The U.S. Navy New York Naval Shipyard, Brooklyn, New York (USA), photographed from 300 m altitude, looking west, 15 April 1945. The ships in the large dry docks in center are (left to right): USS Houston (CL-81) and the aircraft carriers USS Franklin D. Roosevelt (CVB-42) and USS Reprisal (CV-35).
Photo of the Hindenburg over New York City on May 6, 1937. A few hours after this photo was taken, the airship crashed and burned at Lakehurst, NJ while trying to land.
LOTS OF FOLKS IDENTIFIED THIS IMAGE OF GRAND CENTRAL TERMINAL AARON EISENPREISS, LINA BECKER, JOYCE GOLD, ANDY SPARBERG, ALEXIS VILLAFANE, HARA REISER, & GLORA HERMAN
CREDITS
Text by Judith Berdy
WIKIMEDIA COMMONS
MAYA LEVANON-PHOTOS TIK TOK & INSTAGRAM
All image are copyrighted (c) Roosevelt Island Historical Society unless otherwise indicated
IN 1961 THE FDNY DID AN AERIAL SURVY OF WELFARE ISLAND. THESE IMAGES ARE POSTED ON FLICKER. THANKS TO DYLAN BROWN FOR TELLING ME ABOUT THIS GREAT HISTORICAL REFERENCE.
The center of the island from Cottage Row, just sout of Blackwell House. Notice that the main road came off the Welfare Island Bridge and was on the West side of the island. The buildings in the center of the island were the City Home.
On the West Road was Our Lady Consoler of the Afflicted Catholic Church.
Just north of the Welfare Island Bridge are the remains of the Convalescent Camp, later to become the FDNY Training Center. North of the camp are the buildings of Metropolitan Hosptial
The north end of the island showing the City Home area around Good Shepherd. Notice the amount of structures on the island. The white roof is Good shepherd with the one adjacent to it Good Samaritan German Lutheran Church
Another view of the Welfare Island Bridge ramp as it come onto the island going north or south.
Lighthouse Park with Draper Hall, the nurses residence that remained from the Metropolitan Hospital School of Nursing.
Metropolitan Hospital campus with the Octagon central building. Coler Hospital is just to the north. Can you spot the lighthouse?
Sacred Heart Church is to the right of the Metropolitan Hospital campus.
A TRYLON AND PERISPHERE REPLICA ONCE STOOD AT THE LINCOLN TUNNEL
ISSUE # 1190
UNTAPPED NEW YORK
Searching the World’s Fair archives, Untapped New York’s founder Michelle Young came upon a forgotten gem: a mini Trylon and Perisphe replica that once stood at the New Jersey entrance of the Lincoln Tunnel. This information booth structure was meant to be eye-catching and to “induce the out-of-town motorist to stop at the booths before plunging into Manhattan.” The Trylon and Perisphere were the centerpieces of the 1939 World’s Fair and this piece of promotional architecture was one of many replicas that popped up around NYC to promote the fair.
“1939 World’s Fair Information Booth,” Courtesy of The Weehawken Time Machine
At the Lincon Tunnel, the spherical Perisphere part of the information booth is described as “containing a window counter with space for two clerks” and it measured 11 feet in diameter. The Trylon part stretched 38 feet high and was wrapped in a silver and black pennant which read “New York World’s Fair.” The structures were painted white and the lettering on them was red with blue trim.
The booth was advertised with 27 billboards on the highways which called attention to it and directed motorists toward it. It was manned 24/7 while the fair was in operation. The press release notes that the fair guides inside were “equipped to not only dispense information about the fair but about hotels and rooming, garages, road conditions, and similar subjects.”
Trylon and Perisphere booth in Times Square Image fromNYPL
The Port Authority built similar information booths at entrances to the Holland Tunnel and George Washington Bridge as well, as the document notes. Another information booth in this shape was built at the center of Times Square, at 46th Street and Broadway, mere steps away from the headquarters of its sponsor, Loews Metro Goldwyn Meyer.
CORRECTION
Good morning. This is Andy Sparberg. My message is not a response to today’s photo of the day, but a needed correction to this morning’s issue ISSUE # 1189 about the Wall St. Subway Station.
Specifically, the paragraph about the ticket chopper is incorrect. I am providing a corrected version below. Additional needed words are in bold font.
What’s the purpose of the ticket chopper? Before subway tokens were introduced in 1953, riders paid the fare via coins. Until 1921, the worker in the subway booth would hand them a paper ticket, and the rider gave the ticket to another employee at the chopper box, which would shred the ticket, according to the New York Transit Museum. To save the labor costs of chopper boxes, in 1921 the subways introduced automatic turnstiles, which required the rider to deposit the proper fare before admitting the rider into the station. Turnstiles required nickels until 1948, dimes from 1948-53, and tokens from 1953 until 2003.
(Turnstile information is from Under the Sidewalks of New York, by Brian Cudahy, pages 88-99.)
