On June 12th, uncover more sordid tales of the Gilded Age with Carole Lawerence, author of the novel Cleopatra’s Dagger. This virtual talk is free for Untapped New York Insiders! Not an Insider yet? Become a member today with promo code JOINUS and get your first month free!
Cleopatra’s Dagger follows the story of fictional 19th-century journalist Elizabeth van den Broek. When Elizabeth and her bohemian friend Carlotta Ackerman find a woman’s body wrapped like a mummy in a freshly dug hole in Central Park―the intended site of an obelisk called Cleopatra’s Needle―the macabre discovery leads Elizabeth on an investigation through New York City’s darkest shadows. Her hunt for the truth takes Elizabeth to the Bowery where she braves the debaucherous crowds of Harry Hill’s to get information on the mysterious murder.
In his 1882 work New York by Sunlight and Gaslight, James McCabe describes concert saloons as “places where the devil’s work is done.” He goes on to describe the scene inside: “They provide a low order of music, and the service of the place is rendered by young women, many of whom are dressed in tights and all sorts of fantastic costumes, the chief object of which is to display the figure as much as possible.” These fantastically costumed women were “waiter girls” who served drinks.
These venues likely sprang up in the years preceding the Civil War and grew in popularity over the next decade. They were a combination of the English music hall and American tavern. According to the book The New York Concert Saloon: The Devil’s Own Nights by Brooks McNamara, there were roughly seventy concert halls operating in Manhattan by 1862. They tended to be concentrated in rougher parts of the city like the Bowery (described as “the centre of one of Satan’s strongholds”), Hell’s Kitchen, and the Tenderloin. Harry Hill’s was located at Houston and Crosby, just a few blocks west of the Bowery and east of Broadway.
Harry Hill’s Dance Hall was remembered in a December 1927 issue of The New Yorker in an article recalling “When New York was Really Wicked.” The report described Harry’s as a “sprawling, dingy, two-story frame house which had two front entrances, a small door for the ladies who were admitted free, and a larger one for gentlemen, who paid twenty cents.”
Inside there were multiple rooms and bars and a small simple stage where various acts were performed. The proprietor himself took to the stage every week to recite some of his own poetry. Mark Twain wrote of his visit to Harry’s in 1867, describing the female dancers who “did spin around with such thoughtless vehemence that I was constrained to place my hat before my eyes.”
Harry posted a list of rules for his establishment on the wall including no profanity, no loud talking, and no drunkenness. Thanks largely to the owner’s low tolerance for any truly disruptive behavior, Harry’s was a cut above the worst of the dance halls where robbery and violence were rampant, but still on a lower rung than the more reputable theatres of Broadway further uptown. In his New York Times obituary, Harry Hill was described as “a queer combination of the lawless, reckless, rough, and honest man.”
In April 1862, New York passed the Concert Saloon Bill. The New York Times reported that this ambiguous bill would “purge our places of public amusement of most of their evils” and” to “make respectable and popular those that are properly conducted.” Essentially, the bill required all venues to obtain a license for any spoken or sung performances, though no licenses were granted to places that served alcohol or had waiter girls. Hefty fines were imposed on venues that skirted these rules, though many concert saloon proprietors took their chances, either ignoring the bill entirely or finding crafty way around the new rule.
At Harry’s, the entertainment offering shifted to boxing matches. Some of the most well-known boxers got their start on Harry’s stage. Hill even put on a fight between two female boxers.
Due to financial struggles from his other business ventures, Harry was forced to close the dance hall in the 1880s. By the turn of the 20th century, most concert saloons had closed but their influence led to other forms of entertainment like burlesque and vaudeville.
