Nursing, which as a profession has long been associated with women, offered opportunities not only for education and employment, but leadership. Long before American women could vote, they were able to influence public policy, often through professional organizations, such as those formed by nurses in the early 20th century.
Student Nurses in the Orrin Sage Wightman Collection
In 1916, Dr. Orrin Sage Wightman, internist and avid photographer, made a series of photographs showing student nurses from City Hospital at work on Blackwell’s Island. Dressed in tall pleated caps and long aprons, the young women take care of patients, weigh babies, assist surgeons, make beds, fill bottles, and take cooking classes. A fascinating window into one of America’s earliest hospital-based nurse training programs, the photos depict a nurse’s daily routine at a time when the nursing profession was adjusting to a series of momentous changes.
Student nurses tend to babies on Blackwell’s Island, 1916. Orrin Sage Wightman Collection. New-York Historical Society Library.
Nursing Education in New York City
Although professional nurses were nothing new (George Washington’s ledgers detail the fees paid to nurses during the Revolution), the overwhelming demands of the Civil War had demonstrated the country’s urgent need for nurses trained in hygiene and patient care. The demand for trained nurses remained acute after the Civil War was over. As more and more people flocked to dense urban centers, public hospitals strained to cope with growing populations of sick and impoverished patients. In response, philanthropist Louisa Lee Schuyler, founder of the State Charities Aid Association, helped institute and fund a Training School for Nurses at Bellevue Hospital in 1873–74, the first such program in the United States. When City Hospital (then called Charity Hospital) opened its own School of Nursing in 1877, it became the nation’s fourth.
Initially, nursing education consisted of two to three years of practical training in patient care and cleanliness. As Wightman’s pictures indicate, the student nurses provided valuable labor, but the hospitals they worked in rarely hired them as staff nurses once they had graduated.
Student nurses tend to babies on Blackwell’s Island, 1916. Orrin Sage Wightman Collection. New-York Historical Society Library.
Nurses at Work in New York
While many graduates became private nurses—that is, nurses who were hired directly by patients on a temporary basis—by 1916 the range of job opportunities for nurses had increased. Lillian Wald, founder of the Henry Street Settlement, pioneered the field of public health nursing in 1893. (Wald is featured in our new women’s history film, WeRise, and her work in the settlement house movement is discussed in our Massive Open Online Course, Women Have Always Worked.) In 1901, the Army formally established its own Nurse Corps, and the Navy followed suit in 1908. Meanwhile, in 1902, Lina Roberts of New York City had become the first school nurse in the United States. Wald remained active into the 20th century: In 1909 she partnered with the insurance giant Metropolitan Life to employ home nurses to visit sick policyholders, and in 1912 she spearheaded a nationwide Public Health Nursing Service in partnership with the American Red Cross.
Student nurses observe a surgery on Blackwell’s Island, 1916. Orrin Sage Wightman Collection. New-York Historical Society Library.
In keeping with their professional training, New York’s nurses formed a professional association—the first for nurses in the country— in 1901. By 1902, the New York State Nurses’ Association began to press for a law that would establish uniform standards for nursing education and practice. The resulting Nurse Practice Act provided for state examination and certification of nurses, and created the title of Registered Nurse. The first states to pass nurse registration laws—New York, North Carolina, Virginia, and New Jersey—all did so in 1903.
In 1905, the president of the New York Nurse Board of Examiners, Sophia Palmer, wrote that the state required nurses to be trained and examined in medical and surgical nursing, obstetrical nursing, the nursing of sick children, and “diet cooking for the sick.” Wightman’s photographs show the student nurses engaged in just such activities during their training on Blackwell’s Island.
A nursing student tends to an infant on Blackwell’s Island, 1916. Orrin Sage Wightman Collection. New-York Historical Society Library
Nursing on Blackwell’s Island
In Wightman’s time, the city was about to rebrand Blackwell’s Island (today known as Roosevelt Island), which had a fearsome reputation, with the benign-sounding moniker “Welfare Island.” In the 19th century, the island had been the grim home of a penitentiary. Its former inmates included the infamous abortion provider known as Madame Restell and the equally infamous anarchist Emma Goldman, both featured in our Women’s Voices exhibit. The island also housed a smallpox hospital, a workhouse, and the city’s Lunatic Asylum. In 1887, the island’s asylum had been the subject of journalist Nellie Bly’s “Ten Days in a Mad-House,” a chilling exposé which detailed the inadequate food and clothing given to patients, overcrowding within the facility, and mistreatment from the nurses on staff. Bly’s investigation, part of a larger reassessment of how the city coped with problems of poverty and illness, helped spur desperately needed institutional reforms.
Nursing students at a patient’s bedside on Blackwell’s Island, 1916. Orrin Sage Wightman Collection. New-York Historical Society Library.