STATUE OF PROMETHIUS AT ROCKEFELLER CENTER BEING RE-GUILDED GLORIA HERMAN, JOYCE GOLD AND HARA REISER GOT IT RIGHT
Text by Judith Berdy
UNTAPPED NEW YORK
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 Dottie Jeffries
All image are copyrighted (c) Roosevelt Island Historical Society unless otherwise indicated
Con artists were no strangers to early New York City. At one time or another, nearly every major landmark in the city had been sold by a ‘matchstick man.’ Around the turn of the twentieth century, one such fraud was performed by two men who targeted an artifact of slightly less renown: The Great West Point Chain.
The Great West Point Chain was the linchpin of the American defenses at West Point during the Revolutionary War. Prior to the Chain, various other methods of securing the Hudson River Valley from invading British vessels had been tried, but none with success. First installed across the Hudson at West Point in 1778, “General Washington’s watch chain” would guard the River for four years.
George Washington contracted Sterling Iron Works to make the chain, according to the Office of the USMA Command Historian. It contained 750 links weighing 100-120 pounds each. The chain was pulled out of the river each fall so it wouldn’t break when the water froze in the winter. The ice would keep the British at bay during that time. The chain was reinstalled each spring for four years. It was taken in for the last time in the fall of 1782.
After the War, the Chain was left on the riverbanks. The new country was nervous that they would end up in another war with Great Britain and didn’t want to dispose of the Chain in case it became useful again. However, when war did break out again in 1812 the Chain sat idle. Finally, in 1829, it was melted down.
Photo: U.S. Military Academy PAO Michelle Kalish
Or so it seemed. Over the next 60 years most forgot about the West Point Chain. Then, in 1889 Chicago confectioner Charles Frederick Gunther began displaying 18 links of the “original” West Point Chain in his curiosity museum. He had bought them from a military surplus dealer in New York City.
The dealer went by the unlikely moniker of Westminster Abbey (he told people his father had wanted him to be a lawyer and gave him a distinguished name. This would probably have given his father quite a shock, as the elder Abbey actually named his son ‘John’). ‘Westminster’ ran a junk shop on Front Street near the South Street Seaport, advertising everything from “rifles, revolvers, and military pistols” to the “best mixed tea, wholesale or retail”.
New York Sun – December 25, 1898
Abbey picked up his chain at an auction at the Brooklyn Navy Yard but didn’t pretend to know how it got there. When asked, he simply replied that Gunther had verified it. Abbey hit the jackpot, both in dollars and publicity, when he managed to sell 18 links of the chain to former New York mayor Abram Hewitt in 1898.
Abbey got out of the chain game shortly after the Hewitt sale. He sold his remaining sections to equally dubious (albeit more successful) surplus dealer Francis Bannerman VI, of Bannerman Castle fame. Where Abbey was an amateur self-promoter, Bannerman had gone pro. To go along with his links (and the desk weights he made out of some pieces) Bannerman printed up a booklet detailing the chain’s history.
Photo: U.S. Military Academy PAO Michelle Kalish
According to Bannerman, a large section of the Great Chain had survived the furnace and was brought to Manhattan in 1864 to be displayed at the Metropolitan Sanitary Fair, which raised money for the Union Army. Rather than haul the Chain back to West Point after the fair, it was dumped in Brooklyn. It had been Bannerman’s father (also a surplus dealer) who bought the chain at the Navy Yard Auction. His idea was to melt the unremarkable chain down for scrap.
At this point (Bannerman says) Abbey stepped in and, recognizing their importance, saved the links from destruction by buying them all. After making a few big sales, Abbey sold the leftovers back to Bannerman.
The problem is that none of the chain links sold by Abbey or Bannerman were authentic. In reality, Abbey had acquired a British mooring chain, cast in Wales in the mid-nineteenth century. Made of smooth rolled iron (rather than the rough, hand-hammered metal of the authentic Chain), Abbey’s links were almost double the size and weight of the West Point links. Despite the obvious differences, Abbey and Bannerman crafted a fiction from just enough fact that people believed it.
In reality, some of the original Chain was saved from destruction and left behind at West Point. Some of what was saved was exhibited at the 1864 Sanitary Fair. An auction at the Brooklyn Navy Yard in 1887 is also documented (although no mention is made of any chain).
Photo: Michelle Kalish, USMA PAO, Feb. 16, 2024
Although some questioned why their links differed from the originals, most either remained silent from embarrassment or made excuses (the Buffalo Historical Society wrote in 1921 that their Bannerman links are larger because they were made for a point in the Chain where the strain from the River was greatest).
By the time all was said and done, spurious chain links were scattered from Vermont to California, from small-town museums to the Smithsonian archives. The whole fraud wasn’t pieced together until 1990 when Hudson River historian Lincoln Diamant investigated all the known links for his book Chaining the Hudson: The Fight for the River in the American Revolution, a wonderful history of the West Point Chain.
Photo: Michelle Kalish, USMA PAO
A few authentic links still survive, most notably at Trophy Point in the United States Military Academy at West Point. Thirteen links ring a monument to the ingenuity, dedication, and patriotism of those who created it. Most of the chain was reused during the 19th century by the West Point Foundry.
