Did You Know There Was a Movie Theatre in Grand Central for 30 Years?
FRIDAY, OCTOBER 31, 2025
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Issue #1565
Grand Central Terminal is one of New York City’s most beloved landmarks, and over the years this historic transportation hub has stood the test of time. While the majority of the structure has remained intact, the businesses inside the station have seen their fair share of changes since first opening in 1871. But one of the station’s more notable and less widely known tenants includes a special movie theatre designed specifically for travelers.
The Grand Central Theatre first opened in 1937, and showed short films curated specifically for commuters including news reels, documentaries and cartoons. The theatre housed approximately 242 seats and operated for three decades before being gutted and replaced by a retail location. It is now home to the Grande Harvest Wine shop located next to Track 17. The space was also previously occupied by a photo shop.
Installed inside the theater was an early version of stadium-style seating, as well as an illuminated clock that clearly displayed the time for busy travelers. The rear of the theatre was kept clear to allow for standing room, and also had a small bar for patrons looking to wet their whistle while they waited
FROM UNTAPPED NEW YORK
Grand Central Terminal once had a movie theater and remnants of it can be seen in the train hub today. Grand Central Theatre, which opened in 1937 (possibly earlier), showed newsreels, shorts, and cartoons. The 242-seat theater operated for three decades and then was gutted for retail. Today it’s Central Cellars wine shop next to Track 17. Previous tenants were the Grande Harvest Wine store and a photo shop. Renovations to the terminal in the 1990s revealed the ceiling, that stylistically matches the one in the main terminal, along with other historical details and ornamentations.
Another fun tidbit is that the theater was designed by Tony Sarg, the same person who created the first balloons for Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade, including Felix the Cat! According to Johnny, a knowledgable employee at Central Cellars, Sarg was also running this movie theater and using all of his creative earnings to support it. “You might call him America’s first lifestyle guru,” Johnny told us in an interview. “He did covers for the Saturday Evening Post. He invented the balloons for Macy’s Parade…He did textile patterns and place settings…he was a marionette builder.”
Johnny believes the theater extended into what is now Grand Central Market, and that the area where the wine shop is now was both a bar and a place to screen newsreels. You can still find the projection box in the wine store today. “It’s not the HVAC system,” he told us. The mural is likely the last remaining from the movie theater, but there would have originally been more. “He caught the color perfectly,” Johnny describes, comparing it to Grand Central’s main terminal ceiling, but adds “It’s not intended to be the same as it is out there. It’s kind of like a fantasy space scene.”
Renovations that took place in the 1990s revealed a ceiling mural similar to the one found in the main terminal. The mural was painted by artist Tony Sarg, who’s also responsible for designing the very first balloon ever to be included in Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade. In addition to the starry adornments, Sarg also painted illustrated maps, that, according to the Times, had no political significance.
HAPPY HALLOWEEN FROM ROCKEFELLER CENTER
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In New York City’s earliest days, Wall Street was the site of a wall constructed to keep the British out, Canal Street was a canal, and the rest of the Island was the countryside. As the City expanded northward, it enveloped and urbanized its rural backyard. However, the bucolic landscape of Manhattan was not the only thing to be overtaken by the encroaching City. The Island’s cemeteries were also evicted, ever northward, and finally banished to the outer boroughs.
1. Madison Square Park
Madison Square Park, named after James Madison, was opened to the public in 1847. The land was home to a military parade ground, a United States Army Arsenal, and a House of Refuge for juvenile delinquents. Between 1794 and 1797, the land was also home to a potter’s field (a common burial ground for those unable to afford burial in another cemetery or for those who died unknown), after which it moved to Washington Square Park.
2. Washington Square Park
Washington Square Park became a public park in 1827. The park, located in the Village and surrounded by NYU, was once home to a graveyard. In 1797, the land was acquired by the Common Council for use as a potter’s field and a place for public executions. Some historians think that the land might also have been used as a cemetery for one of the adjacent churches, as headstones have been unearthed in the park. According to the Bowery Boys, over 20,000 people are likely still buried in the Park out of as many as 125,000 people who might have been buried there.
3. Union Square Park
Union Square Park has had an illustrious past. The completion of the Croton Aqueduct was celebrated there, the funeral processions of Presidents Andrew Jackson and Abraham Lincoln passed through, and the first Labor Day parade was held there. Prior to becoming a park at the union of Bloomingdale Road (Broadway) and the Bowery (Fourth Avenue), the land served as a potter’s field until 1807. It is possible that when the Commissioner’s grid was being planned, it created Union Square out of the remains of that potter’s field.
4. Bryant Park
Designated a public space since the seventeenth century, Bryant Park became a potter’s field in 1823. It remained a burial ground until 1840, when the space was transformed into the Croton Distributing Reservoir, whose remnants can still be seen inside the main branch of the New York Public Library. In 1884, the land was renamed in honor of William Cullen Bryant, the noted poet, abolitionist, the New York Evening Post editor, and naturalist.
5. Waldorf Astoria
The land on which the Waldorf-Astoria hotel now sits was the City’s potter’s field, after its former location at Bryant Park was co-opted by the Croton Distributing Reservoir. When the land on Park Avenue was granted to the Women’s Hospital in 1857, over 100,000 remains were transferred to Ward’s Island. (From there the potter’s field was moved to Hart Island where it still exists today). The Waldorf-Astoria hotel was later constructed on the site in 1931.
6. James J. Walker Park
James J. Walker Park (or Jimmy Walker Park) in the West Village today features recreational fields and courts. In a previous incarnation, the park contained a beautiful Italianate sunken garden, lagoon, and gazebo, all designed by the firm Carrere and Hastings. Before becoming a park, the land was once St. John’s Cemetery, the burial ground for Trinity Church. While the graves were supposedly relocated to 155th and Broadway, the Daytonian in Manhattan blog claims that most were not: “Under the feet of scores of children playing ball and frolicking in a water spray, approximately 10,000 bodies lie forgotten.”
7. Sara Delano Roosevelt Park
In 1929, New York City purchased the land on the Lower East Side where Sara Delano Roosevelt Park is now located to widen Chrystie and Forsythe Streets and to construct low-cost housing. That plan was never realized, and in 1934, a park was constructed and named after Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s mother. Today, the park contains the M’Finda Kalunga Garden. The garden was named in memory of an African American burial ground that was located adjacent to the park on Chrystie Street, between Rivington and Stanton Streets. The land served as the City’s second African American burial ground between 1794 and 1853 when the remains were disinterred.
8. City Hall Park
In the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, gallows were erected in what is now City Hall Park and countless executions occurred there. During the 1999 restoration of the Park, archaeological excavations uncovered burials and led to the belief that City Hall Park was also once home to a potter’s field. These buried are commemorated with a plaque near the statue of Horace Greeley.
9. St. Mark’s Church in the Bowery
St. Mark’s Church in the Bowery is the oldest site of continuous worship in New York City and the second-oldest church in Manhattan. In 1803, Peter Stuyvesant IV donated a plot east of Second Avenue (between Eleventh and Twelfth Streets) for use as a cemetery. The burial ground was used until 185,1 and in 1864, the bodies were reinterred in Evergreens Cemetery in Brooklyn. In the 1920s, Frank Lloyd Wright was commissioned to design three high-rise apartment towers to rise over the grave of Peter Stuyvesant, which never left the drawing board.
10. Spanish Portuguese Cemeteries
Congregation Shearith Israel (Remnant of Israel), informally known as the Spanish and Portuguese Synagogue, was founded in 1654. It was the first Jewish congregation to be established in North America. The synagogue was first located in rented quarters in Mill Street and its first cemetery was possibly located in a corner of the African Burial ground, though no one is completely certain where it was located. In 1682, the synagogue purchased land at Chatman Square. Over the years, segments of the graveyard were taken by adjacent developments. For example, in 1855, 256 graves had to be moved to make room for the expansion of the Bowery.
In 1823, Eleventh Street became the Synagogue’s next cemetery location. By 1830, the grid reached Eleventh Street and the cemetery fell victim to the surrounding development. The Synagogue moved its cemetery to Twenty First Street just west of Sixth Avenue, in 1829. In 1851, the New York City prohibited burial in Manhattan below 86th Street and the Synagogue’s cemetery emigrated to Queens. Today, remnants of three of the cemeteries can still be seen.
11. 126th Street Depot
In 2008, when the New York City Department of Transportation was working on the Willis Avenue Bridge, construction workers discovered body parts while digging. The land was once part of the Elmendorf Reformed Church’s Cemetery. The site is currently occupied by the MTA’s 126th Street Bus Depot, which was originally built by the Third Avenue Railway in 1947.
