On the morning of December 31, 1909, Saratoga Springs philanthropist and financier Spencer Trask was just waking up after a night in a railroad sleeping car at the rear of the Montreal Express. The night before this southbound train had picked up Trask in Saratoga as it made its way toward New York City.At 8:03 am, only moments after the express train had stopped unexpectedly on the mainline near Croton, Westchester County, New York, a train transporting bales of raw silk crashed into its rear, killing Trask, the porter in his sleeping car, and injuring several other of the passengers. While the direct cause of this deadly wreck pointed to a failure of signal equipment and railroad personnel, events leading up to the tragedy had been put into motion six thousand miles to the west seventeen days earlier.Silk was a commodity whose value in North America had increased dramatically in the years following the Civil War. In 1909, the year of Spencer Trask’s death, our country consumed half of the world’s production of raw silk, about twenty-four million pounds, with an estimated value of eighty million dollars.After silk was harvested in Japan, it was packaged into three-foot bales weighing just under two hundred pounds. The bales were sealed, wrapped in heavy paper, and then marked for shipment throughout the world. In the middle of December of 1909 at the Japanese port of Yokohama, a fast steamship of the Canadian Pacific Railroad’s Empress Line was loaded with the bales of raw silk that twelve days later would be on the silk train that ended Trask’s life.The destination of this vessel was Vancouver, British Columbia, where within minutes of docking bales of raw silk were streaming down a conveyor belt and into the hands of an army of stevedores whose sole duty was to quickly fill the waiting railroad freight cars. In less than two hours, over one million dollars of silk bales were in place and the journey across Canada began.Special silk trains transported this valuable cargo from Pacific Ocean ports to the National Silk Exchange in New York City. The train’s freight cars were specially made for moving this valuable product with both safety and speed. Built on passenger car suspension and wheels, they were shorter than the standard freight car to allow them to take curves at higher speeds. They were also lined on the inside with varnished wood and airtight as the value of the raw silk diminished if it was allowed to absorb moisture.From Vancouver, the train headed east to Prescott, in Ontario, Canada where the cars were taken across the St. Lawrence River to Ogdensburg on the Canadian Pacific Railroad ferry Charles Lyon. From here, the freight cars were attached to a New York Central engine and started south through upstate New York. Five days after coming off the boat from Japan, these valuable bales of raw silk were expected to arrive in New York City.Speed was of the essence in these trips for several reasons, some practical and others clearly financial. The most important of these was the high cost of insurance and bonding that the railroad took out on each shipment which amounted to thousands of dollars a day, often calculated by the hour. There also was the practical matter of the safety of the train and the silk it carried. The railroad looked at each trip as traveling through what they called “a zone of danger” as it passed from point A to point B, with the solution being to travel as quickly as possible. For the silk train, it meant often moving at speeds more than eighty miles an hour with only periodic stops for water and to change out the hard-working steam engines and crews.To expedite these trains, they were put through as a Special, a designation that required all other trains to move aside. These trains were on no schedule, they left Vancouver whenever a ship arrived and then moved as quickly across the continent as conditions allowed. The August 19, 1911, edition of the Plattsburgh Press gave this account of one of these runs:“A million-dollar silk train of eight cars was rushed to Prescott Thursday night after a record-breaking run of four days from Vancouver and no time was lost in getting the cargo ferried across to Ogdensburg where a fresh engine was waiting to rush the valuable cargo down to New York in eighteen hours.”On January 3, 1910, just days after the accident, the Ogdensburg Journal ran a story that suggested that the Canadian Pacific silk train that caused Spencer Trak’s death was in a race to New York with the Union Pacific Railway. It was said that the winner would be given preference in future shipments of raw silk. Harper’s Weekly Magazine in a story that they published on December 4, 1909, reported that winning these contests was “the one important thing to these otherwise unemotional railroad men,” and that they would do everything possible to cut even a few minutes off the time it took to move these trains along their route.No changes concerning the racing of silk trains were ever made after this tragic accident, and the only reported penalty to the railroad was a sixty-thousand-dollar lawsuit that his widow donated to Saratoga charities. By the 1930s the silk trains had been discontinued, due to the dramatic drop in the value of raw silk, and the development of manmade fibers.
The Life and Legacies of Spencer Trask
BY JIM RICHMOND | SPONSORED BY THE SARATOGA COUNTY HISTORY ROUNDTABLE | HISTORY
Spencer Trask at his Yaddo Estate. Photo provided by The Saratoga County History Roundtable.
Spencer Trask awoke on the morning of December 31, 1909 in the last compartment of the last sleeper car on the Montreal Express as it neared New York City on the D&H Railroad line. Getting dressed, his thoughts may have turned to the three passions that dominated his life of 65 years. He did not know then that it would the final day of his eventful life.
Trask was born in 1844 in Brooklyn, the son of Alanson Trask and Sarah Marquand Trask. His early years were immersed in his first passion, to become a successful businessman like his father. Alanson Trask was a New Englander of Puritan stock, descended from a family that arrived in Massachusetts in 1628. Two centuries later, Alanson became the first of the family to move away, settling in New York City. The Trasks were a prominent family of some means, but Alanson took their fortunes to a new level. Investing in a shoe manufacturing business during the Civil War, he became an overnight multi-millionaire by today’s standards, selling shoes and other goods to the Union Army.
Son Spencer entered Princeton in 1862, and upon graduating 4 years later entered the investment banking field. Focusing first on providing venture capital funds to the idea men of the post-Civil War era, he had an uncanny ability to pick winners, most famously backing unknown inventers, such as Thomas Edison. Later he and his firm, Spencer Trask & Co., took on the challenge of rescuing struggling businesses. About to go under, he was among the financiers that saved the New York Times from bankruptcy, becoming President of the newspaper from 1897 to 1906.