You can even see pieces of the fake chain links that Abbey sold. A stretch of 25 links runs across the grounds of Ringwood Manor, the former New Jersey summer estate of Peter Cooper and Abram S. Hewitt. Hewitt purchased the chain segment from Abbey in the early 1900s, but almost immediately realized he had been conned. He had the links analyzed and found out they were made of English iron. The chain remained on the grounds as a reminder of the local area’s iron mining history.
EMERGENCY EXIT FROM 53RD STREET SUBWAY TUNNEL NEXT TO STRECKER LABORATORY
Text by Judith Berdy
ROOSEVELT ISLAND HISTORICAL SOCIETY
UNTAPPED NEW YORK DAN THURBER
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 Dottie Jeffries
MAYA LEVANON-PHOTOS TIK TOK & INSTAGRAM
All image are copyrighted (c) Roosevelt Island Historical Society unless otherwise indicated
During the 1920’s Aloysisus O’Kelly painted a series of paintings of Blackwell’s Island and the East River.
Years ago, I saw 5 of the painting at a conference room at Metropolitan Hospital. I took photos, just in case…..
Originally the painting I assume were hung at the Metropolitan Hospital on Blackwell’s Island.
Recently the NYC Health + Hospitals Arts in Medicine program has been surveying the collections of all the hospitals and facilities. The survey for Metropolitan Hospital lists two of the 5 paintings as being on site. The others may still be there, but not yet discovered.
Two other paintings were listed by an auction gallery on the internet.
Thanks to Larissa Trinder and the Arts in Medicine program for discovering many great artworks that have been lost of not on view at our H+H facilities.
Aloysius O’Kelly (3 July 1853 in Dublin – 12 January 1936) was an Irishpainter.
Early life
Aloysius was born to John and Bridget O’Kelly in Peterson’s Lane (now Lombard Street East), Dublin 3 July 1853. He was the youngest of four boys and one girl. The O’Kelly family along with Aloysius’ cousins, the Lawlors, made up a network of artists and political activists in 19th-century Irish cultural history. His grandparents on his father’s side were natives of County Roscommon and his father ran a blacksmith’s shop and dray making business in Peterson’s Lane.[1] His uncle on his mother’s side was John Lawlor, a successful sculptor, and his cousin, Michael Lawlor, was also a sculptor employed in London. Aloysius’ brothers, Charles and Stephen, also became artists, whereas the eldest brother, James J. O’Kelly, set forth on a successful political career. O’Kelly’s mother directed him towards a career in the arts.
In 1861, John’s father died and Bridget, whose brother, John Lawlor (1820-1901) was already an established sculptor in London. moved her family there. Lawlor became a father figure to her children, especially her sons. Lawlor took on the boys, including Aloysius, as apprentices in his studio.[2]
Career
Mass in a Connemara Cabin by Aloysius O’Kelly, 1883
O’Kelly traveled to Paris in order to enroll at the École des Beaux-Arts in 1874, where he studied under Bonnat and Gérôme. To enter the Gérôme’s atelier was a great honour, however, the master was exceedingly strict and merciless in his criticism; such that a number of students could not last the distance. It is uncertain whether O’Kelly ever matriculated.
From Gérôme, O’Kelly developed an interest in Oriental scenes. He traveled to Brittany in 1876, painting its aesthetic coastlines, fishing ports and villages.
In October 1881, Charles Stewart Parnell, a member of Parliament and leader of the Irish Party, was arrested and imprisoned in Kilmainham. Two days following his arrest, Aloysius’ brother, James J. O’Kelly, along with some other Party members, including John Dillon, were imprisoned where they remained until May 1882. A number of Aloysius’ drawings during this period portrayed the political situation dealing with his brother’s incarceration.[4]
Aloysius inevitably became embroiled in the murky and often secretive life of his brother. He began to paint and sketch political activists including members of the Land League.
O’Kelly lived in Concarneau, Connemara and eventually the United States, painting rural scenes in the prior and city life in New York City.[5] He knew Mark Twain, and painted a depiction of Huckleberry Finn, which the author inspected and commented on.[citation needed]
O’KELLY’S WORKS AT METROPOLITAN HOSPITAL
DRAPER HALL-NURSES RESIDENCE, BLACKWELL’S ISLAND LABELED AS GOLDWATER HOSPITAL) PAINTING ON SITE AT HOSPITAL
LIBRARY – PROBABLY DRAPER HALL, BLACKWELL’S ISLAND
CHAPEL OF THE HOLY SPIRIT- BLACKWELL’S ISLAND PAINTING IS ON SITE AT METROPOLITAN HOSPITAL
METROPOLITAN HOSPITAL BUIDINGS, BLACKWELL’S ISLAND
Just off the coast of Astoria, Queens, at the confluence of the Harlem and East Rivers, is a narrow tidal channel. Hell Gate. Its fast currents change multiple times a day and it used to be riddled with rocks just beneath the surface. Even today, visitors to Randall’s Island Park can see the swirling churn and watch pleasure boaters struggle through. American author Washington Irving wrote an essay about it: “Woe to the unlucky vessel that ventures into its clutches.”
