Monday, October 24, 2022 – When becoming a trained seamstress was a career goal
FROM THE ARCHIVES
MONDAY, OCTOBER 24, 2022
THE 815th EDITION
The Art Deco-Style
Chelsea Mosaics
that Illustrate the
Needle Trades
EPHEMERAL NEW YORK
The Art Deco-style Chelsea mosaics that
illustrate the needle trades
Contemporary New Yorkers don’t often hear the term “needle trades” anymore. But in the vernacular of the early 20th century, it referred to any work related to the creation of clothing—like sewing, pattern making, cloth cutting, and dressmaking.
Much of this work in the decades before World War II was done by immigrants and first generation New Yorkers in Manhattan’s Garment District, the stretch of showrooms, wholesale shops, and factories inside the towering new loft buildings built between Broadway and Ninth Avenue and 34th to 42nd Streets.
Before moving to this chunk of Midtown, the needle trades were centered in sweatshops on the Lower East Side and Greenwich Village, and the work was also done piecemeal at home with little regulation or protection. A somewhat regulated Garment District was considered an improvement in progressive Gotham.
To train and supply prewar New York’s army of garment manufacturers, the city—with the help of the WPA—built an Art Deco-style vocational high school called Central High School of Needle Trades (top photo). Opened in 1940 on West 24th Street between 7th and 8th Avenues, it was developed in conjunction with garment industry reps.
“This building has sixty-five shops and special rooms, ten regular classrooms and six laboratories in which will be taught all branches of tailoring, costume design, millinery design, dressmaking, shoe manufacturing, fur processing and allied subjects,” the New York Times wrote when the school opened, per The Living New Deal.
Since 1956, the school has been known as the High School of Fashion Industries. With the decline of manufacturing in what’s still called the Garment District, there’s much more of a focus on the business of fashion, per the school website.
Even so, students continue to attend class in the original Art Deco Needle Trades building. Outside the entrance are four proud mosaics illustrating different aspects of the needle trades—from sewing to measuring to threading a needle.
The work may seem primitive amid our digital age, but the mosaics are a reminder of all that used to be made in New York primarily by human hands.
MONDAY PHOTO OF THE DAY
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WEEKEND PHOTO
A Reform Party political cartoon which was part of the 1871 Samuel J. Tilden campaign against Tammany Hall and William Magear “Boss” Tweed that ultimately led to Tweed’s 1874 conviction and imprisonment for corruption, in the Blackwell Island Prison. Initially he was sentenced to a term of 12 year but his sentence was subsequently reduced and he was freed after one year. After his release, he was immediately re-arrested for and convicted of embezzlement. During this second incarceration at the Ludlow Jail—while on a supervised visit to the home of a family member—Tweed escaped. He fled to Cuba and then sailed to Spain, where authorities arrested him as he disembarked and returned him to New York City. Tweed spent his final years in Ludlow jail where he died of Severe Pneumonia in 1878. Tweed is buried in Brooklyn’s Green Wood Cemetery. Ed Litcher
Andy Sparberg got it too!
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)
Tags: Art Deco High School of Needle Trades, Art Deco in New York City, Art Deco Mosaics Chelsea NYC, High School of Fashion Industries Chelsea, Mosaics High School of Fashion Industries, Needle Trades High School Mosaics
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