Recently, I was to be in Halifax, Nova Scotia and I asked Kathy Grimm about sites to see. Her daughter lives there and I knew she would have some good suggestions. One was the Art Gallery of Nova Scotia to see the Maud Lewis collection. It was great fun to see the creativity of a woman who painted her entire house!!
Doorway into Lewis’ home
Early life Lewis was born in South Ohio, Nova Scotia, the daughter of John and Agnes (Germain) Dowley.[4][5] She had one brother, Charles. She was born with birth defects and ultimately developed rheumatoid arthritis, which reduced her mobility, especially in her hands. Lewis’ father was a blacksmith and harness maker who owned a harness shop in Yarmouth, Nova Scotia. His business enabled Lewis to enjoy a middle-class childhood.[3] She was introduced to art by her mother, who instructed her in the making of watercolour Christmas cards to sell.[6] Lewis began her artistic career by selling hand-drawn and painted Christmas cards.[7]
Lewis’ father John died in 1935, and her mother followed him in 1937.[4] After living with her brother for a short while, she moved to Digby, Nova Scotia to live with her aunt.[4]
Cottage sitting room
Marriage
Dowley married Everett Lewis, a fish peddler from Marshalltown, on January 16, 1938, at the age of 34.[8] He also worked as the watchman at the county Poor Farm. According to Everett, Maud showed up at his doorstep in response to an ad he had posted in the local stores for a “live-in or keep house” for a 40-year-old bachelor. Several weeks later, they married.[9][4]
They lived in Everett’s one-room house with a sleeping loft, in Marshalltown, a few miles west of Digby. Maud used the house as her studio, while Everett took care of the housework.[10] They lived mostly in poverty.
Maud Lewis accompanied her husband on his daily rounds peddling fish door-to-door, bringing along Christmas cards she had painted. She sold the cards for five cents each, the same price her mother had charged for the cards she had made when Maud was a girl. These cards proved popular with her husband’s customers. When Everett was hired as a night watchman at the neighbouring Poor Farm in 1939, Lewis began selling her Christmas cards and paintings directly from their home.[3] Everett encouraged Lewis to paint, and he bought her her first set of oils.[11]
She expanded her range, using other surfaces for painting, such as pulp boards (beaverboards), cookie sheets, and Masonite. Lewis was a prolific artist and also painted on more or less every available surface in their tiny home: walls, doors, breadboxes, and even the stove. She completely covered the simple patterned commercial wallpaper with sinewy stems, leaves, and blossoms.[11]
Lewis used bright colours in her paintings, and her subjects were often flowers or animals, including oxen teams, horses, birds, deer, and cats. Many of her paintings are of outdoor scenes, including Cape Island boats bobbing on the water, horses pulling a sleigh, skaters, and portraits of dogs, cats, deer, birds, and cows. Her paintings were inspired by childhood memories of the landscape and people around Yarmouth and South Ohio, as well as Digby locations such as Point Prim and Bayview. Commercial Christmas cards and calendars also influenced her.
Lewis returned to the same subjects again and again, each time painting them slightly differently. For instance, she made dozens, if not hundreds, of images of cats over the course of her career. The serial nature of her practice was partly motivated by customer demand; she repeated compositions that sold well while discarding less popular ones. “I put the same things in, I never change,” she said of her style on the CBC program Telescope in 1965. “Same colours and same designs.”[12]
Many of her paintings are quite small, no larger than eight by ten inches, although she is known to have done at least five paintings that are 24 inches by 36 inches. For several years, Everett cut the boards for the paintings to size, although near the end of her career she was purchasing Masonite pre-cut to set dimensions.[3] The size of her paintings was limited by the extent she could move her arms, which were affected by arthritis. She used mostly wallboard and tubes of Tinsol, an oil-based paint. Her technique consisted of first coating the board with white, then drawing an outline, and applying paint directly out of the tube. She never blended or mixed colours.[13]
Early Maud Lewis paintings from the 1940s are quite rare. A large collection of Lewis’ work can be found in the Art Gallery of Nova Scotia (AGNS). It occasionally displays the Chaplin/Wennerstrom shutters (now part of the Clearwater Fine Foods Inc. collection) comprising 22 exterior house shutters Lewis painted in the early 1940s for some Americans who owned a cottage on the South Shore. Most of the shutters are quite large, at 5 ft x 1 ft.6 inches. Lewis was paid 70 cents a shutter.[citation needed]
Between 1945 and 1950, people began to stop at Lewis’ Marshalltown home on Highway No. 1, Nova Scotia’s main highway and tourist route, buying her paintings for two or three dollars each. Only in the last three or four years of her life did Lewis’ paintings begin to sell for seven to ten dollars. She achieved national attention as a folk artist following an article in the Toronto-based Star Weekly in 1964. In 1965, she was featured on CBC-TV’s Telescope.[14][15] Two of Lewis’ paintings were ordered by the White House in the 1970s during Richard Nixon‘s presidency.[16] Her arthritis limited her ability to complete many of the orders that resulted from her national recognition.