Nursing Reforms in City, State, and Nation
One reform that did not take place until the mid-20th century was desegregation. Until 1923, the privately funded Lincoln School for Nurses in the Bronx was the only institution in New York City that trained African American women. Founded in 1898, it was the first school of its kind in the United States. (Mary Eliza Mahoney, the country’s first professionally trained African American nurse, graduated from Boston’s New England Hospital for Women and Children in 1879 under a quota system that admitted one African American woman and one Jewish woman per class.) To press for the end of racial discrimination in the nursing profession, in 1908 fifty-two women formed the National Association of Colored Graduate Nurses in New York. However, it was not until World War II that severe nursing shortages caused state-level nursing associations to admit African American members, and it was not until the passage of the Civil Rights Act in 1964 that the federal government mandated desegregation in hospitals and nursing schools.
Student nurses on Blackwell’s Island, 1916. Orrin Sage Wightman Collection, New-York Historical Society Library.
–Jeanne Gutierrez, Center for Women’s History
This post is part of our new series, “Women at the Center,” written and edited by the staff of theCenter for Women’s History.Look for new posts everyTuesday! #womenatthecenter
COMING TO THE NYPL BRANCH ON FEBRUARY 18TH
WHEN MANHATTAN WAS DUTCH—THE 400TH ANNIVERSARY EDITION
The Dutch of the early 17th century turned an edge of Manhattan wilderness into New Amsterdam. Although it lasted only 40 years, the colony had a profound and lasting impact on the future city of New York. From the start, people of many ethnicities filled its streets, trade and profit were paramount, and religious tolerance was the norm.
With Joyce Gold- Historian and noted NYC Tour Guide
This program is free and open to the public. TIme: 6:30 p.m.
PHOTOS OF THE DAY
Louisa Lee Schuyler (1837-1926) founded the New York State Charities Aid Association in 1873. Shortly thereafter, she founded the nation’s first nursing school, at Bellevue Hospital in New York City. When philanthropist Margaret Olivia Slocum Sage formed the Russell Sage Foundation in 1907, she appointed Schuyler a founding trustee.
Image description: sitting portrait of Louisa Lee Schuyler, a white woman dressed in a dark, ruffled shirt. The image caption reads, “Great-granddaughter of Alexander Hamilton, and founder of the State Charities Aid Association.”
The center building of the Nurses Home (Smallpox Hospital) was named in honor of Louisa Schuyler, Schuyler Hall.
CREDITS
NEW -YORK HISTORICAL SOCIETY FROM THE STACKS
–Jeanne Gutierrez, Center for Women’s History
This post is part of our new series, “Women at the Center,” written and edited by the staff of theCenter for Women’s History.Look for new posts everyTuesday! #womenatthecenter
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.
When Rose O’Neill’s illustrations appeared in True Magazine on September 19, 1896, she made history by becoming the first female cartoonist to publish a comic strip in America. A self-taught artist, O’Neill (1874-1944) had spent her childhood studying artists and submitting her work to various periodicals around the country. She set out for New York City at the age of nineteen with the intention of becoming a writer. Although she would publish numerous works throughout her career, she quickly impressed publishers with her drawings and was able to start a career as an illustrator.
Paul Thompson, photographer. Rose O’Neill, 1914. Rose O’Neill Collection, PR-369, New-York Historical Society.
Her illustrations appeared in a number of notable periodicals including Harper’s, Life, Cosmopolitan, and a number of ladies’ home journals. Her success led to a full-time position with Puck, the humor magazine known for its political satire and anecdotes. While talented in various forms of art and continuing to freelance, it was the creation of one particular cartoon character that launched O’Neill into fame: the Kewpie Baby.
The Kewpies made their first appearance in the December 1909 issue of Ladies’ Home Journal and became an instant sensation amongst readers of all ages. While their style was seen in some of O’Neill’s earlier characters, the creation of “Kewpieville” allowed her to write comics that focused on moral values and kindness. The comics were continuously published in Ladies’ Home Journal, Woman’s Home Companion, and Good Housekeeping well into the 1930s. The Kewpie Doll was soon created in 1913, resulting in a wave of toys, advertisements, and household goods portraying the characters. The Kewpies also became an unofficial mascot for the Woman’s Suffrage Movement, thanks to O’Neill’s involvement. Kewpie posters made an appearance with messages supporting the Women’s Right to Vote while several comics featured feminist-themed plots.
One of several posters created during the Woman’s Suffrage Movement that featured the Kewpie babies. Rose O’Neill Collection, PR-369, New-York Historical Society.
O’Neill made $1.4 million from her Kewpie creations, making her the highest-paid and wealthiest cartoonist of her time. All the while she continued to produce works of art that were much more “serious” in nature. Her success as an artist, writer, and cartoonist allowed her to develop a very lavish lifestyle, placing her in the center of the New York art world, but O’Neill eventually faced financial difficulties during the Great Depression. She died from complications of a stroke in 1944. Production of the Kewpie dolls continued through the 20th century. They remain a familiar part of popular culture all over the world.
“Ramming them back into their desks” (undated). Rose O’Neill Collection, PR-369, New-York Historical Society.
Untitled drawing, 1900. Rose O’Neill Collection, PR-369, New-York Historical Society.
Untitled portrait of a woman (undated). Rose O’Neill Collection, PR-369, New-York Historical Society.
Man gazing at a portrait of a woman (undated). Rose O’Neill Collection, PR-369, New-York Historical Society.