The Harlem African Burial Ground Task Force was formed a year later to advocate for recognition of the site’s historical significance. A memorial and mixed-use development project is currently in the works.
12. African Burial Ground
In 1991, during the construction of a new federal office building at 290 Broadway, workers uncovered human remains. The General Services Administration was faulted for not liaising with the local community and continuing construction. Eventually, as a result of the direct intervention of Congress, the GSA revised its plans. In 2006, President George W. Bush designated the site the 123rd National Monument. The African Burial Ground National Monument was created to preserve the memory of the 6.6 acre burial ground located on that site from about the 1690s until 1794. At that time, the site was located outside the boundaries of the City.
13. 1440 Forest Avenue in Staten Island
Nearly 1,000 men, women, and children are believed to rest below the pavement of the parking lot at 1440 Forest Avenue in Staten Island. Before being paved over in the 1950s, this area was the site of the Second Asbury AME Church and accompanying Cherry Lane Cemetery, an African burial ground that served as the final resting place of local African American residents and former slaves. Long forgotten in the records of history, Cherry Lane received overdue recognition in 2023 when Livermore Avenue in Port Richmond was co-named Benjamin Prine Way.
Benjamin Prine was the last living person on Staten Island to have been born into slavery. He was reportedly 106 years old at the time of his death in 1900. Though forgotten in the afterlife, he was a well-known figure in the 19th century. When he died, he received an obituary in theNew York Times and in newspapers in other states.
SCAREY CREATURES ON EAST 61st STREET
SPPOOOOOKS ON THE UPPER EAST SIDE
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The Bowery is one of Manhattan’s oldest “streets,” dating back to the Dutch days of New Amsterdam. It runs along the path Director-General Peter Stuyvesant took from his home at the tip of the island to his farm, which the Dutch called his bouwerij.
In the 1870s, it ran about a mile from Printing House Square to 8th street. Printing House Square was the heart of the city’s newspaper business, where Park Row is today.
Back then, the Bowery was the place visitors to New York could see the patricians who cornered all the elegance, wealth, and condescension of the city rub elbows with the vermin who scraped crumbs out of the sewers. Silver spoons and filthy fingers alike dipped into its fleshpots.
It was definitely a cosmopolitan place. The rich Irish brogue and the sweet German accent dominated. But one also saw Black Americans, Spaniards, Portuguese, Italians, Frenchman, Mexicans, Asians and many others.
One of the first “Heathen Chinee,” as Chinese (and other Asian people) were dubbed in the prejudices of the day, was Wah Kee. He operated a grocery and curio shop at the Bowery’s lower end. In 1872, he was one of 12 Chinese people living in the area.
Groceries and curios didn’t make him much money though. His serious profits came from his gambling operations and opium den on the second floor.
Word of his prosperity got back to the home country and a rival opened his own opium den. Others followed and by 1880, 700 Chinese people lived in the area. More kept coming, 10 to 15 thousand by 1910, and Chinatown was born.
Opium dens were only one sign of alleged depravity on the Bowery. As you headed up the street, you could find lots of gamblers leaning over pits, betting on dogs fighting, cocks too, and prize fights between men. One of the more popular of the pit sports was rat baiting.
Dogs were chasing rats, seeing how many they could kill in the shortest amount of time. Entry to a pit could run as high as five bucks if good dogs were chasing a lot of rats. One enterprising pit owner offered a hundred dollar purse to the most vicious terrier of the evening, double if he killed a hundred rats in a quarter hour.
Heading further north, you would pass several theaters, of which the Old Bowery Theater was one of the most notorious. Like Wall Street though a lot less respectable, these theaters were male worlds. If a fellow wanted to watch the show, he had best take a seat in one of the first two tiers.
The upper tier of Bowery theaters was where prostitutes plied their trade. One writer said you could view more depravity and degradation in the gallery of a Bowery theater than anywhere else in the city.
Back on the street, next door to the Old Bowery you would find the Atlantic Garden, one of many German beer halls, seating a thousand. The beer halls were respectable places where extended families would head on Sundays to spend the day drinking large mugs of beer at a nickel apiece, listening to music and dancing, playing cards or dominos, billiards or bowling.
All that was illegal – no establishments were allowed to serve beer on Sunday. But as one congressional candidate in the largely German 8th District said, “Just as the religious American has the privilege of going to his church, so must the Germans have the right to seek their recreation on Sunday, specifically to drink your glass of lager beer in peace and quietness so long as you do not disturb the public order.”
Further up at the corner of Prince Street, you found one of the most respectable places on the Bowery: Tony Pastor’s Opera House. This was the impresario’s first theater. As an innovative entrepreneur, he aimed for a broad respectable audience, if not the fashionable set attending performances on Broadway.
He announced his place as a beautiful Temple of Amusement, The Great Family Resort of the City, where heads of families can bring their ladies and children to witness unexceptionable entertainment that will please the most fastidious.
If you’d had enough of the Bowery after you went a few blocks further north, you could escape left onto Bleecker Street and enter New York’s Little Bohemia.
AUTUMN SHADES FROM PANORAMA ROOM
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Illustrations, from above: The Bowery Looking North from Houston Street, 1870 (NYPL); A Rat Pit on the Bowery (source unknown); Inside the Bowery Theater (Library of Congress); and Tony Pastor’s Opera House (Metropolitan Museum of Art).
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.
WHILE WALKING ON WEST 99TH STREET I SPOTTED THIS BUILDING AT #206 AND DISCOVERED THE HISTORY.
49 Bond Street (opened 1883) where the first branch of the NYFCL settled for most of its existence.
The New York Free Circulating Library (NYFCL) was founded in 1879 and incorporated in 1880. Its aim was to supply free reading material and reading rooms to the people of New York City. Over its lifetime, it expanded from a single location to eleven locations and an additional traveling department. It was notable for the large part women played in its administration and staffing. In 1901, the system became part of the New York Public Library. Origins During the 1870s and 1880s, the need for an adequate system of home circulation of books was frequently mentioned in New York City papers and government. Most discussions of such a system never got beyond the talking stage, but they were an indication of public appreciation of the need.
Early in 1879, six girls belonging to a sewing class at New York City’s Grace Church were waiting for their teacher, and whiled away the time by listening to a sensational story read from a cheap paper by one of their number. The story was overheard by the teacher on her arrival, and she was thus led to inquire regarding the children’s reading material, and to make efforts to improve it. The paper was gladly given up in exchange for a book, and each of the girls was offered one such book a week as a loan, on condition that she would never again buy a sensational story paper.[1]
Other women became interested, about 500 books were collected, and a room at 13th Street, east of 4th Avenue, was obtained for library use. The facility was advertised by telling the children to bring their friends, and although at first the room was open only once a week for two hours at a time, the attendance was soon so great that the sidewalk was blocked during the library hours, and on one occasion only two volumes were left in the room.
At the end of the first year about 1,200 volumes, all gifts, were on the shelves, and about 7,000 had been given out to the public. According to the Evening Post for March 18, 1880, patrons included children and men of 60 or 70 years of age, and their dwellings were scattered widely across the city. After wider consultations, and some study of library conditions both in New York and in other large cities, the conclusion was reached that the special needs of the city at this time would be met by the establishment of a library for the circulation of books among the very poor.
First incorporation
With this aim in view, a certificate of incorporation was filed in March 1880. The incorporators named in the certificate were Benjamin H. Field, Philip Schuyler, William W. Appleton, Julia G. Blagden, and Mary S. Kernochan. The object of the society was stated to be the furnishing of “free reading to the people of the City of New York by the Establishment (in one or more places, in the City of New York,) of a Library or Libraries with or without Reading Rooms; which Library or Libraries and Reading Rooms shall be open (without payment) to the public.”
From the room on 13th Street, the library was moved to 36 Bond Street where two rooms were rented in a private house and refitted and furnished as a library. Circulation was begun at this location on March 22, 1880, with 1,837 volumes on the shelves. During April, the first full month, the number of volumes taken for home use amounted to 1,653, and this number grew steadily month by month, that for October being 4,212 volumes. Card holders numbered 712 on March 22, and reached 2,751 on November 1. Of the 22,558 volumes circulated between March and November, 71% were fiction and juveniles; 18% history, biography, and travel; 3% foreign books; 4% science; and 4% poetry, religion, periodicals, and essays. The average daily circulation amounted to about 200 volumes.