By that time, his fortune made, he could indulge his other passions. In 1874 he had married Kate Nichols, daughter of another elite New York family, whose own passions centered around the cultural and literary world. That partnership was to bear fruit in later years. The Yaddo Corporation, first conceived by the Trasks in 1900, opens its doors to members of the artistic community after his death. Authors, painters, sculptors and musicians availed themselves of that restful retreat located in the woodlands near the Saratoga racecourse.
For Spencer and Kate Trask, the decade of the 1880’s was filled with both joy and sorrow. In 1880 their first child, Alanson, named after his grandfather, died at the age of five at their Brooklyn home. Distraught, they made a life changing decision to seek a peaceful place in the country to help them deal with their loss. They were already familiar with the resort town of Saratoga Springs, having visited there during the summer social season. Spencer’s father had retired there and taken up residence in an estate he named ”Ooweekin,” Home of Rest, in the native Iroquois language. In 1881 they leased the former Barhydt estate for the summer. Kate was so enchanted they purchased the 155-acre property for $16,500 the next year. Father and son now owned adjacent retirement estates. Ooweekin was on Nelson Avenue, (later the estate and horse training facility owned by John Hay Whitney), and the soon-to-be named Yaddo on Union Avenue, connected by a road now enveloped by private property south of the NYRA backstretch.
Tragedy struck again in 1888 when daughter Christina and son Spencer, Jr. died of diphtheria they had contracted from their mother Kate, who survived. One year later their fourth child, Katrina died three days after birth. Saddened, but still resilient, they plunged themselves into expanding their estate. When their renovated Queen Anne style home was destroyed by fire in 1891, they immediately set to work to construct the large Gothic style mansion, still the centerpiece of Yaddo today.
During this time, Spencer indulged his third passion – using his resources and influence to address what he saw as the dark side of the Gilded Age. In a town whose life blood was gambling, he railed against it, spending $50,000 and creating his own newspaper, the Saratoga Union to promote his views. When several companies were formed in the 1890’s to extract carbonic gas from the springs – thereby threatening the springs and their park-like surroundings – he swung into action. Trask worked with Governor Hughes to secure passage of the Anti-Pumping Act of 1908, followed by the establishment of the State Reservation in 1909, which was given the authority to purchase the land that was to become the Saratoga Spa State Park.
Trask was appointed to head the three-member commission and it was on Reservation business that he traveled to New York on the last day of 1909. While dressing in his compartment, the train was halted by a signal. A freight train following behind failed to stop and plowed into the passenger train, crushing the last car, and ending the life of this man of many virtues. His legacy lives on in his adopted hometown. Katrina commissioned family friend Daniel Chester French to sculpt the Spirit of Life in Congress Park in his honor, and Yaddo continues to welcome artists to its peaceful grounds.
Jim Richmond is a local independent historian, and the author of two books, “War on the Middleline” and “Milton, New York, A New Town in a New Nation” with co-author Kim McCartney. He is currently researching the early history of today’s Saratoga Spa State Park. Jim is also a founding member of the Saratoga County History Roundtable and can be reached at SaratogaCoHistoryRoundtable@gmail.com
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)
NEW YORK ALMANACK SARATOGA COUNTY HISTORY ROUNDTABLE
GRANTS
CITY COUNCIL REPRESENTATIVE JULE MENIN DISCRETIONARY FUNDING THRU DYCD
Last Sunday, when our ship, the Norwegian Joy was docked in Halifax, Nova Scotia, I visited Government House to sign the Memorial Book to Queen Elizabeth. Being in Canada there were few signs of the monarch’s passing except all flags at half staff.
For the first decade of its existence, New Amsterdam was a rough place. Located on the tip of Manhattan Island, it was a haven for pirates and smugglers. Many of the earliest rules and regulations were an attempt to control the unruly citizens of a backwater outpost, but officials proved unable to lay down the law. Intemperate drinking was one of the problems.
In 1640 permission was granted by Willem Kieft, Director of the New Netherland Colony, for liquor to be distilled on Staten Island – in contemporary Dutch: Staaten Eylandt – where what is believed to have been the first commercial distillery in North America was built (today Staten Island is home to the Booze History Museum).
Settlers from the Low Countries distilled a New World version of their native jenever, a grain-based gin with local botanicals like hops and juniper berries. New Amsterdam developed a rich tavern culture – a home away from home. In the same year 1640, Amsterdam city officials first mentioned the name of Pieter Jacobszoon Bols as a distiller on the Rozengracht.
Flemish Legacy
Jenever was first mentioned in Flanders around 1270 by Jacob van Maerlant in Der naturen bloeme (The flower of nature). The tale that Franciscus Sylvius mixed the drink at Leiden University in 1650 as a cure for stomach disorders is a (persistent) myth.
Originally, people used stale beer or waste products from the wine trade to produce their own brandy (in addition to imports from France). By the end of the sixteenth century, home-made distilled brandy (koren brandewijn: burned malt wine), based on distilling a fermented grain wash of barley, rye and malt, was widely imbibed in the Low Countries. The spread of the drink was encouraged by an active intervention policy of the government.
One of the vital herbs added to make the spirit more palatable was the juniper berry (Juniperus communis or “jenever bes”) which gave the spirit its name. At the time, the juniper was a common shrub in the Low Countries and there was a strong belief in its medicinal properties (a cure for pneumonia; burned juniper berries were used to disinfect plague-infected rooms). People soon found out that this “aqua vitae” had not only health-restoring, but also euphoria-inducing qualities. Schnapps is a similar clear distilled spirit that was produced in German-speaking countries.