But many a vessel did venture into those clutches over the centuries. Traversing it could save sailors navigating between New York Harbor and Southern New England days of travel around Long Island. This expediency often came at a cost. Hell Gate is the final resting place of literally hundreds of ships. Most of them are forgotten but one continues to captivate. Because down there, under the minor maelstroms, is the promise of gold.
The East River runs up from New York Harbor with Manhattan on one side and first Brooklyn then Queens on the other. At Randall’s Island it splits. To the west, it becomes the Harlem River, which skirts around the top of Manhattan to join the Hudson. In the other direction, it connects to the entirety of Long Island Sound—but it’s easy to miss that this connection comes only via a single, slim channel. Each time the tide turns, the Atlantic forces its way through this passage in one direction or the other, with the discharge of the Harlem River adding to the chaos.
Hell Gate, seen in a Hammond’s map from 1909, is where the East River skirts two islands. On the upper left, it turns into the Harlem River and connects to the Hudson. At the upper right, it leads out. to Long Island Sound. THE NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY DIGITAL COLLECTIONS/PUBLIC DOMAIN
“Because those volumes are large, and the opening at Hell Gate is small, it means the velocity is going to get very high and that makes it difficult to navigate,” says Roy Messaros, a coastal engineer and professor of hydraulics at New York University.
“Even on a calm day the current is boiling,” says John Lipscomb, who regularly patrols New York Harbor on a 36-foot wooden boat for the environmental nonprofit Riverkeeper. “It’s a boisterous place. There are whirlpools and the wind against the tide causes interesting, short, aggressive waves. You pay attention when you’re in Hell Gate.”
That’s today. Conditions in the past were even worse. Most rocks in the area have now been removed to facilitate navigation, but Hell Gate used to be a minefield. It sounded like Hell, too. The whirlpools could be heard from “a quarter of an hour’s distance,” according to one 17th-century Dutch traveler. During the 1850s, it was estimated that about one in 50 ships that crossed Hell Gate was either damaged or sunk.
“You’re talking about centuries of navigation,” says Bronx Borough Historian Lloyd Ultan. “Everything from rowboats to large ships have been sunk by hitting those rocks. One on top of the other on top of the other on top of the other.”
Out of all those wrecks, one in particular has obsessed people for over 240 years—HMS Hussar. The whole gamut of underwater exploration technology has been employed in the search for its purported treasure, from 18th-century diving bells to modern sonar scanners. The cast of characters who have invested significant time and money into salvaging the ship is equally wide-ranging. Thomas Jefferson had a go, as did the inventor of the modern submarine. Alongside crews of schemers and hustlers, serious underwater archaeologists have tried, too. Most recently the most prominent attempts to find the wreck were the brainchild of a Bronx man who calls himself Joey Treasures.
The coveted ship was a frigate of the Royal Navy that arrived in British-occupied New York during the Revolutionary War, in November 1780, reportedly carrying the payroll of British troops in gold coins. Shortly after arriving in the city, Hussar set sail for Gardiner’s Bay on the eastern end of Long Island (though some accounts say it was headed to Newport, Rhode Island). While traversing Hell Gate it hit a submerged formation known as Pot Rock and began taking on water. The ship drifted down the East River until it sank to a depth of 60 to 80 feet, somewhere off the coast of the Bronx. This much is known. The rest, much like the waters of Hell Gate, is murky.
Accounts differ on how many, if any, of the crew were lost, but most agree that around 60 American prisoners of war who were shackled below deck went down with the ship. Crucially, whether Hussar still had gold on board when it sank has also been the subject of much debate over the past two centuries. Modern historians tend to think not. Contemporaneous news articles about the accident made no mention of treasure, nor do the minutes from the Royal Navy court martial into the loss of the frigate.
“It’s a pie-in-the-sky romantic notion that you could find gold in the waters of the Bronx,” says Ultan. But this did not stop generations of people from trying, beginning in the early 19th century. It was known that the ship was carrying gold when it arrived in New York, and in the decades after Hussar sank, “the legend began to grow that the gold was still on the ship,” says Ultan. “The East River at the southeastern end of the Bronx suddenly becomes the Spanish Main.”
Captain Charles Morice Pole (left) was in command of HMS Hussar when it wrecked, but was acquitted of wrongdoing at a court martial. This British gold George III guinea (right) from 1777 represents the coins that were rumored to have been carried in the ship. PUBLIC DOMAIN; THE METROPOLITAN MUSEUM OF ART/PUBLIC DOMAIN
By the 1810s, the notion that a fortune in gold was lying near the bottom of Hell Gate had become an almost-uncontested truth in the New York press, and would remain so well into the 20th century. “You have to remember it’s a good story,” says Ultan. “It sells copy.” This frenzy may have been initially fed by the British themselves, who, despite denying that there was gold in Hussar when it sank, sent over a team of experts to salvage the ship in the 1790s, “with results wholly ineffectual,” according to a New York Times article from several decades later.