PHOTO OF THE DAY
EARLY PHOTO OF A TRAIN ON THE UPPER LEVEL OF THE QUEENSBORO BRIDGE THE UPPER LEVEL WAS RESERVED FOR PEDESTRIANS AND THE SUBWAY TRAINS. THINK OF THIS AS YOU ARE ON A SINGLE LANE, AS THE UPPER LEVEL IS REBUILT, 115 YEARS AFTER OPENING
CREDITS:
Judith Berdy UNTAPPED NEW YORK
All image are copyrighted (c) Roosevelt Island Historical Society unless otherwise indicated THIS PUBLICATION FUNDED BY DISCRETIONARY FUNDS FROM CITY COUNCIL MEMBER JULIE MENIN & ROOSEVELT ISLAND OPERATING CORPORATION PUBLIC PURPOSE FUNDS.
On May 14th I looked at these two USPS Relay Boxes in front of 510 Main Street.
They were in very poor condition, rusted and peeling paint. I asked one of our postal carriers if the boxes were used. The answer was negative. These boxes are used when more mail is delivered to a relay box and the carrier picks it up while on their route. This is service is not needed now on Roosevelt Island.
The boxes were eyesores, I decided to e-mail the USPS and see if they could be removed.
I sent an e-mail to the USPS on their website on the 14th. Three days later I got a call from Erica, the manager of our Post Office on Main Street. She told me she would visit the site and see the boxes condition in person.
Yesterday the boxes were gone. All that remained were some nuts and bolts.
A clearing in the sidewalk with no more eyesores.
A few years ago the mailbox in front of 552 Main Street was removed by the USPS. Try e-mailing the USPS and maybe you will have good luck and a box will be placed there again.
You never know, maybe one will be placed back, send an e-mail:
All image are copyrighted (c) Roosevelt Island Historical Society unless otherwise indicated THIS PUBLICATION FUNDED BY DISCRETIONARY FUNDS FROM CITY COUNCIL MEMBER JULIE MENIN & ROOSEVELT ISLAND OPERATING CORPORATION PUBLIC PURPOSE FUNDS.
It looked like an elegant streetlight: a slender pole of bronze standing on a granite base 18 feet high over a circular sitting area that’s part of Riverside Park.
Planted into a bed of flowers and shrubbery at 72nd Street and the beginning of Riverside Drive, the globe-topped monument consisted of inscriptions and bas reliefs inspired by Henry Hudson, whose namesake river ran just to the west.
You won’t find the monument there anymore; it’s long since been carted away.
So how did a memorial to Henry Hudson end up on Riverside Drive, opposite the Drive’s row house mansions and free-standing palaces, including the 75-room, Chateau-like Schwab Mansion (at right)—and why was this remnant of early 1900s Gotham removed?
The idea for the Hudson monument goes back to the turn of the century city. That’s when New York began planning the Hudson-Fulton celebration—a massive two-week event commemorating the 300th anniversary of Henry Hudson’s exploration of the river that bears his name, as well as the 100th anniversary of Robert Fulton’s Clermont paddlewheel steamboat.
The celebration would run from September 25 to October 9, 1909. Festivities in the works were unlike anything the city had ever seen, at least since the Washington Centennial in 1889.
To honor these maritime pioneers, officials scheduled a (above) flotilla of naval ships (with replicas of the Clermont and Hudson’s Half-Moon), fireworks, two parades, signal fires from Governor’s Island to Spuyten Duyvil, and the nighttime lighting of bridges, statues, and city buildings with thousands of incandescent bulbs.
Amid the excitement of all these plans, the Colonial Dames of America decided to build the bronze monument to Hudson. It was unveiled on September 29, 1909, in then middle of the Hudson-Fulton Celebration, to a crowd of Americans and Dutch dignitaries.
“There was a great fanfare of trumpets, a little woman in a pongee suit pulled a cord and ran from under, the Stars and Stripes came down, the Dutch colors followed, and the tall bronze and granite shaft . . . stood revealed,” wrote the New-York Tribune.
For the next five decades, the Hudson Memorial remained on Riverside Drive. And it might be there today if it wasn’t “toppled by a truck in the 1950s” as NYC Parks put it.
