Frontispiece depicting Ole Worm’s cabinet of curiosities, from Museum Wormianum, 1655 (Smithsonian Libraries). Ole Worm was a Danish physician and natural historian. Engravings of his collection were published in a volume after his death. www.khanacademy.org/humanities/approaches-to-art-history/tools-for-understanding-museums/museums-in-history/a/a-brief-history-of-the-art-museum-edit#
Arguments about American Museums Stephen Blank
I’m reading a recent book about the struggle to win American interest in Picasso and other modern artists – Picasso’s War by Hugh Eakin. Made me think about museums, art museums, collecting…
The Romans had something like pop-up museums where they laid out the booty from a victorious battle for folks to see. Churches showed off relics – sort of religious museums. Later, in the age of exploration as the world grew smaller, curious and wealthy types created Wunderkammern, or cabinets of wonders. These were collections of the odd, the rare and newly found, which were the early cousins to museums. As Europe was extending its reach into “new” continents and cultures, Wunderkammern were places to gather, interpret, and show off the riches of the world.
Wunderkammern were playgrounds of the wealthy elite, open only to the collector, his immediate circle, and the occasional visitor who was properly furnished with a letter of introduction. This intimacy meant that objects could be taken from shelves, handled, juxtaposed, and discussed before being returned to storage, often out of sight. Wunderkammern were more like private study collections than the art museums most of us know today.
(This is quite topical for me. On Monday, I gave a talk in Bard Graduate Study Center, a close cousin to the Wunderkammern. Lenore and I donated more than 80 glass, ceramic and wood items we had collected in our travels to the Study Center.)
Travel, organized exploration, and intellectual fermentation produced a new kind of institution. One that not only collected and displayed wonders of the world but sought to understand deeper histories and patterns of relationships. The British Museum, founded in 1750, embodies these objectives – not just exotic objects revealed but a greater sense of what they were, where they came from and how they were used by the societies in which they were found. The British Museum – and soon, similar collections in Paris, Berlin, Vienna and elsewhere – also represented (and glorified) colonial empires.
At the same time, specialized collections, such as botanical and zoological museums, begin to emerge –and, as well, museums devoted only to art. Kustmuseum Basel is seen as the first art museum. Descended from the Amerbach-Cabinet, a Wunderkammern, purchased in 1661 by the city of Basel. It became the first municipally owned museum. Kustmuseum Basel opened publicly in 1671 followed by other art museums — the Capitoline (Rome, 1734), the Louvre (Paris, 1793), and the Alte Pinakothek (Munich, 1836). Britain’s National gallery was founded in 1824 when the government bought 38 paintings from the heirs of John Julius Angerstein, an insurance broker and patron of the arts. Running through these newly public institutions was a deeply didactic structure, and a community, it was felt, to public edification.
Of course, there’s a uniquely American story here. On one side, different institutions claim to be the first American museum.
Founded in 1773, the Charleston Museum is widely regarded as “America’s First Museum.” It was inspired by the creation of the British Museum and established by the Charleston Library Society on the eve of the American Revolution
Charles Wilson Peale opened a portrait gallery in his home studio in 1782, near the war’s official end, where he displayed his portraits of George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, and Alexander Hamilton. Here where he opened the first public museum — called the Philadelphia Museum — in 1786. The Charleston Museum opened earlier but did not open to the public until 1824. So, the Philadelphia Museum was the nation’s “first successful public museum.”
In 1825, a group of New York artists conceived of the National Academy of Design, one of the nation’s first fine arts institutions. They were students of the American Academy of the Fine Arts who were critical of the academy ‘s commitment to teaching. Samuel Morse, one of the leaders, had been a student at the Royal Academy in London and emulated its structure and goals for the National Academy of Design. The mission of the academy, from its foundation, was to “promote the fine arts in America through exhibition and education.”
A few years later, in 1842, the Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art in Hartford was founded with a vision for infusing art into the American experience. The Atheneum is the oldest continuously operating public art museum in the United States, opening its doors to the public in 1844.
Notwithstanding these early efforts, art museums were an unusual luxury in the United States until the later decades of the nineteenth century when wealthy patrons in rapidly expanding American cities began to emulate European models. This is why so many historic American museums resemble their European counterparts (temple-fronted facades over a grand staircase), echo their collecting habits (classical sculpture, Renaissance painting, etc.), and mimic their approach to layout and installation.
The Metropolitan Museum of Art is the second most visited art museum in the world, largest in the United States and third largest in the world. It was founded in 1870 and opened for public February 20, 1872. It was founded by local businessmen and financiers, leading artists and thinkers. It is originally located on Fifth Avenue but it was later moved to on the eastern edge of Central Park.
The Brooklyn Museum opened in 1905 and the Newark Museum was founded in 1909. Its charter states the purpose was “to establish in the City of Newark, New Jersey, a museum for the reception and exhibition of articles of art, science, history and technology, and for the encouragement of the study of the arts and sciences.” Many others soon followed – in Boston and Chicago, Detroit, Pittsburgh and Kansas City among many more.
These museums were all based on the European model. They were built, in many ways, as “temples to art”. Organized along clear and strict historical and modal lines, interaction with viewers was one way. Museum experts decided what visitors would see. These museums represented the ideas, values and interests of the American financial elite of the late 19th century whose purchases of classic European art became legendary and who offered their friends the opportunity to view these works in private salons. These were the leaders of the movement to create new art museums, now open to the public – at least on a limited basis. As kids, when we made a class visit to the Carnegie Museum in Pittsburgh, there were two strict rules: “Don’t talk” and Don’t touch.”
Some historians argued, however, that these weren’t the first museums in America, and that the European model did not really represent the American cultural reality.
Other museums had existed in American cities – for example, just in New York where the “American Museum” was founded in 1791 by John Pintard under the patronage of the Tammany Society. That became Scudder’s American Museum in 1810 which ran until 1841, when it was purchased by P.T. Barnum and transformed into the very successful Barnum’s American Museum.
“Museum” may seem an inappropriate title for these operations. The early collection from the Tammany years included an American bison, an 18-foot yellow snake of South American origin, a lamb with two-heads, wax figures, pieces of Indian, African, and Chinese origin. And surely Barnum was best known for his collection of “freaks” like the Fee/Jee mermaid and General Tom Thumb. They offered what one historian described as a “a chance assemblage of curiosities … rather [than] a series of objects selected with reference to their value to investigators, or their possibilities for public enlightenment.” Museum professionals said these American “museums” consisted of spectacular or bizarre objects with no scientific or educational value; in short, they were sideshows aimed at public gratification.
But there was an argument on the other side: That museum staffs had so closely imitated elitist European models that museums soon became little more than isolated segments of European culture set in a hostile environment. These criticisms hold that museums have long been unresponsive to the needs of the public, instead serving the desires of elitists drawn from the ranks of such groups as highly educated historians and scientists, or those with unusually acute aesthetic sensibilities, such as artists. At best, say the critics, the museums have failed to take steps to attract the people; at worst they have actually discouraged the public from attending. Realizing just how invidious this antiegalitarianism is in a free country, curators have taken care to disguise their exclusivity as necessary scholarship or efficient professionalism. But they never deceived the public, who understood that they were not welcome in the preserves of the plutocrats.
These are both extreme positions and it’s clear that most contemporary arts institutions do seek to reply to both sides. Still, it isn’t difficult to see the continued tension embedded in our arts and cultural institutions over identify and role in society. And I have wandered a far from where I set out to go. Ah, the dangers of research and the (wonderful) constraints of 1500 words. I promise to return to the reception of Picasso and other modern artists in New York.
CENTRAL NURSES RESIDENCE ON THE SITE OF THE NOW 475 MAIN STREET. WITH 600 SINGLE ROOMS THE BUILDING HOUSED NURSING STUDENTS, GRADUATE NURSES AND STAFFS FROM 1939 TO THE 1960’S.
ALEXIS VILLAFANE GOT IT RIGHT. PHOTO M. FRANK
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
Stephen Blank, “P.T. Barnum: New York’s Famous Entertainment Entrepreneurs” RIHS (2022) Joel J. Orosz, Curators and Culture: The Museum Movement in America, 1740-1870 (2011)
THIS PUBLICATION FUNDED BY DISCRETIONARY FUNDS FROM CITY COUNCIL MEMBER JULIE MENIN & ROOSEVELT ISLAND OPERATING CORPORATION PUBLIC PURPOSE FUNDS.