During the sixteenth century, the relatively tolerant rule of the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V led to the economic and cultural expansion of the Southern Netherlands. Under the dictatorial reign of his son Philip II of Spain who set out to be the “saviour” of Catholic Europe, the Low Countries fell apart. Reports in 1567 that the Duke of Alva’s army was marching towards Antwerp caused an exodus of non-Catholic merchants, artists, printers, publishers, and intellectuals. Brewers too took their skills elsewhere. As most refugees settled in Amsterdam, Haarlem, Leiden, and other northern cities, the process shifted the balance of power. Building on Flemish expertise, the Dutch created a commercial and artistic empire that was unrivaled in Europe.
In 1601, the Archdukes Albrecht and Isabella implemented a ban on distilling in the Spanish Netherlands (which would stay in force for 112 years). The brewers and distillers who had remained were forced to leave their premises. Others had moved away long before, including members of the Antwerp Protestant Bulsius family. Having shortened their name to Bols, they settled in Amsterdam where they founded a distillery outside the city walls in 1575.
By 1640 Pieter Jacobszoon Bols was officially documented as operating a distillery in Amsterdam. He started the production of jenever in 1664. Bols is considered the world’s oldest distilled brand.
Madam Geneva
When Elizabeth I sent troops to assist the Dutch in the war against Spain, English soldiers were stunned by the bravery of local fighters. It was assumed that “Dutch courage” was fired by a potent spirit. English soldiers soon joined the jenever habit. Having anglicized the Dutch word to “genever,” they later transformed it to Geneva (the drink was referred to as “Madam Geneva”).
From Philip Massinger’s play The Duke of Milan (c. 1621/3) we learn that the phrase “in Geneva print” was slang for being drunk. For many, the “un-English” word genever seemed to refer to the Geneva Bible and, by association, to the small roman typeface that was used in the mass produced pocket-bible that Protestant soldiers carried with them. Geneva was eventually shortened to the mono-syllabic word gin.
In August 1689 William III of Orange (“King Billy”) banned all trade between England and France. At the time, French brandy and wines were popular in England and the ban sparked a huge increase in smuggling. Low levels of duty on liquor distilled from malted corn and ciders established by statute in 1690 were introduced in an attempt to encourage native alternatives to French wines. William also promoted the distilling of Dutch jenever as a substitute. Labeled as “Hollands,” it was sold in stoneware bottles.
The Southern Netherlands lifted its distilling ban in 1713. Jenever production began again, re-starting the competition with their ever-expanding counterparts in the north. Britain remained a major export destination. In most English cities, gin was cheap and available on every street corner. Dutch jenever brought about London’s gin addiction.
In 1736, Parliament unsuccessfully tried to stem the flow of gin (and lethal surrogates thereof). The Gin Act caused riots in the streets, but the concern about alcohol abuse remained. The drinking of “Geneva” had become excessive in parts of the population, blamed for destroying the health of many people, and rendering tens of thousands unfit for work.
Gin was the rage of the poor parts of London. At its height there were over 7,000 licensed retailers in a city of 600,000 people, plus thousands more street vendors peddling a spirit far rougher than today’s gin. The availability of so much alcohol proved devastating. William Hogarth’s engraving Gin Lane (1751) is an image of chaos by presenting a mother so drunk that her baby falls from her arms.
Rye Whiskey on Staten Island
To early Dutch pioneers in America brewing figured high on a list of priorities. Around 1633, there appears to have been a brewery amongst the first colonial buildings in New Amsterdam. It was inevitable that Dutch and Flemish distilling skills were put to use from the start.
When Willem Kieft permitted distilling on Staten Island, producers made use of an abundance of rye which they distilled with juniper berries and hops, creating a potent liquor. The making of rye whiskey subsequently became popular in areas of Dutch and Germanic settlement, including the “Pennsylvania Dutch.” Beam, Overholt, and Shenk were all early distillers from the Pennsylvania area who descended from Germanic settlers.
Samuel McHarry’s The Practical Distiller was first published in 1809 and describes the methods for making whiskey from the 1600s onward. The book contains a significant recipe on “How to Make Resemblance of Holland Gin Out of a Rye Whiskey.” Native American Indians acquired a taste for the “Dutch rye” spirit which caused a whiskey war between local inhabitants and incomers. The clash led to destruction of the “Oude Dorp” (Old Town) settlement near what is now South Beach on Staten Island.
The Dutch had a reputation for booziness. The verb itself was derived from the Middle Dutch “busen,” meaning to drink heavily (used in 1590 by Edmund Spenser in his description of “Gluttony” in The Faerie Queene). When in 1647 Peter Stuyvesant was appointed Director-General of New Netherland, he made it his mission to restore law and order by fighting drunkenness. In his first Edict issued in May 1647, he condemned intoxication and prohibited the Sunday sale of alcohol in the colony. Stuyvesant may have been a pioneer of Prohibition, but he was unable to reverse a drinking culture.
New York kept distilling alive, albeit on a modest scale. In the early nineteenth century Hezekiah Pierrepont, a major land developer in Brooklyn, acquired a distillery at the foot of Joralemon Street in Brooklyn Heights and began producing Anchor Gin which, for a while, was distributed widely. By 1819, however, Pierrepont had abandoned the business. Other distilleries included a company headed by William Johnson at 16th Street and 9th Avenue, Manhattan, but punishing taxation made the profitable running of a distillery in New York difficult.
Dutch-speaking Martin Van Buren served as the ninth Governor of New York before, in 1837, becoming the eighth President of the United States. A hard drinker, he was known by the nickname “Blue Whiskey Van.” His favorite tipple, however, was “Schiedam” which he consumed in large quantities. He was not the only one.
At a time of mass migration from the Netherlands and Germany to the United States, demand for “home” spirits rose sharply. An enterprising wine merchant came up with a brand that would entice both immigrant markets.