Evidently it was too damaged to repair, or perhaps the popularity of the monument had run its course—especially in a city that honored Hudson with an eponymous river, a northern Manhattan bridge, and a parkway.
But there is a memorial at this circular spot once again: a sculpture of Eleanor Roosevelt. Dedicated in 1996, “this piece depicts Roosevelt in heroic scale half-seated against a boulder with her hand on her chin in contemplation,” notes NYC Parks.
Surrounded again by greenery, the circle is a gathering spot for strollers and loungers. Instead of the magnificent Schwab mansion, the memorial stands in the shadow of Schwab House, the red-brick co-op that replaced the chateau in 1950.
It’s a fitting tribute to a New York City-born First Lady, and like the sculpture of Joan of Arc 21 blocks north at Riverside Drive and 93rd Street, it’s one of the few statues in a city park that honors a woman who actually lived—not a mythological or fictional female.
Riverside Drive is lined with fascinating memorials from the early 1900s, from recognizable figures like Joan of Arc to dramatic monuments honoring fallen firefighters and Civil War veterans. Find out their backstories by signing up for Ephemeral New York’s Riverside Drive Mansions & Monuments walking tour. Sunday, June 16 still has openings—click here for more info!
WEEKEND PHOTO
CHAPEL OF THE GOOD SHEPHERD ROSE WINDOW ED LITCHER GOT IT
All image are copyrighted (c) Roosevelt Island Historical Society unless otherwise indicated THIS PUBLICATION FUNDED BY DISCRETIONARY FUNDS FROM CITY COUNCIL MEMBER JULIE MENIN & ROOSEVELT ISLAND OPERATING CORPORATION PUBLIC PURPOSE FUNDS.
At the corner of Broadway and Wall Street is a hidden gem. Art aficionados might be aware that a floor to ceiling mosaic room exists inside One Wall Street, but it has been closed off to the public for decades. That is soon going to change when the transformation of One Wall Street, the 52-story former Irving Trust Company skyscraper is complete. Visitors to the staged apartments can already see this famous “Red Room” which is being used as the sales gallery.
The dazzling array of red and gold mosaics inside the Red Room, the former banking room of the building, are by the famous Art Deco artist Hildreth Meière. Her works can be found all over the United States and elsewhere in New York City at Radio City Music Hall, Temple Emanu-El and St. Bartholomew’s Episcopal Church. The tiling was pre-fabricated in pieces in Germany, each stamped so that the installers, the Ravenna Mosaic Company, could put it all together. The Ravenna Mosaic Company also installed the mosaics in Rockefeller Center and Meière’s design in the Basilica Cathedral in St. Louis. The Red Room was a private banking hall for the wealthiest of clients, and was never intended to be the lobby of the building. Inside there were desks with matching lamps for the bankers and chairs for clientele. It is one of the only abstract mosaics by Meière, and thus all the more rare.
Photo from the Ralph Walker Archives, courtesy Macklowe Properties
Meière created additional mosaics in the main lobby of One Wall Street, but they were already removed before Macklowe Properties purchased the building in 2014. Macklowe has recreated the entrance along Broadway using architect Ralph Walker’s original drawings and added a new canopy which was approved by the New York City Landmarks Commission but not part of Walker’s original design.
Photo: DBOX for Macklowe Properties
The interior of One Wall Street is not landmarked, but Macklowe put in a little over a million dollars in the restoration of the Red Room alone, mostly in cleaning and repair. “It wasn’t in terrible condition, it just needed some TLC and we had to bring it up to code with sprinklers, lighting, things like that.” says Richard Dubrow, Properties Director at Macklowe Properties. Nothing was modified or attached to the original walls. The plan is for the room to eventually become a retail space.
The Irving Trust Company was looking to make its mark when it moved from the Woolworth Building to One Wall Street. According to Dubrow, Irving Trust “bought the most expensive piece of real estate in Manhattan, here on the corner of Wall and Broadway. In the ’20s, the closer you were to the New York Stock Exchange, the more prestigious you were. So they are about thirty feet away from the stock. You can’t get any closer. They hired the most famous architect of the day, Ralph Walker.” Walker is also known for his other New York City masterpieces 100 Barclay (the former New York Telephone Building), Stella Tower and Walker Tower.