In this same period, volumes on the shelves increased from 1,837 to 3,674, the increase consisting of 271 purchases and 1,566 gifts. The gifts included a large amount of material deemed useless, and the library committee concluded that it was “impossible to secure the best and most desirable books from the donations of private households. . . . Of the 3,674 volumes on our shelves, fully one-third are of such a character as to be rarely, if ever, called for.” The committee thought what was needed were “standard works of fiction, popular and reliable books of travel and history, particularly those relating to our own country, and, above all, the better class of books for boys and girls.”
A reading room was opened on June 1, from 4 to 9 p.m. (Sundays included), and appreciation of this service was shown by the number of 1,988 readers, to whom 2,361 periodicals were issued. A card catalog of the library was made for official use and copied for the public. In May the librarian wrote a catalog of the books then on the shelves, about 2,500 volumes, and from this twelve copies were run off by the “chierograph.” In September a printed catalog of the thousand volumes added during the summer was issued in an edition of 200 copies.
In the Library Journal for January 1881, Charles A. Cutter characterized the first report of the library committee as “in some respects the most important that we have ever received. It marks the inception of a movement. The penetration of the free-library idea into a city of the magnitude of New York, is a very important step in its progress. . . . A New Englander or a Westerner from any of the larger cities who goes to New York to live, feels at once that there is something wanting, and says so. The press, too, both daily, weekly, and monthly, is awake to the need — we might also say to the disgrace.” He expressed the hope that resources would increase beyond those “suitable to a small country town.”
Once established, growth in use and circulation was limited only by growth of stock of books, and this in turn only by fiscal resources. The subsequent history of the institution was a record of efforts towards a larger income and administrative development. A public statement of work done and an appeal for subscriptions were made by a meeting held in the hall of the Union League Club on January 20, 1882, attended by some 350 persons. Mayor William R. Grace presided, and addresses were made by John Hall, Joseph H. Choate, Henry C. Potter, and George William Curtis. On February 4, 8, and 11 following, Edward A. Freeman, then in the country on a lecture tour, gave a series of lectures on “The English People in their Three Homes,” in Chickering Hall on behalf of the library. By means of these meetings and by individual solicitation the treasurer was able to report at the annual meeting in November 1882 that the permanent fund amounted to some $34,000.
This fund enabled the trustees to purchase premises at 49 Bond Street on June 9, 1882, and to fit it up for library purposes at a cost of $15,500 for the lot and $13,774.92 for alterations. The books were removed from the rented quarters at 36 Bond Street on May 1, 1883, a change welcomed by readers no less than by librarians, appreciation being shown by a growth in circulation from the 69,280 volumes reported in the first full year of operation (November 1880 – October 1881), to 81,233 volumes in 1882-83.
An interesting tribute to the part taken by women in the establishment of the library and in its administration came in shape of a letter from the board of managers of the Female Christian Home on April 17, 1882, enclosing a check for $1,700 (subsequently increased to $2,000 by additional contributions) representing the balance of the funds of the Home after settling its affairs. This donation was made with request that the “amount be kept as a fund to be called the ‘Women’s Fund,’ and that the income from it shall be used for the employment of women in the Free Library or for the purchase of books.”
The Ottendorfer Branch, 1884, the first branch designed and built for library purposes
Second incorporation and an added location
The limitations expressed in the terms of the original incorporation eventually rendered the possibilities of growth and effective work too small. To overcome this difficulty, “An Act to incorporate the New York Free Circulating Library” was passed by the state legislature at Albany on April 18, 1884. The first fruit of this new freedom from restriction as to its property holdings came to the library in shape of a letter dated May 12, 1884, from Oswald Ottendorfer, editor of the New Yorker Staats-Zeitung.
Ottendorfer wished to give the NYFCL a branch library at 135 2nd Avenue (near 8th Street) with about 8,000 volumes, half of which were in the German language, the others in the English language. The location was to be leased by the German Hospital and Dispensary to the NYFCL. The gift included $10,000 in 7% railroad bonds and furnishings for the branch, which was to include a reading room. An accompanying condition was that the reading material in German be maintained sufficiently, and German-speaking staff be in attendance. A fire-proof vault was provided in the basement for preserving valuable documents and books of the library, and for the preservation of the records and papers of importance of interested German societies.
This gift and its terms were accepted by the trustees on May 16, 1884, and the same day a lease was executed. Lower 2nd Avenue at that time was the center of a community composed largely of German-speaking people. The Ottendorfer Branch — so named by the trustees in their minute accepting the gift on May 16 — was opened for circulation on December 8, 1884, with 8,819 volumes on its shelves, of which 4,035 were German and 4,784 were English.
Maturity
Funding
The NYFCL had now passed beyond its experimental stage. The need for its existence was patent to the most superficial observer. That the library — limited only by its monetary resources — had the organization and the machinery for supplying this need was made plain by the success of its two locations. Support for the library from the taxpayers’ money was certain to come eventually, in part at least. Until it came, however, money for current expenses and for extension of the work had to be found in contributions from people of means, and few of this class had personal knowledge of the field or of the need. Once interested, though, few lost interest or failed in their annual contributions.
Meetings, public and private, were held, at which the needs and opportunities of the work were presented by men of standing and influence in the community. A meeting of May 2, 1885, was presided over by J. F. Kernochan and addresses were made by Andrew Carnegie and William Woodward, Jr. On Washington’s birthday, 1886, Levi P. Morton presided over a meeting held in Steinway Hall and Henry E. Howland, Chauncey M. Depew, and Frederic R. Coudert spoke. In 1890, Benjamin H. Field, president of the board of trustees, presided over a gathering in Chickering Hall on March 6, at which Howland spoke again, and moving appeals were made by ex-President Cleveland, Seth Low, Joseph H. Choate, and Andrew Carnegie. The last of these public meetings in behalf of the library was held in Chickering Hall in 1896, when Mayor Strong presided and addresses were made by Judge Howland, Carnegie, John Lambert Cadwalader, and Bourke Cockran.
Besides appeals made in this fashion, personal letters were addressed to members of various professions setting forth the needs of the library, the work it was doing, and asking support at least in shape of membership contributions. In 1886 circulars were sent to members of the stock exchange, the railroad service, and the dry-goods trade, each signed by half a dozen of the leading men in each of the businesses mentioned. Lawyers and physicians, members of the cotton and other exchanges, the book trade, uptown retail merchants, and other professions and occupations as widely different as the above named were also called upon. In 1896 the number of such letters sent out was reported as 950, in 1897 as 5,000.
The first step towards public funding came in the passage at Albany on July 15, 1886, of “An Act to encourage the growth of free public libraries and free circulating libraries in the cities of the State.” The encouragement consisted in the grant of permission to local authorities to aid free circulating libraries by annual appropriation of funds bearing some ratio to their volumes circulated. From 1887 to 1900, appropriations to the NYFCL made by New York City in accordance with this act totaled $417,250. For seven years, operating funds from private sources and from the City appropriation were about equal, and for the last seven years the City appropriation was several times larger than the income from donations or investments. The City money depended to a certain extent on the volume of circulation — the maximum permissible by statute being ten cents per volume circulated.
Character of reading material
The library committee continued the initial interest in the character of reading material made available, stating in its report for 1886/7 that it was “attempting to improve the character of the reading, or at least to retain the present high standard for a library of this class” and “therefore refrained from the purchase of many books of an ephemeral or trivial nature, and have not duplicated books of fiction in which the interest might be considered transitory.”
Growth of branches
The Bond Street Branch and the Ottendorfer Branch constituted the plant of the NYFCL for nearly three years. In 1888, the number of branches doubled with the opening of the George Bruce Branch and the Jackson Square Branch. On January 17, 1887, Catherine W. Bruce had given $50,000 for erection and maintenance of a branch to be known as the George Bruce Branch. This branch was erected at 226 West 42nd Street as a memorial to the donor’s father, George Bruce, a type founder. Money was set aside as an endowment fund, and by subsequent gifts Catherine Bruce increased the endowment fund for this branch until at the time of consolidation with the NYPL it amounted to $40,000. The building was opened for circulation on January 6, 1888, with about 7,000 volumes on its shelves. The Jackson Square Branch was opened on July 6, 1888, at 251 West 13th Street, the lot, building, and stock of books being the gift of George W. Vanderbilt.