The Silent Sentinels, or Sentinels of Liberty, organized by Alice Paul and the National Woman’s Party, were a group of over 2,000 women demanding women’s suffrage by silently protesting in front of the White House during Woodrow Wilson’s presidency beginning on January 10, 1917. About 500 were arrested, with at least 168 serving jail time – many of them from New York State, a birthplace of the suffrage and women’s rights movements.
Over the two and a half year long protest many of the women who picketed were arrested, harassed and abused by local and federal authorities, most notably being tortured while in local jails. Among the most horrific of these acts occurred during the night of November 14-15, 1917, known as the Night of Terror.
The conditions of the District of Columbia Jail were unsanitary and unsafe, with prisoners sharing cells and prison facilities with people who had syphilis and other communicable diseases, and where worms were often found in the food. When those arrested surpassed the number of spaces at the DC Jail, the women being arrested were taken to Virginia’s Occoquan Workhouse (now the Lorton Correctional Complex, in Lorton Virginia).
The conditions at the Occoquan Workhouse were terrible. Ordered to strip naked and bathe with a single bar of soap, the women refused.
During a suffrage debate in a committee of the House of Representatives in September 1917, Massachusetts Representative Joseph Walsh called suffragist “nagging… iron-jawed angels,” who were “bewildered, deluded creatures with short skirts and short hair.”
The protests continued, and sentences to jail grew longer. On October 20, 1917, Alice Paul was arrested while carrying a banner that said: “The time has come to conquer or submit, for us there can be but one choice. We have made it.” The banner language was a direct quote of President Woodrow Wilson.
Paul was sentenced to seven months. She was put in solitary confinement for two weeks, with only bread and water. She became weak and unable to walk, and began a hunger strike after being taken to the prison medical ward. In response to the hunger strike, the prison doctors force-fed the women who joined her by forcing tubes down their throats.
A large number of woman protested this treatment on November 10th and about 3o women were arrested and sent to Occoquan Workhouse. On the night of November 14th, the superintendent, W.H. Whittaker, ordered some forty guards to brutalize the suffragists. They beat New Yorker Lucy Burns, chained her hands to the cell bars above her head, then left her there for the night. They put Dora Lewis into a dark cell and smashed her head against an iron bed, knocking her unconscious. Her cellmate, Alice Cosu, who believed Lewis to be dead, suffered a heart attack. Guards dragged, beat, choked, pinched, and kicked other women.
A total of 14 women from New York State were among a larger group of abused protestors. A significant number of New Yorkers also provided support on the White House picket line from January 1917 through June of 1918.
Suffragists themselves called the night the “Night of Terror.” The attack on activists within the correctional facility and the subsequent extensive nationwide publicity became a turning point in the national effort to win votes for women. The campaign for voting rights goes back to the 1848 women’s rights convention in Seneca Falls, NY and ends with the ratification of the 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution in August of 1920.
New York State conducted two referendums on the “votes for women” issue in 1915 and then again in 1917. The 1917 New York State victory recharged the national suffrage movement. After 1917, New York’s large population of new women voters effectively doubled the number of women voters in the nation. The New York victory represented a major step forward in bringing the national suffrage issue to a conclusion in 1920.
New York women arrest for “unlawful assembly” and sentenced on November 14, 1917 included:
Amy Juengling, Buffalo, NY
Hattie Kruger, Buffalo, NY
Paula Jacobi, NYC
Eunice Brannan, NYC
Lucy Burns, NYC
Emily Dubois Butterworth, NYC
Dorothy Day, NYC
Elizabeth Hamilton, NYC
Louise Hornsby, NYC
Peggy Johns, NYC
Kathryn Lincoln, NYC
Belle Sheinberg, NYC
Cora Week, NYC
Matilda Young, NYC
The Turning Point Suffragist Memorial Memorial, near the “Night of Terror” site in Lorton, Virginia, honors the women who were imprisoned at the Occoquan Workhouse and commemorates all of the millions of little-known women who engaged in the suffragist movement primarily from 1848 through passage of the 19th Amendment in 1920 with which most women won the right to vote. More information is available at http://www.suffragistmemorial.org
THE ANSONIA HOTEL HARA REISER, ANDT SPARBERG, ALEXIS VILLAFANE, THOM HEYER, ARON EISENPREISS GOT IT RIGHT!
Text by Judith Berdy Thanks to Bobbie Slonevsky for her dedication to Blackwell’s Almanac and the RIHS Thanks to Deborah Dorff for maintaining our website Edited by Melanie Colter and Deborah Dorff
All image are copyrighted (c) Roosevelt Island Historical Society unless otherwise indicated
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NEW YORK ALMANACK
THIS PUBLICATION FUNDED BY DISCRETIONARY FUNDS FROM CITY COUNCIL MEMBER JULIE MENIN & ROOSEVELT ISLAND OPERATING CORPORATION PUBLIC PURPOSE FUNDS.
Wurts Bros. photographed the building shortly after its completion in 1928. from the collection of the Museum of the City of New York
Justus H. Rathbone was impressed by Irish writer John Banim’s 1821 play Damon and Pythias which highlighted the ideals of friendship, loyalty and honor. In February 1864 he founded The Knights of Pythias, a fraternal group which stressed those qualities and provided philanthropic aid. Like other secret societies, The Knights of Pythias was organized around mystic rituals and included ceremonial props and costumes. Local units were called “Castles” (a term later changed to “Subordinate Lodges”), and members, depending on rank, were Pages, Esquires and Knights. And, like the Masons and Shriners, by the early 20th century their elaborate lodges reflected exotic architectural styles—Moorish, Egyptian and Byzantine, for example. In the mid-1920s the Pythians began accumulating property for its new Manhattan lodge. They had chosen a rather unlikely location—West 70th Street between Columbus and Amsterdam Avenues, a narrow, residential street. By 1926 eight four-story houses had been demolished and construction begun. The Knights of Pythias turned to architect Thomas White Lamb to design the large building. Their choice was possibly influenced by his reputation for creating lavish motion picture palaces for the Fox, Loew’s and the Keith-Albee chains. The Pythian Temple would emerge in 1928 as an exotic $2 million behemoth among the rowhouses–the counterpart of an epic silent movie set,
Lamb freely borrowed from Egypt, Byzantium and Syria in lavishing the façade with cast stone bas reliefs, monumental full-figured seated pharaohs and polychrome bulls. The dramatic entrance, decorated with Egyptian symbols like crowned cobras, vultures, lotus flowers and winged lions, was executed in blindingly colored terra cotta. The nearly-windowless midsection was adorned with handsome gray brick diapering and an enormous Pythian symbol.
Even before the lodge was completed the main auditorium space was leased. On October 6, 1927 Dr. Nathan Krass, rabbi of Temple Emanu-El, preached his Yom Kippur sermon on “Tolerance” here. The following month an operatic concert was held here; and on January 20, 1928 the New York Press Club held an “entertainment and dance.” Five days later the building was officially dedicated in the larger of the two auditoriums. More than 1,600 persons were in attendance and the program was well underway when Mayor James Walker—who had a reputation for being late—arrived. He had not been informed that his arch rival, former Mayor John H. Hylan, would share the stage with him. Walker did not notice Hylan until he had already begun his address. He handled the awkward moment by nodding to his nemesis and saying “If I’d seen you when I first came in, I would have paid my respects then. Time has brought a sympathy for you I never held before.” Walker joked about his tardiness, saying “I suppose you have heard of the ‘late Mayor.’ It is a characterization I can’t deny.” But he apparently did not appreciate the shock of Hylan’s presence. Following his speech, in which he congratulated the Knights of Pythias on the new building, he walked off the stage and left.
