Created by Jose de Creeft, the Alice in Wonderland statue was gifted to the children of New York by the wealthy George Delacore. Delacore wanted to honor his wife Margarita who would read Alice in Wonderland to their children.
In this monument, Alice sits on top of a mushroom throne alongside the Cheshire Cat, March Hare, Dormouse, and the Mad Hatter. Viewed as one of the, if not the most, adored statues in Central Park, children often climb onto and sit underneath it.
Location: 75th Street, east side
Artist/Designer: Jose de Creeft, sculptor; Hideo Sasaki and Fernando Texidor, architects
NYC Parks Website
Created in 1939 by Richmond Barthé, who was an integral part of the Harlem Renaissance, is the Arthur Brisbane Memorial. Brisbane was a journalist who helped create yellow journalism; a gossip-filled style that’s known for its banner headlines and excessive exclamation points. The highest paid newspaper editor during his time, Brisbane advocated for the Spanish-American War through the press, emphasizing how the press can alter public opinion.
Location: 101st Street and Fifth Avenue
Artist/Designer: Richmond Barthé, sculptor; Shreve, Lamb and Harmon, architects
Created in 1873, the Bethesda Fountain, also known as The Angel of the Waters, is both a biblical and historical symbol of the arrival of pure drinking water in New York in 1842. This monument ties together the Gospel of St. John (5:2-4): “Now there is at Jerusalem by the sheep market a pool … whoever then first after the troubling of the waters stepped in was made whole of whatsoever disease he had,” with the feat of the creation of the 42-mile-long Croton Aqueduct system which brought water to New York after it had outgrown its water supply from local wells and springs.
This statue features four cherubs which represent temperance, purity, health, and peace, symbolizing the healing and peace the country so desperately needed at the end of the American Civil War during which time the statue was unveiled.
Location: 73rd Street, mid-Park
Artist/Designer: Emma Stebbins
The two-tiered Bethesda Terrace, considered the heart of Central Park, was installed in 1864. The northern end opens to an upper terrace, home to two square columns carved with scenes of the sun, a rooster, a wheat field, a Bible, an owl, and a witch riding her broom through the sky. Across 72nd street you’ll find two staircases, dressed in the four seasons.
Though the terrace is man-made, its theme greatly portrays nature.
Location: 72nd Street, mid-Park
Artist/Designer: Jacob Wrey Mould and Calvert Vaux
Shutterstock / cpaulfell
A symbol of power and prestige, the Obelisk was created under an Egyptian pharaoh to highlight his dexterity as a king. Around 2000 years later, the Egyptian ruler, in hopes of expanding trade, gave the Obelisk to the U.S. After 40 days on the Atlantic and 112 days spent maneuvering through Manhattan, the Obelisk found its home in Central Park in 1881.
Location: 81st Street, east side
Artist/Designer: Egyptians during the reign of Pharaoh Thutmosis III (c. 1443 BC)
Shutterstock / Holly Vegter
Hans Christian Andersen was an author who wrote more than 150 fairy tales including “The Little Mermaid” and “The Ugly Duckling.” The Danish-American Women’s Association sponsored a radio broadcast and raised $75,000 in order to create this statue, and in 1956 it was created to celebrate the 150th anniversary of Andersen’s birth.
Location: 74th Street, east side
Artist/Designer: George Lober, sculptor; Otto F. Langmann, bench architect
Central Park Conservancy Website
Helping to lead the fight for independence of multiple South American nations, Jose de San Martin’s victory over the Spanish Royalists is said to be one of the most courageous plans by any military leader. Losing a third of his army on his journey over the Andes mountains, Jose de San Martin was memorialized in Central Park after Buenos Aires traded the statue for one of George Washington.
Location: 59th Street and Sixth Avenue
Artist/Designer: Louis-Joseph Daumas
Central Park Conservancy Website
Helping to lead the fight for independence of multiple South American nations, Jose de San Martin’s victory over the Spanish Royalists is said to be one of the most courageous plans by any military leader. Losing a third of his army on his journey over the Andes mountains, Jose de San Martin was memorialized in Central Park after Buenos Aires traded the statue for one of George Washington.
Location: 59th Street and Sixth Avenue
Artist/Designer: Louis-Joseph Daumas
Shutterstock / ness26
First sculpted around 1932 specifically for the Bronx Zoo and then used for subsequent castings, this monument may be familiar to those who have never even stepped foot in Central Park. This is because this monument is also on display at the Met, the Bronx Zoo, and atop the southern gatepost of the Ancient Playground at 84th Street.
Location: 79th Street, east side
Artist/Designer: Paul Howard Manship, sculptor; Bruce Kelly and David Varnell, architects
Shutterstock/ Via Ravenash
The statue of Balto was created in 1925 by Frederick George Richard Roth, famed Brooklyn-born sculptor. The Siberian Husky made national headlines for transporting a much needed medicine from Anchorage, Alaska to Nome, Alaska during a diphtheria outbreak. A group of New York artists then raised money to honor Balto, commissioning Roth to memorialize the canine. Balto has been well loved over the last 90+ years
Location: 67th Street, east side
Artist/Designer: Frederick George Richard Roth
Shutterstock / travelview
Known for inventing the historical novel, Sir Walter Scott was memorialized in 1872 by Sir John Steell, who also sculpted his companion Robert Burns. Before writing historical novels such as Rob Roy, Scott began with translating German ballads into Scottish and then writing ballads celebrating Scottish traditions. Proud of Scott, and wanting to celebrate the 100th anniversary of his birth, Scottish-Americans raised the funds for the statue as a way to memorialize him.
Location: 66th Street, mid-Park
Artist/Designer: Sir John Steell
Shutterstock / Paul Juser
A Scottish national hero, poet Robert Burns, known as being fluent in “the language of the heart,” was memorialized in 1880 by Sir John Steell. At Burns’ feet you’ll find a poem to Mary Campbell, his lost love.
Location: 66th Street, mid-Park
Artist/Designer: Sir John Steell
Shutterstock / Paul Hakimata Photography
Ludwig van Beethoven is no stranger. In 1884, Henry Baerer sculpted the bust of Beethoven based on the work of European sculptor Hugo Hagen. This memorial is meant to celebrate Beethoven’s presence in the music world and was erected to celebrate The German-American Beethoven Mannerchoir’s 25th anniversary.