The fifth or Harlem Branch developed from the opening on July 7, 1892, of a small distributing station in part of a room at 2059 Lexington Avenue on the corner of 125th Street, between five and six hundred volumes being drawn off from Bond Street and Jackson Square Branches. During the lifetime of the NYFCL it moved from there, to two rooms at 1943 Madison Avenue, to 18 East 125th Street (July 1895) and finally to 218 East 125th Street (May 1899). A sixth branch of the system was opened on February 25, 1893, in the parish house of the Church of the Holy Communion at 49 West 20th Street, and was named the Muhlenberg Branch in memory of the first rector of the church, William Augustus Muhlenberg (1796-1877). Before taking up his ministry among the poor in 1845, Muhlenberg had been a nationally known educator (college preparatory schools). The seventh branch also found its first outside support from a church. This was the Bloomingdale Branch, opened on June 3, 1896, at 816 Amsterdam Avenue. In 1898, the Bloomingdale Branch moved to the first building to be constructed with NYFCL funds.
Two new branches and the equivalent of a third were established in 1897. The Riverside Branch opened at 261 West 69th Street on May 26, 1897; the Yorkville Branch opened at 1523 Second Avenue, on the corner of 79th Street, on June 10; and the Traveling Library department was established in April of that year at the George Bruce Branch. The Riverside Branch opened using the books of the Riverside Association, which had been operating as an independent library since 1894. This was the first branch to use an open shelf system. The Yorkville Branch was located in a thickly populated section, Germans and Bohemians forming a large portion of the non-English readers. So great were the demands during its first summer that adequate service could scarcely have been given had not librarians and assistants in other branches voluntarily given their services to support the local staff.
George Burce Branch Jackson Square Branch Muhlenberg Branch Bloomingdale Branch Harlem Branch
The nucleus of a traveling library system had existed in the practice adopted by the NYFCL at an early period of its history by which it furnished to clubs, schools, or any responsible group of persons, a stock of books suitable for their needs, to be kept as long as needed. This work had become so extensive by 1897, that it was felt advisable to withdraw the issue for such purposes from the various branches and to concentrate it into a separate department. This was done in April 1897, the librarian of the George Bruce Branch undertaking it in addition to her duties as librarian in charge of that branch. In 1898 it was given a separate staff and was moved to the Ottendorfer Branch. In 1899 it was moved to the Bloomingdale Branch where the third floor was set aside for its needs.
The tenth branch building was opened on June 6, 1898, in rented quarters at 215 East 34th Street, in a remodelled dwelling house, where it occupied the whole building except the basement. The circulation room was located on the first floor, the reading room on the second, and the staff room and janitor’s quarters on the third floor. The branch opened with 3,710 volumes on its shelves. For the first five months its circulation was 26,645 volumes, and the number of readers 1,045, three fourths of this number being children.
The use of the library by children was so marked that a separate room was set aside for them, and the success of the experiment here soon led to the establishment of separate children’s rooms — long desired by every branch — at Ottendorfer, Bloomingdale, the new Harlem building, and the new Chatham Square Branch.
The last branch established by the NYFCL was opened on July 5, 1899, at 22 East Broadway in a remodelled dwelling house just off Chatham Square from which square it took its name. The general circulation room was located on the first floor and the children’s room on the second. Each of these two departments had about 3,000 volumes at the time of opening, but of the 46,339 volumes circulated by the branch in the first four months 37,914 were taken out by the children. In memory of her friend Emily E. Binsse, lost in the shipwreck of La Bourgogne in July 1898, Susan Travers gave $1,000 for books for the children’s room at Chatham Square and in addition she provided six interesting casts of sculpture.
With the increase in branches, circulation increased from 69,000 volumes during the first full year in the two small rooms at 36 Bond Street to 1,600,000 volumes for the eleven branches two decades later.
Staffing
One of the most noteworthy facts is the part taken in the history of the NYFCL by women. The first president, the first secretary, the first chairman of the committee on ways and means, the first chairman of the building committee, and the first librarian were women. Of the forty trustees that served from 1880 to 1901, nineteen were women. The working staff was almost entirely feminine.
Ellen M. Coe (1881–1895)
Arthur E. Bostwick (1895–1899)
Norris Wing (1899–1900)
The staff was put on a graded basis in March 1897, four classes, A, B, C, and D being formed, ranking downwards from A that for the librarians in charge of branches or departments. Promotion from lower to higher grades was made as result of examinations and of routine work. No formal examinations were required for admission to the staff, their place being taken in large measure by the answers to the questions called for on the application blank signed by the inquirer.
To provide a supply of trained assistants for the lower grades, an apprentice class was begun in February 1898. Applicants for positions were required to sign and fill in a blank form on which they gave a statement of their previous training and education and promised to give the library forty-five hours a week in return for the systematic training provided by this class. After a few weeks’ preliminary work in instruction the apprentice was sent about from branch to branch, doing her share of the regular work, becoming familiar with local needs and customs, giving each librarian in charge an opportunity to observe her work. When a paid substitute was needed, she was taken from the apprentice class. When a vacancy on the permanent force was filled, the choice fell upon the best fitted apprentice. There was no seniority: the successful applicant sometimes showed her superior fitness by an apprenticeship of two weeks, sometimes service of months was required. A member was at liberty to leave at any time without notice, and one evidently unfitted for the work was so notified as soon as her unfitness was unmistakably evidenced.
There were four chief librarians during the 21 years of the life of the NYFCL. The first librarian, Mary J. Stubbs, combined the offices of librarian and housekeeper. With her sister, she lived in the building from March 1, 1880, to May, 1881, when ill health forced her to go home to Maine. She died in the autumn, and her sister served as acting librarian. Late in 1881, Ellen M. Coe was appointed librarian, and she filled the post for about 14 years, resigning in February 1895. Under her administration, five branches were added, and circulation grew from 69,000 to 650,000. On April 1, 1895, Arthur E. Bostwick, was appointed chief librarian. He left on March 8, 1899, and his successor, J. Norris Wing, was appointed April 7. Wing died December 20, 1900, and the position remained vacant until the NYFCL became part of the New York Public Library.
TIME FOR A DRINK AT THE PANORAMA ROOM
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WIKIPEDIA
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I AM WORKING EARLY VOTING ON THE UPPER WEST SIDE. HERE ARE ARTICLES ON A NEW NEIGHBORHOOD.
SEE YOU AT PS 217 ON ELECTION DAY, TUESDAY, NOV. 4th.
photo nyc-architecture.com
As the 18th century turned into the 19th, St. Mark’s in the Bowery was the northernmost church in Manhattan. Not until the traveler would reach Yonkers would he find another place of worship. It was a problem for wealthy New Yorkers who dotted the upper island with their grand and extensive country estates.
In 1806 several of the gentlemen, most of whom worshiped at Trinity Church, laid plans to build an Episcopal church in the country. Oliver H. Hicks donated the site and Trinity Church promised financial aid. On July 27, 1807 Bishop Moore consecrated the completed building at what today is Amsterdam Avenue and 99th Street.
An early watercolor depicts a charming rural church. Wooden and painted white, it featured the open belfry, grassy lawn and picket fence expected in a countryside church erected by well-to-do families. The list of members included New York’s most prominent families: Elizabeth Hamilton, widow of Alexander Hamilton; the Schermerhorns, the De Peysters, the Schieffelin and the Lawrence families among them.
The 1807 wooden church — Churchman magazine 1907 (copyright expired)
The little church may have appeared quaint, yet it was anything but inexpensive. The cost of the first St. Michael’s was $4,959.72—around $90,000 today—of which Trinity Church gave $2,000. The first pew rents were around $200 per year (about $3,500). Money was apparently not a great problem for St. Michael’s and in 1827 it was resolved to discontinue the morning and evening collections “as interrupting the solemnity of divine worship and generally unpleasant to the congregation.”
In 1853 the pew rents were abolished altogether. The same year the wooden church building was destroyed by fire. A second building costing $12,611.70 was quickly built on the same site—also of wood and slightly larger. The new church could seat 400, double the number of worshipers as the former church.
In the meantime the neighborhood was experiencing more development. In 1859 there had been 21 baptisms at St. Michaels, in 1863 there were 199. In 1864 gas lighting was introduced and the rector’s salary was increased to $3,500 due to the “increased cost of living.”
The 1854 Carpenter Gothic church was twice the size of the earlier building.
When the Civil War broke out, St. Michael’s was shuttered and locked, not to be reopened until the end of the conflict. The work of the church, however, continued through outreach programs and work with the needy and sick. St. Michael’s was the first church to provide Christian burial for the poor and its Charity School became the first public school on the West Side of Manhattan. The Churchman, in 1907, would remember “The work of the Church among the miserable and abandoned in the hospitals, the almshouses, the asylums and the prisons of New York, the work of the Church in the slums, the rescue for the fallen women, and forsaken children, all of these began in St. Michael’s.”