Press speculation on the value of the gold varied wildly. The “large amount” vaguely referred to in early articles suddenly became the oddly specific sum of £600,000, and then $1,000,000, then $5,000,000. In the 1980s, an international coin dealer told The New York Times that the bullion said to be in the Hussar wreck could fetch a whopping half a billion dollars in the rare coins market. “Everything gets distorted,” says Ultan. “It’s like a game of telephone.”
Early attempts to salvage the ship, including by the British, involved diving bells, a technology that dates back to antiquity and is still used today. Divers descended in a small metal chamber with an open bottom, with the air pocket that allowed them to breathe at depth as they more or less felt around the bottom. At and around Hell Gate, this yielded few results. Diving was only possible for short windows, and even then the currents would toss the bell around, making any kind of concerted search impossible.
A Charles Pratt diving helmet which is on display at the Worcester Historical Museum in Massachusetts. JOAQUIM SALLES
But even for him the waters around Hell Gate were a worthy opponent. The bottom lived up to the tempestuous reputation of its surface waters. Currents remained fierce, visibility was near-nonexistent, and the submarine armor was cumbersome. It was made of a combination of rubber and metal and weighed around 70 pounds. Its copper helmet had to be bolted to the diver’s neck piece. A rubber hose connected the helmet to a hand-cranked air pump at the surface.
Over the course of 13 years, Pratt salvaged numerous artifacts from Hussar. He raised cannons and cannonballs, bottles of wine and swords. He found human bones still in shackles—likely the remains of the American prisoners. Tantalizingly, he also found several 18th-century gold guineas, but far from the promised windfall. The coins probably belonged to the crew and were not a part of a larger haul, but were more than enough to keep the legend alive. Like others before him, Pratt had difficulty breaching the wreck’s lower deck, where cargo was traditionally stored. He dove on Hussar for the last time in 1866. (Fast forward to 2013, when Central Park Conservancy employees were cleaning a cannon from Hussar that had likely been donated by Pratt and kept in storage for many years. They were surprised to discover it was still loaded with gunpowder and a cannonball. The NYPD bomb squad was called on to diffuse it.)
McGowan’s Pass, now in Central Park, was a British position during the Revolutionary War. Today, a cannon from HMS Hussar marks the site. In 2013, the Central Park Conservancy discovered that it was still loaded, and called on the NYPD bomb squad to defuse it. STATION1/CC BY-SA 4.0
Several salvage companies worked on Hussar over the ensuing decades, without Pratt’s success. One notable attempt was led by a less-than-reputable street preacher named George W. Thomas, who, like Davis before him, convinced investors to back his effort. They gave him $70,000, roughly equivalent to $2 million today, though he was later accused of using the money to buy a lavish house in New Jersey. In 1900, divers trying to salvage a yacht in the East River found an anchor with “H.M.S. Hussar” inscribed on it and sold it to a junk shop. After a century of regular media coverage, it would be almost 40 years until Hussar made headlines again.
Four decades is a long time in a place like Hell Gate. Somewhere along the way, the location of the wreck was lost. Hell Gate itself had changed significantly over the course of the 19th century. Its rocks had been blown to bits to facilitate boat traffic, first by a French civil engineer in the 1850s and later by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. Pot Rock, the hazard that sank Hussar, was the first to go. The greatest of these blasts happened in 1885, when 300,000 pounds of explosives were simultaneously set off in the waters of Hell Gate, lifting a geyser of foam and rock high in the air. Journalists at the time hyped it as the single largest explosion in history. The blast was felt as far as Princeton, New Jersey, 50 miles away, according to the New York City Parks Department website entry for Mill Rock Island, where the explosives were prepped. One can only imagine the effect that this blast and the ones that came before it, all over Hell Gate, had on the remains of the wrecks below.
But even after dozens of failed attempts and the bombardment, there were still those who believed there was a fortune waiting to be discovered. Simon Lake, one of the inventors of the modern submarine, began looking for Hussar in 1935 in a “baby-submarine” of his own creation, adapted to the conditions of the East River. A year later he gathered journalists in his hotel room and announced that he had found the ship. “Within six weeks I expect to step within her hold,” he told The New York Times. This never came to pass. Whatever Lake had found, it was not Hussar. He ended the 1930s in dire financial straits.
Fifty years later, another underwater explorer would continue the search. Salvage expert Barry Clifford came to the project with a pedigree. He had just discovered Samuel Bellamy’s treasure-filled pirate ship, Wydah, off the coast of Cape Cod. Hussar seemed like the next logical step. Clifford and his team began taking sonar images of the bottom of Hell Gate in 1985. The same technology had just been used to locate the wreck of Titanic that same year. Within months, in an echo of Simon Lake’s hotel room press conference, Clifford announced to the world that he had found the wreck. “My opinion is there is a very strong possibility that there is treasure on board the Hussar,” he told The New York Times. But when divers got in the water it was a different story. In the end, Clifford and his team encountered abandoned cars, washing machines and seven other shipwrecks, but none from the Revolutionary War era.