Four enormous polychrome pharaohs sit high above the street, below an Egyptian peristyle. photo by Beyond My Ken
The larger auditorium featured a pipe organ; and the Christman Piano Co. of New York proudly announced that the Temple had purchased eight pianos, “some of which are Studio grands and the rest uprights.” At least one of these would be housed in the smaller auditorium, which was capable of holding 500 persons. The new building offered members a gymnasium, a bowling alley and billiards room in the basement, 15 lodge rooms decorated in Aztec, Egyptian and other motifs, and a rooftop solarium. The auditoriums and meeting rooms were routinely leased for wedding receptions, musical programs and lectures. Meetings as diverse as those of the Christian Science Liberals, graduation exercises of the Jewish Theological Seminary, and the church services of the Manhattan Congregational Congregation were held here. The week-long hazing of Columbia University fraternity pledges ended here on February 17, 1929. The Columbia Spectator reported three days later, “Since noon of last Tuesday twelve Sigma Chi pledges have been going through the well known miseries connected with ‘Running Week.’ Much to their relief it all ended Sunday night with the formal initiation and banquet. These functions were held at the Pythian Temple on West Seventieth Street.” While the Calvary Baptist Church was being constructed in 1929, the congregation held its Sunday services and its weddings and funerals here. And in April 1930 the Milton Herbert Gropper and Oscar Hammerstein II play New Toys opened here by the Garfield Players. By now many of the meetings held here were of a more political nature. The first session of the Annual Convention of the Federation of Polish Jews met in May 1930. More than 400 delegates met to draft a resolution to Warsaw asking for aid for Polish Jews. That same month Daniel F. Cohalan and Saliendra nath Ghose addressed Indian Nationalists on the 73rd anniversary of the Sepoy Mutiny and the imprisonment of Mahatma Ghandi. And the following year the United Romanian Jews met here, as did the convention of the Advancement of Atheism, formed five years earlier. While Jewish and Christian congregations continued to use the auditoriums on weekends throughout the next two decades, the increasingly extreme political assemblies filled the halls during the week. On May Day 1939 the Federation to Combat Communism and Fascism, Inc. held a demonstration to “protest the infiltration of Communist, Nazi and Fascist propaganda.” But on the same holiday in 1946 the Socialist Labor Party held its celebrations here. The auditorium was routinely leased by the West Side Committee of American-Soviet Friendship, and the Upper West Side Civil Rights Congress; both of which drew the close scrutiny of the United States Congress. A Congressional report dated February 15, 1947 focused on the Upper West Side Civil Rights Congress. The report began “Having adopted a line of militant skullduggery against the United States with the close of World War II, the Communist Party has set up the Civil Rights Congress for the purpose of protecting those of its members who run afoul of the law.” It reported that “On August 28, 1946, the Upper West Side Civil Rights Congress of New York City held a meeting at the Pythian Temple, 135 West Seventieth Street, which was cosponsored by the Communist Party, West Side; American Labor Party; American Youth for Democracy; United Negro and Allied Veterans of America; and the International Workers Order, Lodge 572.” The Report cautioned that some of these groups used deceptively patriotic names. In the first years of the 1950s the Knights of Pythias gave Decca Records the exclusive use of the main auditorium as a recording studio. Some of the best known names in Rock ‘n Roll would produce their hits here. Bill Haley and the Comets recorded the albums “Rock Around the Clock” and “Shake, Rattle and Roll” here in 1955; and Johnny Burnette and the Rock ‘n Roll Trio recorded its debut album here the following year. Buddy Holly’s first recording session in the Pythian Temple studio was on June 19, 1958. Other hits recorded here were Bobby Darin’s “Early in the Morning” and “Now We’re One,” and Leroy Anderson’s “Sleigh Ride.” In the meantime the smaller auditorium continued to be used for operas, plays, and meetings. In April 1956 the People’s Artists staged a “Hootenanny” here and in January 1957 folk singer Pete Seeger held a concert. One notable event was the meeting of the National Council of the American-Soviet Friendship Association in November that year. The group had been meeting here for years with little real notice. But that night, when actor and activist Paul Robeson spoke, the timing was ill-advised. The Soviets had fired on student demonstrators in Budapest a month earlier, killing one. It sparked the 1956 Hungarian Revolution and American sympathies. When the meeting broke up, its members were pelted with eggs, spoiled tomatoes and other projectiles. In 1957 the New York Institute of Technology purchased the building in foreclosure for $500,000—exactly one-quarter of its construction cost. A few weeks later, in January, officials explored the structure to map out classrooms, lecture halls and other areas. What they found was a bit startling and equally creepy. Meyer Berger reported in The New York Times on January 20, 1958, “Wardrobe lockers still hold Egyptian, scriptural and other ritualistic garb. There is great store of halberds, ancient staffs and magic wands and rods. “Under several of the meeting-room altars, which are done in Egyptian, Babylonian or Aztec motifs, the college faculty found coffins filled with grinning skeletons, some done in plastic, some apparently human—the kind of thing used to chill and horrify initiates.”
For several days leading up to September 1, 1960 police had received reports of a mysterious cat-sized beast slipping among the buildings on the block. The phantom animal was considered “imaginary” by officials–until it appeared in the lobby of the New York Institute of Technology that night. Discovered by an elevator operator, the animal curled into a corner was Timmy, the escaped honey bear owned by 17-year old Robert Engler. When police arrived a safari of sorts ensued. Timmy bolted, making his way to a basement restroom; then upstairs to the lobby lavatory. Police were close on its tail, literally. Timmy was eventually captured, but not before Detective Walter Bentley was bitten on the wrist. The prisoner was taken to the West 68th Street police station in a pail and calm was restored to West 70th Street. In 1983 architect David Gura completed a conversion of the structure into apartments. He called the project “like dealing with an enormous Rubik cube” because of the myriad spaces. Windows were carved into the vast brick façade, the major change to the exterior, and 83 different apartment layouts were created. Some of the resulting duplexes had 16-foot high living rooms.
Because of its side street location, the extraordinary building, now called The Pythian, is as overlooked today as it was in 1928. But its dramatic, brilliant decoration is worth a detour.
TIMES SQUARE WITH THE FAMOUS LATIN QUARTER NIGHT CLUB.
ANDY SPARBERG AND GLORIA HERMAN BOTH 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
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DAYTONIAN IN MANHATTAN
THIS PUBLICATION FUNDED BY DISCRETIONARY FUNDS FROM CITY COUNCIL MEMBER JULIE MENIN & ROOSEVELT ISLAND OPERATING CORPORATION PUBLIC PURPOSE FUNDS.
Written 100 years ago, this concise history of the New York City welfare system tells the story of how our concern for public health and well-being has grown over the years. The story continues today with many more agencies, names, commissions and advisors.
The vertical files in the Municipal Library contain a treasure trove of newspaper clippings, media releases and documents from City agencies. There also are original analyses written by the legendary Rebecca Rankin, the long-time Municipal Librarian and her staff. Written on onion-skin paper, the articles are distinctive and elicit a jolt of anticipation when located. This week’s blog is a history of public welfare in the City, circa 1922 as written by Ms. Rankin and staff. The original records of these welfare institutions, the Almshouse Ledger Collection, were processed by the Municipal Archives in 2016 under a grant funded by the National Historical Publications and Records Commission and a digitized selection of ledgers are now online.
DEPARTMENT OF PUBLIC WELFARE OF THE CITY OF NEW YORK
The first Bellevue, a 6-bed infirmary on the present site of City Hall. Department of Public Charities Collection, NYC Municipal Archives.
The responsibility for the care and treatment of the dependents in the City of New York rests upon the Department of Public Welfare. The history of the Department really begins in 1734 when it became apparent to the Common Council that some means for caring for the poor, the beggars and the dependent sick must be provided; at this time the population of the City was 8,000 and contained 1,400 houses. It was decided to erect a workhouse on the unimproved lands known as the “Vineyard”; this site was the ground on which the City Hall now stands. This “Publick Workhouse and House of Correction” was finished in 1736; by 1746 it was outgrown and required additions.
Page from Admissions, Discharges and Death Ledger, Almshouse of the City of New York, 1758-1809. Ledger columns include: date admitted, name, age, occupation, where from or born, complaints, by whom sent/by whose order, location/ward no., date of discharge, date of death, remarks. This collection was processed by the Municipal Archives in 2016 under a grant funded by the National Historical Publications and Records Commission and a digitized selection of ledgers are now online. Almshouse Ledger Collection, NYC Municipal Archives.
Prior to this date, in the early years of the City, the poor had been maintained by the Church. From 1695 on the City appropriated yearly a sum of one hundred pounds or more for the support of the poor, and it appointed Overseers of the Poor who were responsible for policies of management and a Keeper was in charge. But not till 1736 could it be considered as an official part of the city’s activities. The Workhouse was supported by a tax upon the inhabitants. By 1775 this tax amounted to 4,233 pounds or about 95 cents per capita.
View of the “Old Bellevue Establishment” from the East River. Department of Public Charities Collection, NYC Municipal Archives.