As the century drew to a close, Amsterdam Avenue had become a major thoroughfare and the Upper West Side experienced an explosion of new homes and businesses. The arrival of the elevated railway in 1879 made the area conveniently accessible. By 1889 a new church building was imperative. Robert W. Gibson was awarded the commission for the structure and he delivered a surprising yet remarkable design.
The cornerstone was laid by Bishop Potter on St. Michael’s Day, September 29, 1890. The walls began rising around the still-standing older church over the old cemetery. The day after the cornerstone laying, The New York Times noted that “In the excavations for the foundations a number of old vaults have been brought to light. The doors of three of these were to be seen yesterday in a bank of earth just back of the platform surrounding the cornerstone. It is intended to preserve these vaults, it was said yesterday, and to build the church over them.”
The new church begins rising around the still-standing 1854 St. Michael’s — Churchman magazine 1907 (copyright expired)
The building was expected to be completed in September 1891; however that date came and went and work dragged on. Finally, on December 15 the still-unfinished church was consecrated. The New York Times remarked on the status of construction. “While the church was still far from being complete, the rood-screen not being in place for the consecration services, the pulpit, lectern, and altar being but temporary structures, the organ being only partially finished, the walls undecorated, and the windows wanting in memorial gifts, sufficient was nevertheless disclosed to make it assured that the new Saint Michael’s…will eventually be one of the finest houses of worship in this vicinity, if not in the country.”
photo by America’s Roof
Clad overall in rough-cut Indiana limestone it harmoniously combined historic styles. The Romanesque Revival, bowed chancel section on 99th Street nestles against a soaring Florentine campanile 160 feet tall. Unlike nearly every other Romanesque building of the time, which were built of brownstone or red brick, St. Michael’s gleamed in its white stone. When completed at a cost of $183,000 including furnishings the church could seat up to 1,600.
King’s Handbook of New York City called the new building “a noteworthy instance of modern intelligent ecclesiastical architecture.”
The “walls undecorated” that The Times made mention of would be worth the wait. Tiffany Glass and Decorating Company was given the job of decorating the interior and the project would be a long one. Between 1893 and 1907 the firm headed by Louis Comfort Tiffany lavished the chancel area with mosaics, a Vermont marble altar, the pulpit, altar rail and glass reredos.
The magnificent chancel window in seven sections, each twenty-five feet high, depicted “St. Michael and all the Host of Heaven.” Executed by Tiffany artisans Edward P. Sperry, Joseph Lauber, Louise J. Lederle and Clara W. Parrish, Palette; Bench magazine termed the group “the most important window in the country.”
But Tiffany’s work ground to a halt and the main sanctuary was left unadorned. In 1922 the firm was called back to decorate the Chapel of the Angels. A large mosaic mural behind the chapel altar was installed, as well as two additional stained glass windows. It was the end of Tiffany’s work at St. Michael’s, leaving the drab main sanctuary in marked contrast to the vivid Tiffany sections.
The Upper West Side continued to grow and in 1899 the Third Avenue Railway Company began plans to lay train tracks up the center of Amsterdam Avenue alongside an already-existing set. Pastor Dr. John P. Peters would not have it.
Peters raised money and recruited what The Outlook magazine termed “a few conscientious anti-monopolists” in a lawsuit against the railroad. The magazine insisted that “New York City has not in years been so stirred by an anti-corporation campaign as by the present one.” Peters intended to fight against “turning the attractive street into a dangerous car-yard.”
In March 1899 the Supreme Court of New York heard the case of “The St. Michael’s Protestant Episcopal Church in the City of New York, Plaintiff, v. The Forty-Second Street, Manhattanville and St. Nicholas Avenue Railway Co., Defendant.” The feisty preacher won.
St. Michael’s in 1895 – Nickerson’s Illustrated Church, Musical and School Directory of New York and Brooklyn (copyright expired)
One of the wealthy parishioners of St. Michael’s in the first years of the 20th century was Margaret E. Zimmerman. The widow of John E. Zimmerman and an heiress in her own right –her father William Ponsonby Furniss was known as the “West Indian merchant prince”–she had a falling out with her family.
When Margaret’s father died in 1871 he left his three sons and three daughters his fortune, including over 200 undeveloped lots in the Riverside Drive area. By the early 20th century that land was highly valuable as mansions began rising along the newly-finished Riverside Park. In 1916 only the 84-year old Margaret, now an invalid, remained alive among the heirs, having inherited their shares as each died.
When relatives insisted on an accounting of the original trust funds, the referee concluded that Margaret’s sisters had made unauthorized investments under the law and charged Margaret $257,838 in fines.
Margaret Zimmerman was not pleased.
When the rich woman died in her apartment at 400 Park Avenue in 1918, her relatives discovered they had all been ignored in her will. Instead the Metropolitan Museum of Art received the valuable paintings and works of art, charities were given hefty amounts of money and St. Michael’s Church received more than $1 million in real estate and $50,000 in cash.
The money, no doubt, made Tiffany’s decoration of the Chapel of the Angels less burdensome.
On November 10, 1921 the Rev. Dr. John Punnett Peters died of a heart attack. Although he was noted as a civic reformer (not only had he battled the Amsterdam Avenue train tracks, he was Chairman of the Committee for the Extension of Transfers on Street Car lines and the President of the Transit Reform Committee of One Hundred and a crusader against “commercialized vice”) he was much more.
In addition to heading St. Michael’s Church, he had been a noted archaeologist, Hebrew scholar and expert on Babylonian excavations. It was Dr. Peters who discovered and excavated the ancient city of Nippur and led the first archaeological expedition of the University of Pennsylvania to Babylonia.
After nearly a century of use, St. Michael’s Church embarked on a three-year restoration in 1989. Nicholson & Galloway, Inc. cleaned and repointed 20,000 square feet of the limestone façade. The church bells and the timber supports of the belfry were removed and restored. The entire Spanish tiled roof was removed and 18,000 square feet of original tile was replaced with matching Ludowici clay tiles.
But inside something daring was going on. Fine Art Decorating of Manhattan restored the Tiffany interiors and then went a step further. Because plans for the rest of the church were never completed by Tiffany, the firm carefully designed decorations in the Tiffany spirit.
Costing over half a million dollars, the result is dazzling. The sanctuary that for nearly a century had moped in drab neutral colors now exploded in vivid primary colors with gold accents. The entire space was now cohesive, perhaps as the renowned decorating firm had originally envisioned.
St. Michael’s Church was listed on the National Register of Historic Places and the New York State Register of Historic Places in 1997.
KID SIZE TEE SHIRTS ON SALE NOW AT ROHS VISITOR CENTER KIOSK SIZES XS S M L XL $20-
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DAYTONIAN IN MANHATTAN
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Collection of the Museum of the City of New York (c)
Issue #1562
34-01 38th Avenue. Pierce Arrow Building 1921 MCNY (C)
The building today on the corner of Northern Blvd. (Check out the cars in both photos)
350 Fifth Avenue. Empire State Building, view of from Lincoln Building, East 42nd Street
New York Worlds Fair. Perisphere and Trylon steel frame 1938 MCNY (C)
Description: Possibly Metropolitan Printing Plant. Dated ca. 1910-1935 MCNY (C)
Courtyard at the Cloisters. 1935 MCNY (C)
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ALL WURTS BROS. PHOTOS COPYRIGHT MUSEUM OF THE CITY OF NEW YORK (C)
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The house itself, a Romanesque Revival mansion completed in 1893 that spread across the northeast corner of 66th Street and Fifth Avenue like an open book, was sober and restrained.
Compared to Caroline and John Jacob Astor IV’s fantastical French Renaissance chateau one block south, as well as the many other gaudy showpieces lining the Gilded Age’s millionaire mile, it had an air of unobtrusive understatement.
But the rough-stone facade and turreted bays belied an interior so extraordinary, it made the house not just a family mansion but also a landmark of decoration filled with masterfully placed art and antiquities from all over the world.
The husband and wife who built this “house of fantasy,” as one newspaper retrospective called it, were not only fabulously wealthy but also well-known in business, political, and social circles of the 19th and early 20th centuries: Henry O. and Louisine Havemeyer.
Henry Havemeyer—known as Harry—was the heir to a family sugar dynasty that operated a refinery along the East River in South Williamsburg. Hence Williamsburg’s Havemeyer Street, which may have been named for the sugary refinery or possibly for William Frederick Havemeyer, a relative who served three stints as New York’s mayor in the 19th century.