Schiedam Schnapps in Beaver Street
Grain is jenever’s main ingredient. As a North Sea port located at the mouth of the river Maas, the city of Schiedam profited economically by the handling and processing of grain that was transported from the harvested fields of northern and central Europe.
Schiedam rapidly developed as a distilling hub. Windmills were built close to the port and distilleries (captured in an 1897 lithograph by Joseph Pennell). Botanicals for flavoring were supplied by the Amsterdam-based Dutch East India Company. By exporting jenever worldwide, the city’s name became synonymous with the product.
In 1774, Jewish merchant Benjamin Wolfe moved from Germany to London. Two years later he settled in Richmond, Virginia, served under George Washington, and fought against the British in the War of 1812. Around 1824, his son Joel moved to New York where he established himself as a wine and spirit importer in Beaver Street, Manhattan. His younger brother Udolpho joined him there.
In 1839, the brothers commissioned the Schiedam distillers Blankenheym & Nolet to work on their behalf (the latter had been established in New York since 1691). In 1848, the firm advertised a new brand. Labelled Aromatic Schiedam Schnapps, it was medically endorsed by “chemists and physicians.” Schiedam was promoted as a curative to combat gout, rheumatism, obstruction of the bladder and poor blood circulation.
Wolfe’s Aromatic Schnapps was a phenomenal success. By the 1870s, at least one million bottles were sold around the world. Schiedam was the liquor centre of the world. In 1858, a roasting house was built in the city’s harbor area. Named “New York,” the structure reflected the special (liquid) relationship between the two cities.
When by the 1890s the malt wine industry came under increasing pressure from the competition of jenever produced more cheaply from molasses spirit (made from waste originating from the sugar beet industry), the traditional distillers united in a Brandersbond (Malt Distillers’ Association). The aim of this alliance was to preserve and protect the original distillers’ craft.
Until the late nineteenth century, most American bartenders mixed their cocktails with jenever. During the First World War, Belgian producers were hit when German invaders confiscated the copper stills and used the metal to produce ammunition. Prohibition was a further blow to the producers as the export of jenever to the United States dwindled.
As the Netherlands remained neutral during the World War I, its international trade suffered but the distilling industry survived. World War II changed all that. The Nazi occupation of the Netherlands completely halted production. Post-war competition with more fashionable English gin brands started a “spirit war” in which jenever lost its international appeal. The hangover was severe. It led to the demise of many distilleries in the Low Countries.
NORWEGIAN JOY The design of the artwork is called “Phoenix” and it was visioned by renowned Chinese artist Tan Ping. Featured on the ship hull is an iconic mythical bird which is believed to reign supreme over all birds of the world and is used a lot throughout Chinese culture.
A Little Explanation This ship was built for the Chinese and Asian market in 2017. Due to complications with the Chinese market the ship was renovated and now sails to the US, Canada and other islands. The wonderful hull artwork fascinated me all week and no one could tell me about it on the ship. This joyful piece is the only memory of the shop’s Chinese beginning.
Thanks to Bobbie Slonevsky for her dedication to Blackwell’s Almanac and the RIHS Thanks to Deborah Dorff for maintaining our website Edited by Deborah Dorff All image are copyrighted (c)
All image are copyrighted (c) Roosevelt Island Historical Society unless otherwise indicated
SOURCES
NEW YORK ALMANACK
JAAP HARSKAMP
GRANTS
CITY COUNCIL REPRESENTATIVE JULIE MENIN DISCRETIONARY FUNDING THRU DYCD
Joseph Freedlander (1870 – 1943)Mercury16 1/2″ bronzeIn the late 1920s, Freedlander was asked by the City of New York to design a series of bronze light posts for Fifth Avenue. The first, completed in 1931, was installed at 41st and Fifth, and 103 others followed between 8th and 59th Streets. Each traffic light was topped by a bronze statuette of Mercury. Only several survived
Tired of cars — and bikes — running red lights? How about no lights at all? That’s the kind of traffic system New York had until 1920, when a series of tall bare-bones towers went up down the middle of Fifth Avenue, flashing red and green lights to the growing onslaught of automobiles. Two years later they were replaced with formidably elegant bronze and granite towers, sumptuous contributions to the City Beautiful, but destroyed within a decade, victims of increasing traffic.
The Library of Congress has a website of digitized photographs and early movies of New York, called American Memory. If you look at the half dozen movies set in New York it is clear that, except for a few policemen, traffic regulation amounted to “hey, watch out!”
My book “Fifth Avenue, 1911, From Start to Finish” (Dover, 1994) covers most blocks from Washington Square to 93rd Street, and there is nary a traffic light nor a sign to be seen in any of the photographs, although policemen were clearly on duty at many intersections.
But automobiles complicated the mix, and safety became an increasing concern. In 1913 The New York Times reported on the city’s “Death Harvest” — that’s the actual headline — from 1910 and 1912 for three different types of vehicles: the number killed by wagons and carriages, down in two years to 177 from 211; and streetcars, down to 134 from 148. But automobile fatalities nearly doubled, to 221 from 112. Ninety-five percent of the dead, according to The Times, were pedestrians. (In 2013, 156 pedestrians were killed by automobiles.)
Influential retailers on Fifth Avenue no doubt felt sympathy, but what hurt them at the cash register was traffic gridlock, and pressure grew to declog the avenue. It could take 40 minutes to go from 57th to 34th Street.
There had been an experimental traffic light in 1917, but it was short-lived. Thus it was in 1920 that the first permanent traffic lights in New York went up, the gift of Dr. John A. Harriss, a millionaire physician fascinated by street conditions. His design was a homely wooden shed on a latticework of steel, from which a police officer changed signals, allowing one to two minutes for each direction. Although the meanings we attach to red and green now seem like the natural order of things, in 1920 green meant Fifth Avenue traffic was to stop so crosstown traffic could proceed; white meant go. Most crosstown streets and Fifth Avenue were still two-way.