COMING TO THE NYPL BRANCH ON FEBRUARY 18TH
WHEN MANHATTAN WAS DUTCH—THE 400TH ANNIVERSARY EDITION
The Dutch of the early 17th century turned an edge of Manhattan wilderness into New Amsterdam. Although it lasted only 40 years, the colony had a profound and lasting impact on the future city of New York. From the start, people of many ethnicities filled its streets, trade and profit were paramount, and religious tolerance was the norm.
With Joyce Gold- Historian and noted NYC Tour Guide
This program is free and open to the public. TIme: 6:30 p.m.
PHOTOS OF THE DAY
Six Cornell Tech took on the challenge of assembling Frank Lloyd Wright design jigsaw puzzles today at a seminar on campus. The winner was Gen Fei (middle student on left side) The group was awarded a box of Lunar New Year sweet treats. Each year I join the students at this seminar and we discover new things about their experiences and life on Roosevelt Island.
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.
Jessie Tarbox Beals, self-portrait with camera. Jessie Tarbox Beals photograph collection, ca. 1905-1940, PR-4, New-York Historical Society. [Click image for higher resolution scan.]
Jessie Tarbox Beals was a woman of many firsts. A pioneer of photography, she was the first published female photojournalist in the United States, the first woman press photographer, and the first female night photographer. The Jessie Tarbox Beals photograph collection, ca. 1905-1940, PR-4, at the New-York Historical Society is available through our Shelby White and Leon Levy Digital Library.
Beals was born in 1870 in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada. Her father, John Nathaniel Tarbox, was a sewing machine manufacturer, and inventor of the portable sewing machine. Jessie Tarbox Beals moved to Massachusetts when she was 17 to become a teacher, a job she held for roughly 12 years. She got her start in photography by chance, when she won a small camera in a contest. She was immediately intrigued and began taking portraits of local students at a low price. Once she caught the photography bug, Beals never looked back. Her first credited work is in the Vermont newspaper the Windham County Reformer in 1900. In 1902, she was hired as a photographer for two newspapers in Buffalo, New York; The Buffalo Inquirer and The Buffalo Courier.
Beals was no doubt a tough woman, and quite the hustler. She always went the extra mile for her photographs. She did not have one particular focus, and her photos contain a wide number of subjects; such as major events (e.g., the 1904 Louisiana Purchase Exposition), outdoor photography (e.g., houses and gardens), architecture, Greenwich Village, children, and urban poverty. According to the Library of Congress’s own post about her, she carried around a 50-pound (8×10 format) camera for her assignments–definitely not equipment for the faint of heart!
Three cafes and their owners on the corner of Washington Place. A Busy Corner in Greenwich Village, Will o’ the Wisp Tea Room, Idee Chic [?], Aladdin Tea Room. Jessie Tarbox Beals photograph collection, ca. 1905-1940, PR-4, New-York Historical Society. [Click image for higher resolution scan.]
Beals moved to New York in 1905 and made a name for herself in the New York scene by first opening a portrait studio, and then by taking portraits of prominent artists (a job commissioned by American Art News). She later moved to Greenwich Village, opening a tea room and art gallery in 1917. Much of her work during this time was freelance, and she spent her days capturing the artistic nature of Greenwich Village. She focused on educational and arts programs aimed at progressive reform initiatives. She also contributed to the New York Times by submitting scenic photographs of architecture, street scenes, and gardens.
W. H. Wells 265 W. 11th; 10 year old pear tree 4 stories high, started flowering and fruiting again, special treatment by Mr. Wells. Jessie Tarbox Beals photograph collection, ca. 1905-1940, PR-4, New-York Historical Society. [Click image for higher resolution scan.]
Beals fit right in with the bohemians of Greenwich Village and enjoyed the artistic, free spirit of the neighborhood. She got on well with the likes of Sinclair Lewis and Edna St. Vincent Millay. Since Beals didn’t specialize in one area, choosing instead to take a wide variety of photos, her collection is particularly rich for setting the scene of Greenwich Village in the early 20th century. Her photos are even used in other blog posts about other 20th century figures! For example, our blog post on Alice Foote MacDougall features photographs taken by Beals of the coffee shop mogul. She has captured images of four presidents (Theodore Roosevelt, Calvin Coolidge, Herbert Hoover, and William Howard Taft), as well as other famous/prominent individuals such as Mark Twain, Ida M. Tarbell, General Pershing, and Fannie Hurst to name a few. No matter your interest, whether it is portraits, gardens, street scenes, fashion, or documentary photography, Beals has no doubt covered it.
Mark Twain. Jessie Tarbox Beals photograph collection, ca. 1905-1940, PR-4, New-York Historical Society. [Click image for higher resolution scan.]
It is thanks to fellow photographer Alexander Alland that Beals’ work did not fall into complete obscurity. Beals passed away in 1942, at the age of 71, in the charity ward at Bellevue Hospital. Much of her work was initially thought to be lost or destroyed. However, Alland bought many of Beals’ negative and prints from her heirs, and in 1978 published a biography entitled, Jessie Tarbox Beals: First Woman News Photographer. See through the eyes of Jessie Tarbox Beals, and glimpse history by heading over to our Digital Library now!