In May 1796 a new Almshouse was finished and used till 1816; this occupied the site where the Courthouse now stands on Chambers Street. About this time the City purchased old Kip’s Bay Farm on the East River at the foot of 26th Street which later became known as Bellevue Hospital. This group comprised two hospitals, an almshouse, a workshop and a school. In 1819 an epidemic of yellow fever forced the addition of a hospital for contagious diseases. In 1828 Blackwell’s Island was bought and a penitentiary built and by 1839 a lunatic asylum added. In 1850 it became apparent that a poor farm was necessary and consequently Ward’s Island was purchased for that purpose. By 1843 a re-organization was demanded and a special committee investigated and a resolution was passed which provided for an almshouse on Blackwell’s Island, a children’s and an adult hospital, the lunatic asylum extended, a workhouse, and nurseries and infants hospital on Randall’s Island
Blackwell’s Island looking southeast: Penitentiary, Charity Hospital with Superintendent’s cottage, Smallpox Hospital, Reception Pavilion, ca. 1900. Department of Public Charities Collection, NYC Municipal Archives.In 1846-1849 there was an Almshouse Department with a Commissioner at its head. But in 1849 a new state law put the Almshouse Department under a Board of Governors, ten in number which continued its responsibility until 1860 when the Department of Public Charities and Correction was created. It was in 1850 that the City began the practice of subsidizing private institutions for the care of dependents; in that first year a sum of $9,865 was expended. This policy is still continued successfully; in 1920 there were 196 private charitable institutions which accepted public charges for the City.
Horse-and-buggy ambulance in front of (Old) Coney Island Hospital, ca. 1900. Department of Public Charities Collection, NYC Municipal Archives.
Sea View Hospital, West New Brighton, Staten Island, 1920. Department of Public Charities Collection, NYC Municipal Archives.
About 1883 a feeling became general that the existing system under which the paupers, criminals, lunatics and the sick poor were cared for by one department, (Department of Public Charities and Corrections which was established in 1860) was objectionable so that in 1895 a law providing for the division of the department into two distinct bodies, namely, the Department of Public Charities and the Department of Correction was passed. The hospitals, almshouse, lunatic asylum and all institutions on Blackwell’s Island were placed under the Department of Public Charities, and the Department of Correction managed the penal and reformatory institutions. In 1902 further revision resulted in Bellevue and Allied Hospital having a separate organization. In 1920 the name of the Department was changed to the Department of Public Welfare [in 1938 it was further simplified to Department of Welfare
City Home for the Aged, Blackwell’s Island, ca. 1900. Frederick A. Walter, Department of Public Charities Collection, NYC Municipal Archives.No allusion has been made to much legislation affecting the administration of this department. There were many and constant changes in the form of administration; sometimes three, sometimes five, sometimes one commissioner of almshouse, or even a Board of Governors. The Department at present administered is under one commissioner appointed by the Mayor.View fullsize
City Home for the Aged, Blackwell’s Island, ca. 1900. Frederick A. Walter, Department of Public Charities Collection, NYC Municipal Archives.To carry on its diverse activities, the Department in 1920 maintained and operated two reception hospitals, six general hospitals, three special hospitals, two homes for the aged and infirm, cottages for aged couples and women, a preventorium, a convalescent home for women and children, a municipal lodging house, a mortuary, a social service department in connection with the hospitals, four schools of nursing and four training schools for attendants. The combined capacity of the eleven hospitals was 8,796 beds; the daily average of all patients cared for was approximately 5,847. The Department had a staff of 4,200 employees to carry on its work and the appropriation in the 1922 budget for the Department was $7,370,550.
Nurses lined up in front of Cumberland Street Hospital, 1920. Department of Public Charities Collection, NYC
MONDAY PHOTO OF THE DAY SURROGATES COURT BUILDING 31 CHAMBERS STREET LOBBY
ALEXIS VILLAFANE AND HARA REISER GOT THIS ONE 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
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MUNICIPAL ARCHIVES OF THE CITY OF NEW YORK
THIS PUBLICATION FUNDED BY DISCRETIONARY FUNDS FROM CITY COUNCIL MEMBER JULIE MENIN & ROOSEVELT ISLAND OPERATING CORPORATION PUBLIC PURPOSE FUNDS.
Before he was a turncoat, he was an American hero. James K. Martin, Professor Emeritus at the University of Houston and author of Benedict Arnold, Revolutionary Hero: An American Warrior Reconsidered, reveals the strategic genius of Arnold, his essential contributions to the Revolutionary War, and his mistreatment at the hands of his superiors.
ABOUT JAMES KIRBY MARTIN
As for me: Might say that I’ve had a long academic career, teaching almost 50 years at Rutgers in NJ and the Un. of Houston. Also held distinguished visiting appointments at The Citadel in SC and the U. S. Military Academy at West Point. Have published several books, including Benedict Arnold, Revolutionary Hero, on which the film is based. Also served as an executive producer of the film, which is available on Amazon Prime and other streaming networks. My most recent book is a novel, titled Surviving Dresden: A Story of Life, Death, and Redemption in World War II. Many other writing projects are underway. And I serve on the boards of trustees of the Fort Ticonderoga Association on Lake Champlain and the Fort Plain in the Mohawk Valley, and also serve as an historian adviser to the Oneida Indian Nation of NY. That should be plenty and please feel free to reduce this information if you like.
Recently the question of whether the City’s seal has outlived its useful life circulated in the media. The seal is omnipresent on letterhead and other documents issued by City government agencies and officials. While news stories date the current seal to a local law enacted in 1915, the imagery dates back much further. The Municipal Library’s Vertical Files (so called because they consist of file folders of media releases, news clippings and other material held in vertical file cabinets, not shelves) yielded a surprising quantity of material on the subject.
Camera art for the City Seal, NYC Municipal Library vertical files.
An interesting history of the City’s seal was published in 1915 in the American Scenic and Historic Preservation Society’s twentieth annual report. Titled “SEAL AND FLAG OF THE CITY OF NEW YORK” it traces elements of the seal to the City of Amsterdam in 1342 at which time William Count of Henegouwen and Holland “made a present to the Amsterdammers of three crosses on the field of the City’s arms.” Not just any crosses but “saltire” crosses which means a diagonal cross—shaped like an X, not a t, and sometimes called a St. Andrew’s Cross.
City seals and flags are outgrowths from the coats of arms and banners that initially came into use around 1100 when helmeted knights fought in battle. Distinctive color and design were required to identify who was behind a given helmet. An entire craft, heraldry, evolved. This “practice of devising, granting, displaying, describing and recording coats of arms and heraldic badges is complicated.” There are many rules around the shapes, designs, colors, patterns, and division of the shield into halves, thirds, quarters, etc. There is a separate set of directions for identifying where an item should be drawn or placed, consisting of numbered locations within the shield and, most important for our purposes, four cardinal points: chief for the top, base for the bottom, dexter for the left and sinister for the right (in Latin, dexter means right, and sinister left, but the positions refer to the shield bearer’s perspective). The design of New York City’s official seal incorporates all of these practices.
Evolution of the City Seal, NYC Municipal Library vertical files.
One consistent feature on the New York City seal is the image of a beaver. The fur trade formed the basis of commerce for New Netherlands, including New Amsterdam and the beaver was the foremost symbol. Interestingly a beaver both had value as a commodity and as currency itself. In the Scenic Society’s report the author notes, “The intelligence and industry of these little animals, their ingenuity as house-builders and their amphibious character make them eloquent symbols also for the City of New York. So far as we know, the use of the beaver in the arms of New Netherland, New Amsterdam and New York City is unique in heraldry.”
Documentation on the ornamental cast-iron seals that decorated the old West Side Highway shows the evolution of the City’s seal. The Seal of the Province of New Netherland, adopted in 1623, is made up of two shields—the smaller contains an image of a beaver and the larger, which surrounds the smaller, consists of a string of wampum. It is topped by a crown and the outer border is ringed with the Dutch words for “Seal of the New Belgium.” (Holland and Belgium were united at that time.)
In 1653, New Amsterdam developed a municipal government, the Burgomasters and Schepens, which petitioned the West India Company for its own seal, which was received in 1654. Once again, there were two shields. Arranged one atop the other with a beaver between them, the larger shield contained three saltire crosses. There was drapery above and a label with the words “Seal of Amsterdam in New Belgium” at the bottom.
Tracing of the seal of New Amsterdam, NYC Municipal Library vertical files.
Ten years later, the Dutch surrendered New Amsterdam to the English and the City was renamed New York, after the Duke of York. The provincial seal was centered around the coat of arms of the Stuarts and was encircled with the Latin words meaning “Evil to Him who evil thinks.” There is a crown atop the shield and all is encircled by a laurel wreath. This is the only seal without the otherwise ubiquitous beaver. In 1686, the rights of the City were affirmed by Governor Dongan in the Dongan Charter which also provided for a City seal. In the center is a shield on which the sails of a windmill are arranged in a saltire cross. There are two beavers and two flour barrels alternating between the crosspieces of the windmill. On either side of the shield are human figures—on the dexter side a sailor holding a device for testing the depth of water; on the sinister, a Native American image.