The doctor’s signals were so well received that in 1922 the Fifth Avenue Association gave the city, at a cost of $126,000, a new set of signals, seven ornate bronze 23-foot-high towers placed at intersections along Fifth from 14th to 57th Streets. Designed by Joseph H. Freedlander, they were the most elegant street furniture the city has ever had. It was a time when elevating public taste through civic beauty was considered a fit goal for government effort. In 1923 the magazine Architecture opined that “To understand the beautiful is to create a love for the beautiful, to widen the boundaries of human pride, enjoyment and accomplishment.”
Dr. Harriss’s towers would have looked at home in a railway freight yard; Freedlander’s towers were fitting adornments for the noblest of New York’s public spaces, like the forecourt of the New York Public Library or the Plaza at 59th Street.
For reasons unstated, the towers were not placed in the center of the intersections, but several feet north or south of the crosswalks — crosstown drivers could barely see them. The new lights supposedly reduced that trip from 57th to 34th to 15 minutes. Soon, traffic lights were like laptops in classrooms: everyone was in favor of them.
Most of the big avenues got traffic lights, of much simpler design, and mounted on corners. In 1927 the present system of red, yellow and green was generally recognized, but The Times said the yellow caution light had been abandoned in New York because it was a “temptation to motorists to rush through intersections.”
Cars continued to flood the streets and within a few years the police decided that Freedlander’s sumptuous traffic towers were blocking the roadway. It took some convincing, but the Fifth Avenue Association came around to taking them down and in 1929 Freedlander was called back to design a new two-light traffic signal, also bronze, to be placed on the corners. These were topped by statues of Mercury and lasted until 1964. A few of the Mercury statues have survived, but Freedlander’s 1922 towers have completely vanished.
In retrospect, the automobile appears as the opening wedge to a new kind of city. Pedestrians were zoned off the streets, to which they had formerly had unfettered access. The speed of automobiles, not horse-drawn vehicles, became the metric. Street cars, held hostage to their fixed routes, were often stalled by traffic. The streets themselves became layered with regulation after regulation, covered with signs, lights, arrows and stanchions, none of which were ever as elegant as the 1922 Fifth Avenue traffic towers.
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 Helicline Fine Art
NEW YORK TIMES (c) Christopher Gray
FUNDING PROVIDED BY ROOSEVELT ISLAND OPERATING CORPORATION PUBLIC PURPOSE GRANTS CITY COUNCIL REPRESENTATIVE BEN KALLOS DISCRETIONARY FUNDING THRU DYCD
After the Revolutionary War, two financially strapped New York City brothers named James and Jacob Blackwell tried to find a buyer for the East River island they had inherited from their father.
After the Revolutionary War, two financially strapped New York City brothers named James and Jacob Blackwell tried to find a buyer for the East River island they had inherited from their father.
A 1784 newspaper advertisement placed by James Blackwell described the island’s selling points.The island, “was about four miles from the city,” the ad stated, according to the Landmarks Preservation Commission report from 1976. Among the features were “’two small Dwelling Houses, a Barn, Bake, and Fowl House, a Cyder Mill,’ a large orchard, stone quarries and running springs.”
Despite the amenities, the island didn’t sell—or perhaps the Blackwells fortunes changed, and they decided to hang onto this two-mile long private strip between Manhattan and Queens.Whatever the reason, From 1796 and 1804, James Blackwell built a spacious farmhouse that still stands on their former island, now called Roosevelt Island.The clapboard Blackwell House, with typical late 18th-century touches like a wide porch, separate kitchen wing, gabled roof, root cellar, and dormer windows, is the only building that survives from the two centuries or so when Roosevelt Island was privately owned, states the LPC report.
It’s also the sixth oldest still-extant farmhouse in New York City, a charming relic still in its original spot facing the East River. It dates from the same era as the Dyckman Farmhouse in Northern Manhattan as well as Gracie Mansion across the East River.A farmhouse isn’t what you’d expect to find on a spit of land better known as a notorious 19th century repository for Gotham’s poor, sick, and criminal. But before New York City purchased the island from the Blackwells in 1828 and built a penitentiary—then an almshouse, workhouse, and hospitals for people afflicted with smallpox, mental illness, and a variety of incurable diseases—the island was farmland.
The Blackwell farmhouse, about 1933, before a wing off the house was demolished
The first European settlers in the 17th century were Dutch, who called it Varckens Eylandt, or Hog Island in English, after the pigs raised there. “It was purchased from two [Native American] chiefs by Governor Wouter van Twiller in 1637 and was already being farmed by 1639 under land grants from the Amsterdam Chamber of the West India Company,” explains the LPC report.
The Blackwells become owners when Mary Manning Blackwell inherited it from her stepfather, Captain John Manning. Captain Manning got it through a land grant from Richard Nicholls, the first British colonial governor of New York and one of the commanders who seized New Amsterdam from the Dutch in 1664.
The house on what was then called Welfare Island, 1950
After the city took over Blackwell’s Island, the farmhouse was used to house administrators of the many institutions that didn’t begin to close until the end of the 19th century, as the terrible conditions inside them became known to an outraged public.
During the 20th century, the house fell into disrepair, like so many other buildings on what was renamed Welfare Island. Restored and rehabbed (minus an original wing) in the early 1970s—with the island renamed for FDR—it now houses artifacts and documents related to Roosevelt Island history and is open to the public.
Imagine the views the house had to the Manhattan country estates along the East River (the house would line up to about East 65th Street today, across from the circa-1799 Mount Vernon Hotel, a popular summer resort) and the sailing ships of New York’s busy harbor!