Ktchen stove
Later life and death
In the last year of her life, Lewis stayed in one corner of her house, painting as often as she could while traveling back and forth to the hospital for treatment of health issues. She died in Digby on July 30, 1970, from pneumonia.[17] Her husband Everett was killed in 1979 by a burglar during an attempted robbery of the house.[18]
House
After Everett Lewis’ death, their painted house began to deteriorate. A group of concerned citizens from the Digby area started the Maud Lewis Painted House Society to save the landmark. In 1984, it was sold to the Province of Nova Scotia and transferred to the care of the AGNS,[4] which restored the house and installed it as part of its permanent Lewis exhibit.[4]
A steel memorial sculpture based on the Lewis’ house has been erected at the original homesite in Marshalltown, designed by architect Brian MacKay-Lyons.[19] A replica of the Maud Lewis House was built in 1999 by retired fisherman Murray Ross, complete with finished interior. It is a few kilometres north of Marshalltown on the road to Digby Neck in Seabrook.[19]
TODAY BRIGHT IN THE SUNSHINE THE COLER RESIDENTS HAD A GRAND BBQ IN THEIR GARDEN.
THE DIETARY DEPARTMENT AND THERAPEUTIC RECREATION DEPARTMENTS CAME TOGETHER TO BRING HUNDREDS OF RESIDENTS TO THE GARDEN FOR THE FUN AFTERNOON.
IT TAKES A MULTI-DEPARTMENT EFFORT TO SAFELY SERVE THE RESIDENTS. EVERY RESIDENT HAD A COLOR CODED STICKER INDICATING THE MEAL THAT THEY WERE BEING SERVED.
A GROUP OF HUNTER COLLEGE DIETARY STUDENT ARE INTERNING AT COLER AND THEY MADE GREAT SERVERS AND HELPERS TODAY.
WE ARE NOT ALLOWED TO PHOTOGRAPH THE RESIDENTS, BUT WE ASSURE YOU THAT THERE WERE LOTS OF SMILES AND CHEERFUL RESIDENTS TODAY ENJOYING A SPECIAL END OF SUMMER BBQ.
RECREATION THERAPISTS ROBERT, GENARO AND ASHLEY FORMED AN ASSEMBLY LINE OF HAMBURGER ASSEMBLY. DIRECTOR OF THERAPETIC RECREATION JOVEMAY SANTOS WAS BUSY ON THE ASSEMBLY LINE TOO.
GEORGE IS COLER’S BEST M.C. AND MUSIC MASTER AT ALL EVENTS.
RECREATION THERAPISTS MARGARET AND MARIA TOOK A BREAK TO GREET AND SERVE THE RESIDENTS
THERAPIST ASHLEY LOVES FOOD EVENTS AND DOES SPECIAL SNACKS FOR RESIDENTS EACH WEEK
THURSDAY PHOTO OF THE DAY
THE NEW POWER CELL AT THE OCTAGON HAS JUST BEEN COMPLETED. THE BUILDING REPLACED THEIR ORIGINAL UNIT THIS YEAR.
Text by Judith Berdy Thanks to Bobbie Slonevsky for her dedication to Blackwell’s Almanac and the RIHS
JUDITH BERDY
Thanks to Deborah Dorff for maintaining our website Edited by Melanie Colter and Deborah Dorff
MAYA LEVANON-PHOTOS TIK TOK & INSTAGRAM
All image are copyrighted (c) Roosevelt Island Historical Society unless otherwise indicated
On a cold, snowy January evening in 1874, Anna Elizabeth Dickinson became one of the first women of national prominence to speak on women’s suffrage in Clinton County, NY. Those gathering to hear her at the Palmer Hall, located upstairs at 60 Margaret Street in downtown Plattsburgh, were described as the most intellectual and cultivated in the community.
The crowd that night would have known her reputation.
Dickinson was born in 1842 into a Philadelphian Quaker family. Her father was an abolitionist. She was educated at the Friends’ Select School in Philadelphia and acknowledged as a gifted speaker and prodigy.