Location: 71st Street, mid-Park
Artist/Designer: Henry Baerer
Shutterstock / Dominique James
Standing tall on a ledge in Central Park you’ll find The Falconer, a statue of a fifteenth-century man with a falcon on his left arm. Sculptor George Blackall Simons was commissioned by George Kemp, an Irish New Yorker who saw the statue in 1875 at the Royal Academy exhibition and wanted a larger version of it in Central Park.
Location: 72nd Street, mid-Park
Artist/Designer: George Blackall Simonds
Shutterstock / elisank79
One of the newer statues in Central Park, this monument honors three women who fought for civil rights; Sojourner Truth, Susan B. Anthony, and Elizabeth Cady Stanton. Prior to this monument, Central Park had 28 men honored with statues, and no historical women. The all-volunteer Monumental Women group formed in 2015 to raise awareness of women’s role in history. They then commissioned Meredith Bergmann to sculpt the monument, which was revealed on the 100th anniversary of the ratification of the 19th Amendment which gave women the right to vote.
When the idea for the monument was first thought up, the public review of the proposed design raised concern that women of color were not being recognized, so in 2019 the concept was revised. In this monument you’ll see the three women working with essential texts from the early women’s rights movement beneath the table.
Location: 67th Street, mid-Park (on the Mall)
Artist/Designer: Meredith Bergmann
PHOTO OF THE DAY
Alexander von Humboldt Geographer, Naturalist & Explorer appropriately outside the Museum of Natural History
CREDITS
SECRET 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.
At Tony Pastor’s Opera House, one of the more respectable establishments on The Bowery in 1872, the impresario sang of the gulf separating the city’s Upper Ten Thousand and Lower Ten Thousand. But whether blue-blood on Fifth Avenue or down-and-out in Five Points, everyone in New York City could enjoy a good party.
The Patriarchs, twenty-five gentlemen possessing the snootiest of names and the moldiest of money, held their inaugural ball in mid-winter. Under rules established by the event’s planners, Ward McAllister (1827 – 1895) and Caroline Astor (1830-1908), each was entitled to invite five men and four ladies.
To thwart a patriarch introducing an unworthy guest to the assemblage, his associates threatened to publicly upbraid him for the offense. Heaven forbid that a Astor or Van Rensselaer rub elbows with a nouveau riche like Commodore Cornelius Vanderbilt.
The anointed gathered for dinner around an immense oval table. Flowers and fountains covered it in such exquisite arrangement that neither petal nor spray hindered the beautiful from gazing upon one another. The quadrilles and waltzes lasted until dawn, when another magnificent repast fortified the guests for their journey home.
Not to be outdone, the aristocracy of the Fourth Ward assembled at a rat-pit turned saloon for the Beggars’ Banquet, according to The New York Times.
The blind, the crippled, and the maimed packed tables like sardines to celebrate their decidedly artistic profession. Bringing appetites as great as the Bohemian whose dinner hour was always “one o’clock tomorrow,” they feasted on beefsteak and onions.
The ancient patriarch among them went by “Cully the Codger.” He refused to unwrap the yards of woolen scarf round his throat. “They’d be sure to steal ‘em,” he said, eying his sticky-fingered neighbors.
Awash in whiskey, a fellow named Burkey climbed atop a chair busting to make a speech. He swore he’d visit Boss Tweed in Sing Sing and cared no more for the Reverend Henry Ward Beecher than his grandmother’s aunt’s cat’s tail did. He’d refused a toddy from financier Jim Fisk because he never drank beneath himself.
Dublin Mag usurped his chair to declare that “as long as a woman’s a woman she ought to have a woman’s rights.” While Mag gave a hoot about voting, she claimed her right to drink whatever she pleased.
After hours more oratory, song, and liberal doses of liquor and tobacco, the beggars went straight home to bed. Not a bit of trouble, said the copper on the beat. The great middle whose blood was too impure for the Patriarchs and bodies too washed for the beggars attended the annual bacchanal of the French Ball.
Thousands of the best men and the worst women filled the Academy of Music, Woodhull & Claflin’s Weekly proclaimed. Things were not quite that simple. Many married couples joined the masquerade, though frequently not with each other.
For this year’s event, gentlemen commonly disguised their identities as French musketeers, Italian revolutionaries, and Brother Devil. Another’s getup as Aladdin in black velvet and orange satin displayed more imagination, though disappointingly his genie did not emerge from the lamp. The hooded cape known as the domino was de rigueur for a woman.
Its built-in mask might hide her lovely eyes but she should shield no other features beneath anything but tights – black, red, blue or most daringly flesh – or was that bare skin showing on a goodly number of ladies?
Masquerade notwithstanding, the Sunday Mercury named dozens of revelers. Businessmen and politicos who might generally exercise their peccadillos discreetly need fear no embarrassment here. The evening benefited charity. The madams with whom they cavorted could ask for no better advertising.
Fanny Turnbull, who presided over a first-class establishment on Twelfth Street, appeared as Diana, Goddess of the Chase. Kate Wood operated the most exclusive bordello on the most exclusive block, West Twenty-fifth known for its Seven Sisters in the trade. Wood, whose gallery of paintings alone cost $10,000, wore a blue domino befitting a vestal virgin.
At ten, the band struck up a quadrille. At midnight, the tempo turned into a gallop. Gus Thompson banged Jennie Mitch into the buxom Eva King. All went down. Eva shook her striped domino with a frown that said “I’d like to put a head on you.”
Poor May Sherwood guzzled wine provided by her good-natured Charley, while Jo Thompson and Cora Lee of the house on Thirty-First Street hustled around like a pair of lovers.
At one o’clock, eyes turned upward to the boxes. A sweet creature leaned far over the velvet rail clapping her jeweled hands. She revealed so many of her charms that whistles and cat-calls demanded an encore. Hours later Dashing Angola, in a short tunic of purple satin and flesh colored tights, led the Can-Can, joined by Scotch lassie Katie and lank and limber Amelia.
With lights out at 5 am, the Sunday Mercury noted this year’s ball missed only the jolly face of the recently deceased Jim Fisk and the seductive curves of his flame Josie Mansfield.
Illustrations, from above: The parlor at the Salmagundi Club’s Fifth Avenue brownstone; “The French Ball,” a later Patriarch’s Ball illustrated in George W. Walling’s Recollections of a New York Chief of Police (1887); Mr. and Mrs. Cornelius Vanderbilt II, nee Alice Claypoole Gwynne, in costume, 1883 (Museum of the City of New York); Ward McAllister caricatured as “Snobbish Society Schoolmaster” in Judge magazine, November 1890.
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.