BLACKWELL HOUSE IS OPEN WEDNESDAY TO SUNDAY 11 A.M. TO 5 P.M. FOR VISITS OF THE EXHIBITS CURATED BY THE R.I.H.S. (CLOSED 2 RO 3 P.M.)
TO READ THE FULL LANDMARKS PRESERVATION COMMISSION DESIGNATION REPORT:
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
EPHEMERAL NEW YORK NYC LANDMRKS PRESERVATION COMMISSION ROOSEVELT ISLAND HISTORICAL SOCIETY
FUNDING PROVIDED BY ROOSEVELT ISLAND OPERATING CORPORATION PUBLIC PURPOSE GRANTS CITY COUNCIL REPRESENTATIVE BEN KALLOS DISCRETIONARY FUNDING THRU DYCD
A new exhibition that explores the work of artist Edward Hopper and his relationship with New York City will open at the Whitney Museum this fall. Hopper, who called Greenwich Village home from 1913 until his death in 1967, uniquely captured an evolving city at a time of historic development and population growth. On view at the museum starting in October, Edward Hopper’s New York will feature more than 200 paintings, watercolors, prints, and drawings by Hopper, along with additional archival materials like photographs and notebooks.
The exhibition is organized by “thematic chapters” of Hopper’s life and includes eight sections and four gallery spaces featuring his most celebrated paintings. The installation begins with Hopper’s early sketches and drawings from when he was commuting to the city from Nyack, New York to when he first moved to the apartment at 3 Washington Square North in Greenwich Village.
Another section of the installation, titled “The Window,” highlights Hopper’s work that was inspired as he walked the streets or rode elevated trains, witnessing everyday life, as seen in paintings like Automat (1927) and Room in Brooklyn (1932).
On display for the first time together will be Hopper’s panoramic cityscapes in a section called “The Horizontal City.” The installation features five of the artist’s paintings (Early Sunday Morning (1930), Manhattan Bridge Loop (1928), Blackwell’s Island (1928), Apartment Houses, East River (c. 1930), and Macomb’s Dam Bridge (1935)) which have a nearly identical format. Together, the paintings provide a fresh look at Hopper’s “contrarian vision of the growing city at a time when New York was increasingly defined by its relentless skyward development,” as a museum press release describes.
“Hopper lived most of his life right here, only blocks from where the Whitney stands today,” Kim Conaty, curator of Edward Hopper’s New York, said. “He experienced the same streets and witnessed the incessant cycles of demolition and construction that continue today, as New York reinvents itself again and again.”
“Yet, as few others have done so poignantly, Hopper captured a city that was both changing and changeless, a particular place in time and one distinctly shaped by his imagination. Seeing his work through this lens opens new pathways for exploring even Hopper’s most iconic works.”
“Washington Square” features paintings inspired by his neighborhood and explores his infatuation with views from his apartment. “Theater” explores Hopper’s love of the stage and includes works inspired by theater spaces, like The Sheridan Theatre (1957), as well as preserved ticket stubs.
The comprehensive exhibit includes a selection of sketches that show Hopper’s favorite places in the city to document, as well as later works that show a more fantastical approach to depicting the urban experience.
“Edward Hopper’s New York offers a remarkable opportunity to celebrate an ever-changing yet timeless city through the work of an American icon,” Adam D. Weinberg, the Alice Pratt Brown Director of the Whitney Museum.
“As New York bounces back after two challenging years of global pandemic, this exhibition reconsiders the life and work of Edward Hopper, serves as a barometer of our times, and introduces a new generation of audiences to Hopper’s work by a new generation of scholars. This exhibition offers fresh perspectives and radical new insights.”
Hopper’s relationship with Whitney began in 1920 when he had his first solo exhibition at the Whitney Studio Club, which closed in 1928 to make way for the Whitney Museum of American Art. Hopper’s work first appeared in the inaugural Whitney Biennial in 1932 and in 29 Biennials and Annuals through 1965, according to the museum. In 1968, Hopper’s widow, artist Josephine Nivison Hopper, bequeathed the entirety of his collection to the museum, which today is home to more than 3,100 works by the artist.
Edward Hopper’s New York will be on view from October 19, 2022, through March 5, 2023. Timed tickets to the exhibition will be available starting Tuesday, September 13.
“BLACKWELL’S ISLAND” now owned by Crystal Bridges in Benton, Arkansas will be on exhibit at the Whitney.
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
6SQFT
WHITNEY MUSEUM
FUNDING PROVIDED BY ROOSEVELT ISLAND OPERATING CORPORATION PUBLIC PURPOSE GRANTS CITY COUNCIL REPRESENTATIVE BEN KALLOS DISCRETIONARY FUNDING THRU DYCD
Collection: Crate, can, and bottle label collection Date: Undated Call Number: Kemble Spec Col 08 Digital object ID: Kemble Spec Col 08_005.jpg General note: Farley Fruit Company, main office, Salinas, California Preferred citation: Lettuce label, Air Chief Brand, Lehmann Printing and Lithographing Co., Crate, can, and bottle label collection, Kemble Spec Col 08, courtesy, California Historical Society, Kemble Spec Col 08_005.jpg.
Collection: Crate, can, and bottle label collection Date: Undated Call Number: Kemble Spec Col 08 Digital object ID: Kemble Spec Col 08_046.jpg General note: Picked and packed by Central Lemon Association, Villa Park, Orange County, California
The Alaska -Yukon-Pacific Exposition was held in Seattle in 1909 as a way to highlight the development of the region, and to spotlight Seattle as a gateway to Alaska and Asia. Exhibits were a major attraction of the AYPE and featured in most of the buildings on the Fairgrounds. Intended to be educational, exhibits were used to show off the products, people, and culture of the sponsoring country, state, county or organization. One state that showed particularly spectacular exhibits was California. These imaginative displays included a lemon made of lemons, an elephant of walnuts, and a cow of almonds. This brightly colored “Exposition Brand” Sunkist lemon crate label prominently features the Grand Prize certificate that the Johnson Fruit Co. of California, packers of Sunkist lemons, won for their exhibit of lemons at the Alaska -Yukon-Pacific Exposition.