After the British evacuated the City in 1783, the new government updated the 1686 City seal to remove the Imperial crown. Atop the shield they placed an image of an eagle standing on a hemisphere. It’s dated 1686 to commemorate the Dongan Charter and the words “Seal of the City of New York” are inscribed in Latin. Most of these design elements are present in the City’s seal (and flags) today.
Seal of the Office of the Mayor, NYC Municipal Library vertical files.
Sometimes the use of the City seal was contentious. Common Council minutes from 1735 address an apparent wanton use of the city seal without proper authorization and there was some concern that the Mayor was not providing the Council with use of the seal. The Council passed an ordinance that “lodges and deposits the common seal in the hands and custody of the Common Clerk” of the city—today the city clerk—and further banned alternative city seals. The ordinance restricted the use of the seal to actions taken by the Common Council or the Mayor’s Court.
A review of the archival records in the Office of the Mayor collection starting with the so-called “early mayors” shows that correspondence was not bedecked with official letterhead. In many letters the tops of the pages were blank. In other instances, the name of the agency writing the letter was hand written at the very top of the page, followed closely by the text of the letter, written in flowing cursive. That’s not to say that there wasn’t a City seal in use. But, its’ use was sparing, apparently deployed to certify some official documents, not run-of-the-mill correspondence. A case in point is an 1816 certificate issued by Mayor Jacob Radcliff certifying that a woman named Nancy, approximately 60 years of age, was a free woman and could travel. An embossed seal is embossed at bottom of the document. It bears all the elements of the seal in effect today.
In 1914, a group of former members of the Art Commission was appointed to provide an accurate rendering of the corporate seal of the City, and a design for a City flag. The various departments and boroughs had been using variations of the seal which created confusion about the provenance of official documents.
Based on the recommendation of this committee, in 1915 the Board of Alderman amended the City’s Code of Ordinances relating to the city seal, flags and decorations on city hall. The Aldermen re-established the 1686 seal as updated in 1784 and required it to be used for all documents, publications or stationery issued or used by the city, the boroughs and the departments. They made some minor style changes-the shape of the seal, the position of the eagle, etc. and also changed the date on the seal from 1686, the date of the Dongan Charter to 1664, the year the City was named New York.
It is in this legislation that a major error was made. Apparently the bill’s drafters were not versed in the heraldic arts. As a result, the cardinal directions of “dexter” and “sinister” were assigned as the names of the figures in each location. So the sailor holding a depth reading device was named “Dexter” for the left sided placement and the Native American figure placed on the right was named “Sinister.” How this happened is lost to history. One would think the high-profile former Art Commissioners would have sounded the alarm and corrected the error, which still exists.
In 1975, City Council President Paul O’Dwyer sought to change the founding date on the seal from the existing 1686 date marking the issuance of the Dongan Charter, to 1625 when the Dutch established New Amsterdam. The legislation also invalidated all former seals bearing the 1664 date.
As mentioned, not only is there a City seal, but each of the boroughs have separate seals or emblems dating to the colonial period. After consolidation of the Greater City in 1898, the boroughs continued to use these seals for various official purposes until 1938 when the Board of Estimate mandated that the seal of the City of New York would replace any previous seals that had been in use. Thereafter, the various seals were to be found on the borough flags and not on official documents. But the use of the seal continued to vex officials and in 1970, the Board of Estimate mandated that the seal of the City be placed on each letterhead and restricted the use of a gold seal to the Board of Estimate and the Vice Chair of the Council.
Seal of the Borough of Queens, NYC Municipal Library vertical files.
The flag for the borough of Queens was announced in 1948 after a design competition. The three-paneled seal included a tulip commemorating the Dutch on the dexter side, a double Tudor rose documenting the English on the sinister side. The border consists of shells used as money “wampum.” At the very top of there is a crown signifying that the borough was named for a Queen, namely Queen Catherine Braganza wife of England’s King Charles the Second.
According to an excerpt in the files from a 1925 history, “the Boroughs of Brooklyn and Queens, Counties of Nassau and Suffolk Long Island, New York 1609-1924” Brooklyn’s seal was established by the West India Company in 1664. It consists of an image of the Roman goddess Vesta (equivalent to the Greek goddess Hestia) holding fasces—or bunch of rods and an axe bundled together. Apparently, this reflected the colony’s agricultural status. The motto surrounding the seal translates to “unity makes strength” which in 1664 was an update from the 1556 motto on the coat of arms of William the Silent, Prince of Orange. When the Village of Brooklyn officially incorporated in 1817, the seal was adopted by the common council.
Seal of Staten Island, NYC Municipal Library vertical files.
The seal of the Borough of Richmond, aka Staten Island, has gone through several evolutions. The Dutch named the island after the “Staten General” of their legislature. One seal consists of two doves facing each other with the letter S (for Staten) between them and N YORK beneath their feet. Another early seal has a female figure gazing toward the water in which two ships sail, one purportedly Henry Hudson’s Half Moon. In 1970, the then- Borough President held a contest to develop a better emblem. The winner was an oval with waves surrounding an island with birds flying in the sky above and STATEN ISLAND written between the waves and the island. However, this design was not universally admired. The Staten Island Advance reported that current Borough President James Oddo redesigned the emblem in 2017 to incorporate elements of the woman gazing out on the Verrazzano Narrows as well as oystermen, a moon and stars.
The Bronx, by contrast, maintained its seal, adopting the coat of arms of Jonas Bronck who settled in the area in 1639. A sun rises from the sea and a globe topped by an eagle stands above it. The Latin motto under the shield translates to “do not give way to evil.” This same design was the basis for New York State’s post- revolutionary coat of arms.
Brooklyn Markets Seal, NYC Municipal Library vertical files.
Notwithstanding this requirement that the City seal be use on all official materials, some agencies developed their own seals. In 1940, Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia announced the conclusion of a contest, with a $10.00 prize won by a high school student, to design a seal for the Department of Markets. The seal featured a scale, a bundle of wheat and two full cornucopias. More recently, the New York Police Department (NYPD) developed a seal described in the agency’s 1987 annual report. It’s a somewhat cluttered design with the names of the five boroughs creating an interior ring. The City seal is at the bottom and the upper portion includes the words Lex and Ordo (Law and Order). The scales of justice are balanced atop the fasce and what looks to be a rocket (but probably isn’t) explodes from the top.
NYC Housing Authority Seal, NYC Municipal Library vertical files.
STATUE OF ABRAHAM DE PEYSER, THE CITY’S 20TH MAYOR IN THOMAS PAYNE PARK IN LOWER MANHATTAN. 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)
MUNICIPAL ARCHIVES OF THE CITY OF NEW YORK
JAMES KIRBY MARTIN
Illustration: “The Hudson at Tappan Zee” by Francis Silva 1876 showing a sloop, but actually depicting Esopus Meadows.
CITY COUNCIL REPRESENTATIVE JULE MENIN DISCRETIONARY FUNDING THRU DYCD
Before he was a turncoat, he was an American hero. James K. Martin, Professor Emeritus at the University of Houston and author of Benedict Arnold, Revolutionary Hero: An American Warrior Reconsidered, reveals the strategic genius of Arnold, his essential contributions to the Revolutionary War, and his mistreatment at the hands of his superiors.
ABOUT JAMES KIRBY MARTIN
As for me: Might say that I’ve had a long academic career, teaching almost 50 years at Rutgers in NJ and the Un. of Houston. Also held distinguished visiting appointments at The Citadel in SC and the U. S. Military Academy at West Point. Have published several books, including Benedict Arnold, Revolutionary Hero, on which the film is based. Also served as an executive producer of the film, which is available on Amazon Prime and other streaming networks. My most recent book is a novel, titled Surviving Dresden: A Story of Life, Death, and Redemption in World War II. Many other writing projects are underway. And I serve on the boards of trustees of the Fort Ticonderoga Association on Lake Champlain and the Fort Plain in the Mohawk Valley, and also serve as an historian adviser to the Oneida Indian Nation of NY. That should be plenty and please feel free to reduce this information if you like. https://jameskirbymartin.com/
The 1862 Hope Building
131-135 DUANE STREET
photo courtesy Tribeca Citizen
In 1861 Public School No. 10 had sat within the plots at Nos. 131 through 135 Duane Street for fifteen years or more. The brick building was surrounded by a schoolyard where the children played. By now, however, the neighborhood was becoming less and less residential as commercial buildings replaced or altered homes.