Starting as a teenage apprentice in the 1850s, Harry learned all about the business, from the secrets of sugar boiling to finance. Eventually he became one of the leaders of what was then called Havemeyer & Elder.
His work ethic and competitive nature helped Havemeyer & Elder corner the extremely competitive post–Civil War sugar market and make the East River waterfront the top sugar refining location in the nation. The company built a state-of-the-art refinery on the same spot in the 1880s, ran afoul of anti-trust laws, and in 1901 introduced a new name, Domino—which maintained a presence in Williamsburg until 2004.
While Harry was a fierce businessman, he also enjoyed what seemed to be a fulfilling home life. Louisine, his second wife (above, with daughter Electra in an 1895 portrait by Mary Cassatt), was the daughter of his former business partner George W. Elder.
Later in life, Louisine would become known as a feminist and suffrage supporter who was arrested outside the White House during a 1919 march. But as a 19-year-old student on an extended trip to Paris with her family, she was introduced to painter Mary Cassatt—who became a pivotal figure.
“When we first met in Paris, [Cassatt] was very kind to me, showing me the splendid things in the great city, making them still more splendid by opening my eyes to see their beauty through her own knowledge and appreciation,” recalled Louisiane in her autobiography, via the Shelburne Museum website.
“With Cassatt’s tasteful eye and tap on the pulse of the Parisian art world, she guided Mrs. Havemeyer during their initial meetings to purchase modern art—works by Edgar Degas (1834-1917), Edouard Manet (1832-1883), and Cassatt herself—which would inform her, and later, her husband’s collecting interests,” states the Shelburne museum.
Harry and Louisine married in 1883, had three children, and spent the rest of their lives collaborating as art collectors. Harry had already purchased items on his own, such as carved ivory figures, Japanese lacquered boxes, and sword guards. Louisine continued her interest in scooping up the work of French Impressionists.
Eventually their collection included “nearly 2,000 Egyptian, Greek and Roman, Asian, Islamic and European paintings, sculptures, drawings, prints, and decorative objects,” wrote Michael Kimmelman in the New York Times in 1993.
As their collection grew, they needed a mansion with the proper light and grandeur to display their holdings. The commission to design the house went to architect Charles Coolidge Haight. For the interiors, they turned to the design firm run by Louis Comfort Tiffany and Samuel Colman.
“While Colman supervised the decorative schemas, Tiffany saw to the fabrication of opulent decorative elements that resembled giant pieces of jewelry,” states the University of Michigan Art Museum website.
Perhaps the most imaginative feature in the house could be found in the second-floor picture gallery: a “flying” staircase. “The spectacular staircase was suspended, like a necklace, from one side of the balcony to the other,” wrote art and architectural critic Aline Saarinen, as quoted in Splendid Legacy.
Also inventive in Louisine’s second-floor bedroom (below) overlooking Fifth Avenue was Tiffany’s use of “what seem to be two long printing blocks, possibly Indian and perhaps for textiles, adorn the headboard and footboard for the bed,” wrote Frelinghuysen.
“Every component of the eclectic interior décor pushed the limits of decorative design by merging principles of jewelry design, mosaic art, sculpture, metalwork, and textile and furniture design,” the Michigan museum continued. “Not one square inch was neglected; no surface was left untouched.”
What Tiffany and Colman created was a sumptuous work of art in itself. Visitors would go through the metal and opalescent front doors and find themselves in the main entrance hall (fifth image), with a glass mosaic-faced staircase and a frieze of “individual mosaic panels that repeated a motif of Islamic character,” states Alice Cooney Frelinghuysen in Splendid Legacy: the Havemeyer Collection.
The library was known as the Rembrandt room (above), as it held the couple’s collection of Dutch pictures. Colman designed the furniture; the lighting fixture above the desk may be the first extant Tiffany chandelier, suggests Frelinghuysen, who was a family descendant by marriage.
It would not have been unusual for wealthy mansion dwellers to have art galleries in their homes. But because of their extensive collection and vision for how to display it, in partnership with Tiffany and Colman, the Havemeyers created a harmonious, enchanting, and spectacular space that received international attention.
Even after Harry passed away in 1907, Louisine continued collecting. Following her death in 1929, much of the couple’s holdings were bequeathed to the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Some went to the Shelburne Museum in Vermont, which was co-founded in 1947 by youngest daughter and art collector in her own right Electra Havemeyer Webb.
And the mansion itself? This fortress of art and antiquities went to the three children, who had the magnificent interiors broken up, sold off (some artifacts went to the University of Michigan Museum of Art), and the house demolished. Its replacement is an 18-story co-op completed in 1949.
A final relic of the Havemeyer fortune still stands in Williamsburg. The Domino sugar refinery is part of a complex rebranded Domino Park that includes the facade of the old brick refinery—an eerie ghost of one of the many riverfront industries that powered the fortunes made during the Gilded Age.
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.
As New York City rapidly grew so did its postal needs. In 1845 the post office was working out of the defunct Middle Dutch Church – a bleak structure already 200 years old at the time.
By the time of the Civil War, the old church building could no longer handle the increased mass of mail and the need for a new facility was obvious. A congressional investigation reported that “the present post office building was totally unfitted for an inadequate to the present wants of the postal business.”
The Middle Dutch Church building on Nassau Street was home to the post office in the early 19th Century — NYPL Collection
In 1857 the President of the United States authorized Congress to purchase a site for a new post office in New York “at a cost not to exceed $500,000.”
The wheels of government turned slowly and eleven years later, on May 16, 1866 Congress resolved to appoint a commission to select a proper site for a multi-purpose structure. In the time between the President’s authorization and the formation of the congressional committee the average amount of mail processed in the old church had grown from 10 to 100 tons per day.
Congress envisioned a structure that would house the postal business of New York City as well as the United States Courts and would require “a space of land equal to from twenty-five to thirty city lots.” The spot selected was the tip of City Hall Park, directly in front of the elegant Federal-style City Hall.
The price tag place on the plot by the city was $500,000; perhaps not coincidentally exactly the maximum amount allowable. The New York Times offered its opinion, “We believe that, as the Government has got the ground so cheap, it will be inclined to act liberally as regards the structure.”
A contest among architects was held for a winning design. Sadly, there was no winner. So a committee of architectural firms was appointed to review all the plans and perfect a design from among them. Included in the committee were some of the most influential architects of the time including Richard Hunt and James Renwick, Jr. The result was a monumental French Second Empire pile that The Times called “pure French Renaissance style, and represents a chaste and harmonious combination and grouping of parts.”
Architect Alfred B. Mullett, who had submitted his own design in the competition, didn’t think so.
After he aggressively lobbied against the extravagant expense of the group design, he was handed the project to complete.
By early 1869 still little seemed to have been accomplished, other than plans for a “grand plaza” in the remainder of the park between City Hall and the proposed post office building. The editor of The Times recommended that the plaza “should be made as nearly like the Place de la Concorde in Paris as possible.”
Finally in August of that year ground was broken – while squabbling still continued over the intended site by groups opposed to the location. As excavation progressed, five human skeletons were discovered, remnants of a potter’s field, as well as several gold coins. The laborer who found the coins did not report back to work the following day.
As the Post Office rose, it was praised by the press. Readers were told it would be “renaissance, of the French school,” according to The Times in January 1870 and “The exterior will be treated in the Doric style, each story embracing an order which will be increased in richness from the ground to the cornice.”
Four stories of granite rose like a grey stone wedding cake to a bulbous mansard roof. The colossal edifice cost a staggering $8.5 million — $5 million over the proposed cost and approximately $156 million in 2011 dollars.
The state-of-the-art sorting room — NYPL collection
Up-to-the-minute innovations, like a system of pneumatic tubes that whisked mail to sub-stations and distribution points, improved delivery. The Federal Government rented the upper offices for judges and lawyers as well as for hearing rooms and court rooms. And it immediately became a must-see spot for tourists.
Looking back with a 21st Century viewpoint, we see Mullett’s grand edifice as a wonderful and splashy example of Victoriana at its best – a lush pile of ornament and shapes. The AIA Guide to New York City says it was “a rich building inspired by Napoleon III’s Paris.”
The rarely-photographed rear facade facing City Hall Park — author’s collection
Contemporary opinion was not so kind. By the time the eleven-year construction project was completed the style was already out of date. Almost immediately it was dubbed Mullett’s Monstrosity” and, in comparison to the tall buildings rising around it, was likened to a portly dowager squatting in the park. The Century Magazine called it “a showy granite building.”