One Wall Street was so connected with Walker’s persona that he dressed as the building itself at the 1931 Society of Beaux-Arts Architects Ball. Dubrow says, Walker “was looking to celebrate the machine age with the design. Not so much the power of the machine but the precision of the machine” which is reflected on the relief sculptures and pattern of the limestone-clad facade of the building. The interiors of One Wall Street were treated with equal attention.
On the terraces of the apartments at One Wall Street, you can see how the limestone facade undulates
STONE QUARRIED AT THE SOUTH END OF CORNELL CAMPUS. STONE WAS REMOVED FROM SITE IN 2015,
CREDITS:
UNTAPPED NEW YORK
All image are copyrighted (c) Roosevelt Island Historical Society unless otherwise indicated THIS PUBLICATION FUNDED BY DISCRETIONARY FUNDS FROM CITY COUNCIL MEMBER JULIE MENIN & ROOSEVELT ISLAND OPERATING CORPORATION PUBLIC PURPOSE FUNDS.
The United Workers Cooperative Colony (called “the Coops” or the “Allerton Coops” by residents), located at 2700 Bronx Park East, was a radical experiment in cooperative housing in the 1920s. Large numbers of Jews, fleeing oppression in the Russian Empire, began settling in Manhattan’s Lower East Side in the late nineteenth century.
Some had already been involved in revolutionary politics in their homelands. Crowded living conditions, high rent, and economic exploitation in their new home attracted more to various alternatives to capitalism.
The United Workers Cooperative Association was one among many of these alternatives developed by working-class Jews, most of whom were laborers in the needle trades, one of the largest industries in New York City at the time.
The Association focused much of its early cooperative efforts on Harlem. Its largest and most ambitious project, however, was in the northern Bronx, where it bought land on Bronx Park East in 1926 in order to build a large complex of cooperative housing.
The Coops sold financial stakes in the cooperative to “tenant investors” at the rate of about half a year’s salary for working-class people at the time. As shareholders, residents had a say in the operation of the cooperative.
The Coops were a nonprofit cooperative, meaning apartments could not be sold by individuals. Departing tenants received their initial investment back, with interest, and the board of directors, elected by the tenants, decided which new applicants got the vacant apartments.
In the 1940s, the board implemented an occupancy policy that gave priority to Black applicants. A small number of Black tenants were already present as early as 1935, but thanks to this policy, the Coops became one of the first significantly interracial housing complexes in New York City, long before the end of Jim Crow in the South and de facto segregation in the North.
As the rendering from 1926 above illustrates, beauty was a chief concern of the shareholders of the Coops, many of whom had lived in the squalid tenements of the Lower East Side.
Apartments were designed with high ceilings, healthy ventilation, and windows oriented so that direct sunlight would fall into at least one room. Further, spaces in the complex were designated for a library, daycare, Yiddish-language schools, youth club rooms, a cooperative restaurant, and a lecture hall,
Ravaged financially during the Great Depression, the Coops began to recover slightly during World War II and was offered new mortgage terms by the bank in 1943 that included rent increases. The Coops was deemed a financial liability by banks and insurance companies at the time for a variety of reasons, including its small but significant number of Black residents.
Tenants voted against accepting the new mortgage, the bank refused to negotiate different terms, and the Coops became privately-owned apartment buildings.
Nevertheless, the legacy of housing cooperatives remains alive and well in The Bronx, with historic examples like the Amalgamated Housing Co-operative, built shortly after the Coops and remaining a cooperative to this day, and Co-Op City, the largest cooperative housing development in the world, built starting in the late 1960s and located along the Hutchinson River in the northeast Bronx.