Dancing in Charley Reed’s Purple Pup, Greenwich Village. Jessie Tarbox Beals photograph collection, ca. 1905-1940, PR-4, New-York Historical Society. [Click image for higher resolution scan.]
This post is by Gina Modero, Reference Librarian for Printed Collections.
COMING TO THE NYPL BRANCH ON FEBRUARY 18TH
WHEN MANHATTAN WAS DUTCH—THE 400TH ANNIVERSARY EDITION
The Dutch of the early 17th century turned an edge of Manhattan wilderness into New Amsterdam. Although it lasted only 40 years, the colony had a profound and lasting impact on the future city of New York. From the start, people of many ethnicities filled its streets, trade and profit were paramount, and religious tolerance was the norm.
With Joyce Gold- Historian and noted NYC Tour Guide
This program is free and open to the public. TIme: 6:30 p.m.
PHOTO OF THE DAY
CREDITS
NEW -YORK HISTORICAL SOCIETY FROM THE STACKS GINA MODERO, REFERENCE LIBRARIAN FOR PRINTED COLLECTIONS
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 chalet-style elevated train station is long gone; the Ninth Avenue El, which ran along Greenwich Avenue, was demolished in 1940. (Though Berenice Abbott keeps it alive just as the painting does in this 1936 photo.)
The cigar shop in the little Federal-style house on the left has also bit the dust. The land is part of the churchyard of St. Luke’s, and the sidewalk is occupied by a row of Citibikes.
But otherwise, so much of Beulah R. Bettersworth’s 1934 depiction of Christopher Street looking down toward Greenwich Avenue is strangely unchanged more than 90 years later.
The three-story yellow building on the northwest corner of Greenwich is still there and still yellow. The two red-brick taller buildings to the north exist as well. The curvy awning at the entrance to the Hudson Tubes—aka, the PATH train—remains in place.
Beyond Greenwich Street, the Gothic steeples of St. Veronica’s enchant and delight. Far in the background, a sliver of the Hudson River lets us know we’re at the small-scaleend of this historic street in Greenwich Village.
I tried to capture the same view today, but my camera work is no match for Bettersworth’s eye. This was her neighborhood—she lived in an Art Deco high-rise on the corner of Bleecker Street—and she depicts her neighborhood with tenderness.
I’m not the only one so taken with this streetscape. “A wintry corner of Greenwich Village lives in this painting as Beulah Bettersworth knew it when she and her husband inhabited 95 Christopher Street, a block away,” explains the Smithsonian, which has the painting in its collection. (Before that, FDR had it hanging in the White House.)
“Closely observed details draw the viewer into the painting to join Bettersworth’s neighbors hurrying through the slushy snow, catching a whiff of tobacco from the cigar store in the foreground. Snow melts from the roof of St. Veronica’s Catholic Church, whose towers are visible behind the Ninth Avenue ‘L’ station. The elevated train station had been an elegant adaptation of a Swiss chalet when it was built in 1867, but by Bettersworth’s time it was an aging relic soon to be torn down.”
More about Christopher Street is known than about Bettersworth. Born in St. Louis, she studied at the Art Students League and became a WPA painter during the Depression. She exhibited portraits and still lifes; she painted a mural for the Columbus Ohio post office that by today’s sensibilities has been considered controversial.
She died in Tucson in 1968, and I like to think she’d be quite charmed to know that the contours of this part of Christopher Street are almost frozen in time.
PHOTO OF THE DAY
Snowy day at the north end of Blackwell’s Island about 1915
CREDITS
EPHEMERAL 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 holdings of the New-York Historical Society Library are vast and fascinating. It is always fun to open a box of photos or unroll a set of drawings to discover something new. Recently, a researcher was working with the Printmaker File (PR 58), a collection of aquatints, engravings, etchings, lithographs, and woodcuts, representing work by over 200 artists dating from 1730 to the present. That’s how the delightful etchings of Albert E. Flanagan caught my eye.
Ruth Marie Reeves (1892–1966) was an American painter, Art Decotextile designer and expert on Indian handicrafts.
1930 Place madeNew York, United States, North America Silk shantung Overall: 54 x 35 1/4 in. ( 137.2 x 89.5 cm )
Gift of Bella C. Landauer 1945.82 Designed by Ruth Reeves (1892-1966), the textile “Manhattan” was part of a series commissioned by the W. & J. Sloane Company in 1930. The series was exhibited later that year at the Metropolitan Museum of Art exhibition, “Decorative Metal Work and Cotton Textiles.” Reeves’s designs ranged from the abstract to more realistic scenes of contemporary life and reflected her interest in the urban landscape of soaring skyscrapers, expansion bridges, and sophisticated citizens. Description MarkingsPrinted along selvage: “Manhattan designed by Ruth Reeves” ClassificationsTEXTILES
In 1920, Reeves traveled to Paris and studied with Fernand Léger.[5] During her time in Paris, she pioneered the use of vat dyes and the screen print process for home fabrics.