AFTER A YEAR OF BACK AND FORTH MEETINGS AND CONSUMER COMPLAINTS, THE MTA HAS KEPT THE Q102 ROUTE, THOUGH SHORTENED, IT NOW GOES EAST ON 36 AVENUE, TURNS RIGHT ON 31 AVENUE, TO QUEENS PLAZA AND ENDING AT COURTHOUSE SQUARE. THE ROUTE ENDS AT THE TRAM STATION AND WILL NOT GO SOUTH TO SOUTHPOINT PARK.
About the route
The Q102 will now connect Long Island City and Roosevelt Island with a new, more direct routing. In Queens, the route will start at Court Square, traveling to Roosevelt Island via Jackson Av, 31 St, and 36 Av. On Roosevelt Island, the route will be shortened to terminate at the Roosevelt Island Tramway. The trains will provide service along 31 St, and the Q18 will still serve 30 Av. Service through Queensbridge will still be provided by the Q103.
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.
To many historians, World War I Harlem Hell Fighters Band lead vocalist, composer, lyricist, bandleader, singer and playwright Noble Sissle (1889-1975) is the man most responsible for ushering in the Harlem Renaissance.
In Sullivan County, NY history however, he will be forever remembered as the celebrity name behind Lucky Lake, “America’s first and only inter-racial lake colony community.”
It was Sissle’s 1921 musical revue Shuffle Along, said to be the first all-black musical hit on Broadway,that inspired others in the years that followed, directly or indirectly launching the careers of numerous notable African American performers.
“More than just another show on Broadway, ‘Shuffle Along’ helped to usher in the Harlem Renaissance, showcasing the excellence in Black culture through Black art. Additionally, the production marked the first time the orchestra of an audience was integrated on Broadway,” Marc J. Franklin wrote in a 2021 article for Playbill magazine.
“This revue legitimized the African American musical, proving to producers and managers that audiences would pay to see African American talent on Broadway,” writes Jo Tanner, Ph.D., for the Kennedy Center. “President Harry Truman even picked a ‘Shuffle Along’ song for his 1948 campaign anthem, ‘I’m Just Wild about Harry.’”
Furthermore, Dr. Tanner maintains, the revue, “written by the famous comic duo of Flournoy Miller and Aubrey Lyles, with music and lyrics by the vaudeville team of Noble Sissle and Eubie Blake… dealt a major blow against racial stereotyping.”
Lucky Lake Estates
Lucky Lake Estates was developed in the 1950s around Luxton Lake, a 2-1/2-mile long section of Ten Mile River in Tusten that had been dammed up, and in the 1900s provided recreation for a few small boarding houses — the Homestead, owned by Robert Huebner was probably the best known — not unlike hundreds of others in Sullivan County at the time.
The lake was named for George Luxton, who had at one time owned most of the property around it. When the boarding houses closed, some developers got the idea to divide up the property and sell small homesites.
Aggressive advertising of the homesites aimed at working class African Americans typically included unabashed name-dropping, and personalities such as New York Giants center fielder Willie Mays, musicians Sissel and Bill Doggett and actress Hilda Simms were often cited as property owners.
For $100 down and 37 cents a day, one could purchase a lot, and many did, some building modest homes suitable for vacation living.
The developers turned one of the old boarding houses into a clubhouse, which became the center of social activity, often hopping to the wee hours of the morning on summer weekends.
But Noble Sissel was more than just a property owner at Lucky Lake Estates.
“Noble Sissle Named Head of $1 Million N.Y. Resort,” read a headline in the March 24, 1955 edition of Jet magazine. “Showman Noble Sissle was named executive vice president of the $1 Million Lucky Lake Catskill Mountains Resort in upstate New York, scheduled to open May 31,” the article continued.
“The 720-acre property, formerly the estate of a wealthy hotel operator, is being developed as a completely equipped mountain resort for Negroes, with a motel, ballroom, casino, outdoor theater, and boating facilities.”
Perhaps one of the most innovative gimmicks used to sell the lots at Lucky Lake was a paid advertisement that ran regularly in the popular African American newspaper New York Age which was designed to look like an entertainment column along the lines of those written by Walter Winchell or Ed Sullivan.
The “column” was called “Shooting the Breeze” and appeared with the byline, Mr. Lucky. The first one appeared in June of 1957, and was entitled, “Introducing Mr. Lucky.”
“Call me Mr. Lucky, because I never believed I could ever own my own little estate in such a place as this,” the column began. “10,000 square feet of high, dry land… and that’s forever, with a free full warranty deed, plus title insurance.”
Mr. Lucky went on to tout the private clubhouse — for members only — the five miles of shore line (which was sometimes advertised as six miles), the great fishing, and the 400 acres of private hunting land. And, of course, he name-dropped, mentioning each of the aforementioned celebrities, and then some.
About 300 of the lots were sold, and a vibrant community existed at Lucky Lake for a number of years, made up mostly of summer residents, with a handful of year-around families.
But heavy truck traffic over the aging dam eventually caused it to crack, and the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) decided it was unsafe in 1983.
They ordered the dam removed, and the lake immediately disappeared, much to the consternation of the homeowners there.
Without the lake, many homeowners simply abandoned their properties, and without sufficient members to financially support it, the clubhouse was soon closed.
Homeowners banded together to sue the Town of Tusten and the developer for $20 million at one point, but lost. That was the end of Lucky Lake Estates, the self-proclaimed “first and only inter-racial lake colony community.”
COLER’S ANNUAL LEGISLATIVE BRUNCH WAS HELD FRIDAY BRINGING TOGETHER ADMINSTRATION, STAFF, RESIDENTS, POLITICAL REPRESENTATIVES, COMMUNITY AND AUXILIARY MEMBERS,
CREDITS
Illustrations, from above: Noble Sissle in 1951 (by Carl Van Vechten); Sheet music cover for I’m Just Wild About Harry from the musical Shuffle Along by Noble Sissle and Eubie Blake, 1921; Lucky Lake Advertisement, Daily Mirror, May 13, 1955; and swimmers at Lucky Lake (courtesy the Roach family).
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 Orchid Show: Mexican Modernism.” All photos courtesy of the New York Botanical Garden
The New York Botanical Garden’s beloved Orchid Show officially opened this weekend, bringing the bold colors of Mexican modernism to the Bronx. Inspired by the work of Mexican modernist architect Luis Barragán, “The Orchid Show: Mexican Modernism” turns the Enid A. Haupt Conservatory into a vibrant landscape of thousands of orchids, tropical plants, and succulents like cacti and agave. The breathtaking display is on view through April 27.