This essay was first published in The Bronx County Historical Society’s newsletter. The Bronx County Historical Society, founded in 1955, is a non-profit educational and cultural institution chartered by the New York State Board of Regents. The Society is dedicated to the collection, preservation, and interpretation of the history and heritage of The Bronx.
Illustrations, from above: Artistic rendering of the Allerton Coops, ca. 1926, from the At Home in Utopia Collection of The Bronx County Archives; and Allerton Coops in 2017 (courtesy Wikimedia user Jim Henderson)
All image are copyrighted (c) Roosevelt Island Historical Society unless otherwise indicated THIS PUBLICATION FUNDED BY DISCRETIONARY FUNDS FROM CITY COUNCIL MEMBER JULIE MENIN & ROOSEVELT ISLAND OPERATING CORPORATION PUBLIC PURPOSE FUNDS.
During a visit to the Roebling Museum on Sunday, the guide discussed the many generations of the Roebling family. Apparently, not every descendant was destined to lead the family business. Washington A. Roebling, a race car aficionado, ventured into race car manufacturing and driving. The guide also mentioned that a Roebling traveled to Europe with a member of the Blackwell family, Stephen Weart Blackwell, from Hopewell Junction, NJ. The majority of the Blackwells migrated from Astoria to the Trenton area, and here was one of them!
Both perished on the Titanic, but the chauffeur and car made it back to the U.S. on a later sailing.
TUESDAY, MAY 21, 2024
ISSUE #1240
THE ROEBLING-BLACKWELL
CONNECTION
TRENTON SPACES JUDITH BERDY
Washington Augustus Roebling II
Washington Augustus Roebling II in driver’s clothes.
Washington Augustus Roebling II was an American businessman and early automobile manufacturer who perished in the sinking of RMS Titanic.
Washington August Roebling was born in Trenton, New Jersey on March 25, 1881 into the prominent Roebling family of American Industrialists. He was the son of Charles Roebling and Sarah Mahon Ormsby. He was named after his famous uncle Washington Roebling, a Civil War Colonel and supervising engineer for the construction of the Brooklyn Bridge. Friends would call him ‘Washy’. Washington II attended the elite Hill School in Pottstown, Pennsylvania where he was an adept football player. After working with his father in the family business, for the John A. Roebling Sons Company, he switched to the Walter Automotive Company as its Secretary.ADVERTISEMENT
The 1911 Mercer Raceabout, which took second in the hands of Washington Augustus Roebling II at the 1911 International Light Cars Race.
In 1909, Washington Roebling II arranged to take over the Walter Automobile Company from William Walter because of its mounting financial issues. The company was moved to an abandoned brewery owned by the Kuser family in Hamilton, New Jersey, outside of Trenton. Washington Roebling II’s father, Ferdinand Roebling was made President, John Louis Kuser, the twin brother of prominent New Jersey businessman Anthony R. Kuser was made Secretary-Treasurer, and Washington was made General Manager of the new enterprise, Mercer Automobile Company.
The company marketed itself to the high end and racing markets. He worked with noted French auto designer Etienne Planche, designing the Roebling-Planche Racing Car which performed well in auto races of the time. Roebling tested all Mercer Models before they entered market, and participated in racing.
As an amateur, he finished an astounding second at the International Light Car Race for the Savannah Challenge Trophy in November 1911, with the Mercer Raceabout. He had a collision with a palmetto tree at the last lap, damaging his control levers. This must have cost him a victory, since he lost 12 minutes in the collision, and the damage it caused must have had an affect on the speed of the car, which still ran at an impressive average of 61 mph, Washington only finished 8 minutes behind the winner after a race of 277 miles.
Titanic
In early 1912, he took a long European road trip with his friend and Trenton native, Stephen Weart Blackwell and Chauffeur Frank Stanley in a Mercer Fiat. While touring Italy and France, Blackwell and Roebling meet the Bonnell and Wick families, and decided to join them on their return trip to United States on the new ocean liner RMS Titanic. Because of illness, Frank Stanley stayed behind in Europe with Roebling’s car. Both Blackwell and Roebling stayed in First Class accommodations, Roebling boarded the ship at Southampton, England, on April 12, 1912, for its Maiden Voyage. He was 31 years old at the time, and stayed in cabin A-24.