Horse-drawn drays line up at the loading docks (far left) in 1909 — photograph from author’s collection
The New York Sun derided Mullett as “the most arrogant, pretentious, and preposterous little humbug in the United States.” In 1890 the architect ended his life in Washington DC.
By 1912 there were calls for the demolition of the giant building. The Times wrote “The Mullett Post Office has always been an architectural eyesore, and has, from the first, been unsatisfactory to the Postal Service and the Federal Courts beneath its roof.”
Trolley cars snarl in front of the post office building in 1905 — NYPL Collection
Dissatisfaction grew and in 1921, only four decades after its opening, the reviled post office was deemed obsolete. Postmaster Edward M. Morgan stated that the facility was “totally inadequate” and noted that the Government spent about $900,000 in rent in the building; while Postmaster General Will H. Hays admitted “almost universal sentiment on the part of the people of this city is to have their old park restored to its original colonial form and beauty.”
The New York Times added its own brutal criticism. “The city spoiled the park for a mess of pottage,” it said, “Except for cheapness there is no merit in the present building.” Calling the Post Office “an architectural abomination,” the editorial quoted Postmasters Willcox, Patten and Morgan as deeming it “inconvenient, inadequate, unhealthful.”
That year, in what now seems the pinnacle of irony, the New York Historical Society and the Sons of the Revolution garnered the assistance of “many persons and associations active in the conservation of historical landmarks and beauties of the city” to attack the problem of “ridding the park of what everybody regards as a nuisance.”
Although the dispute between the Federal government and the city over ownership of the land provided a temporary stay of execution for the post office; New York’s attempts to beautify the city for the upcoming 1939 World’s Fair hastened the end. In 1938 Mullett’s elaborate granite masterpiece with its columns and porches, mansards and iron cresting, was bulldozed to rubble.
Today the old City Hall Post Office is remembered as one of the best examples of monumental French Second Empire architecture in the United States – along with Mullett’s Old Executive Office Building in Washington DC. However there are few who remember it at all. Posted by Tom Miller
NON-PROFIT DISCUSS THEIR GROUPS HOWARD AXEL OF THE FDR FOUR FREEDOMS STATE PARK, JUDITH BERDY, MODERATOR, CHRISTINA DELFICO OF Idig2Learn, BOBBIE SLONEVSKY-EDITOR OF BLACKWELL’S ALMANAC AT THE RIHS EVENT ON MONDAY
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DAYTONIAN IN MANHATTAN
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.
NYPL RI Branch Monday, October 20th 6:30 P.M. THE ROOSEVELT ISLAND HISTORICAL SOCIETY & THE NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY
“ROOSEVELT ISLAND AT 50”
Our next program in our 50th anniversary series presents: Non-Profit Island Discussion with Howard Axel and Christina Delfico.
Yesterday, two friends and I ventured to Grand Central Terminal to see the photo exbibit “Dear New York .”
The terminal was mobbed with commuters, tourists, demonstators from the No Kings demonstration and I made a quick exit to The Transit Museum Gallery located in a quiet corner of the terminal.
The skylight above the escalators bring more light into the terminal
Nothing makes me happier than being in the grand main terminal
The pillars had new views
Outside the Transit Museum Gallery, a demonstator taking his politics to the terminal
A Century of The New Yorker’s Transportation Cartoons
Commentary on the Commute
Many of the cartoons are over a century old.
Great transit map!
HALLOWEEN EXTRAVAGANZA IN THE OCTAGON LOBBY
Credits
Commute: A Century of The New Yorker’s Transportation Cartoons. Showcasing work from 57 artists, the exhibit includes a selection of cartoons and covers from The New Yorker whose subjects should be familiar to anyone who has ever taken public transportation: the uniqueness of New Yorkers, the challenges of the commute, the daily sea of humanity (and critters) that move through the region, and the grittiness and the grandeur that is New York. On view now through October.
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.
NYPL RI Branch Monday, October 20th 6:30 P.M. THE ROOSEVELT ISLAND HISTORICAL SOCIETY & THE NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY
“ROOSEVELT ISLAND AT 50”
Our next program in our 50th anniversary series presents: Non-Profit Island Discussion with Howard Axel and Christina Delfico.
Howard Axel, the CEO of Four Freedoms Park Conservancy responsible for maintaining and operating FDR Four Freedoms Park on Roosevelt Island, NY. Axel is a nonprofit executive committed to bringing the best of business practices to sustainable social impact efforts in the United States. Axel has 13+ years of experience in fundraising, creating and stewarding strategic partnerships, executing marketing and social media-driven crowdsourcing opportunities for non-profits and entertainment brands.
In 2012, Christina Delfico founded iDig2Learn because she recognized the need for a local organization that would connect city children and their families with nature. Leveraging her expertise as an Emmy-nominated children’s media producer, she saw the chance to disconnect children from their screens and get them outside. Developing and facilitating enriching opportunities soon expanded to include spotlighting smart waste reduction practices to support a healthy environment. Today, iDig2Learn creates experiences for all ages and abilities.
From Public Hanging to Electric Chair: Kemmler, Edison & Tesla
(also: Executions on Blackwell’s Island)
Weekend, October 18-19, 2025
Issue #1557
New York Almanack
Jaap Harskamp
From Public Hanging to Electric Chair: Kemmler, Edison & Tesla
Italian jurist and criminologist Cesare Beccaria was a leading figure in Milan’s Enlightenment circles. In 1764 he published his treatise Dei delitti e delle pene which made an instant impact. Translated in many languages, an English version appeared in 1767 as On Crimes and Punishments.
Advocating proportionality of punishment, Beccaria was one of the first thinkers to make a case against the death penalty by claiming that it is “better to prevent crimes than to punish them.”
Insisting that there is no justification for the taking of life by the state, his exposition made a strong impact in Europe and America. Both George Washington and Thomas Jefferson acquired a copy of the book in 1769. The latter scribbled more than two dozen passages from Beccaria’s study into his “commonplace book” (a diary of his reading).
When asked by a reporter what would be the greatest challenge to any political career, British Prime Minister Harold Macmillan reputedly replied: “Events, dear boy, events.” Incidents happen and tend to knock governments off course or instigate change.
Against the background of Enlightenment thinking, unpredicted events made an impact on the way in which society dealt with crime and punishment, both in London and New York – and there were many similarities.
Tyburn Theater
In early nineteenth-century England there were more than two hundred offenses carrying the death penalty, from stealing sheep to treason, arson or murder. Until 1783, Tyburn (a village close to the current location of Marble Arch) served as London’s primary place of execution.
Public display of hangings was a vital part of a legal system that relied upon deterring people from committing crime. Executions were spectacles that followed a regulated protocol. For the occasion to set a fearful example, the “performance” had to be a dramatic one.
A public execution was set for three days after trial, allowing time for repentance and reconciliation. The event itself was both ritual and spectacle.
Large numbers of onlookers, men, women and children, enjoyed the atmosphere. It was a family affair and a profitable day for vendors, pickpockets and prostitutes. Printed broadsides were offered for sale telling stories of murderers, pirates, traitors and other felons. Such tales enhanced the excitement.
On hanging day, the condemned person was transported from Newgate Prison to the execution site in a two-mile procession through central London. The journey took place on an open cart and drinks were consumed on the way. The “parade” could last for several hours. A rowdy mob followed the cart, pelting the convicted criminal with rotten vegetables and stones.
The prison chaplain accompanied the criminal (not all, but mostly males) during the procession and on to the scaffold, praying for him. An addition to the process was the “gallows speech.” The spiritual state of those facing death was believed to possess a special truth.
Convention dictated that a felon confessed his sins. In doing so, he accepted the fairness of his sentence and the legitimacy of the justice system.
But convicts did not always adhere to expectations in their final address. Some claimed innocence; others complained of injustices in their conviction. Increasingly, spectators demanded “firework” from the platform.
An outrageous speech electrified onlookers who became vocally involved in this carnival of death. Then the hangman appeared, the noose was adjusted and a bag drawn over the criminal’s head. The horse would be lashed to move the cart and leave the criminal hanging in the air.
Procession and execution would serve, according to Henry Fielding in An Enquiry into the Causes of the Late Increase of Robbers (1751), to “add the Punishment of Shame to that of Death; in order to make the Example an Object of greater Terror.”
The regularity of hangings however led to execution-fatigue amongst the public and a hardening of moral senses. Around the mid-eighteenth century critics began demanding a stop to public executions.