Above Drawing, preliminary sketch for “Westpoint” from the Hudson River series, 1933–1934 by Ruth Reeves
Ruth Reeves working on a mosaic mural. Photographed for the Works Progress Administration. Identification on verso (handwritten and stamped): Federal Art Project W.P.A.; Photographic Division; 110 King Street; New York City Location: 628 West 24 St.; Date: 6/10/40; Negative No.: 4794-1; Photographer: Shalat. Identification on accompanying label (typewritten): Ruth Reeves, right, and an assistant at work on a large mosaic mural in the Stained Glass Shop, a unit of the New York City WPA Art Project, located at 624 West 24th Street, New York City. Miss Reeves, well-known textile designer, mural painter and Guggenheim Fellowship winner for 1940, has adopted the familiar theme of school activities for the mural which is to be installed in the William Cullen Bryant High School.
Career
Returning to the United States in 1927, her designs were influenced by modern developments in France like Cubism.
Reeves’s first exhibition was with the American Designers’ Gallery in New York, where she showed textiles.[8]Lewis Mumford called her wall hangings and dresses inspired by traditional Guatemalan designs shown in 1935 “probably the most interesting work any designer has offered for commercial production today.
One of her best-known works was the carpeting and wall fabrics of Radio City Music Hall in New York City.[10] Her fabric and carpet designs along with those of her colleague Marguerita Mergentime can be seen there today. ]Donald Deskey, who won the competition to design the interiors for Radio City Music Hall, commissioned Reeves and Mergentime to design textiles for the hall.[12]
The Index of American Design, one of three main divisions of the Federal Art Project (FAP) was originally conceived by Reeves and Romana Javitz, the curator of the Picture Collection at the New York Public Library, as a way for the American artist to find authentic American everyday objects to use as visual references for their work. The Index was established with the FAP in January 1936 with Reeves as its national supervisor. She held the position until the spring when Adolph Cook Glassgold replaced her. Within the Index, Shaker works were highly prized as Reeves felt they emphasized the art of the American common man.[10][13][14]
She later taught at the Cooper Union Art School in New York [ She married engineer Donald Robert Baker and had three daughters. The couple separated in 1940
She often worked with narratives sourced from her life or friends live
South Mountain is one of her earliest narrative pieces designed as an autobiographical family portrait. It was named after the road she lived on in the artist colony in New City, New York. This piece was the start of her “personal prints” that were privately commissioned limited editions.
In 1930, Reeve was commissioned by the W. & J. Sloane Company to create a group of narrative textiles to be submitted to the American Federation of Art for their International Exhibition of Decorative Metalwork and Cotton Textiles that was to be held later that year at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The company neglected to check in on her progress and in the end were horrified at the unconventional fabric she designed. Each pattern was printed on twenty-nine different types of cotton and depicted a series of rooms in an imaginary house. The fabrics also didn’t sell and the relationship ended unhappily. The most notable work from this collection is “American Scene,” a panorama that celebrates everyday American life: work, sports, and family.[15][17][18]
In 1933, Reeves created a series of textiles inspired by the Hudson River School. These textiles were funded by a grant from the Gardner School Alumnae Fund. In 1934, the textiles were shown at the National Alliance of Art and Industry.[6]
In 1934, she traveled to Guatemala through a sponsorship from the Carnegie Institution. The textiles she collected on this trip were exhibited at Radio City in New York. In 1935, she worked with R. H. Macy & Company to create five Guatemalan-inspired patterns that were some of her only works to be produced commercially.
Above DescriptionDesign for carpet for Radio City Music Hall. Repeating pattern of still life with musical instruments in tones of brown and beige. Repeat unit is rectangular; some feature instruments including the guitar, saxophone, and accordion, while others rendered with undulating abstract shapes; nine units shown.
PHOTO OF THE DAY
A Transit Art and Design mosaic at Times Square this morning.
CREDITS
WIKIMEDIA COMMONS ENCYCLOPEDIA.DESIGN WIKIPEDIA FROM THE STACKS NEW-YORK HISTORICAL SOCIETY 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.
The holdings of the New-York Historical Society Library are vast and fascinating. It is always fun to open a box of photos or unroll a set of drawings to discover something new. Recently, a researcher was working with the Printmaker File (PR 58), a collection of aquatints, engravings, etchings, lithographs, and woodcuts, representing work by over 200 artists dating from 1730 to the present. That’s how the delightful etchings of Albert E. Flanagan caught my eye.
Waterfront, New York, 1933
Morning Light, 1934
The Fountain, Central Park, 1933
Skyline, 1933
Flanagan was born in Newark in 1884. He graduated from Columbia University’s School of Architecture in 1910 and worked at several firms over the course of his career, including McKim, Mead & White. He taught at Columbia and was one of the original members of the Society of American Etchers. His work is in the collections of several other museums and libraries, including the Metropolitan Museum and the Library of Congress. He died in New York City in 1969.
Coenties Slip, New York, 1931
Plaza Group – Towers of Manhattan, 1930. The two buildings at center are the Sherry-Netherland Hotel and former Savoy-Plaza Hotel, which was demolished in 1965 to allow for construction of the present General Motors Building.
Jacob Street, New York, 1931. All the buildings on this street were razed in the mid 1960s and the street itself became part of the Southbridge Towers apartment complex. (Of interest to Bob Dylan fans: Jacob Street was the site of his photo shoot for the cover of the July 30, 1966 edition of the Saturday Evening Post and the 45 RPM release of “I Want You.”)
