer society, environmental issues, a critique of our current educational system, gun violence, consumer debt and our unstable economy.
On the face of it, it’s a RIOC Bus Stop Sign pointing in the wrong direction, but I still think that RIOC secretly and intentionally created the sign to commemorate Douglas Corrigan an American aviator, who in 1938 was nicknamed “Wrong Way.” He received his nickname after completing the first half of a transcontinental flight from Long Beach, California, to New York City, in a plane that he rescued from a trash heap, but on his return trip, he had a navigational problem that sent him from Floyd Bennett Field in Brooklyn to Ireland.
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
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