When the ship struck and iceberg on April 14, 1912 at 11:40 P.M, the ship started sinking. On April 15, Washington was seen helping the women of the Bonell and Wick families into a lifeboat, telling them reassuredly “you will be back with us on the ship soon”. Blackwell and Roebling’s bodies were never found. Because of a miscommunication his Roebling cousins traveled to Halifax, believing him to be among the survivors picked up by the RMS Carpathia. The Mercer Motor Company was taken over by outsider investors in 1919, going into receivership in 1925 and folding not long after that.
A NEW RESIDENT RI PLANNING TASK FORCE IS ANNOUNCED
MATT ALTWICKER HAS SET UP A QR CODE LINK TO COMMUNICATE WITH YOUR THOUGHTS FOR A PLANNING TASK FORCE. HAVE CONCERNS, IDEAS, SUGGESTION, SEND THEM TO MATT.
The Albert Swinden mural looks down at activities at the Tata Innovation Center on Friday, where the graduates were showcasing their projects/
CREDITS:
ROEBLING MUSEUM
JUDITH BERDY
All image are copyrighted (c) Roosevelt Island Historical Society unless otherwise indicated THIS PUBLICATION FUNDED BY DISCRETIONARY FUNDS FROM CITY COUNCIL MEMBER JULIE MENIN & ROOSEVELT ISLAND OPERATING CORPORATION PUBLIC PURPOSE FUNDS.
Ever since I passed the Roebling stop on the N.J. Light Rail a few years ago, I’ve wanted to visit the museum. My friend and I ventured there today since the museum was open and there was a fair on the grounds.
The museum is compact, telling the story of the Roebling family and the many generations that ran the company. The story of the town is fascinating. The company knew that to entice workers in this remote town,
Roebling built decent housing, stores, schools, and all facilities a community would need. Many Easter European immigrants came straight from Ellis Island to Roebling and stayed for generations.
At its height, the factories all over the Trenton area had 4,000 employees. The factory faced financial difficulties in the 1950’s, leading to the plants’ closure in the 1960’s.
Looking at this pristine neighborhood ti is hard to believe that belching smoke and ash flowed from the steel wire structures for decades.
One side effect that isn’t publicized is the widespread contamination of the sites and how remediation efforts have continued for years.
Town of Florence Historical Society Aerial view of Roebling,NJ.
The museum on Open House Day
One of the relics of the factory.
One of the wire turning machines,
As you moved up in the company, your home was father away from the plant and closer to the river.
A showcase of employee ID badges
The grounds home to much equipment.
The Company Store is still a store to this day, but it is a contmporary deli in the original structure.
Now county administration buildings, to this day they ae connected by a suspension bridge
A NEW RESIDENT RI PLANNING TASK FORCE IS ANNOUNCED
MATT ALTWICKER HAS SET UP A QR CODE LINK TO COMMUNICATE WITH YOUR THOUGHTS FOR A PLANNING TASK FORCE. HAVE CONCERNS, IDEAS, SUGGESTION, SEND THEM TO MATT.
NEW VISITOR TO THE ISLAND,NAMED ASTORIA, Day 5. Astoria is still here venturing around the Rivercross Lawn and in back of 565 and 555 Main St.
All image are copyrighted (c) Roosevelt Island Historical Society unless otherwise indicated THIS PUBLICATION FUNDED BY DISCRETIONARY FUNDS FROM CITY COUNCIL MEMBER JULIE MENIN & ROOSEVELT ISLAND OPERATING CORPORATION PUBLIC PURPOSE FUNDS.
Take a quick look and you will see some familiar structures in Long Island City and many of others are gone. Massive demolition of the area has wiped away so much local history.