Her first speaking engagement was in 1860 at age 18 when she addressed the Pennsylvania Anti-Slavery Society. In early 1861, when she spoke in her native city on “Women’s Rights and Wrongs,” her career on the speaking circuit began.
By 1863 Dickinson’s reputation had grown and her name appeared around the country for her anti-slavery stand during the Civil War. She was a staunch supporter of the Republican Party, though not always of Abe Lincoln, whom she felt was too moderate. Because she was a young phenom, she was elevated by some as the “Joan of Arc” of the United States’ ongoing battle to end slavery in the South.
In 1864 she was the first woman to speak before Congress and after the war she resumed her speaking career, equality for African-Americans and women’s rights. The speech was attended by Lincoln.
By 1874 she had been on the speaking circuit for nearly 15 years. During the 1871-72 lecture season she spoke almost every night from October to April commanding from $150 to $400 a night, a very large sum for its time. At her peak, she earned more than Mark Twain.
Dickinson’s spoke on “The Rights and Wrongs of Women,” Reconstruction, “Women’s Work and Wages,” and “Between Us Be Truth,” on the social evils of venereal disease. Before arriving in Plattsburgh, she had started an acting career, climbed Pike’s Peak, and traveled the nation to give her orations on African American and women’s suffrage. (is is believed to be the first white woman to summit Colorado’s Longs Peak, Lincoln Peak, and Elbert Peak, and the second to climb Pike’s Peak.) It is unclear which organization in Plattsburgh sponsored her lecture or if admission was charged.
She entered the Palmer Hall stage not as the audience expected a radical, nonconformist to appear. Her rich brown silk dress included a train. There were diamonds on her ears, neck, and fingers. Her passport described her as 5’ 2” with large gray eyes, a fair complexion, a large Grecian nose, full lips, a round chin, and a round face. Her voice was rich, deep, and mellow, with a style betraying her Quaker training using biblical words.
Her stage presence was not that of a petite woman, and she used the entire stage to deliver her speech. She was a dramatic actress with a message. The title of her address was “What’s to Hinder Women from Helping Themselves?”
She began with the premise women are weak and dependent and need to understand how to overcome their “disabilities.” Women are their own worst enemy, she said, due to their typically gentle upbringing, women are not toughened for real work as their brothers are. Further, in order for women to do men’s work they needed to have the same training.
There would be no free ride, she argued. One will not get something for nothing. If all women are waiting for is marriage, they are not fitting themselves for good work and will not receive rewards for good work.
“The key of a woman’s success is in the brain and in the skill and cunning handle craft that come only with practice,” the Essex County Republican quoted. The reporter felt she did far more than other female orators in the country to create “a correct public sentiment for the best interests of her sex.”
After Dickinson’s 1874 lecture, Plattsburgh organizations started to host lectures by other noted suffrage supporters such as Wendell Phillips and Susan B. Anthony. But it would be 43 years before the city’s women would win the right to vote in state and federal elections.
Also a writer, Dickinson published the radical novel What Answer? (1868), supportive of interracial marriage. She made arguments for worker training, prison reform, assistance for the poor, and compulsory education for children in A Paying Investment, a Plea for Education (1876).
In the meantime, Anna was committed to against her will by her sister Susan Dickinson to the Danville State Hospital for the Insane in Pennsylvania, before being transferred to a private hospital in Goshen, Orange County, NY, where she quickly began giving lectures. She sued newspapers who claimed she was insane and those who had her committed, winning the case against her kidnapping and three libels suits in 1898.
Once released, she lived with George and Sallie Ackley in Goshen for more than 40 years. According to letters between them, and confirmed by George Ackley and his sisters, Dickinson and Sallie Ackley were lovers. When Sallie died, she left a large portion of her estate to Anna.
Anna Elizabeth Dickinson died in 1932 at the age of 89 and was buried in Slate Hill Cemetery in Goshen. A marker at her grave (next to that of the Ackleys) reads “America’s Civil War Joan of Arc,” and quotes her: “My head and heart, soul and brain, were all on fire with the words I must speak.”
WEDNESDAY PHOTO OF THE DAY
READY FOR NEXT YEAR NINA LUBLIN, PRESIDENT OF THE R.I. JEWISH CONGREGATION STORES ITEMS FOR OUR NEXT HOLIDAYS.