On select evenings during “The Orchid Show,” visitors ages 21 and up can experience Orchid Nights—a vibrant evening of music, dancing, cash bars, and food for purchase at the “lushest bar in town.” The events are led by a DJ and professional dancers, bringing the bold colors and style of the exhibition to life.
In addition to the vibrant orchids, this year’s show will feature succulents like cacti and agave. Visitors will also learn about orchids in the wild and NYBG’s ongoing global research and conservation efforts from the garden’s horticulture staff.
PHOTO OF THE DAY
COLER’S ANNUAL LEGISLATIVE BRUNCH WAS HELD FRIDAY BRINGING TOGETHER ADMINSTRATION, STAFF, RESIDENTS, POLITICAL REPRESENTATIVES, COMMUNITY AND AUXILIARY MEMBERS,
CREDITS
6sqft NEW YORK BOTANICAL GARDEN 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 Bayonne Peninsula, to the north of Staten Island at the junction of Newark Bay, Kill Van Kull, and Arthur Kill, experienced a restricted amount of large scale waterfront development due to shallow water surrounding the area.
Development was concentrated on the Kill Van Kull until navigation improvements in the early twentieth century opened Newark Bay to larger vessels.
Due to its central location, the Bayonne peninsula benefited from increasing maritime traffic and was eventually transformed from a rural destination of wealthy New Yorkers in the nineteenth century to an urban industrial center in the twentieth century.
Inland navigation improvements in 1825-1835, along with rail connections, including the Elizabeth-Somerville (later the Central Railroad of New Jersey), were responsible for an increase in vessel traffic in the early nineteenth century.
Such traffic carried coal from Pennsylvania, clay products from New Jersey, and manufactured goods from the surrounding area, and soon made cities like Jersey City and Elizabethtown into new industrial centers.
In 1864, the Central Railroad of New Jersey opened the railroad bridge across Newark Bay and enabled coal to reach Jersey City via Bayonne.
Rail links through Bayonne resulted in its incorporation as a town in 1861 and as a city in 1864. The Port Johnson terminal, at which was transshipped large amounts of coal, was the first sizeable industrial development and set the stage for Bayonne’s rapid growth as a center of industry.
By 1875, the population growth of New York had increased the demand for kerosene used for lighting. Petroleum companies, seeking more inexpensive and larger areas than could be had in Brooklyn and Queens, soon relocated to the peninsula.
Standard Oil completed the first long distance pipeline to Bayonne from oil fields in Texas, and Bayonne became a national center of petroleum refining. By the end of the nineteenth century, industrial activity had filled most of the Bayonne peninsula to somewhere east of Port Johnson.
Concurrent with the rise in demand for gasoline to power automobiles and generate electricity, production switched from kerosene to gasoline. This increasing demand resulted in the construction of new and bigger plants.
This second wave of industrial expansion extended to 1917. By this time, most of the marsh lands had been filled in.
Maritime traffic began to diminish after World War One, and many waterfront industries disappeared during the Great Depression.
Today, petroleum refining continues to form a large sector of the local economy, but not to the extent of the early twentieth century.
Illustrations, from above; Aerial view of industrial waterfront, Bayonne, New Jersey; View of Bayonne, 1974 with decaying remains of a dock at Port Johnston Terminal visible in the left foreground (by Hope Alexander, National Archives); and a view of Manhattan from Bayonne, 1974, by Hope Alexander (National ArchivesGOTTSCHO PHOTO ARCHIVE 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.
Okaloosa County’s Tourist Development Department, Destin-Fort Walton Beach, Florida, says it has completed the necessary safety requirements by local, state and federal agencies to move the SS United States from Philadelphia to a docking area in Mobile, Alabama where preparations to to sink the historic ocean liner off Florida are expected to continue.
The SS United States, one of America’s most historic ships, spent most of its career traveling between New York City and Southampton, England. The SS United States Conservancy transferred ownership of the SS United States to Okaloosa County.
Operations to move “America’s Flagship” were expected to begin with a lateral move from Pier 82 to Pier 80 this morning, Thursday, February 6, 2025. The United States will depart Philadelphia on Saturday, February 8, 2025 at 4 am. According to Okaloosa County, Florida officials.
“If visibility is an issue that morning, the move down river will take place at the next low tide. She will be chaperoned by multiple tug boats as she makes her way down the Delaware River and into the Atlantic Ocean,”the county’s tourism department announced in press release issued Wednesday.
The former steamship’s journey to Mobile is expected to take about two weeks. Upon arrival, the vessel contractors will remove hazardous material, including non-metal parts and fuel.
Modifications will also be made to ensure that when the vessel is sunk, it will land upright underwater. The preparation process will take about 12 months organizers say.
The exact location along the Gulf Coast for the vessel’s deployment has not been set but it is expected to be about 20 nautical miles south of the Destin-Fort Walton Beach area. The County has dubbed the project the “World’s Largest Artificial Reef.”
“Okaloosa County will continue to partner with the SS United States Conservancy as it pivots to develop a land-based museum in Destin-Fort Walton Beach that will celebrate and commemorate the nation’s flagship,” the press release said. “The County will provide the Conservancy with regular project updates and will support the museum planning process which will incorporate iconic features from the ship, including the funnels, radar mast, and other signature components, as well as the Conservancy’s extensive curatorial and archival collection.”
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.
Emma and the Angel of Central Park: A Talk with Maria Teresa Cometto
Wednesday, February 19, 2025
ISSUE #1399
FROM THE STACKS
NEW-YORK HISTORICAL SOCIETY
As our 2023–24 exhibition Women’s Workenters its final weeks, we at the Center for Women’s History are in a reflective mood. New York City doesn’t always lend itself to quiet introspection, but it’s worth remembering that, even among the hustling pedicabs and bustling bridal parties, Central Park was created expressly for this purpose. Park architects Frederick Law Olmstead (1822–1903) and Calvert Vaux (1824–1895) sought to provide weary urbanites with a peaceful oasis—a beautiful, pastoral setting in which they could refresh their bodies and minds.
And at the center of the Park lies the Bethesda Terrace with its iconic fountain, topped by the Angel of the Waters. “This is my favorite place in New York City,” reflects Prior Walter in the Epilogue of Tony Kushner’s award-winning Angels in America. “No, in the whole universe, the parts of it I have seen…This angel. She’s my favorite angel. I like them best when they’re statuary…They are made of the heaviest things on earth, stone and iron, they weigh tons but they’re winged, they are engines and instruments of flight.”