The detail in Flanagan’s etchings is what is most appealing. It is interesting to consider the time at which they were made, during what many have since referred to as a ten-year hangover from the Roaring ’20s. Though they depict a busy city in the throes of a financial crisis, a city subject to all manner of Modernist movements, and one on the brink of another war, there is a quiet aspect to them that suggests tranquility — a calm response to chaos.
Afternoon Light, 1930
PHOTO OF THE DAY
On as freezing Friday, CBN Older Adult Center celebrated January birthdays and after members Roma, staffer Joanna, Marilyn, Indira and Judy practice a future Conga Line.
CREDITS
This post is by Jill Reichenbach, Reference Librarian,Department of Prints, Photographs, and Architectural Collections. FROM THE STACKS NEW-YORK HISTORICAL SOCIETY 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.
The Jane Bannerman Travel Sketchbooks Collection in the New-York Historical Society’s Patricia D. Klingenstein Library consists mainly of freehand pen and ink or watercolor illustrations depicting “Jane’s jaunts,” as the artist called them, around the world. Presently on view in the library’s reading room is Jane Bannerman: New York City Freehand, a selection of Bannerman’s New York City scenes. Bannerman was an eyewitness to a changing city, and her sketches capture intimate views of a New York that is at times preserved and at others fleeting, a theme familiar to visitors of New-York Historical’s current Lost New Yorkexhibition.
As a native New Yorker, Bannerman clearly delighted in capturing sweet and simple vignettes of everyday life in the city. One in particular caught the eye of a colleague and sent me on a research journey; as it turns out, the illustration depicts a former “resident” of Central Park and beloved fixture of two city boroughs – Manhattan and Queens.
“Jonah’s Whale,” named after the Biblical story, was an installation in the Central Park Children’s Zoo for over 30 years after opening in 1961. It was not a real whale, but an interactive sculpture that children could walk into, and at various points housed a fish tank and other small, marine life-themed exhibits. In 1996, the Zoo decided to go in a more scientific and educational direction, and Jonah’s Whale — later named Whaley, and then Whalemina — was moved to Rockaway Beach, where it lived at Beach 95th Street. Though a local attraction, having been lovingly restored and decorated with mirrors and multi-colored tiles, it sadly washed away during Superstorm Sandy in 2012. In the years since there have been efforts to both construct a new whale and write a children’s book about it.
Flipping through Bannerman’s sketchbooks feels like a walking tour of a bygone New York City. The examples below evoke scenes from Lower Manhattan and the East River shore. To see more of her sketches in the Patricia D. Klingenstein Library, visit Jane Bannerman: New York City Freehand, on view until July 28, 2024.
Properly known as the Ravenswood Generating Station, in Queens, along the East River, “Big Allis” is the City’s largest power plant, and plans are afoot to convert it into a renewable energy center.
Sketch of 72nd Street. Jane Bannerman Travel Sketchbooks Collection, PR 297, Patricia D. Klingenstein Library, New-York Historical Society.
Here Bannerman depicts the sidewalk knife sharpener, who came equipped with a home-made contraption: a grinding wheel turned by a fan belt, to sharpen knives. He carried a school bell to announce his presence.
Sketch of Fraunces Tavern. Jane Bannerman Travel Sketchbooks Collection, PR 297, Patricia D. Klingenstein Library, New-York Historical Society.
In 1785, this meeting hall and inn built at the corner of Queen Street (now Pearl Street) and Canal Street (now Broad Street) became one of the first buildings to be occupied by offices of the federal government, when New York City was the nation’s capital. The entire block housing the Museum (which opened in 1907) is on the National Register of Historic Places.
Lastly, Bannerman illustrated a haunting view of two neighboring buildings, St. Paul’s Chapel and the Twin Towers. “The Little Chapel That Stood” was a place of peace and rest for first responders (firefighters, police officers, doctors, and nurses) in the midst of unimaginable pain. Originally termed a “chapel of ease,” it was completed in 1766 at Broadway and Fulton Street. George Washington celebrated Thanksgiving there in 1789. Sketching most likely in the late 1970s, Bannerman titled the image “Past and Future,” juxtaposing the historical and modern eras that produced these two vastly different structures.
Jill Reichenbach is Reference Librarian at the Patricia D. Klingenstein Library.
PHOTO OF THE DAY
The cold steel winter sunshine refines the smokestacks across the river.
CREDITS
FROM THE STACKS NEW-YORK HISTORICAL SOCIETY 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.
This post was written by Luis Rodriguez, Collections Management Specialist
By 1897, New York City was well on its way toward being the roaring metropolis of steel and concrete that we know today. Elevator cars were carrying passengers up and down in the earliest skyscrapers, while the elevated rail lines stretched further and further uptown. It was then that James Reuel Smith embarked upon his quest to document a particular feature of the city’s vanishing pastoral life—its springs and wells. Traveling by bicycle, Smith explored the upper half of Manhattan and much of the Bronx looking for and photographing those places where New Yorkers were still obtaining water without the necessity of an aqueduct or faucet.
James Reuel Smith. Unidentified girl drinking from a spring on the east side of Broadway between W. 184th and W. 185th Street, New York City. September 19, 1897. Glass plate negative. New-York Historical Society.