By 1861 the number of capital offenses was reduced to five (murder, piracy, arson, espionage and high treason). Seven years later, the Capital Punishment Amendment Act was passed, requiring that hangings must be conducted in private.
The last public execution took place on May 26, 1868, when Irish activist Michael Barrett was hanged for his part in the Clerkenwell bomb explosion of December 1867 in which twelve bystanders died.
Hanging John Johnson
When European peoples emigrated to settle in what is now the United States, they brought with them the laws and customs of their homelands. England introduced the death penalty into the American colonies.
The first recorded instance took place in 1608 when Captain George Kendall was executed in Jamestown, Virginia, for plotting to betray the English to the Spanish. He was executed in front of a firing squad.
New York’s history of capital punishment also goes back to colonial times. During various periods from the 1600s onward, its legal provisions prescribed the death penalty for crimes such as sodomy, rape, adultery, counterfeiting or perjury. Most executions were carried out by hanging.
By 1796, the legislature authorized construction of the State’s first penitentiary and reduced the number of capital crimes from thirteen to two (murder and treason, to which arson was added in 1808).
John Johnson was a family man who kept his wife and children at an upstate farm whilst he ran a seedy boarding house for mariners at 65 Front Street, Lower Manhattan, close to the buzzing port.
One day in 1823, the body of a Boston sailor named James Murray was discovered in a nearby alley. His head had been split open with a hatchet.
Murray had rented a room at Johnson’s lodge. When police officers found bloody sheets in the cellar of the property, the latter was accused of robbery and murder. Under interrogation Johnson made conflicting statements, admitting to the crime, then retracting his statement, blaming another guest for the attack.
The case attracted wide publicity. Whether Johnson was fairly treated is unclear, but public interest in the story reached fever pitch as details were splashed across newspapers. Decrying his innocence to the end of the trial, he was sentenced to hang on April 2, 1824.
Seated on a coffin in an open wagon, Johnson was transported from Bridewell Prison through Broadway to a field at the junction of Second Avenue and 13th Street (once part of Peter Stuyvesant’s “Bouwerie”). He was accompanied to the gallows by a minister and escorted by infantrymen who had to hold back an over-excited pack of onlookers.
His hanging was witnessed by a huge crowd. Estimates vary between thirty and fifty thousand spectators which, at the time, was almost a third of New York City’s entire population.
His body was then taken to the College of Physicians and Surgeons at Barclay Street, Manhattan, where it was subjected to a number of medical “experiments.”
Public Executions
Wherever they took place, public executions were unruly affairs, achieving the opposite of their intended effect. Instead of deterring people from crime, these events were an orgy of drunkenness debauchery and pick-pocketing. There were many observers who called for a stop to public hangings on moral grounds.
The city authorities seemed to agree – but for an entirely different reason. The execution of John Johnson had caused gridlock conditions in Manhattan. His macabre death marked a change in decision making.
Future executions were to be moved to nearby Blackwell’s Island (now Roosevelt Island) where crowds would not be able to reach proceedings. The outcome proved even worse. Nothing could deter the mob from entertainment.
On May 7, 1829, the double execution of convicted murderers Richard Johnson (a white man) and Catharine Cashier (a Black woman), was to take place on the island.
That day The Evening Post reported that large crowds had gathered outside Bridewell Prison at an early hour. Broadway was “blocked up with spectators, so much so as to make it difficult for carriages to pass; and for a short time before the procession moved, every avenue leading to the prison was completely closed.”
The prisoners were supposed to have been moved quickly to the port where a chartered steamer awaited them, but several delays allowed a huge crowd to build up. There was worse to come.
When the ship left dock, thousands of spectators had piled into small vessels and ringed the island. Many made their way ashore. This time gridlock prevailed on the East River.
Regular water traffic was brought to a halt, whilst steamboats packed with spectators jostled for the best vantage point. At least three small vessels overturned and a number of people drowned.
It turned out to be one of the last public executions staged in the city of New York. The council ordered that all future hangings would take place in prison behind closed-doors. Only a select number of people were allowed to attend proceedings.
Final Event
The final public execution in the City took place on July 13, 1860. Sailor and lifelong petty criminal Albert Hicks had joined a three men crew of the E.A. Johnson, a sloop docked on the Hudson River which he knew to be carrying cash for buying oysters in Virginia.
When the vessel approached Staten Island, he grasped an axe, killed his colleagues, stole all money and valuables, and reached the shore in a small rowing boat. When coast guards entered the abandoned and blood-bathed sloop, they just found mutilated body parts.
After a huge manhunt, Hicks was arrested at a boarding house in Providence, Rhode Island, where detectives recovered some of the stolen goods. He was returned to Manhattan and tried for piracy in a Federal Court.
The case created a sensation. Public executions were proscribed by New York State by then, but the federal government had no such ban. New Yorkers wanted Hicks to hang. He was taken to Bedloe’s Island to be executed.
Having undergone a religious conversion in prison, Hicks stepped calmly towards the gallows as if resigned to his fate. He was smartly dressed, wearing his favorite wide-brimmed Kossuth hat down low of one eye. An estimated 12,000 rowdy spectators had turned up to view the display from boats anchored in New York Bay.
Hicks made no gallows speech. Kneeling down for a brief prayer, he spoke his last words. “Hang me quick – make haste.”
The hangman slipped a hood over his head, placed a rope around his neck and pulled the lever. When the weights dropped, Hicks was thrown six meters into the air, his neck snapping at the third vertebra.
The crowd cheered. A quarter of a century later, Bedloe’s Island (renamed Liberty Island in 1956) became home of the Statue of Liberty.
The public spectacle of official physical punishment disappeared from legal proceedings in the aftermath. The word “punish” itself became suspect. The renaming of institutions was evidence thereof.
The slammer became a penal institution; prison was turned into a house of correction. The new name was a euphemism in order to expel memories of a brutal past. Metaphorically at least, it suggested a more humane regime.
Humane Methods
Physician Joseph-Ignace Guillotin was one of ten Parisian deputies in the French Assembly and an advocate of prison reform. In October 1789 he proposed that capital punishment should take place by means of a “painless” mechanism as a first step towards the abolition of the death penalty altogether.
While he did not invent the guillotine, the politician’s name became an eponym for it. He also vowed to make punishment a more private process, but the public was not convinced. A “hidden” execution was considered suspicious.
The first time that the guillotine was applied, the Chronique de Paris reported widespread protests and calls for “Give us back our gallows.”
Nearly a century later (1886), New York State established a committee to determine a less cruel system to replace hanging. Dentist Alfred Southwick came up with the idea of putting electric currents through a chair.
A prototype was built by employees of Thomas Alva Edison’s works at West Orange, New Jersey. Edison suggested that the system of alternating current (AC) system, developed by his arch-rival, Serbian-born engineer Nikola Tesla, be applied to for its superior lethal power.
The first person to be executed in this manner was William Kemmler at New York Auburn Prison on August 6, 1890. He descended from a dysfunctional family of German immigrants; William himself was notorious for drinking binges in his Buffalo neighborhood. He murdered his wife Tillie Ziegler with a hatchet.
On the morning of his execution, Kemmler was presented to seventeen witnesses in attendance. The first passage of current through his body lasted seventeen seconds. It caused unconsciousness, but failed to stop his heart.
The generator was re-charged and in a second attempt William was shocked with 2,000 volts. Blood vessels ruptured and his body caught fire. The stench in the death chamber “was unbearable,” according to a report in The New York Times.
The entire process took eight minutes. Those present described the execution as a grotesque and shocking spectacle, one far worse than hanging.
The botched nature of the act in addition to the disputed legal proceedings leading up to Kemmler’s execution caused widespread concern and would contribute to the rise of movements that pleaded for the abolition of capital punishment altogether.
After examining Kemmler’s body, Tesla declared that death by electrocution was “cruel torture” and that the chair should never be used again.
HALLOWEEN EXTRAVAGANZA IN THE OCTAGON LOBBY
Credits
New York Almanack Illustrations from above: Detail of portrait of Cesare Beccaria by Jean-Baptiste-François Bosio, nd (Metropolitan Museum of Art); Contemporary image of a Hanging Day at Tyburn, London; An Enquiry Into the Causes of the Late Increase of Robbers; H. R. Robinson, “Old Bridewell, Manhattan”; A Correct Copy of the Trial and Conviction of Richard Johnson (New York); “Hicks the Pirate,” a murder ballad by H. S. Backus (sung to “The Rose Tree”); Prototype of the first electric chair, 1890; and a contemporary illustration of Kemmler’s execution.
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.