TUESDAY PHOTO OF THE DAY
COUNCIL SYNAGOGUE OPENED BY THE NATONAL COUNCIL OF JEWISH WOMEN IN 1927, TO SERVE THE RESIDENTS OF THE CITY HOME
Text by Judith Berdy Thanks to Bobbie Slonevsky for her dedication to Blackwell’s Almanac and the RIHS
Anna Elizabeth Dickinson: ‘America’s Civil War Joan of Arc’ NEW YORK ALMANACK
Illustrations, from above: A Mathew Brady photo of Anna Elizabeth Dickinson, taken between 1855 and 1865; an Anna E. Dickinson photo and autograph; and a lecture poster from 1891.
John Warren contributed to this article.
Thanks to Deborah Dorff for maintaining our website Edited by Melanie Colter and Deborah Dorff
MAYA LEVANON-PHOTOS TIK TOK & INSTAGRAM
All image are copyrighted (c) Roosevelt Island Historical Society unless otherwise indicated
In 1993, the Roosevelt Island Jewish Congregation (RIJC) moved into it’s new home in the Cultural Center. We were the only tenants along with the Main Street Theatre and Dance Alliance (MSTDA).
The RIJC held its services in the same room all year and expanded to the adjacent dance studio for high holidays and and occasional celebrations.
The MSTDA thrived under the direction of Worth and Nancy Howe, and subsequent directors.
Many other island and outside organizations used the space and it thrived as a cultural headquarters.
In the 2000’s the Cultural Center suffered two massive floods that closed the facilties for years. RIOC decided that the RIJC and MSTDA would now rent their space and other groups would also use the facilities.
The constant delays and construction issues, along with RIOC politics lead to extensive delays and postponements of usage.
Our sanctuary was no longer ours, stripped of all removable furnishings. Anyone can now rent the space for any event. We agreed to the changes and worked to reserve the space when we needed it for events.
Other groups used the space and left in frustration of dealing with RIOC. Only two groups have persevered with use of the center.
We are thirilled to be back in our “home” even for they most holy of holidays and welcome all to our Succah this Friday evening on the roof of the CUltural Center, at the 540 breezeway (on the senior center terrace) RIJC.ORG for more information.
Rabbi Laurie Gold and Cantor Sandra Goodman welcoming congregants for our Yom Kippur service
The torah is read and congregants follow in person or on Zoom.
The end of the holiday is celebrated with Havdalah
NINA LUBLIN AND RABBI LAURIE GOLD AFTER THE LONG YOM KIPPUR SERVICES.
I usually pass by the FIT campus when the museum is closed. The other day I saw it was open and who can resist an exhibit about food and fashion.
Both food and fashion are central to our daily lives. They speak to people’s most basic needs while also expressing our individual and cultural identities. The exhibition Food & Fashion explores how food themes and motifs are used to comment on critical topics from luxury, gender, and consumerism to sustainability, social activism, and body politics. Food has influenced fashion design from the eighteenth-century to today. So while the connection between the two genres is hardly new – think of woven pomegranates, embroidered ears of wheat, or fruit-trimmed hats – just this year, in 2023, the New York Times reported that food motifs are “the new florals” in fashion. Food & Fashion is an exciting and timely exhibition that includes over eighty garments and accessories by designers including Chanel, Moschino, and Stella McCartney. It is a multifaceted look at how intertwined these genres are and what they can express about our culture and society.
Food & Fashion is co-curated by Melissa Marra-Alvarez, curator of education and research, and Elizabeth Way, associate curator of costume at MFIT.
On the occasion of Hispanic Heritage Month, Four Freedoms Park Conservancy has engaged its first guest curator, bestselling author, Pulitzer Prize finalist, and Brooklynite Xochitl Gonzalez.
Kicking off her programming is a newly commissioned mural by Latin-American artist Mata Ruda entitled “Esta Tierra Es Nuestra Tierra” (“This Land is Our Land).”
“Esta Tierra Es Nuestra Tierra” (“This Land is Our Land)”
When: Now through October 15
Where: Franklin D. Roosevelt Four Freedoms State Park, 1 FDR Four Freedoms Park, NYC
Free
LEARN MORE ABOUT THE CURATOR AND ARTIST
XOCHITL GONZALEZ is the New York Times bestselling author of Olga Dies Dreaming. Named a Best of 2022 by The New York Times, TIME, Kirkus, Washington Post, and NPR, Olga Dies Dreaming was the winner of the Brooklyn Public Library Book Prize in Fiction and The New York City Book Awards. Her new novel, Anita de Monte Laughs Last, is forthcoming in March 2024 with Flatiron Books. As a staff writer for The Atlantic, she was recognized as a 2023 finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in Commentary.