That year Thomas Hope demolished P. S. 10 and began construction on a modern loft and store building. Hope was president of the dry goods wholesaling firm Thomas Hope & Co. But if he ever intended to move his company into what would be called the Hope Building, he changed his mind.
The structure was completed in 1862, a dignified commercial interpretation of the Italianate style. The name of the architect has been lost, however it was almost assuredly he who had designed the abutting No. 129 Duane Street a year earlier. The architect exactly copied that design three-fold.
The four stories of white marble rose that above the cast iron storefront were separated into two sections by a projecting sill course between the third and fourth floors. Each horizontal section had two-story arches separated by Corinthian “sperm candle” pilasters. (The term derived from their visual similarity to the tall, thin candles made from the waxy substance found in the heads of sperm whales.) The spandrel panels between the second and third, and fourth and fifth floors took the form of blind balustrades. An arched gable within the cast iron cornice announced the building’s name.
The Hope Building filled with dry goods merchants, including L. P. Morton & Co.
Surprisingly, within a year of moving in, L. P. Morton & Co. made a drastic change of course. A notice in The New York Herald on December 5, 1863 announced “We have relinquished the dry goods importing and commission business, and taken offices at 35 Wall street for the transaction of a general banking and exchange business.”
On the same day Welling, Coffin & Co. “domestic dry goods commission merchants,” announced that they had moved into the space “lately occupied by Messrs. L. P. Morton & Co.” The war in the South may have prompted the marketing of two of their cloth goods as “Army Kerseys and Flannels.”
Bauendahl & Co., importers of woolens, was a large initial tenant. It did significant business during the Civil War years, and on June 29, 1865 The New York Times reported that it had done $1.5 million in business the previous year–over $25 million today.
Wholesale dry goods firm Allen Brothers moved into the building in 1865. It offered to “clothiers, tailors and the dry goods trade” a long list of items including Spanish linens, repellents, sackings and fancy cloakings, satinets, cottonades, and “mantilla and dress black silks.”
By now one of the stores was home to Lithauer & Cristlar, auctioneers. The firm sold off the overstock of dry goods firms, or the remaining goods of defunct stores. On November 10, 1865, for instance, an auction included 3,000 pairs of men’s, ladies’ and misses’ cloth and Berlin gloves, 1,000 dozen “gents’ hemmed linen cambric Handkerchiefs, including some very fine qualities,” breakfast shawls, furs, and “fancy goods,” including combs and Meerschaum pipes.
D. Powers & Sons operated from the building by 1875 and was perhaps the first of the tenants not involved in the dry goods business. Founded in 1817, it was the city’s oldest manufacturer of oil-cloths–the decorative water-resistant floor coverings placed under kitchen tables. The firm had two factories upstate, one in Lansingburgh and another at Newburgh. D. Powers & Sons was also the agent for “leading manufacturers of linoleums, shades and opague cloths,” according to New York’s Great Industries in 1884.
By the time of that article, shoe manufacturers were taking over the Hope Building. Ira G. Whitney, boots and shoes, was here before 1881, as was Woodmansee & Garside. That firm was looking for “some first-class shoe buttonhole operators for Singer sewing machines” that year.
Before the end of the decade the shoe and boot manufacturers Morse & Rogers, M. L. Hiller & Son, W. A. Ransom & Co., and A. Garside & Sons would also be in the building.
Shoe & Leather Reporter, April 27, 1887 (copyright expired)
The help-wanted ads placed by A. Garside & Sons give a vague idea about the day to day workings within the shop. On October 16, 1888 the firm advertised “shoemakers wanted to make Oxford ties, Louis XV heels.” And four years later, on July 31, 1892, it wanted a “German boy, between 16 and 18 years, for assistant shipping clerk, who can speak and write English.”
The company, which made only ladies shoes, was highly successful. In 1894 it employed 85 men, 3 boys under 18 years old, 2 under 16, 45 women and 20 girls under 20 years old. Two years later the workforce had increased to 106 men, 5 boys, 30 women and 20 girls. And in 1906 there were now 160 men and 50 females. They worked a 52-hour work week.
Morse & Rogers would remain in the building through 1910. An incident in 1909 reflects the close relationship employers often had with their higher-end employees. On November 30, 1909 The New York Press reported that Edward Van Auken, a retired preacher, had died in a Brooklyn boarding house when the gas jet was accidentally left slightly open. His landlady, Margaret Turner, found the 80-year old. The article mentioned “A son of the clergyman is employed in the Morse & Rogers Shoe Manufacturing Company, in No. 131 Duane street, and Mrs. Turner said the preacher told her many times that Morse, the head of the firm, would arrange for the funeral with his son’s aid when the time came.”
Love was the undoing of one employee of shoe maker Clark, Hutchinson & Co. in 1911. Walter P. Richmond was convicted of stealing $600 (about $16,700 today) from the firm on July 22. In court, according to The New York Press, “Richmond blamed his downfall on his infatuation for a woman who worked in an establishment where he formerly was employed and on whom he lavished money and gifts.”
It was a costly crush. Judge Malone sentenced him to not less than four years in Sing Sing prison. “When sentence was imposed Richmond almost collapsed,” said the article.
Shoe manufacturers continued to fill the building throughout the World War I years. W. D. Hannah was looking for “wood heelers” and a “naumkeger and finisher” in 1918. (A naumkeger buffed the bottoms of shoes to a smooth finish.)
The early 1920’s saw tenants arrive who were not involved in the shoe industry. Radio Industries Corporation was in the building by 1923, and the typesetting firm of Stow-Whittaker Company, Inc. operated here be 1929. That firm would change its name twice–in 1932 it was Whittaker-Glegengack-Trapp, Inc., and by 1940 it was Whittaker-Trapp, Inc.
The Radio Sun & Globe, October 13, 1923 (copyright expired)
Shoe firms, nevertheless, continued to call the Hope Building home. Lion Shoe Co. was here in the early to mid-1940’s, as was the Lester Pincus Shoe Corporation. The latter firm changed from tenant to landlord when it purchased the building in February 1946.
The last quarter of the 20th century saw artists, restaurants and boutiques taking over the old factory buildings of Tribeca. The owners of the Hope Building, the Sylvan Lawrence Company, looked the other way as tenants converted former manufacturing space to residential lofts in the early 1970’s. In January 1974 there were two residential tenants on the third floor, two on the fourth, and one on the fifth–despite the leases limiting the use to commercial purposes.
The owners had covered over the Hope Building name at the time of this mid-1970’s photograph. The narrower but otherwise identical building to the right is a year older. photo by Edmund Vincent Gillon from the collection of the Museum of the City of New York
But then in 1982 they organized as the Duane Thomas Loft Tenants Association and claimed rent stabilized status. The conflict ended up in court with the tenants winning.
In 1994 Maurya 11 Restaurant opened in the ground floor, followed by 131 Duane Street restaurant, which opened in 1997. That was replaced only a year later by Henry Meer’s City Hall restaurant.
The property was purchased in 2014 for $18.5 million. Once again rent stabilization ended in a legal battle. Duane Street Realty sought to evict the tenants and could legally do so “if the owner intends to demolish the building,” reported The New York Times. But the tenants argued that “demolition” and “gut renovation” were two different things.
In connection with its plans for a residential renovation, the operators hired architect Jonathan Schloss to design a rooftop addition.
Check out the websites for 131 Duane Street and see the convoluted contemporary history. Luckily, the building is being restored to its original design.
RCA BUILDING CANOPY OF RIHS VISITOR CENTER KIOSK DURING RESTORATION IN 2010
GLORIA HERMAN AND ALEXIS VILLAFANE 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
NEW YORK ALMANACK JAMES. S. KAPLAN
A New Jersey native and enthusiast, Kirstyn covers northern Brooklyn for Brooklyn paper, from Greenpoint to Gowanus
THIS PUBLICATION FUNDED BY DISCRETIONARY FUNDS FROM CITY COUNCIL MEMBER JULIE MENIN & ROOSEVELT ISLAND OPERATING CORPORATION PUBLIC PURPOSE FUNDS.
Since its foundation, German settlers had been present in New Amsterdam (Peter Minuit was a native of Wesel am Rhein), but the significant arrival of German-speaking migrants took place towards the middle of the nineteenth century. By 1840 more than 24,000 of them had made New York their home.