Springs were very important to Mr. Smith. He made careful notes regarding each aquiferous site, and he always had in mind the publication of his findings. His interest led him to travel around the Mediterranean region in search of the springs mentioned in classical literature, and this work resulted in the 1922 publication of Springs and Wells in Greek and Roman Literature, Their Legends and Locations.
James Reuel Smith. Central Park spring opposite E. 76th Street, 75 feet east of Sixth Avenue, New York City. April 2, 1898. Glass plate negative. New-York Historical Society
His study of New York City’s springs, however, was only published posthumously. When he died in 1935, his will directed that the New-York Historical Society should receive his photographs and papers, as well as some money, on the condition that it publish his then unknown work. The arrangement resulted in the 1938 publication of Springs and Wells of Manhattan and the Bronx: New York City at the End of the Nineteenth Century.
James Reuel Smith. Unidentified man drinking from the spring at E. 63rd Street, Central Park, 100 feet west of Fifth Avenue, New York City. October 26, 1897. Glass plate negative. New-York Historical Society.
In Smith’s introduction to the book, written around 1916, he reflects on the rapidly changing city and on the practical and aesthetic pleasures offered by the remaining springs: “In the days, not so very long ago, when nearly all the railroad mileage of the metropolis was to be found on the lower half of the Island, nothing was more cheering to the thirsty city tourist afoot or awheel than to discover a natural spring of clear cold water, and nothing quite so refreshing as a draught of it.”
James Reuel Smith. Unidentified woman drinking at Carman Spring, on W. 175th Street east of Amsterdam Avenue, New York City. undated [c. 1897-1902]. Glass plate negative. New-York Historical Society.
Many more of James Reuel Smith’s photographs can be found online at New York Heritage, where they are part of our “Photographs of New York City and Beyond” collection.
James Reuel Smith. Unidentified boy seated beside a spring on the Hudson River shore, east of the railroad tracks near the foot of W. 177th Street, New York City, September 25, 1897. Glass plate negative. New-York Historcal Society.
PHOTO OF THE DAY
LUNA has joined MOMO as a visiting dog at Coler. She is looking forward to her new career. MOMO had no comment but was glad to share her treats with the newcomer.
CREDITS
FROM THE STACKS NEW-YORK HISTORICAL SOCIETY 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.
What happened to the 104 bronze figures that once lined NYC’s famous thoroughfare?
The bronze statuette of Mercury now standing atop Helicline Fine Art proprietor Keith Sherman’s kitchen island once stood atop a traffic light on Fifth Avenue. Over 100 of these statuettes formerly lined the famous thoroughfare from Eighth Street to 59th Street, but the figures vanished from the streetscape over 60 years ago. What happened to these gilded gods and how did Sherman get a hold of not one, but four of them?
To trace the appearance and disappearance of Fifth Avenue’s Mercury statuettes, we need to look at the earliest days of vehicular traffic on Fifth Avenue. They were a mess. To help ease the flow of traffic, five elevated signaling sheds were constructed in 1920. A patrolman at each post manually operated the tri-colored signal lights. These signals were effective in cutting down travel time along the avenue.
The first signaling sheds were built simply for function and painted with black and white stripes for visibility. A couple of years after their installment, the Fifth Avenue Association offered to pay for more ornamental and permanent versions. A design competition was held and the victor was American sculptor Joseph H. Freedlander
Freedlander designed a series of ornate bronze towers that stood 23 feet tall on a granite base. The towers were adorned with neoclassical ornamentation such as eagles, torches, and foliage. An illuminated clock sat at the center of the tower below the glass-enclosed space where the patrolman operated the signal, a space heated by an electric stove according to the New York Times.
As traffic signal technology advanced, the bulky manually operated towers became obsolete. Freedlander was tasked with designing traffic light poles to take their place along Fifth Avenue. He topped these slender bronze poles with a figure of Mercury, the Roman god of commerce and travel.
Freedlander’s depiction of Mercury stands atop a globe wearing a World War I-style helmet and a sash draped around his waist and arms. One arm is outstretched while the other holds a winged wheel at his side. The figure stood atop a rectangular traffic light with just two colors.
Two Mercury statues were installed at 41st Street and Fifth Avenue in 1931 and more were added until they stretched all the way from 8th to 59th Street.
The Mercury statuettes stood watch over Fifth Avenue for over thirty years until more innovations in street lighting and signaling were made. Many of the ornate lampposts of the early twentieth century began to be replaced by sleek modern posts in the 1950s. By 1962, the changes hit Fifth Avenue.
Christopher Gray wrote in theNew York Times in 1997 that Traffic Commissioner Henry A. Barnes had the Mercurcy statues removed in 1964 “to stop souvenir hunters.” The paper reported that the removal process was complete by Christmas of that year.
Another article in theNew York Times from 1971 states that the statuettes were briefly reinstalled due to public demand after Michael B. Grosse, executive vice president of the Fifth Avenue Association at the time, had the statuettes refurbished. It’s unclear when the statues were taken down again, but they were gone by the time Gray wrote about them in the 1990s.