And with that, the era of serious salvagers and underwater explorers was deep-sixed. The latest to take up the mantle left by others before is an actor and demolition worker from the Bronx named Joe Governali, who goes by “Joey Treasures.” Governali has been trying to secure exclusive salvage rights over the wreck since the early 2000s. In a deposition, Governali claimed to have found an old map in the Rare Books Room of the New York Public Library that revealed the location of the ship. His salvage company conducted several exploratory dives, but have little to show for it other than some grainy video of what Governali claims is the wreck of Hussar and an 18th-century beer pitcher of British origin. Governali produced a reality TV pilot of his escapades. Alas, he is also being accused of fraud by one of his investors, James Kays, who was convinced to pitch in $100,000 after being shown gold coins purported to be from Hussar. According to court records, they were allegedly “junk bought on eBay.”
It’s difficult to predict what the next phase of this centuries-long treasure hunt will be, but it’s likely to continue in some form. James Kays’s lawyer wrote in a letter to the judge presiding over the case that his client intends to continue the search, just as soon as he gets his money back.
The next big development might be with Hell Gate itself. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has proposed major civil works in the area to protect New York City from storm surges. Some versions of the proposal include large storm barriers that could permanently alter the tidal exchange between the East River, Long Island Sound, and New York Harbor, potentially weakening Hell Gate’s infamous currents. Although such barriers would only close during rare storms, they “threaten to choke off the tidal flow” even when open, according to Riverkeeper. The Army Corps of Engineers indicated recently that they are leaning towards a less invasive alternative but the storm barriers have not yet been ruled out. “It remains possible that other alternatives or components of those alternatives may also be advanced,” according to New York/New Jersey Harbor and Tributaries Project Manager Bryce Wisemiller.
“It’s a little bit here, a little bit there, a little bit everywhere.” For now at least, the currents of Hell Gate will keep on flowing unobstructed. As for Hussar, the promise of its gold remains alive and well, even if the same may not be true for the ship itself. After two centuries of salt corrosion, violent tides, salvage attempts and maybe explosives, it’s a safe bet that whatever remains of it is probably beyond recognition. “I think the Hussar is hither and yon,” says Lloyd Ultan. “It’s a little bit here, a little bit there, a little bit everywhere.”
In his essay about Hell Gate, Washington Irving mentions how he had grown up hearing fantastic stories about the remains of a ship that lay scattered among the channel’s rocks, one of the many that fell victim to its currents. As an adult, he tried to find the truth about those stories. “I found infinite difficulty, however, in arriving at any precise information,” he wrote. “In seeking to dig up one fact it is incredible the number of fables which I unearthed.”
CITY HOSPITAL SCHOOL OF MEDICINE & NEW YORK TRAINING SCHOOL FOR NURSES
ISSUE # 1185
ROOSEVELT ISLAND HISTORICAL SOCIETY
The south end of the island was the training center for physicians and nurses from the 1870’s until the 1950’s. Enjoy some of our vintage images.
Medical students in front of City Hospital
Staff House for doctors.
Nursing students picture perfect pose
This lounge with its’ plaster relief of the City of New York existed during my early years on the island. It is the southernmost room in the Smallpox Hospital ruin.
Classes were in lecture style
Student nurses were taught to make healing medications and foods.
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 Dottie Jeffries
MAYA LEVANON-PHOTOS TIK TOK & INSTAGRAM
All image are copyrighted (c) Roosevelt Island Historical Society unless otherwise indicated
The former home of the reclusive “Weird Wendels” who dominated New York real estate a century before Donald Trump.
BEFORE DONALD TRUMP’S MONIKER WAS STAMPED all over New York City, there was another super-rich surname that dominated Manhattan real estate, and another bizarre story attached to it.
Around the turn of the 20th century, the Wendels were one of the most powerful real estate families in New York, owning 150 properties in Manhattan, worth about $1 billion today. But they certainly didn’t act the part. The six Wendel siblings—five of whom were women—lived together in a mansion on 5th Avenue and barely ever set foot outside the house. The four-story, 40-room red brick brownstone became known as the “House of Mystery,” where “the Weird Wendels” lived like hermits.
John G. Wendel, the one male, was eccentric at best, tyrannical at worst. He refused to allow his sisters to marry, worried that any children they had would dilute the family fortune. He gave them few opportunities to socialize with others, and lived like a recluse stuck in his ways. The house, built in 1856, was lit by gaslight up through the 1920s, eschewing modern amenities like electricity or telephone. Decades went by without any updates made to the musty furniture or decor, or the Wendels’ clothing—they wore outdated Victorian garb and traversed the city in an old carriage instead of a car on the rare occasion they went out.
The last of the Wendel siblings, Ella, passed away in 1931. She left the Wendel home to Drew University requesting it remain as a memorial to the family in its current state (such that it was). The university maintains a memorial room on campus, but the prized site on 5th Avenue was razed in 1934 and gave way to commercial properties like the rest of the formerly residential avenue.