In the next two decades, when large parts of the territory were plunged into deep socio-political and economic problems, another hundred thousand Germans crossed the Atlantic turning New York into the world’s third-largest German-speaking city, after Berlin and Vienna.
Established in the 1840s and peaking during the 1870s, Little Germany (Kleindeutschland) in Manhattan’s Lower East Side was one of New York’s first major ethnic enclaves. The career of one of those numerous migrants illustrates the rise and decline of an overwhelming Teutonic presence in Manhattan.
On Arrival
When twenty-three year old August “Gus” Lüchow decided to set sail from Hanover for America, migration had become a routine experience amongst his contemporaries. According to official figures, the Kingdom of Hanover lost 183,355 inhabitants between 1832 and 1886. Poverty was rife in rural areas that had been hit by years of harvest failure. Most of those leaving the land moved to the United States and Ohio was their preferred destination, but Lüchow was urban dweller. He planned to make the city of New York his home.
On arrival in the metropolis in 1879, he came across numerous references to his home town, not least in Manhattan’s financial district where a brownstone building at 1 Hanover Square was home to the Hanover National Bank. The suburban town of Hanover in Chautauqua County may have been somewhat out of his way, but on entering Little Germany he walked into a well-established and diversified district with hundreds of active businesses and socio-cultural institutions.
References to “German” migration into New York suggests a false image of oneness. Its religious community consisted of Catholics, Protestants, Lutherans, Mennonites, and Jews, but particularism – more than religion – was a real source of division. Those who escaped a patchwork of German states during the 1850s had no notion of a “national” identity. Differences in dialect, politics, cuisine and regional culture left most of them unable/unwilling to acknowledge fellow migrants.
German unification occurred in 1871, but it would take many decades for a sense of shared characteristics to emerge. New York’s German community was as diversified as the home lands themselves. Little Germany was originally broken up into various neighborhoods of Swabians, Bavarians, Hessians, Westphalians, Hanoverians and Prussians. Initially, migrants – of which Bavarians and Prussians were the largest groups – tended to marry within their own groups and organized themselves around regionally based networks and loyalties.
Living in relative close proximity with many common interests, incomers were eventually pressured into a mutual understanding from which a new type of citizen emerged, that of the German-American.
Music & Hospitality
Gus Lüchow started his career in hospitality. Having learned the skills of the trade as a waiter and bartender, he began work in 1879 in the small Von Muehlbach Restaurant located at 110 East 14th Street. Three years later he bought out his employer. His venture was made possible thanks to a loan from the piano magnate and fellow German immigrant William Steinway who ran his concert-hall and showroom across the street at Union Square. He had also been a regular at Von Muehlbach.
As the district was developing into a hub of theatrical entertainment and nightlife activities, the Academy of Music stood nearby as did the German-language Irving Place Theatre, the newly named Lüchow’s gained a reputation for its cuisine. Employing twenty-eight chefs at its peak, the restaurant not only served Little Germany, but also offered food and entertainment to visitors and revelers.
The menu promoted staples such as wiener schnitzel, knack- and bratwurst, sauerbraten and pumpernickel. An extensive dessert selection included Pfannkuchen mit Preiselbeeren and Sachertorte. The cellar was stocked with the finest European wines. The house was devoted to good living, reflecting the wealth and well-being of New York’s German immigrant population. Lüchow introduced German gemütlichkeit (geniality; friendliness) into the heart of Manhattan. Rapidly expanding by the acquisition of flanking properties, the establishment became known as the “capital of 14th Street.”
Its eclectic ambiance took on a northern European character. Running the food concession for the Tyrolean Alps Exhibit at the St Louis Fair in 1904, Lüchow purchased a huge painting, “The Potato Gatherers” by Swedish artist Auguste Hagborg. It was given a central place in the so-called Heidelberg Room in addition to numerous Dutch and Austrian pictures, a porcelain statue of Frederick the Great, and multitudes of mounted animal heads and beer steins. A huge model of the clipper Great Republic was on show in the background (the largest full-rigged ship ever built in the United States).
Music was a cultural touchstone to German-Americans. August exploited his friendship with Steinway to the full. The latter’s many clients and colleagues were his core patrons during the early years. They enjoyed many lavish meals at his tables. About to leave New York in 1906, a farewell engagement was organized for the immensely popular Polish pianist Ignaz Paderewski. The event was stretched to six hours of food, wine and musical entertainment.
Oscar Hammerstein was a regular. Bohemian composer Anton Dvorak and Russian opera singer Feodor Chaliapin were faithful clients. Enrico Caruso’s had a taste for pig’s knuckles, but was also often seen enjoying a plate of caviar at the house. Irving Berlin and Cole Porter liked to drop by too.
In February 1914 Dublin-born and German-raised Victor Herbert, composer of a series of successful operettas that premiered on pre-war Broadway, met eight associates at Lüchow’s in order to draft plans for the performing rights organization which became the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers (ASCAP).
Lüchow’s establishment was a Manhattan institution where musicians, writers and actors mingled. With Tammany Hall nearby, scheming politicians and financiers were a continuous presence. When an emerging politician named Theodore Roosevelt arrived for dinner one day, he ordered venison and a bottle of Burgundy wine (Pommard).
Breweries & Festivities
The influx of German immigrants increased the number of beer producers in the city. By 1877, Manhattan counted seventy-eight breweries; Brooklyn had forty-three. Germans in New York congregated at beer halls with large meeting rooms that were used by singing societies, lodges or political organizations. Elaborate beer gardens were the pride of German neighborhoods.
Locally produced ale was an acceptable substitute, but memories of home brewed beer prevailed. This nostalgic longing inspired Lüchow (a beer drinker himself) to start importing lager directly from Germany. It proved to be a master stroke. The word spread; the pumps began to flow. By 1885 Gus was the sole American agent for Würzburg Hofbräu, an amber-colored Bavarian beer that would soon enjoy a cult status in New York and elsewhere. It was swilled down with such delicacies as pig’s knuckles and sauerkraut or potato dumplings.
In 1902 Harry von Tilzer composed the song “Down Where the Würzburger Flows” in honor of August and his restaurant. It became a hit that traveled from Fourteenth Street to the beer gardens of Cincinnati, St Louis, Chicago, Milwaukee and beyond.
With German beer came the celebration of traditional festivities. During the three-day Bock Beer Festival in March, a band would play a selection of old German songs whilst the guests would consume large amounts of their favorite foods: Bockwurst, liver sausage, roast ham and pheasant on wine kraut.
At Christmas a massive tree was erected. Trimmed with countless electric candles, it showed a splendid nativity village underneath (hand-carved in Oberammergau, Bavaria). The standard menu consisted of oxtail soup, boiled carp, roast goose with chestnut stuffing, pumpernickel, plum pudding with brandy sauce and ice cream. At six on Christmas Eve, the lights would be dimmed, whilst the house orchestra performed “Stille Nacht.”
Umlaut War
In the 1890s, Germans and German-Americans began to move out of the Lower East Side to Yorkville and the Bronx, moving their businesses and institutions with them. Fourteenth Street lost its appeal as department stores and office buildings replaced cafés and theaters. Only Lüchow’s survived as a high-quality relic of the past.
Anti-German sentiment during the First World War ran high with outbreaks of nativism and xenophobia. Americans of German descent were targeted; the German-American press was censored; libraries pulled German books off the shelves; and German-American organizations were under scrutiny. In spite of all the commotion, Lüchow continued to import German beer. One lucrative shipment alone, in November 1915, contained 22,492 casks of Pilsner and Würzburger.
Following the sinking of RMS Lusitania by a German submarine on May 7th, 1915, August was forced to defend his patriotic credentials. When it was reported that some of his patrons had cheered on hearing the news of the attack, his lawyer published a letter in New-York Tribune on his behalf in which he stated that August had instructed his orchestra to refrain from playing national airs or patriotic songs. He had barred demonstrations in favor of any of the belligerents.
Before the war the umlaut had been a mark of identity and a sign of German-American distinctiveness. By the time the United States joined the battle, the symbol was re-interpreted as a token of betrayal and hostility, a statement of aggression. Animosity became so intense that by 1917 August thought it prudent to remove the umlaut of his name in all public statements.
Prohibition & Successors
Prohibition came as a blow to August Lüchow. From the outset in 1920, he was not prepared to break the law and allow patrons to consume illicit liquor. His record was impeccable. When Prohibition finally ended in May 1933 and the finest pilsners flowed again on Fourteenth Street, New York’s authorities honored the establishment with Liquor License Number One.