Bethesda Terrace, ca. 1873. Patricia D. Klingenstein Library, New-York Historical Society
The Angel of the Waters in Bethesda Terrace is all of those things and more. Based upon a passage from the Biblical Book of John, the fountain was commissioned in 1863 to commemorate the completion of the Croton Aqueduct and the incalculable benefit it brought to New York in the form of clean drinking water. As such, it symbolized a major victory in the fight against cholera and the other deadly diseases that plagued the 19th-century city.
The Angel of the Waters also represents a landmark in women’s history. As journalist and author Maria Teresa Cometto writes, it is “the first and only sculpture commissioned as part of the Central Park plan and funded with taxpayer money,” and the artist, Emma Stebbins, was “the first woman in New York City to be commissioned to create a large work of public art.” Stebbins, though born into a wealthy and well-connected New York family, created the Angel in her studio in Rome. She had gone to Italy in 1857 to study sculpture and live in a community of like-minded, independent women artists. Among them was the famous 19th-century actor Charlotte Cushman, acclaimed for her facility in playing male roles, including Romeo and Hamlet. Stebbins and Cushman maintained a romantic relationship for many years, and it is thought that Stebbins may have modeled the figure of the Angel after her gender-bending partner. In addition to acting, Cushman worked as a model; a bust representing her form is currently featured in our special exhibition, Women’s Work, alongside a discussion of her relationship with Stebbins.
Charles Autenrieth (active 1850), artist. Croton Water Reservoir, 1850. Color lithograph. Patricia D. Klingenstein Library, New-York Historical Society.
Ten years after a cholera epidemic swept New York, the city celebrated the opening of the Croton Aqueduct, which brought fresh water from what is now Westchester County to this reservoir, which occupied the site where Bryant Park and the New York Public Library’s Schwartzman Building now stand. You can learn more about the Croton Aqueduct at our exhibition Lost New York, on view until September 29, 2024.
To learn more about Stebbins, we spoke with Cometto about her recent biography of the artist, entitled Emma and the Angel of Central Park. Our conversation appears below, lightly edited for length and clarity:
Charles Autenrieth (active 1850), artist. Croton Water Reservoir, 1850. Color lithograph. Patricia D. Klingenstein Library, New-York Historical Society.
Ten years after a cholera epidemic swept New York, the city celebrated the opening of the Croton Aqueduct, which brought fresh water from what is now Westchester County to this reservoir, which occupied the site where Bryant Park and the New York Public Library’s Schwartzman Building now stand. You can learn more about the Croton Aqueduct at our exhibition Lost New York, on view until September 29, 2024.
To learn more about Stebbins, we spoke with Cometto about her recent biography of the artist, entitled Emma and the Angel of Central Park. Our conversation appears below, lightly edited for length and clarity:
Miss E. Stebbins (Emma Stebbins, 1815-1882), Cartes de visite portraits of nineteenth century artists, 1856. American Art and Portrait Gallery Collection, Smithsonian Institution.
Emma Stebbins is a rather opaque figure. As you write in your Introduction, she was “very shy, reserved… she left no diary, she destroyed her private correspondence with Charlotte [Cushman]…here are few traces of her in the archives of universities, museums, and research centers, from New York to Rome.” Why do you think this might be the case? And given her enigmatic nature, what prompted you to take on Emma Stebbins as a subject?
“(I am) a soft-shelled crab, forced by circumstances into hard-shelled positions.” This is how Emma Stebbins described herself. So yes, Emma was very shy and reserved. She destroyed the letters she exchanged with Charlotte [Cushman] because Charlotte had asked her to: they were too scandalous and would have compromised the image of Charlotte herself, the very famous actress happy to be remembered as a “virgin queen of the dramatic stage,” as the New York Times wrote in her obituary.
As for me, I am a journalist, curious by nature. I was struck by the gap between the popularity of the Angel of the Waters versus the silence about the artist who created it. Even today, very few know the story of this iconic New York monument and the woman behind it. My book is the first and only biography of Emma Stebbins. I decided to write it when I started looking for news on the Angel of the Waters—which I love very much—and I realized that its creator, Emma Stebbins, was a true pioneer as an artist and as a woman who, together with her companion Charlotte Cushman, defied prejudice and social conventions, living openly as a married couple 150 years before marriage equality in the United States.
Although we often think of artists as solitary geniuses toiling alone in their studios, you’ve demonstrated that Emma Stebbins was part of several very distinguished social and artistic circles, through both her family of birth in New York and later, her chosen family in Rome. Can you describe some of the key players in Stebbins’s life, and how they impacted her and her career?
The first key player in Stebbins’s life was her brother Henry, an early supporter of her artistic career. He was president of the New York Stock Exchange and a patron of the arts— one of the founders of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, in fact. He was also a commissioner of Central Park, which led some critics to say Emma got the commission for the Bethesda Fountain because of nepotism. But she was already pretty famous when she got the commission, and Henry Stebbins was always praised as an upstanding citizen, devoted to improving life in New York and fighting corruption.
The other key player was Charlotte Cushman. As I wrote in my book: “Strong, decisive, passionate, a shrewd steward of her own image and financial fortune, Charlotte was also generous to her expatriate artist women friends in Rome. She hosted them, helped them, promoted them within the art world, and defended them from the envy and attacks of male competitors.” Emma became part of Charlotte’s “family” when she moved to Rome in 1856. And Charlotte became not only her partner but also took on a managerial role, helping her solve all the practical problems of artistic activity, from getting commissions to getting paid.
Henry Inman (1801-1846), artist. Henry G. Stebbins (1811-1881), 1838. Oil on canvas. Metropolitan Museum of Art, Bequest of Josephine S. Stebbins, 2001.269
David Richards (1829–1897), artist. Portrait bust of Charlotte Cushman (1816–1876), ca. 1870. Painted plaster. New-York Historical Society.
Emma Stebbins’s process was different from other sculptors of her time; you mention that Stebbins insisted on “being 100 percent the author of her sculptures,” which was not the way that her contemporaries and friends (such as Harriet Hosmer or Edmonia Lewis) worked. How would you characterize the differences between these artists, and how did Stebbins’s creative process affect her career?
Harriet Hosmer and Edmonia Lewis worked as all neoclassical sculptors did, starting with the master of neoclassicism Antonio Canova. They employed Italian craftsmen to rough out marble blocks based on their models and then engaged with the chisel only in the final stage of statue creation. (Indeed, access to high-quality Carrara marble, skilled yet affordable assistants, and nude models—none of which were readily available in the United States—was the reason why so many women artists made their way to Rome.) This process allowed Hosmer and her colleagues to make several copies of their more popular and successful statues.
