Monday, June 12, 2023 – SOME WONDERFUL TILEWORK THAT IS IN MANY N.Y. LANDMARKS

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Are you interested in History & specifically OUR unique histories on Roosevelt Island?

Roosevelt Island Historical Society is looking for new Board Members to help us continue to serve the Roosevelt Island community.

We are regretfully losing two of our longtime Board members–one is moving and one is retiring. We are thankful for their years of service & will miss them both dearly.

We are also excited for this opportunity to meet new neighbors with diverse backgrounds to help move RIHS forward. If YOU are interested in history–and specifically Roosevelt Island’s unique and messy history–please contact us. We would value you as a Board Member to help keep Roosevelt Island’s history a LIVING history!

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FROM THE ARCHIVES

MONDAY,  JUNE 12,  2023

ISSUE#  1012

BEAUTIFUL LOCATIONS

TO FIND

GUASTAVINO TILES IN NYC

PART 2

UNTAPPED NEW YORK

We all know our visitor center probably has the smallest
Guastavino ceiling in New York.  Here are some that are much larger and more grand.

The Cathedral of St. John the Divine is the world’s largest cathedral, but remains unfinished. In cross-shaped churches, a tower or a dome is constructed over the intersection of the four arms of the cross; a junction called the “crossing.” Guastavino tiles were used to build the dome that hovers over St. John the Divine cathedral’s crossing, the side aisles of the nave, as well as the staircases.

The Guastavino tile system lends major stability to the dome, also making it one of the largest free-standing domes in the world. It is now near impossible that the cathedral will ever be completed, as new apartment buildings have risen where the trancepts would have been built.

Image courtesy Prospect Park Alliance by Elizabeth Keegin-Colley

Prospect Park contains many structures built using Guastavino tiles, including the entrance shelters at Grand Army Plaza, the Willink Entrance Comfort Station, the tennis shelter, and the menagerie.

The Boathouse, in particular, features beautifully colored Guastavino tiles, which have shone brighter since the building was restored in 1999. The Beaux Arts landmark was built in 1905, and is now an Audubon Center, the first of its kind in the United States. Also, check out 12 other secrets about Prospect Park.

The entrance to the Bronx Zoo elephant house — now the Zoo Center — has two adjacent domes overhead. The domes are lined with the characteristic herringbone pattern of Guastavino tiles, which train your eyes to the vaulted ceiling of the one-story Beaux-Arts building, located in Astor Court.

Today, the space is home to monitors, Komodo dragons, and southern white rhinoceros, but make sure to look up and spend time studying the grandeur of the Guastavinos’ work

Wolfgang’s Steakhouse (formerly the Della Robbia Bar) would have clearly been a stunning place to enter when it was built in 1913, but today it is even more remarkable for the fact that it is the “lone remnant of an interior ensemble destroyed in a 1960s modernization of the former Vanderbilt Hotel into a multi-use building,” write Gura and Wood in Interior Landmarks: Treasures of New York. The Vanderbilt Hotel was part of a larger grand plan around Grand Central Terminal, known as Terminal City.

Wolfgang’s is also an example of preservation and landmarking by means of community, grass-roots efforts. In this case, the organization Friends of Terra Cotta campaigned for its designation. In addition to the tiling work, the restaurant interior features polychrome ornamental tile by the Rookwood Pottery Company of Cincinnati.

A few steps after getting off the Roosevelt Island tram, you will be greeted by a stately but tiny welcome center. The welcome center structure dates to around 1909 when the Queensboro Bridge once had a trolley line, but this building was only moved here in 2007. There were five trolley kiosks, located between the inbound and outbound lower level roads between 59th and 60th Street. Like other parts of the Queensboro Bridge, the visitors center is one of the places in New York City you can find Guastavino tiling.

The last trolley ran on this line in 1957 and three of the five kiosks were demolished. One was moved to the Brooklyn Children’s Museum in Crown Heights where it functioned as the entrance to the museum until the museum was completely redesigned. Judith Berdy, President of the Roosevelt Island Historical Society, spearheaded the efforts to get the kiosk moved to Roosevelt Island, where it was restored and reopened as a visitors center.

The Old St. Patrick’s Cathedral in Nolita is yet another location that features Guastavino tiles. The tiles, are located in the catacombs below ground, where many past archbishops and cardinals are buried. Pictured here is a crypt for the Eckert family, above which you can spot the green-hued Guastavino tiles. Old St. Patrick’s Cathedral is one of the two locations of catacombs in New York City, the other is located in Green-Wood Cemetery.

When the New York City subway first opened, the now abandoned City Hall station was referred to as “an underground cathedral,” according to John Ochsendorf, head of the Guastavino Research Project at MIT and co-curator of the “Palaces for the People” exhibit. Speaking to Susan Stamberg of Morning Edition in 2013, Ochsendorf continues, “The public was afraid to go underground at that time and so these vaults and this beautiful decorative, colorful ceiling really helped people feel comfortable in a grand space below the city.”

With its stunning tile work and stained glass windows, the station was designed to be the crown jewel of the New York City subway system. The architecture remains as beautiful as ever, but the station has been closed since 1945 due to its curved platform, which was deemed too short for longer trains that were later used.

Guastavino’s work appears in the Alexander Hamilton Custom’s House (the American Museum fo American Indian portion) as a giant domed ceiling in the massive rotunda under which workers once sat at the large marble counter to collect tariffs. The skylight that is supported by the dome weighs 140 tons and there is no metal support structure. The ceiling is made entirely of plaster and tile using the famous Guastavino method.

MONDAY PHOTO OF THE DAY
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WEEKEND  PHOTO OF THE DAY

THE HELL GATE BRIDGE UNDER CONSTRUCTION
ARON EISENPREISS AND ANDY SPARBERG
GOT IT RIGHT

Text by Judith Berdy
Thanks to Bobbie Slonevsky for her dedication to Blackwell’s Almanac and the RIHS
Thanks to Deborah Dorff for maintaining our website
Edited by Melanie Colter and Deborah Dorff

All image are copyrighted (c) Roosevelt Island Historical Society unless otherwise indicated

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THIS PUBLICATION FUNDED BY DISCRETIONARY FUNDS FROM CITY COUNCIL MEMBER JULIE MENIN & ROOSEVELT ISLAND OPERATING CORPORATION PUBLIC PURPOSE FUNDS.

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