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
WIKIMEDIA COMMONS
FUNDING PROVIDED BY ROOSEVELT ISLAND OPERATING CORPORATION PUBLIC PURPOSE GRANTS CITY COUNCIL REPRESENTATIVE BEN KALLOS DISCRETIONARY FUNDING THRU DYCD
Childe Hassam Flags on the Waldorf Amon Carter Museum
Childe Hassam, The Flag, 1917, NGA 179844
Childe Hassam, The Billboards, New York, 1916, etching on paper, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Transfer from the National Museum of American History, Division of Graphic Arts, Smithsonian Institution, 1971.222
Childe Hassam, The Village Elms, Easthampton, 1923, etching on paper, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Transfer from the National Museum of American History, Division of Graphic Arts, Smithsonian Institution, 1971.221
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
WIKIMEDIA COMMONS
FUNDING PROVIDED BY ROOSEVELT ISLAND OPERATING CORPORATION PUBLIC PURPOSE GRANTS CITY COUNCIL REPRESENTATIVE BEN KALLOS DISCRETIONARY FUNDING THRU DYCD
Painter and illustrator. Hassam was a leading American Impressionist whose work was much influenced by Claude Monet. His landscapes, street scenes, and interior scenes were both popularly and officially recognized.
Joan Stahl American Artists in Photographic Portraits from the Peter A. Juley & Son Collection (Washington, D.C. and Mineola, New York: National Museum of American Art and Dover Publications, Inc., 1995)
Frederick Childe Hassam, the scion of an old New England family (his surname is a corruption of Horsham), grew up in the upper-middle-class suburb of Dorchester, Massachusetts. His father, a Boston merchant and hardware store owner, collected Americana well before this hobby became a popular pastime. He passed this interest in history along to his son. It is telling that the future artist first dabbled with a brush while sitting in the old coach that carried the Marquis de Lafayette through New England on his triumphal tour in 1824 – 25! Hassam, like many of his fellow artists, traveled to Europe for instruction in the 1880s and eventually settled in New York. Exposed to the full measure of urban hustle and bustle, Hassam returned to the past as often as he could and during the last forty years of his life traveled from one historic summer resort to the next, painting picturesque villages and towns throughout New England. The past is therefore a living presence in Hassam’s art. While his village scenes may appear quaint, they are also active statements about the importance of traditional New England values and institutions in an era of great change.
William H. Truettner and Roger B. Stein, editors, with contributions by Dona Brown, Thomas Andrew Denenberg, Judith K. Maxwell, Stephen Nissenbaum, Bruce Robertson, Roger B. Stein, and William H. Truettner Picturing Old New England: Image and Memory (Washington, D.C.; New Haven, Conn; and London: National Museum of American Art with Yale University Press, 1999)
Childe Hassam learned the value of hard work after his father’s hardware store burned to the ground and Hassam left school to work as a wood engraver. He made illustrations for newspapers in his hometown of Dorchester, Massachusetts, and began painting scenes of urban life in the 1880s. Ambitious and determined, Hassam settled in New York with his wife, Maude, and set to work painting the booming city. In the summer months he traveled around New England and to Appledore Island off the coast of New Hampshire. A sociable and extroverted character, Hassam surrounded himself with friends who enjoyed lively dinner parties that lasted late into the evenings. (Broun, “Childe Hassam’s America,” American Art, Fall 1999)
Childe Hassam, New York Bouquet, 1917, lithograph on paper, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Transfer from the National Museum of American History, Division of Graphic Arts, Smithsonian Institution, 1971.231
Childe Hassam, Tanagra (The Builders, New York), 1918, oil on canvas, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of John Gellatly, 1929.6.63
In Tanagra (The Builders, New York), Childe Hassam painted an ambivalent image of modern life. At the turn of the twentieth century, the skyscraper symbolized all that was dynamic and powerful in America. Architects praised the new towers as symbols of mankind’s reach for the heavens. But as the United States grew in power and prestige, the workers who provided the nation’s muscle also seemed to threaten Hassam’s orderly and prosperous world. The artist had won fame and fortune picturing New York for the delight of its moneyed class; the art, music, and fine manners surrounding this “blond Aryan girl” provided a buffer against the unruliness of America’s immigrant society. If the skyscraper represents worldly ambition, the other vertical elements in the painting—the lilies, the Hellenistic figurine, the panels of a beautiful oriental screen—suggest a different kind of aspiration. But in 1918, the refined life this woman pursued in her elegant environment was already under attack by the reality of war and the clamor of a new century.
Exhibition Label, Smithsonian American Art Museum, 2006
Childe Hassam, The Billboards, New York, 1916, etching on paper, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Transfer from the National Museum of American History, Division of Graphic Arts, Smithsonian Institution, 1971.222
Childe Hassam, The Village Elms, Easthampton, 1923, etching on paper, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Transfer from the National Museum of American History, Division of Graphic Arts, Smithsonian Institution, 1971.221
This series continues tomorrow
Weekend Photo of the Day
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
SMITHSONIAN AMERICAN ART MUSEUM
FUNDING PROVIDED BY ROOSEVELT ISLAND OPERATING CORPORATION PUBLIC PURPOSE GRANTS CITY COUNCIL REPRESENTATIVE BEN KALLOS DISCRETIONARY FUNDING THRU DYCD
Painter and illustrator. Hassam was a leading American Impressionist whose work was much influenced by Claude Monet. His landscapes, street scenes, and interior scenes were both popularly and officially recognized.