MATA RUDA (Karl Miller Espinosa) is a Latin-American artist and muralist residing in Newark. Using iconography from both sides of the border, he creates a variety of murals and paintings that empower overlooked communities. His work has been exhibited by institutions including: the Newark Museum, El Museo Barrio in Harlem, the Street Art Museum in Russia, and the Hudson Valley Center for Contemporary Art. Since 2012 he has been invited to commissioned to create public murals in Russia, Puerto Rico, Ukraine, Mexico, the United States, and more.
Ooops…. We missed Thursday’s issue due to late night activities.
FROM THE ARCHIVES
FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 22, 2023
RUTH LAW
PIONEER IN AVIATION
WIKIPEDIA
ISSUE# 1081
Ruth Law Oliver (May 21, 1887 – December 1, 1970) was a pioneer American aviator during the 1910s.
Biography
She was born Ruth Bancroft Law on May 21, 1887 to Sarah Bancroft Breed and Frederick Henry Law in Lynn, Massachusetts.[1]
She was inspired to take up flying by her brother, parachutist and pioneer moviestuntmanRodman Law,[4] with whom she challenged herself to physically keep up during their childhood.[5]
She was instructed by Harry Atwood and Arch Freeman at Atwood Park in Saugus, Massachusetts,[6] having been refused lessons by Orville Wright because, according to Law, he believed that women weren’t mechanically inclined, but this only made her more determined, later saying “The surest way to make me do a thing is to tell me I can’t do it.” She was an adept mechanic.[5] She received her pilot’s license in November 1912, and in 1915 gave a demonstration of aerobatics at Daytona Beach, Florida, before a large crowd. She announced that she was going to “loop the loop” for the first time, and proceeded to do so, not once but twice, to the consternation of her husband, Charles Oliver.
Ruth Law was the only woman in World War I permitted to wear the French government aviation uniform for nonmilitary purpose
In 1915 she participated in a publicity stunt for baseball’s Grapefruit League. Dodgers manager Wilbert Robinson and outfielder Casey Stengel heard that Law had been dropping golf balls from the sky for a nearby golf course and decided that a similar stunt would be good for publicity. On March 13, 1915, Law flew with Stengel on board (though, later, Stengel would recant his role in the tale, saying it was team trainer) ready to drop the baseball to Robinson’s waiting mitt. But instead of a baseball, a grapefruit was flung out the plane, either as a prank or by mistake. The fruit shattered on impact, covering Robinson in the “ooze and goo” and making him believe he was injured and covered with blood. Fortunately, this was not the case, but a popular legend is that this incident was how the Grapefruit League earned its nickname.[7]In the spring of 1916, she took part in an altitude competition, twice narrowly coming in second to male fliers. She was furious, determined to set a record that would stand against men as well as women.Her greatest feat took place on 19 November 1916, when she broke the existing cross-America flight air speed record of 452 miles (727 km) set by Victor Carlstrom by flying nonstop from Chicago to New York State, a distance of 590 miles (950 km). The next day she flew on to New York City. Flying over Manhattan, her fuel cut out, but she glided to a safe landing on Governors Island and was met by United States ArmyCaptainHenry “Hap” Arnold (who changed her spark plugs in the Curtiss pusher),[citation needed] who would one day become Commanding General of the United States Army Air Forces. PresidentWoodrow Wilson attended a dinner held in her honor on 2 December 1916.
After the United States entered World War I in April 1917, she campaigned unsuccessfully for women to be allowed to fly military aircraft. Stung by her rejection, she wrote an article entitled “Let Women Fly!” in the magazine Air Travel, where she argued that success in aviation should prove a woman’s fitness for work in that field.After the war, she continued to set records. After Raymonde de Laroche of France set a women’s altitude record of nearly 13,000 feet (4,000 m) on 7 June 1919,[8] She broke Laroche’s record on 10 June, flying to 14,700 feet (4,500 m).[8] Laroche, in turn, broke Oliver’s record on 12 June, flying to a height of 15,748 feet (4,800 m).[9]On a morning in 1922, Law woke up to read with surprise an announcement of her retirement in the newspaper; her husband had tired of her dangerous job and had taken that step to end her flying career,[10] and she acquiesced to his demand.She attributed a 1932 nervous breakdown to the lack of flying, having settled down in Los Angeles, spending her days gardening.[5]In 1948, Law attended a Smithsonian event in Washington, D.C. celebrating the donation of the Wright brothers’ Kitty Hawk plane, despite Orville Wright’s earlier refusal to teach her. Notwithstanding her accomplished career in aviation, she traveled by train.[5]She died on December 1, 1970, in San Francisco.[1] She is buried in Pine Grove Cemetery in Lynn, Massachusetts.