In contrast, Emma did everything herself, with maniacal perfectionism. It was a matter of professional pride and a desire to be independent, to maintain control of her work, without interference. So Emma limited much of her production to small statues and didn’t make many copies of her statues. But the hours and hours spent using hammer and chisel on marble, breathing in the dust, were harmful to the lungs and eventually proved fatal to Emma.
You’ve gathered so many interesting stories about the creation of the Angel of the Waters, it’s difficult to focus on just one—but if there was one thing that you wanted everyone who saw this statue to know, what would it be?
I would like to draw attention to the fact that for Emma, the Angel is a woman. When she explains the significance of the Angel of the Waters in the program printed for its inauguration, she speaks of her angel as a woman: “She bears in her left hand a bunch of lilies, emblems of purity, and wears across her breast the crossed bands of the messenger-angel. She seems to hover, as if just alighting on a mass of rock…”
It struck me, because it is not a customary way of depicting angels. In the collective imagination the association of angels with the male gender prevails. The cherubic angels are definitely male, and the Archangel Michael is a warrior, wielding a sword to defeat the dragon, that is, evil.
In fact, the Angel of the Waters has a woman’s breasts, although overall the body is as powerful as a man’s. The face, on the other hand, is androgynously beautiful. So Emma’s statue anticipates by a century and a half the concept of gender fluidity. Its beauty also lies in being open to ever new interpretations, which is the essence of true art.
Fritz Bjorkman (1892–1967), photographer. Bethesda Fountain, Central Park, New York City, ca. 1905–1919. Patricia D. Klingenstein Library, New-York Historical Society
The Angel of the Waters took a long time to plan and execute, and it had a very fraught journey from Emma Stebbins’s studio in Rome, to the foundry in Germany, to its final placement in New York. Can you describe the statue’s journey, and some of the problems that stood in its way? And, in the end, when it was finally installed, how was the statue received?
It took 10 years for the Angel of the Waters to appear in Central Park. It was 1863 when Emma got the commission, and 1873 when the fountain was finally inaugurated. One reason is that Emma was a perfectionist: it took her four winters, between 1864 and 1867, to create the clay and plaster models of the Angel and the fountain. But Emma was also unlucky. In 1869 the statue arrived in Munich to be cast at the Royal Foundry, the best in the world for artistic works. But because of the Franco-Prussian war, the statue remained stuck in Germany until 1871.
The statue didn’t arrive in New York City until July 2nd, 1871. At that time, the City administration was in the hands of William “Boss” Tweed and the Tammany Ring, who, among other things, mismanaged Central Park. The corrupt Tweed administration was defeated during the municipal election in 1872, in part because a commission chaired by Emma’s brother, Henry Stebbins, had publicly enumerated and denounced Tweed’s misdeeds. Tweed’s thefts left the public coffers in shambles and to restore them the comptroller of New York City, Andrew Green, drastically cut spending, including spending for Central Park. That is probably why the inauguration of the Bethesda Fountain was a very low profile event.
The inauguration took place on May 31, 1873, “without ceremony, without even any spoken words of introduction by a Commissioner, and with a simplicity that it was not possible to attenuate,” wrote the New York Herald. There was only a little music played by a band. The spectators were mostly Americans of German descent, entire families, flocking not so much for the Angel itself as for their pride in the work of the Royal Munich Foundry.
For the New York Times the Angel was a great disappointment: “From a rear view the figure resembles a servant girl executing a polka pas seul in the privacy of the back kitchen; from the front it looks like a naughty girl jumping over stepping-stones, while the wind drives back the voluminous folds of her hundred petticoats, which, however, are so diaphanous in texture as to clearly reveal the form. The head is distinctly a male head, of a classical commonplace, meaningless beauty, the breasts are feminine, the rest of the body is in part male and in part female.” The article closes with a message that seems actually paid for by the American foundry lobby: The casting of the bronze Angel made in Munich is “infinitely inferior” to that of the Shakespeare statue made by a Philadelphia foundry. It sounds like the slogan “Buy American” that is popular now!
Fortunately, other newspapers and magazines loved Emma’s Angel. The New York Evening Post wrote that the Angel of the Waters elicits “emotions of delight and admiration.” And the New York Herald—the most influential newspaper at that time, and with the largest circulation—praised the Angel.
Emma was not surprised by the bad reviews. She wrote to a friend: “I confess I dreaded the comments of the press which in this country respects nothing human or divine and is moved by any but celestial influences.” But by this time, she was totally absorbed by caring for Charlotte Cushman, who had been diagnosed with breast cancer in 1869.
Towards the end of her life, Emma Stebbins devoted much of her time and energy to Charlotte Cushman—first caring for her as she battled breast cancer, then writing Cushman’s biography after her death. This seems to have been a terribly painful time for Stebbins, especially since she was in poor health herself, and could not return to her own artistic pursuits. How do you think she viewed her own legacy—as a person and as an artist?
It was indeed a terribly painful time for Stebbins. But towards the end of her life, she tried to find her own dimension by looking to the future, even though lung disease always plagued her. She proposed to her friend and colleague Anne Whitney that they write a book together, in epistolary form, exchanging views on art. Emma wanted to share her approach, explaining that she always tried to resist “the pressure of outside influences,” and felt that the pressure to complete work quickly often harmed the final product. Stebbins wrote Whitney that sculpture as a form was the “saddest of all, because what we do is so imperishable.” She added that if she could write exactly about her experience as an artist, that “would teach many lessons.” Unfortunately the book project didn’t materialize. But from her letters you can understand that she wanted to be remembered as an artist who was true and honest.
I think that Emma gave her sister Mary instructions about her grave in the Green-Wood Cemetery, the Brooklyn cemetery where she is buried. And that gives us a hint about how she viewed her own legacy as a person: a brave woman who remained faithful to her partner all her life, resisting the pressures of family and society. On the simple, small marble headstone you can read: “Love is the fulfilling of the law.” It is part of St. Paul’s Letter to the Romans. The apostle summarizes all of God’s laws in one precept: “Love your neighbor as yourself. Love does no wrong to its neighbor. Therefore, love is the fulfillment of the law.” I believe it’s a way of saying that loving another woman is the fulfillment of the law too.