Joan Stahl American Artists in Photographic Portraits from the Peter A. Juley & Son Collection (Washington, D.C. and Mineola, New York: National Museum of American Art and Dover Publications, Inc., 1995)
Frederick Childe Hassam, the scion of an old New England family (his surname is a corruption of Horsham), grew up in the upper-middle-class suburb of Dorchester, Massachusetts. His father, a Boston merchant and hardware store owner, collected Americana well before this hobby became a popular pastime. He passed this interest in history along to his son. It is telling that the future artist first dabbled with a brush while sitting in the old coach that carried the Marquis de Lafayette through New England on his triumphal tour in 1824 – 25! Hassam, like many of his fellow artists, traveled to Europe for instruction in the 1880s and eventually settled in New York. Exposed to the full measure of urban hustle and bustle, Hassam returned to the past as often as he could and during the last forty years of his life traveled from one historic summer resort to the next, painting picturesque villages and towns throughout New England. The past is therefore a living presence in Hassam’s art. While his village scenes may appear quaint, they are also active statements about the importance of traditional New England values and institutions in an era of great change.
William H. Truettner and Roger B. Stein, editors, with contributions by Dona Brown, Thomas Andrew Denenberg, Judith K. Maxwell, Stephen Nissenbaum, Bruce Robertson, Roger B. Stein, and William H. Truettner Picturing Old New England: Image and Memory (Washington, D.C.; New Haven, Conn; and London: National Museum of American Art with Yale University Press, 1999)
Childe Hassam learned the value of hard work after his father’s hardware store burned to the ground and Hassam left school to work as a wood engraver. He made illustrations for newspapers in his hometown of Dorchester, Massachusetts, and began painting scenes of urban life in the 1880s. Ambitious and determined, Hassam settled in New York with his wife, Maude, and set to work painting the booming city. In the summer months he traveled around New England and to Appledore Island off the coast of New Hampshire. A sociable and extroverted character, Hassam surrounded himself with friends who enjoyed lively dinner parties that lasted late into the evenings. (Broun, “Childe Hassam’s America,” American Art, Fall 1999)
Childe Hassam, The South Ledges, Appledore, 1913, oil on canvas,
Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of John Gellatly, 1929.6.62 Hassam spent many summers on Appledore Island off the coast of Maine. Every year, he and a circle of musicians, writers and other artists made an informal colony based at the home of his friend, the poet Celia Thaxter. In Thaxter’s gardens and on the rocky beaches, Hassam used the flickering brushwork and brilliant colors he had adopted in France to capture the spangled light of Appledore’s brief summer. This painting evokes the leisurely, seasonal rhythms of America’s priveleged families in the last years before the Great War. A beautifully dressed woman shields her face from the sun; she looks down and away, as if absorbed in the song of a sandpiper, the island bird that inspired Celia Thaxter’s most famous children’s poem.
Exhibition Label, Smithsonian American Art Museum, 2006 American Impressionism emerged in the late 1880s when a generation of American artists studied abroad to absorb the new palette and compositions that were modernizing painting in France. Landscapes and domestic scenes by these American Impressionists are as wonderfully fresh and sparkling as those by their more familiar French counterparts. These artists, attracted to the light and color of painting outdoors, celebrate a modern view of life as America entered the twentieth century.
Childe Hassam spent many summers on Appledore Island off the coast of Maine. Every year, he and a circle of musicians, writers, and other artists made an informal colony based at the home of his friend, the poet Celia Thaxter. In Thaxter’s gardens and on the rocky beaches, Hassam used the flickering brushwork and brilliant colors he had adopted in France to capture the spangled light of Appledore’s brief summer. Smithsonian American Art Museum: Commemorative Guide. Nashville, TN: Beckon Books, 2015.
Childe Hassam, Up the River, Late Afternoon, October, 1906, pastel on paper, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of John Gellatly, 1929.6.65
Childe Hassam, Noon above Newburgh, 1916, watercolor on paper, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of John Gellatly, 1929.6.59
Childe Hassam, Thaxter’s Garden, 1892, watercolor on paper, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of John Gellatly, 1929.6.54
This series continues tomorrow
Friday Photo of the Day
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
SMITHSONIAN AMERICAN ART MUSEUM
FUNDING PROVIDED BY ROOSEVELT ISLAND OPERATING CORPORATION PUBLIC PURPOSE GRANTS CITY COUNCIL REPRESENTATIVE BEN KALLOS DISCRETIONARY FUNDING THRU DYCD
Mary Cassatt – Ellen Mary Cassatt In A White Coat – 1896
Mary Cassatt – Under the Horse-Chestnut Tree – Google Art Project.
Mary Cassatt – Childhood in a Garden – 1901
Mary Cassatt – Portrait of Mrs. Currey; Sketch of Mr. Cassatt.jpg Oil, c. 1871, private collection. Mrs. Currey had worked for the Cassatt family. When Mary Cassatt returned home from Paris at the outbreak of the Franco-Prussian war, she asked Mrs. Currey to pose for her and gave her the sketch. Superimposed (the canvas turned upside down) is a sketch of her father. Smithsoniam Insitution record.
Mary Cassatt Feeding the ducks c1894.
Feeding the ducks, ca. 1894, signiert Mary Cassatt, Kaltnadel und Aquatintaradierung in Farbe mit Monotypie auf Bütten, Darstellungsgröße 29,5 x 39,5 cm, Blattgröße 35 x 50 cm
This series continues tomorrow
Thursday Photo of the Day
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
WIKIMEDIA COMMONS
FUNDING PROVIDED BY ROOSEVELT ISLAND OPERATING CORPORATION PUBLIC PURPOSE GRANTS CITY COUNCIL REPRESENTATIVE BEN KALLOS DISCRETIONARY FUNDING THRU DYCD