Today there are a few reminders of the Wendel empire, outside a vault at Trinity Cemetery in lower Manhattan, and a bronze plaque the size of a door at the site of the former Wendel home on 5th Avenue.
19th century map showing Manhattan’s East Side shoreline and Blackwell’s Island, now Roosevelt Island. Avenue A and Avenue B are now York and East End Avenues, respectively.
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 Dottie Jeffries
MAYA LEVANON-PHOTOS TIK TOK & INSTAGRAM
All image are copyrighted (c) Roosevelt Island Historical Society unless otherwise indicated
To commemorate the New York City designation of July 10, 1997 as Nikola Tesla Day, the Flatiron Partnership recalls the electric power inventor’s life in the neighborhood during the 1890s. Tesla resided and conducted scientific experiments at the Gerlach Hotel, now known in his honor as the Radio Wave Building at 49 West 27th Street, between Sixth Avenue and Broadway. Wireless remote control was one of Tesla’s notable creations, and he held its first demonstration at the 1898 Electrical Exhibition in Madison Square Garden on 26th Street.
Born on July 10, 1856 in the Croatian village of Smiljan, Nikola Tesla was the fourth of five children. His father was a Serbian Orthodox priest, and mother, a household appliances inventor and manager of the family’s farm. While in high school, their son Nikola could “do integral calculus in his head,” notes thoughtco.com, and was so inspired by the demonstrations of electricity in his physics class that it “made him want to know more of this wonderful force.” He would receive a college scholarship for further study at Austria’s Graz Polytechnic School.
In 1882, Tesla accepted an offer to work at Thomas Edison’s Continental Edison Company in Paris. Two years later, he relocated to New York City for a job opportunity at Edison Machine Works, along “with the hope that Edison would help finance and develop a Tesla invention, an alternating-current (AC) motor and electrical system,” wrote The New York Times on December 30, 2017. “But Edison was instead investing in highly inefficient direct-current (DC) systems, and he had Tesla re-engineer a DC power plant on Pearl Street in Lower Manhattan.”
According to history.com, Tesla “worked there for a year, impressing Edison with his diligence and ingenuity. At one point Edison told Tesla he would pay $50,000 for an improved design for his DC dynamos. After months of experimentation, Tesla presented a solution and asked for the money. Edison demurred, saying, ‘Tesla, you don’t understand our American humor.’” Tesla left the Edison team, and the pair soon engaged in an electrical power rivalry known as the “War of the Currents.” Their competition included the 1892 bid by the Westinghouse Electric Corporation, where Tesla sold his AC patent and was now a consultant, and Edison’s General Electric firm vying for Chicago’s World’s Fair electricity contract, which Westinghouse won.
During 1892, Tesla had also moved to the Gerlach Hotel at 49 West 27th Street, between Sixth Avenue and Broadway. Constructed as French flats between 1882-83, the 11-story structure was designed by August Hatfield. But by the 1890s, it was operating as a hotel. Explained Richard Munson inTesla: Inventor of the Modern about the tech pioneer’s time there, “After arising at 6:30 a.m., having gotten three hours of sleep, Tesla enjoyed a light breakfast, performed a few gymnastic exercises, and began his daily thirty block walk” pass Madison Square Garden and Madison Square Park to his Lower Manhattan lab. Tesla had installed at the Gerlach, a “receiver on the hotel’s roof in order to capture some of the first radio transmissions from his downtown workshop,” wrote Munson. The author also revealed that while Tesla strolled, he “counted his steps, making sure they were divisible by three.” His “obsession with the number three and fastidious washing,” notes history.com, were “dismissed as the eccentricities of genius.”
By 1898, Tesla was ready to showcase one of his most innovative inventions, the first radio-controlled vessel, at an exhibit held in Madison Square Garden on 26th Street. The event’s opening day on May 2nd included a wired message from President William McKinley in Washington, D.C. The Commander in Chief expressed that it gave him “great pleasure to open the Electrical Exhibition in Greater New York, and to participate in this wonderful demonstration of the latest method of recording and publishing by means of electricity,” reported The New York Timeson May 3, 1898. “I am glad to know that the resources of the wonderful electrical arts have already been so far advanced in the United States that American electrical goods are welcome the world over.”
Photo Credit: Nikola Tesla demonstrates his Tesla coil “Magnifying Transmitter via ThoughtCo
Tesla’s presentation was considered to be “a scientific tour de force, a demonstration completely beyond the generally accepted limits of technology,” according to pbs.org. “Everyone expected surprises from Tesla, but few were prepared for the sight of a small, odd-looking, iron-hulled boat scooting across an indoor pond (specifically built for the display). In an era when only a handful of people knew about radio waves, some thought that Tesla was controlling the small ship with his mind. In actuality, he was sending signals to the mechanism using a small box with control levers on the side. Tesla’s device was literally the birth of robotics.”