PHOTO OF THE DAY
“OUR LADY OF NOMAD”
CREDITS
N-Y HISTORICAL SOCIETY JUDITH BERDY
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The eminent biochemist Pierre Boucard was an ideal subject for Lempicka, who ‘loved art and society in equal measure’ — and she portrayed the venerated man of science as the embodiment of Art Deco urbanity and glamour
Tamara de Lempicka (1898-1980), Portrait du Docteur Boucard, 1928 (detail). Oil on canvas. 53⅛ x 29½ in (135 x 75 cm). Estimate: £5,000,000-8,000,000. Offered in the 20th/21st Century Evening Sale on 5 March 2025 at Christie’s in London
In the années folles between the two world wars, Tamara de Lempicka was one of the most sought-after portraitists in Paris. She socialised with — and painted pictures of — numerous members of her era’s elite, from the Marquis d’Afflitto to the cabaret singer Marjorie Ferry.
For Lempicka, the personal and the professional were intricately intertwined. Not for nothing did Jean Cocteau claim that she ‘loved art and high society in equal measure’. A chic hostess, she used her apartment-atelier on Rue Méchain in the 14th arrondissement not just as a space to live and work, but as a venue to throw lavish cocktail parties. Spread over three floors, the property — designed by the modernist architect Robert Mallet-Stevens — was viewed at the time as the epitome of modernity, renowned for its sleek interior complete with chrome fittings and an American bar.
Lempicka purchased and moved into the atelier in the late 1920s. Financial stability, provided in part by the patronage of the medical scientist Pierre Boucard, had enabled her to do so. A keen art collector, Boucard owned a number of the artist’s works, and also commissioned her to produce a series of portraits of his family. One painting from that series — that of Boucard himself, from 1928 — is being offered at Christie’s in London in the 20th/21st Century Evening Sale on 5 March 2025.
The doctor is depicted in the bold Art Deco style for which Lempicka is famous, oozing cool elegance. Adopting a dynamic pose, Boucard twists his body towards a shaft of light from beyond the picture’s left, which illuminates him. He rests one hand on a microscope, and clasps a glass test-tube in the other — both of them tools of his trade.
Boucard was a successful man. He had made his greatest contribution to medicine in 1907, when he invented the probiotic pharmaceutical Lactéol, a drug still widely used today to improve digestive health.
At first glance, his attire in the portrait seems to be a formal laboratory coat, as befitting a scientist. Upon closer inspection, though, one sees that it is in fact a stylish white trench coat, an item of clothing more readily associated with a detective. Is the suggestion that Boucard’s scientific discoveries were every bit as noteworthy as any detective’s criminal ones?
His collar fashionably upturned, Boucard sports both a trim moustache and a gleaming pearl on an emerald-coloured tie — all contributing to the sense that this is no regular biochemist. This is a highly sophisticated man of the world.
For her part, Lempicka came to be known as ‘the Baroness with the Brush’, true to the striking public persona she had crafted for herself in Paris as an aristocrat-émigré. Very little is known for certain about her early life, including the place and year of her birth.
She grew up in Poland, before moving to St Petersburg as a young woman. Following the Bolshevik revolution of 1917, Lempicka (then probably in her early twenties) fled Russia, along with her first husband Tadeusz and their infant daughter. They settled in Paris, where she would train in the studios of Maurice Denis and André Lhote.
Success came relatively fast. The first Parisian exhibition to which she contributed was the Salon d’Automne of 1922, and she showed in numerous other salons thereafter. ‘Among a hundred paintings, you could always recognise mine,’ Lempicka said in later life. ‘The galleries… put me in the best rooms, always in the centre, because my painting attracted people.’
The golden period of the artist’s career is widely agreed to have been the decade between the mid-1920s and the mid-1930s. Her pictures evoked the glamour, optimism and extravagance of that age, and Lempicka herself welcomed media attention, regularly inviting photographers to her studio to shoot her.
One such invitee was the esteemed society photographer Jacques Henri Lartigue, Boucard’s brother-in-law. In 1928, shortly before the artist’s move to Rue Méchain, he took a set of pictures at her atelier-residence on Rue Guy de Maupassant, one of which shows Portrait du Docteur Boucard in progress. The canvas can be seen on an easel, with the composition sketched out fairly comprehensively in charcoal. Lempicka would go on to complete the work in oil paints in her distinctively glossy style.
In her best works, the artist achieved a masterful blend of the classical and the contemporary. Apropos of the former, she often cited a teenage tour of Italy with her grandmother — ‘taking in the treasures of the Italian Old Masters’ — as a formative influence. ‘[It was then] that my love of painting, and my desire to become a painter, were born,’ she said.
For the Boucard portrait, Lempicka embraced the Mannerist ideal of the figura serpentinata, where a figure rotates around a central axis, so that the lower limbs face in one direction and the torso in almost the opposite direction, thus creating a sense of movement.
As for the modern aspects of Portrait du Docteur Boucard, three are perhaps worth highlighting. The tight cropping and atmospheric lighting, for a start, are devices used in the cinema of the day. The Cubist backdrop hints at an urban mise en scène, with several tall buildings. Finally, there’s the metallic sheen with which Lempicka finished this painting and many others, a feature alluding to the advances of the Machine Age.
The artist died in 1980, yet her fusion of old and new continues to prove popular. She is currently the subject of her first retrospective in the United States (which recently closed at the de Young Museum in San Francisco and will be on show at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, from 9 March to 26 May 2025).
In the picture coming to auction, Boucard doesn’t look us in the eye. He knowingly looks away. Like many of Lempicka’s subjects, the scientist is imbued with an urbane self-confidence that reflects the aspirations and worldly success of the haute société to which he belonged.
Led by the 20th/21st Century Evening Sale and The Art of the Surreal on 5 March 2025, Christie’s 20th and 21st Century Art auctions take place in London and online from 26 February to 20 March. Find out more about the preview exhibition and sales
PHOTO OF THE DAY
AFTER A GLOOMY WEEKEND, A GLORIOUS DAY AT MADISON SQUARE
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IT’S PRESIDENTS DAY & NEW YORK AND PRESIDENT JIMMY CARTER
WEEKEND, FEB. 15-17, 2025
ISSUE #1397
New York Municipal Archives
New York City government offices, including the Municipal Archives, close on the third Monday in February for Presidents Day. Banks, schools, the United States Post Office, and the New York Stock Exchange also observe the holiday.
Archives collections document some presidential moments in the City’s history, highlighted in For the Record articles.