August himself did not survive Prohibition. On his death in 1923, ownership of the restaurant had passed to his nephew Victor Eckstein whose father was a German migrant too and once operated a restaurant in Fourth Street. During Eckstein’s stewardship the restaurant maintained its grand reputation for fine German food, until the challenge became too taxing for him. In 1950, the restaurant changed hands again. Its new owner was an intriguing figure.
Leonard Jan Mitchell was born in April 1913 in the port city of Libau (now: Liepāja), Latvia, which was then part of the Russian Empire. In 1932, while serving on a merchant marine vessel, young Mitchell jumped ship in Baltimore and headed for New York City. Despite speaking little English, he found work as a waiter at the Hotel Grand Concourse in the Bronx, near Yankee Stadium (Yankee players nicknamed him the Swede) and at the Waldorf-Astoria.
Setting out on his own in 1942, he acquired the Olmsted restaurant in Washington. It prospered. He then set his sights on Lüchow’s with which he had fallen in love after eating there early in his New York years. Eckstein agreed the sale with him on condition that the restaurant’s traditional values and settings be preserved. Mitchell went further than that. In 1952 he re-introduced the umlaut that Lüchow had dropped in 1917. In 1952 Michell recorded the history of the restaurant which had become his passion in Lüchow’s German Cookbook, complete with the original recipes.
Unfortunately, the demands of “progress” were undermining the establishment. Union Square was declining rapidly and was no longer the heart of the theater district. Mitchell sold his business in 1970 (in his later years he became a noted art collector). In 1982 an “unexplained” fire destroyed the building and efforts by preservationists to gain landmark status for Lüchow’s failed.
The restaurant moved uptown to Broadway near Times Square, but revival proved impossible. It finally closed in 1986, symbolizing that a period in which the German presence in Manhattan prevailed, had come to a final conclusion.
SPARROW WHO IS A CONTINUAL VISITOR TO THE P.S. 217 CAFETERIA. IT KNOWS ITS WAY IN AND OUT AND DOES NOT EAT THE SCHOOL FOOD. GLORIA HERMAN AND ALEXIS VILLAFANE 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
Illustrations, from above: Lüchow’s in April 1896 (Museum of the City of New York); The Potato Gatherers, undated by August Hagborg (Private collection); an early twentieth century postcard highlighting The Potato Gatherers; original vintage match cover; Luchow’s New York World’s Fair menu, 1939; book jacket by Ludwig Bemelmans to Jan Mitchel’s German cookbook; and Lüchow’s menu for Sunday February 7th, 1954.
THIS PUBLICATION FUNDED BY DISCRETIONARY FUNDS FROM CITY COUNCIL MEMBER JULIE MENIN & ROOSEVELT ISLAND OPERATING CORPORATION PUBLIC PURPOSE FUNDS.
Raphael, son of the French painter Theodore Roussel, designed posters for the British steamship lines P&O and RSMP promoting travel to such foreign destinations as Australia and Sudan. He also designed dioramas for the British Empire Exhibition in 1926. “Another avenue for poster artists was the desire, on behalf of both the Commonwealth of Australia and the shipping lines, to lure immigrants to Australia. [Roussel’s poster] is a classic image with a lightly tanned farmer beckoning Britons to a land bathed in sunshine” (Trading Places p. 4). Trading Places p. 5.
Brondy was one of several classically trained painters who designed travel posters during the 1930s. “He produced a number of splendid posters for Meknes and was head of the city’s tourist office in the 1930s” (Orientalist p. 73). Moulay-Idriss is a holy city in northern Morocco. Orientalist p. 72.
In 1900, an electric funicular railway operated by the Societa Sicula Tramways Omnibus was opened. It connected Palermo to Monreale, able to climb the 184 meters between the Piazza Bologni in Palermo and the terminus in Rocca di Monreale. It ran until 1946. Visible here is the stunning elevated view in Monreale, the Benedictine Cloisters connected to the Monreale cathedral and a vista of the port of Palermo with the imposing Mount Pellegrino behind it.
L’Étoile du Nord was an absolute revolution in advertising when it first appeared in 1927. Although advertising a Pullman train, it was startlingly new to have a travel poster that depicted no landscape, no destination, and no train. The pure and powerful image is a tribute to the dramatic use of perspective, with the train represented metaphorically by the star dancing on the horizon where many rails converge in the distance. To keep the image as clean and unobstructed as possible, Cassandre corrals the typography at the very bottom of the composition and then organizes it in a neat and structured frame around the border. Here, he also develops one of his signature design elements: viewing an object from a low angle to make it seem larger than life and more impressive, a technique he perfected in his 1935 poster for the Normandie. Through his association with Maurice Moyrand, who was the agent for the printer L. Danel, (and with whom he would form the Alliance Graphique in 1930), Cassandre was commissioned to create two posters for the Chemins de fer du Nord in 1927.
A very early ocean liner poster for the Red Star Line, featuring the Westernland. Built in 1883, the ship was the company’s first with a steel hull, first with two funnels and first with three different classes of passenger accommodation. From 1883-1901, she sailed the route between Antwerp and Philadelphia, seen here sailing into New York, past the Statue of Liberty (officially opened in October 1886) and heading towards the Brooklyn Bridge (opened in May 1883). Passenger Ships 17.
An optimistic post-war image depicting North America as the proverbial “City in the Clouds.” Note the subtle depiction of the stars and stripes. Air France p. 72.
http://This, the Southern Pacific’s “first streamliner poster . . . emphasized the distinctive “armor yellow” color and automotive profile of the new City of San Francisco. The artists communicated modernity and speed by rendering the train in a seamless watercolor wash, removing all traces of rivets and vestibules” (Zega p. 111). Rare. We could find only one other copy at auction. Zega 140.
This poster reflects the novelty, energy and brightness of the many electrical and neon displays which were utilized throughout the Chicago World’s Fair. Born in Hungary, Katz was a prominent Jewish artist who worked extensively on WPA projects including murals, illustrations and stained glass. This is the rare small format. World of Tomorrow p. 14.
“A colorful bird’s-eye view of the Theme Center . . . [showing] fairgoers entering the Perisphere from the Trylon and leaving by the Helicline” (World of Tomorrow p. 195). This poster was published two years prior to the fair, when the plans for the Trylon and Perisphere were first released to the press. It was not part of the later poster design competition to promote the fair, won by Joseph Binder. Nembhard N. Culin was an architect who worked with Frost, Frost & Fenner, a firm that designed several pavilions for the fair. This “nighttime aerial view captures the fair’s dramatic, otherworldly nature, and [Culin’s] airbrushing creates an appropriate machine-like surface” (Resnick p, 56). This is the rare large format. World of Tomorrow p. 194, Resnick 26, Taschen p. 323.
FROM ED LITCHER: The gate to a brighter future. We Hope. Thank you Judy and all of the vote site volunteers who made the process on RI a very smooth and pleasant experience.
ALEXIS VILLAFANE 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
Sources
SWANN AUCTION GALLERIES
THIS PUBLICATION FUNDED BY DISCRETIONARY FUNDS FROM CITY COUNCIL MEMBER JULIE MENIN & ROOSEVELT ISLAND OPERATING CORPORATION PUBLIC PURPOSE FUNDS.
For the last 10 days I have been the Coordinator at the early voting and Election Day at PS 217. Yesterday 1240 islanders came out to vote. We have a great community and the over 2000 islanders that voted in the last 10 days make me proud of our community. Also my great time of workers for voting, 25 dedicated workers who work long and sometimes stressful hours. Thanks to everyone who preserved our democracy!!! Judy Berdy
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
Judith Berdy
THIS PUBLICATION FUNDED BY DISCRETIONARY FUNDS FROM CITY COUNCIL MEMBER JULIE MENIN & ROOSEVELT ISLAND OPERATING CORPORATION PUBLIC PURPOSE FUNDS.
In the fourth quarterly issue of Volume VIII, the fascinating history and recent lecture by Jeffrey S. Urbin discusses Appalachia’sPack Horse Librarians.
FollowingThe Origins of Modern Santa — A New York Inventiondiscusses the nuances of the figure St. Nicholas through the past to the present.
In the final piece, Island Icons: Part VII — World War I discusses the affects and aftermath of the First War on New York City.
Don’t forget to check out our updated event calendar on the last page of Blackwell’s Almanac!