Title: Queens Plaza, Long Island City Subject: Aerial and Panoramic Views
Title: Engineers of the Tophographical Bureau of Queens, NYC Description: At Long Island City Court House Date: 1906
Title: Topographical Bureau of Queens Baseball, Long Island City Description: Long Island City Date: 1910
Title: Long Island City Post Office & its Stall Letter Carriers (Identification on Rear of Print) Description: Group Portrait of Long Island City Post Office Staff Date: 1900
Title: Queens County Courthouse-Long Island City Subject: Courthouses Description: General view of courthouse from Jackson Avenue Date: January 5, 1928
Title: Borough Hall, Long Island City Subject: Queens Borough Hall Description: General view of building Date: August 7, 1936
Title: Vernon Boulevard, north at 50th Avenue (4th Street) Subject: Traffic Description: Trolley, store fronts, pedestrians, church, and moving traffic (non-vintage print) Date: 10-Nov-31
A NEW RESIDENT RI PLANNING TASK FORCE IS ANNOUNCED
MATT ALTWICKER HAS SET UP A QR CODE LINK TO COMMUNICATE WITH YOUR THOUGHTS FOR A PLANNING TASK FORCE. HAVE CONCERNS, IDEAS, SUGGESTION, SEND THEM TO MATT.
NEW YORK CITY MUNICIPAL ARCHIVES ROOSEVELTISLANDER JUDITH BERDY
All image are copyrighted (c) Roosevelt Island Historical Society unless otherwise indicated THIS PUBLICATION FUNDED BY DISCRETIONARY FUNDS FROM CITY COUNCIL MEMBER JULIE MENIN & ROOSEVELT ISLAND OPERATING CORPORATION PUBLIC PURPOSE FUNDS.
A NEW RESIDENT RI PLANNING TASK FORCE IS ANNOUNCED
MATT ALTWICKER HAS SET UP A QR CODE LINK TO COMMUNICATE WITH YOUR THOUGHTS FOR A PLANNING TASK FORCE. HAVE CONCERNS, IDEAS, SUGGESTION, SEND THEM TO MATT.
Prior to Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. becoming a national icon of the Civil Rights Movement during the Montgomery Bus Boycott of 1955–1956, one of the most well-known figures of African-American freedom struggles was Paul Robeson (1898–1976).
Robeson was born in Princeton, New Jersey; his mother died in a house fire when he was six, and his father was a minister and manual laborer. In 1915, Robeson became the third African American to enroll at Rutgers University. He made the football team, playing end, and was involved in the debate club as well as singing on and off campus.
As he writes in his memoir Here I Stand (1958), Robeson encountered discrimination on and off the football field. Nevertheless, he earned four oratorical awards, varsity letters in several sports, was selected as first-team All-American in his junior and senior football seasons, and was elected valedictorian of his graduating class in 1919.
Robeson went on to attend law school, first at NYU and then at Columbia. During these years, he was recruited by the NFL’s Akron Pros, began to sing at major public events like the dedication of the Harlem YMCA, met and married Eslanda Goode, and had his theatrical debut. After graduating from law school in 1923, Robeson worked briefly as a lawyer but his theatrical and musical career soon became his primary focus.
The multi-faceted cultural movement of African-American creativity we know as the Harlem Renaissance was blossoming at this time, and the Robesons were very much a part of it. In 1925, thanks to Eslanda’s urging, Robeson auditioned for and appeared in his first film, Oscar Micheaux’s Body and Soul, shot in The Bronx. Amid touring, filming, and travels — domestic and international — Paul Robeson, Jr. was born in 1927.
In 1930, the Robesons made the decision to relocate permanently to London, staying there until 1940. While in the U.K., Robeson had become increasingly politicized, befriending exiled leaders of African liberation struggles and becoming involved in the Spanish Republicans’ struggle against General Franco’s fascist forces during the Spanish Civil War (1936–1939).