This groundbreaking technology inside the Garden was not the only sign of change around the neighborhood. At the end of the 19th century, the Gerlach had also temporarily shut its doors in 1899, and Tesla made a move to Midtown Manhattan. “In his heyday,” wroteTime magazine on November 27, 1944, Tesla “lived at the Waldorf-Astoria and had a fabulous reputation as a host. He invariably took his guests to his laboratory and treated them to an electrical display, which included the then startling trick of passing 1,000,000 volts through his body.” Tesla continued to occupy hotels most of his life, which included a 10-year stay at The New Yorker Hotel, where he reportedly died of coronary thrombosis on January 7, 1943 at the age of 86.
Six months after his death, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld an earlier decision on Tesla’s radio patent, thus naming him the real inventor of the radio, not Guglielmo Marconi, who had received the 1909 Nobel Prize in Physics for his work in wireless telegraphy. “The Court had a selfish reason for doing so,” notes pbs.org about the controversial ruling. “The Marconi Company was suing the United States government for use of its patents in World War I. The Court simply avoided the action by restoring the priority of Tesla’s patent over Marconi.” In recognition of Tesla’s triumphs in radio technology while living and working in Madison Square, a commemorative plaque was placed at 49 West 27th Street by the Yugoslav-American Bicentennial Committee on January 7, 1977, which was also 34 years after Tesla’s passing.
SUNY PLATTBURGH NURSING STUDENT STANDING ON ROOF OF CENTRAL NURSES RESIDENCE. STUDENT NURSES LIVED ON WELFARE ISLAND WHILE STUDYING AT NEW YORK HOSPITALS, 1966
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 Dottie Jeffries
MAYA LEVANON-PHOTOS TIK TOK & INSTAGRAM
All image are copyrighted (c) Roosevelt Island Historical Society unless otherwise indicated
75½ Bedford Street is a house located in the West Village neighborhood of New York City that is only 9 feet 6 inches (2.9 meters) wide. Built in 1873, it is often described as the narrowest house in New York.[1] Its past tenants have included Edna St. Vincent Millay, author Ann McGovern, cartoonist William Steig and anthropologist Margaret Mead.[1][2][3] It is sometimes referred to as the Millay House, indicated by a plaque on the outside of the house.[4] The house is located in the Greenwich Village Historic District, but is not an individually designated New York City Landmark.[5]
History The three-story house is located at 75½ Bedford Street, between Commerce and Morton Streets, not far from Seventh Avenue South in the West Village section of Manhattan.[4] The New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission considers it the city’s narrowest townhouse.[1][4] On the inside, the house measures 8 feet 7 inches (2.62 m) wide; at its narrowest, it is only 2 feet (0.61 m) wide.[1]
According to the Landmarks Preservation Commission and the archives of the Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation, the house was constructed in 1873 during a smallpox epidemic, for Horatio Gomez, trustee of the Hettie Hendricks-Gomez Estate, on what was the former carriage entranceway for the adjacent property,[1] which includes the adjacent 1799 house at 77 Bedford Street, built by Joshua Isaacs,[3] the oldest house in Greenwich Village. However, the house may have been constructed earlier, as the style that appears in a 1922 photograph at the New-York Historical Society is typical of the 1850s Italianate architecture common in the area at the time.[3]
In 1923, the house was leased by a consortium of artists who used it for actors working at the nearby Cherry Lane Theater. Cary Grant and John Barrymore stayed at the house while performing at the Cherry Lane[4] during this time. Edna St. Vincent Millay, the Pulitzer Prize winning poet, and her new husband, coffee importer Eugen Jan Boissevain, lived in the house from 1923 to 1924. They hired Ferdinand Savignano to renovate the house. He added a skylight, transformed the top floor into a studio for Millay and added a Dutch-inspired front gabled façade for her husband.[3]
Later occupants included cartoonist William Steig and his sister-in-law, anthropologist Margaret Mead. The house was the inspiration the children’s book Mr Skinner’s Skinny House,[6] written by former resident Ann McGovern and illustrated by Mort Gerberg. George Gund IV, son of sports entrepreneur George Gund III, purchased the house for $3.25 million in June 2013.[4]
Architecture The external dimensions of the house are approximately 9.5 by 42 feet (2.9 by 12.8 m), on a lot that is 80 feet (24 m) deep, while the internal dimensions vary between 2 and 8.5 feet (0.61 and 2.59 m) by 30 feet (9.1 m) deep.[1][3] City records list the house as 999 square feet (92.8 m2).[4]
The exterior features a stepped gable similar to those seen in the Dutch architectural tradition.[7] Inside, “[a] centrally placed spiral staircase dominates all three floors and bisects the space into two distinct living areas. The narrow steps call for expert sideways navigational skills. Under the stairwell on the first floor is a tiny utility closet, the only closed storage space in the house. All three floors have fireplaces”.[1] An arched doorway leads to the shared garden in the rear.[7][1] The house has two bathrooms, and its galley kitchen comes with a microwave built into the base of the winding staircase that rises to the upper floors.[4]
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 Dottie Jeffries
All image are copyrighted (c) Roosevelt Island Historical Society unless otherwise indicated