Ruth Law, from the cover of the May 5, 1917 issue of Billboard.
Place-Royale in Old Québec, Notre-Dame-des-Victoires (Our Lady of Victories) church is considered to be the oldest church built in stone and which still has its same walls in Canada. The Norwegian Joy is docked a few blocks away and is intruding on the historic scene.
TUESDAY PHOTO OF THE DAY
GUASTAVINO CEILING ON ROOF OF ENTRACE TO CHATEAU FRONTENAC HOTEL IN QUEBEC CITY Andy Sparberg got this right
Text by Judith Berdy Thanks to Bobbie Slonevsky for her dedication to Blackwell’s Almanac and the RIHS
WIKIPEDIA
Thanks to Deborah Dorff for maintaining our website Edited by Melanie Colter and Deborah Dorff
MAYA LEVANON-PHOTOS TIK TOK & INSTAGRAM
All image are copyrighted (c) Roosevelt Island Historical Society unless otherwise indicated
Having spent three weeks in Boston where he enjoyed an enthusiastic reception, Charles Dickens arrived on February 12, 1842, in South Street, Lower Manhattan, on the packet New York from New Haven. The city depressed him.
In his travelogue American Notes, he contrasted sun-filled Broadway with the filth of The Five Points. In the district’s narrow alleys the visitor was confronted with all that is “loathsome, drooping, and decayed.” Dickens described New York as a city of sunshine and gloom.
As Manhattan’s built environment expanded with the arrival of large numbers of newcomers, New Yorkers complained of being engulfed by blackness. The introduction of gas light in the streets alleviated the issue during night time hours, but distribution of the new technology was unequal. The monopolistic New York Gas Light Company bypassed deprived localities in favor of affluent or commercial districts.
Access to light in Manhattan, both natural and artificial, defined the difference between rich and poor neighborhoods, between safe and troubled environments. It marked the social inequalities of the urban landscape.
Pen Power
In 1906 Carl Hassman published his cartoon The Crusaders depicting a vanguard of writers and journalists as knights campaigning against corruption and corporate deceit. Many of the portrayed characters carry the pen as it were a warrior’s lance. The artist incorporated a number of vanguard journals in this imaginative army, including McClure’s Magazine and the satirical weekly Puck (famous for its cartoons).
That same year the term “muckraking” was introduced by President Theodore Roosevelt in describing the socially committed journalism of his day. Having borrowed the word from John Bunyan’s The Pilgrim’s Progress (1678), he criticized the press for focusing on corruption at the expense of more positive news. Journalists took this attack as a compliment and adopted the term as a badge of honor.
During the period between roughly 1890 and 1920 (the Progressive Era), muckrakers were investigative journalists who exposed fraud and duplicity in authority whilst highlighting social problems. Their aim was to generate public anger which would force lawmakers to intervene (or not). The muckrakers’ well-researched reporting differed from “yellow” journalistic practice by which newspapers sensationalized stories based on fiction and hearsay rather than factual information.
The muckraker was driven by both a quest for dramatic effect and a passion for justice. Coinciding with a growing readership and an emerging sense of urban identity, this type of journalism had been expanding gradually. In the city of New York, the scandal-focused approach and stylistic tone was set earlier in the nineteenth century by an enigmatic author named George Goodrich Foster.
Journeyman Journalist
Foster remains a shadowy figure as biographical information is scarce. He was born about 1812 in (probably) Vermont. With little or no formal education, he was – in his own words – a “dreamy poet” who took up journalism out of financial necessity.
Having moved to New York in 1842, his love for poetry became clear three years later when he published the first American edition of The Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley. In his introduction he praised the radical poet for his civilizing role in society. A student of French utopian philosophy, Foster’s thinking was influenced by Charles Fourier’s radical views on social change. He made his political engagement clear with the publication of The French Revolution of 1848. From the outset of his career, Foster acted as a commentator with reform in mind.
It may have been this particular aspect of his intellectual makeup that motivated Horace Greeley to hire him as a reporter. Founder and editor of the New York Tribune, the latter was a promoter of reform movements such as socialism, feminism, temperance and vegetarianism.
Foster soon established a reputation as an author of urban sketches and an observer of events that took place during New York City’s gaslight era. In engaging pieces, he attempted to pinpoint underlying sources of urban vice and crime and suggest solutions to the problems engendered by those living in poverty and destitution.