In 1968, President Lyndon Baines Johnson signed the Uniform Holiday Bill that set specific Mondays to celebrate Washington’s Birthday, Memorial Day and Veteran’s Day as well as establishing Columbus Day as a Federal Holiday, effective in 1971. The goal was to establish a minimum of five three-day weekends for federal workers. As Johnson stated in his approval message, “The bill that we sign today will help Americans to enjoy more fully the country that is their magnificent heritage. It will also aid the work of Government and bring new efficiency to our economy.”
President Abraham Lincoln’s birthday, February 12, was never a national holiday but was a State holiday in many places, including New York. In 2018, the For the Record article Bodies in Transit displayed an entry about the assassinated President Lincoln as an example.
Presidents Day officially celebrates Washington’s birth, which was made a federal holiday in 1885, and is still named Washington’s birthday for federal workers. As noted above, some states and municipalities mark both births, closing government offices on Lincoln’s Birthday, February 12, and Presidents Day on the third Monday. Conversely, it is business-as-usual in ten states that do not mark Presidents Day as a holiday. Clever marketers coined the term Presidents Day in the 1980s to combine the commemorations.
Mayor Edward Koch, President Jimmy Carter, New York Governor Hugh Carey, on the steps of City Hall following approval of Federal loan guarantees for New York City, August 8, 1978. Mayor Edward Koch Photograph Collection, NYC Municipal Archives.
The Presidents featured in these For the Record posts made significant contributions to the nation. Let us honor their work during this holiday weekend.
On October 5, 1977, President Jimmy Carter visited the South Bronx. “The Presidential motorcade passed block after block of burned-out and abandoned buildings, rubble-strewn lots and open fire hydrants, and people shouting, “Give us money!” and “We want jobs!” Twice Mr. Carter got out of his limousine, walked around and talked to people. He said the Federal Government should do something to help, but he made no specific commitment.” —The New York Times, October 6, 1977.
The pleas Carter heard from the residents of the South Bronx are essentially what the President heard from New York City officials throughout his administration: We want money, and we want jobs!
Beginning in the 1930s, Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia established a financial relationship between the City and the Federal Government that has continued to this day. It began with Federal funds from President Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal programs that the LaGuardia administration used to lift the City out of the Great Depression. With seven million inhabitants and dozens of “shovel-ready” public works projects, New York received more funding than any other city.
Since then, City finances have been inextricably linked to, and reliant on, federal sources. For a while, it worked. From the 1930s through the 1960s, federal funding flowed, with support for highways and housing as notable examples. By the 1970s, however, new administrations in Washington with different priorities became less sympathetic to urban needs. For New York City, the famous New York Daily News headline on October 30, 1975, “Ford to City: Drop Dead,” summed up the change in relationship.
The election of Jimmy Carter to the White House in 1976 gave New York officials hope for an improved relationship with their Federal counterparts. Researchers interested in documenting the history of the connection between City finances and the Federal Government will be well rewarded by information in the Municipal Library and Municipal Archives collections.
The Municipal Library’s vertical files on Federal-City Relations are a particularly rich resource for investigating the dramatic story of New York’s fiscal crisis, and recovery, in the 1970s. Although the immediate peril to the city’s economy had passed by the time Carter took office in January 1977, intense negotiations between City, State, and Federal authorities continued throughout his administration. “Carter Cool to Plea on New York’s Loan,” (New York Times, February 1, 1977), and “Carter Opens Drive for Passage of Bill on Aid to New York,” (New York Times, May 9, 1978), are just two examples of the many, almost daily, clippings in the vertical file that chart the ups and downs of efforts to fix the City’s budget
Delving into the Municipal Archives collections to document President Carter’s relationship with the City brings researchers to the Mayor Beame collection. During the Abe Beame administration mayoral correspondence was sent to “central files” where clerks separated letters into different series, e.g. Subject Files, Departmental Correspondence, General Correspondence, and Correspondence with State and Federal offices. The clerks further refined this arrangement by separately filing “President” correspondence.
Mayor Beame’s “President” file for 1977 contains copies of the letters he wrote to President Carter recommending people for jobs in the new administration. In April, the Mayor began to address economic conditions in his correspondence with Carter. On April 20, 1977, he sent a dense three-page letter urging the President to consider the effects of defense spending on employment. “The Mayors of the nation’s older urban centers want our cities to continue their historic role as major contributors to the American economy… by assuring that these communities receive a fair share of authorized Defense spending, the federal government can provide an important stimulus to the private sector economics of these cities.”
The file does not include a response from Carter directly addressing Beame’s concerns regarding unemployment, but on May 11, 1977, the President wrote to the Mayor about the Comprehensive Employment and Training Act (CETA): “I am writing you to emphasize the continuing urgency of our battle against high unemployment. I anticipate that Congress will soon approve the funds we have requested… to double the number of public service jobs provided under CETA.” Carter went on to urge Beame to “…do everything possible to minimize procedural delays… in filling these new jobs.”
When Mayor Edward Koch took office as Mayor in January 1978 the “central file” system, with correspondence arranged in series, seems to have been abandoned. Although this makes research in Koch administration records somewhat more challenging, archivists created a key-word searchable inventory for a portion of his records—essentially what would have been his subject and departmental files.
Typing ‘Carter’ into the search box identified a folder of correspondence between the Mayor and the President. In a letter to President Carter, dated February 20, 1980, Koch got right to the point: “I wish to bring you up to date on the progress being made to close New York City’s projected budget gap and to acknowledge the assistance being provided by your staff in identifying additional sources of federal aid.” In three typed pages Koch delineated measures related to Medicaid, Welfare, and Education Aid, and attached a six-page memorandum prepared by the Mayor’s Office of Management and Budget that detailed “Federal Actions.”
Four months later, on June 20, 1980, Koch wrote to President Carter’s Chief of Staff, Jack Watson, about funding needed for the CETA program, and scrawled “Please Help!” under his signature. Koch again used the personal approach in an August 1980 handwritten note to Carter: “Here is the memo you asked that I send to you when we traveled together to the Urban League. Congratulations on the outcome of the Convention. Now we have to pull it all together.” He signed it, Your friend, Ed. Although the convention went in Carter’s favor, the general election in November did not.
Jimmy Carter’s connection to New York City did not end with his Presidency. His work for the Habitat for Humanity organization brought him back to New York. In 1985 he met with Department of Housing Preservation and Development Commissioner Anthony Gliedman on the roof of a building on East 6th Street in Manhattan where Carter had been working with the Habitat group.
MORE THIS WEEKEND?
CREDITS
NEW YORK CITY MUNICIPAL ARCHIVES KENNETH COBB
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