Eugene de Salignac served as Photographer for the Department of Plant & Structures (originally the Department of Bridges) from 1906 to 1934. During this time, the agency took on many of the functions that would later be taken over by the Department of Transportation and the MTA. When I wrote New York Rises: Photographs by Eugene de Salignac (Aperture 2007), I included a chapter “Accidents.” In it I wrote: “An important part of de Salignac’s job seems to have been photographing accidents that occurred on or under New York bridges or that involved city-operated bus lines. These were documents made for the City’s Corporation Counsel to use in possible legal cases or to show needed repairs to damaged property. Often de Salignac arrived at the scene within minutes of the incident before passengers had even been evacuated.” What I did not cover in the book were the ways that the Plant & Structures agency tried to address the growing problem of traffic safety. This week’s “For the Record” takes another look at these photos.
BPS 8214: Williamsburg Bridge, view showing [electric] auto truck, south roadway between Bedford and Driggs Avenue, Brooklyn, June 5, 1923.
BPS 8215: Williamsburg Bridge, view showing [electric] auto truck, south roadway between Bedford and Driggs Avenue, Brooklyn, June 5, 1923.
BPS III 2022: Manhattan Bridge, view showing auto damaged by accident, February 23, 1924.
BPS 5880: Park Circle stage line accident 11:30 a.m., close view, December 6, 1919.
BPS 4974: Lenox Avenue Bridge 145th Street showing accident to auto, Bronx approach north side, July 10, 1917.
BPS 7226: Vernon Avenue Bridge view showing accident to auto truck, May 15, 1922.
BPS IV 1874: Queensboro Bridge, Queens view showing automobile accident, June 11, 1920.
BPS IV 2577: Queensboro Bridge showing accident to auto, May 22, 1933.
PHOTO OF THE DAY
OPENING DAY AT CAFE AVIVA WHAT A JOYFUL LOCATION FOR A CAPPUCINO!
CREDIT
All photographs above by Eugene de Salignac, Department of Bridges/Plant & Structures Collection, NYC Municipal Archives.
Sources:
In 2014, Christopher Gray (a cherished and missed friend of this agency) wrote about the history of New York’s Traffic lights in his popular New York Times “Streetscapes” column:
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.
New York is a city filled with hundreds, maybe thousands of public memorials. Some are lifelike figures, some are bas-relief plaques, some take classical architectural forms.
The Henry Hudson Memorial, which for almost 90 years has towered over the British navigator and explorer’s namesake park in the hilly Bronx neighborhood of Spuyten Duyvil, combines all of these elements.
Why so many components to a monument that could have been just as meaningful as a bronze bust on a granite base or an embossed tablet in the ground?
It has to do with the Henry Hudson anniversary mania that gripped the city more than a century ago, when the monument embarked on a three-decade journey from the idea stage to its completion and official dedication in 1938.
The story of the memorial begins in 1906. That’s when New York City was in the midst of planning a spectacular two-week double celebration in 1909 to mark the 300th anniversary of Hudson’s dropping anchor in New York Harbor, as well as the 100th anniversary of the first voyage of Robert Fulton’s paddlewheel steamboat, Clermont.
This citywide party put Hudson and Fulton front and center. But it was also a message to the world highlighting New York’s might and power at the start of a new century. Among the festivities were fireworks, a naval flotilla on the river bearing Hudson’s name, parades, pageants, signal fires, and the nighttime lighting of over a million incandescent bulbs on Gotham’s best-known monuments, bridges, and buildings. A new bridge, eventually named the Henry Hudson Memorial Bridge (below postcard), which connected Inwood with Spuyten Duyvil, was proposed. Statues commemorating Hudson were also in the works, including one placed at Riverside Drive and 72nd Street.
Because Hudson docked at Spuyten Duyvil during his voyage up the river in 1609, civic leaders on the celebration committee decided that a promontory with scenic views would be an ideal setting for a truly glorious Henry Hudson monument.
“The committee broke ground at the donated memorial site in 1909, and the massive Doric column was erected in 1912,” wrote NYC Parks. Karl Bitter, a prominent Austrian-born sculptor who created the Franz Sigel equestrian statue on Riverside Drive and 106th Street, was tasked with designing a statue of Hudson that would be hoisted on top of the column.
But as all New Yorkers know, plans for public works often go awry. A lack of funds kept Bitter from finishing the sculpture; he died in 1915 after being hit by a runaway car outside the Metropolitan Opera House on Broadway.
For decades, the Hudson Memorial remained unfinished. In the 1930s, parks commissioner Robert Moses completed the Henry Hudson Memorial Bridge (with a very different design than the original proposal in the above postcard), then turned his attention to finishing the memorial.
Moses acquired the land around the promontory, which became Henry Hudson Memorial Park. “Sculptor Karl H. Gruppe, a student of Bitter, redesigned the bronze figure of Hudson and the two bas-reliefs at the base of the column, and the completed Henry Hudson Memorial was dedicated on January 6, 1938,” stated NYC Parks.
Since then, a 16-foot Henry Hudson in 17th century pantaloons has stood on top of this 109-foot Doric column. One bas-relief shows the explorer looking at a globe with his men, one of whom is gripping his sword. The second bas-relief depicts Hudson attempting to trade beads for the furs carried in the arms of a Native American.
Monuments to explorers have fallen out of favor; note that no one proposed a 400th anniversary celebration in Hudson’s honor in 2009.
But this memorial in a lovely and scenic pocket park is a commanding one, showing Henry Hudson in “magnificent isolation,” as one newspaper put it.
All image are copyrighted (c) Roosevelt Island Historical Society unless otherwise indicated THIS PUBLICATION FUNDED BY DISCRETIONARY FUNDS FROM CITY COUNCIL MEMBER JULIE MENIN & ROOSEVELT ISLAND OPERATING CORPORATION PUBLIC PURPOSE FUNDS.