When he returned to the U.S. in 1940, Robeson became immediately involved in African-American freedom struggles, leading the charge to break Jim Crow in baseball and raising awareness of anti-colonial liberation movements in Africa as chairman of the Council on African Affairs.
It was after his return to the U.S. that Robeson started to come around the Allerton Coops in The Bronx, a complex that housed notable African-American activists, artists, actors, and other creatives.
In oral histories in the collections of The Bronx County Historical Society, residents of the Coops remember Robeson being a regular presence at parties and other social functions throughout the 1940s and 1950s.
As World War II came to an end and McCarthyism became ascendant, Robeson and other civil rights leaders were accused of being Communists. As a result, Robeson was barred from performing publicly in most venues in the U.S. The Coops was a rare social and cultural haven for Robeson — constant F.B.I. surveillance aside — during this difficult period in his life.
TWO DETERIORATING MAIL RELAY BOXES Located in front of 510 Main Street these two boxes are used by the USPS to store mail in for carriers to pick up and deliver. All over the city, these boxes are deteriorated and looks like the USPS has neglected them for decades.
CREDITS:
NEW YORK ALMANACK
This essay was first published in The Bronx County Historical Society’s newsletter. The Bronx County Historical Society, founded in 1955, is a non-profit educational and cultural institution chartered by the New York State Board of Regents. The Society is dedicated to the collection, preservation, and interpretation of the history and heritage of The Bronx.
Photo: Paul Robeson among a crowd of fans in Harlem, 1955 (courtesy Robeson Family Trust and Marilyn Robeson).
All image are copyrighted (c) Roosevelt Island Historical Society unless otherwise indicated THIS PUBLICATION FUNDED BY DISCRETIONARY FUNDS FROM CITY COUNCIL MEMBER JULIE MENIN & ROOSEVELT ISLAND OPERATING CORPORATION PUBLIC PURPOSE FUNDS.
City records convey data, instructions, or information, generally without embellishment. But there are exceptions, and this Find of the Week is an outstanding example.
Topographical Maps in the Matter of Opening Central Park, New York, July 1855, Title Page. NYC Municipal Archives.
The image depicted is the title page of a ledger “Topographical Maps in the Matter of Opening Central Park, New York, July 1855.” Created by City surveyor Roswell Graves, the ledger contains 40 plates depicting the topographical features of the land that would become Central Park.
Topographical Maps in the Matter of Opening Central Park, New York, July 1855, sample plate. NYC Municipal Archives.
Beginning in 1807, surveyor John Randel, Jr., produced a map for the Commissioners Plan of 1811, which imposed a grid of streets and avenues creating uniform blocks from Houston Street north to 155th Street. By the time Graves surveyed the land for Central Park, the blocks had been divided into lots to facilitate development. Each plate of the Graves ledger displays three blocks in what would become the park—from 59th to 106th Streets, between Fifth and Eighth Avenues.
Topographical Maps in the Matter of Opening Central Park, New York, July 1855, sample plate. NYC Municipal Archives.
The ledger is currently being appraised in the Conservation Laboratory to determine treatment and re-housing measures that will ensure its long-term preservation. Look for future articles for updates and information about the provenance of this significant item.
Hi Judy — The RIHS post today might have been about the gum thing, but that photo is about so much more — a real look back at a really interesting time. **When there was cigarette & tobacco advertisements. ** When there was a meaningful ad from the New York Savings Bank reflecting some hope for the future. And whose building I think is still standing at Eighth Ave & W.14th Street. ** And those warning words on the door between subway cars. Nicely done. Nina P.S. And those cane seats that snags your stockings.
CREDITS:
KENN COBB NYC MUNICIPAL ARCHIVES BLOG
All image are copyrighted (c) Roosevelt Island Historical Society unless otherwise indicated THIS PUBLICATION FUNDED BY DISCRETIONARY FUNDS FROM CITY COUNCIL MEMBER JULIE MENIN & ROOSEVELT ISLAND OPERATING CORPORATION PUBLIC PURPOSE FUNDS.