On a roving assignment (a “journeyman journalist” in his own phrase), he covered city life in all its aspects. Day or night, Foster hurried to report from fire or crime scenes; he joined public processions; covered local controversies; and commented on visits to New York by foreign dignitaries.
Foster was a regular guest at Manhattan’s House of Detention (known locally as “The Tombs”) which he outlined as a “shrine of petty larceny, drunkenness, vagabondism and vagrancy,” referring to his slum and prison tours in terms of “pilgrimages.” The use of the term is a reminder of the fact that journeys into the urban “jungle” were considered to be of great moral significance. Here too, Forster set an example.
Victorian London of the 1870s was a city of stark contrasts between affluence and squalor. In 1872 English journalist Blanchard Jerrold and French engraver Gustave Doré produced a book entitled London: A Pilgrimage. Together, the two explored the capital, visiting night refuges, lodging houses and opium dens.
In order to produce a telling record of the city’s “shadows and sunlight,” they also attended an event at Lambeth Palace and the Derby at Epsom Race Course. Doré’s 180 engravings, with their dramatic use of light and shade, captured the public mood.
Gaslight Foster
Few writers or journalists knew Manhattan by day or by night better than did George Foster. An urban chronicler, he roamed the streets and avenues, observed the razzmatazz of city life, and recorded events with a sharp eye and in a fluent and witty style.
His portraits of “swells” dining at Delmonico’s or gathering in oyster cellars; of Bowery derelicts and criminals; of “sidewalkers” hooking clients at The Five Points; of high-class “cyprians” operating in luxurious brothels (the “Golden Gates of Hell” in his words), provided his readers with juicy tales of life in a metropolis that by then had become the nation’s richest, most crowded and most vice-ridden center of activity. Foster’s snapshots helped forge the city’s identity and its distinct vocabulary (“New York City English“).
We shape our buildings and thereafter they shape us, Winston Churchill insisted in a speech of October 1943 concerning the rebuilding of the bomb-damaged House of Commons. The same statement can be applied to urban neighborhoods. In his descriptions, Foster dissected the metropolis into various “slices” of life animated by colorful characters. He was one of the first authors to offer a social geography of New York City.
Foster’s columns proved popular and a collection of tales was published in 1849 as New York in Slices; by an Experienced Carver. In autumn 1850, he published a new series of sketches entitled New York by Gas-Light, with here and there a Streak of Sunshine which, as his publisher claimed, sold even better than the previous book.
Covering much the same topics, this set of stories concentrates on the “festivities of prostitution, the orgies of pauperism, the haunts of theft and murder, the scenes of drunkenness and beastly debauch, and all the sad realities that go to make up the lower stratum – the underground story – of life in New York!” (opening paragraph). The effort earned him the nickname “Gaslight Foster.”
What was the appeal of Foster’s columns? In his writing the author showed genuine sympathy for people caught in the meshes of poverty, a concern that was spiced by his contempt for politicians and religious dignitaries who defended the status quo and peppered by his hatred of the hedonistic lifestyles associated with a “sporting man culture.”
In his self-described role as an “experienced carver” of urban life, Foster practiced voyeurism with a social conscience. His success indicated an emerging wider sense of city identity that went beyond the Knickerbocker history of New York City.
That shift in urban awareness became evident when Benjamin Baker’s musical farce A Glance at New York in 1848 hit the stage, turning out to be one of the greatest theatrical successes up to that time. Following the adventures of Big Mose, a muscular firefighter, the play was a potpourri of filth and fury.
Its main character was presented as the “toughest man in the nation’s toughest city.” The play became a trailblazer for a new kind of drama populated by street-familiar characters that spoke directly to New Yorkers. Baker’s realistic and unsentimental image of the Bowery would have inspired Foster’s approach.
Foster’s work remains of interest to the social historian. Criminals, beggars and prostitutes may abound in his tales, but there is also ample attention to the plight of working people, to women struggling in sweatshops, to gangs that controlled districts, or to the aimless exploits of “b’hoys & g’hals” hanging out on street corners.
In spite of his stress on degradation and exploitation, Foster’s approach did help to instill a feeling of anticipation of “better days ahead.” The author believed that the city would “cure” itself from the “poison” of prostitution. Poverty and injustice could be eradicated. New York City was full of potential and an era of social change and reform was imminent. Foster’s messianic idealism never left him.