Throughout the coverage in the Times the disappearance of the statues was attributed to traffic accidents, vandalism, theft, and destruction. Gray wrote that the statuettes were “junked for scrap.” He was able to track down just three of the 104 statues that once existed. He found two in the collection of the Museum of the City of New York and one in the office of the Fifth Avenue Association. Untapped New York reached out to those institutions to check on the tiny Mercury figures.
MCNY confirmed that the museum has one in its collection, while the representative we corresponded with for the Fifth Avenue Association said they were unable to turn up any photos or information about a statuette in their possession.
A former chairman of the Fifth Avenue Association wrote a letter to the editor in 1997 in response to Gray’s piece, stating that he remembered the Association giving out the statues to “guest of honor at the annual luncheon, which took place at the Waldorf-Astoria for a great many years.” Clearly not all the statues had been destroyed. They are out there somewhere.
Art collector Keith Sherman, co-owner of Helicline Fine Art, has been lucky enough to find multiple Mercury statues on the antique market. “I pore through hundreds of auctions every week and at one point I was just fascinated by this gorgeous Art Deco Mercury,” Sherman told Untapped New York. He didn’t know the backstory at first but after doing research on the artist and learning about the statuette’s New York City history, he was hooked.
His first Mercury find was in the 1990s. In total, Sherman has found four of the statuettes. He has sold two, one is at his Manhattan home and another is at an upstate property.
Sherman’s Mercury statues have come from the families of former Department of Transportation workers who he surmises salvaged the statues when they were removed from their posts. His most recent Mercury find was during the pandemic and he always has an eye out for more. “Every time I look at an auction, in my head, I’m saying ‘When I flip to the next page, will there be a Mercury? Will there be another one?'”
If you remember seeing the Mercury statues on Fifth Ave or have ever come across one since they were removed, let us know by leaving a comment!
PHOTO OF THE DAY
A MACY’S ODDITY.
Back in the 1960’s when Macy’s was constructing their new store on Queens Boulevard there was a holdout homeowner. To satisfy the the problem the building has a notch in the structure to accommodate the neighbor. It is still visible on the western side of the building.
CREDITS
HELICLINE FINE ART- KEITH SHERMAN DYLAN BROWN
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.
There’s a lot of white in this depiction of a blustery winter day in the New York City of 1911: white snow on the street, stoops, and light poles; white-gray skies filling with factory smoke (or smoke from ship smokestacks?) across a grayish river.
Then there’s the violent white brushstrokes of howling wind against the red brick buildings. The wind is painted so viscerally, you can almost feel the icy snow and biting cold (and sympathize with the woman shielding her face in her coat, holding on to her hat).
“City Snow Scene” is an early work of Stuart Davis, a Pennsylvania native born in 1892 who is much better known as a Modernist painter. As a 17-year-old launching a career in New York, he fell under the thrall of early 20th century Ashcan artists and their gritty depictions of urban life.
The painting was auctioned by in 2012 by Christie’s, which had this to say about it: “Through bravura brushwork and a simplified muted palette, Davis succeeds in rendering a dreary winter’s day in lower Manhattan.”
“With a generous application of whites, Davis works up the surfaces to portray the texture of the snow which is juxtaposed with the more carefully applied reds he employs to develop the architecture in the background,” per Christie’s website.
“Broad, heavily applied strokes of black are the only device Davis employs to represent the pedestrians with the exception of a few simple touches of orange that delineate the faces of the primary figures in the foreground.”
It’s how a New York City winter used to be—and is once again in winter 2025.
DYLAN BROWN SPOTTED ROSIE ENJOYING A STROLL IN THE SNOW
PHOTO OF THE DAY
The caption actually states that we’re on East 79th Street between Avenues A and B—a reminder that both avenues originally extended all the way through the Upper East Side. Avenue A is York, and Avenue B is East End Avenue, which starts at 79th Street.
What’s this little boy doing on the rock-strewn ground of a stoneworks business beside the East River—close enough to what was then called Blackwell’s Island that the octagon tower of the lunatic asylum is within view? The caption says he’s drinking water from a spring.
An actual spring on the north side of East 79th Street? It’s hard to believe, but in fact Manhattan used to have plenty of springs. Some remain buried underground, only appearing during building construction, per this New York Times article. Today, you can still find springs in Central Park.
It should be noted that the photographer, James Reuel Smith, made a name for himself at the turn of the last century taking photos of springs and wells in northern Manhattan and the Bronx, documenting these vanishing waterways and the people who still drank from them. A book of his photos was published posthumously in 1935.
Who is this boy, with his heavy cap and delicate lace-up boots? I’m guessing he’s part of a family that moved uptown to the new tenement rows of Yorkville, where working-class and poor parents, mostly immigrants, toiled in factories, breweries, and on the waterfront.
The East Side Settlement House would be built on East 76th Street in 1903, offering activities and educational support for kids as well as their parents. But for now, an undeveloped stretch of land near the East River apparently made do as a play space, at least for this boy.
East 79th Street looks pretty rough in this photo. But within a decade or so, undeveloped areas like this would soon be cleaned up and turned into housing lots. What would become of this boy? With no way to know for sure, we’ll have to assume that he grew up and made his way.
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.