Decline & Demise
Throughout his writings, starting with the introduction to his Shelley edition, Foster showed an understanding of those being destroyed by the impersonal forces of poverty and destitution. His final book New York Naked was undated and appeared sometime in 1854. More substantial than his two preceding publications, it lacked their spark. By now he had become interested in Italian opera (he edited a Memoir of Jenny Lind, a compilation of printed items resulting from the from the adored Swedish singer’s 1850 tour) and his sketches of New York’s publishers, editors and writers remain of interest to historians of books and newspapers.
Beyond his publishing activities little is known of Foster during the years after he left the Tribune in 1849/50. Sometime before the end of 1853 he moved to Philadelphia, but must have hit hard times. In January 1855 he landed in prison for passing forged bank notes. He died on April 16, 1856, shortly after his release.
At best, Foster was a great storyteller, an author who could outline a scene in a single stylish paragraph through sharp characterisation. At worst, his writing deteriorated into sugary sentimentalism or petty finger-wagging. This was a thin dividing line. Many moralists had entered and described the sordid world of the metropolis, be it in London or New York, but only the work of great narrators survived and made an impact. Gaslight Foster was one of those.
GUASTAVINO CEILING ON ROOF OF ENTRACE TO CHATEAU FRONTENAC HOTEL IN QUEBEC CITY
Text by Judith Berdy Thanks to Bobbie Slonevsky for her dedication to Blackwell’s Almanac and the RIHS
NEW YORK ALMANACK
Illustrations, from above: “Prostitution: ‘Hooking a Victim’,” Engraving from New York by Gas-Light, 1850; Carl Hassman’s “The Crusaders,” 1906 (Library of Congress); Cover of 1879 sheet music for C.M. Connolly’s song “Under the Gas Light”; Cover of the first edition of Foster’s New York by Gas-Light (1850); and “Mayhem in Five Points,” an 1855 guidebook lithograph by an unknown artist.
Thanks to Deborah Dorff for maintaining our website Edited by Melanie Colter and Deborah Dorff
MAYA LEVANON-PHOTOS TIK TOK & INSTAGRAM
All image are copyrighted (c) Roosevelt Island Historical Society unless otherwise indicated
Changes came to the Brooklyn Bridge not long after this “eighth wonder of the world” linking the cities of New York and Brooklyn opened to enormous fanfare on May 24, 1883.
The toll to cross the bridge (one cent for pedestrians, a nickel for a horse and rider, and 10 cents for a horse and wagon, per history.com) ended in 1891. Eight years later, tracks were added to the bridge’s roadways so trolleys could carry people across the bridge in both directions.
But before that, in 1886, a high-profile New York welfare worker came up with a more fantastical idea: building an “ornamental palace of glass,” as Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper described it, on the top of each of the bridge’s two towers (sketch above).
These glass enclosures would serve as “grand observatories” for visitors who wanted to view the cities of Brooklyn and New York from “lofty heights,” the article continued.
How would people reach these glass enclosures? They would be whisked to the top of the towers and into the observatories by elevators, which would be enclosed in new steel framework to be added alongside each tower.
It might rank as the boldest, most unusual idea to alter the bridge ever put before city officials. But then Linda Gilbert (above), the woman who suggested it, was a bold and unusual New Yorker.
Born in Rochester in 1847, Gilbert (above in 1876) had been dubbed “the prisoner’s friend” because of her dedication to improving prisons and the lives of people residing in them. As a young woman, she used inherited family money to create penitentiary libraries, eventually building libraries at Sing Sing, the Tombs, the Ludlow Street Jail, and the New York House of Detention.
After her own funds dried up, she launched the Gilbert Library & Prisoners Aid Fund in 1876. Her need for more money to put toward her prison reform work appears to have been the reason behind her glass observatory idea.
“Gilbert proposed a modest fee for visitors, three-quarters of which would serve as direct revenue for the bridge, while the rest would fund Gilbert’s charitable and reformatory work,” wrote Richard Haw, author of Art of the Brooklyn Bridge: a Visual History.
“I am constantly hampered in my work for lack of funds,” Gilbert stated to Frank Leslie’s newspaper, bolstering her idea by adding that one of her cousins, Rufus H. Gilbert, was the inventor of the city’s first elevated railway.
She described the bridge towers as “not very ornamental.” Instead, she advocated for adding on top “two of the grandest points of elevation in the world” as long as she could be assured of getting a quarter of the receipts to put toward her prison reform work.
“The scheme will certainly attract general attention,” the Frank Leslie article concluded. In the end, of course, the glass observatories idea was DOA.
“The bridge’s trustees considered the proposal, but it went no further,” wrote Haw.
