Renaissance is a French word meaning rebirth or revival. The Harlem Renaissance was a social revolution and cultural explosion among the growing Black community of Harlem during the 1920s and early 1930s. Some of the best-known black artists of the period include Duke Ellington, Bessie Smith, Zora Neale Hurston, and Langston Hughes.
In 1900 Harlem was home to mostly white Americans. But over-development in 1905-06 left many apartments empty and African Americans began renting there in increasing numbers. They typically came from other parts of Manhattan – like the Tenderloin and San Juan Hill.
They also came from the South during the Great Migration, when Black people were escaping violence and racism and looking for freedom and new job opportunities in the north.
Although Black people were excluded from unions and many professions, the arts offered them some success.
Wintz notes that in 1924 Charles S. Johnson, a black sociologist and director of the Urban League, gathered a dozen writers for lunch at the New York Civic Club. This meeting then paved the way for many black writers, including Langston Hughes, Zora Neale Hurston, Aaron Douglas and Countee Cullen.
These writers created Fire!! magazine in 1926 to express the African American experience. Although only a single issue was published, it was impactful in expressing African American identity.
Several of the writers, including Hurston and Hughes had the backing of a wealthy white patron, Charlotte Osgood Mason. According to Wikipedia, she subsidized Hughes beginning in 1927.
There was, however, a downside to her patronage, as she was very controlling regarding his writing and other aspects of his life – ioncluding in the areas of the music he listened to and the books he read. He quickly cut ties after three years. Charlotte Mason’s relationship with Hurston was also controlling.
The website “Harlem Renaissance: History, Notable Figures and Decline,” mentions Langston Hughes as a prominent leader during the Renaissance and he “wrote poetry mainly to promote equality, condemn racism and injustice, and celebrate African American culture, humor, and spirituality.”
Zora Neale Hurston was also a literary leader. “With her striking wit, irreverence, and folk writing style, she soon gained a reputation as one of the major figures of the Harlem Renaissance,” according to one observer. Another key figure was Countee Cullen “who used art as a vehicle to minimize the distance between blacks and whites.”
The following are a few lines from Hughes, Hurston, and Cullen –
1926: Langston Hughes published “Weary Blues”:
“Droning a drowsy syncopated tune, Rocking back and forth to a mellow croon, I heard a Negro play. Down on Lenox Avenue the other night By the pale dull pallor of an old gas light He did a lazy sway. . . . He did a lazy sway. To the tune o’ those Weary Blues. With his ebony hands on each ivory key He made that poor piano moan with melody. O Blues!”
1927: Countee Cullen’s “From the Dark Tower”:
“We shall not always plant while others reap The golden increment of bursting fruit, Not always countenance, abject and mute, That lesser men should hold their brothers cheap; Not everlastingly while others sleep Shall we beguile their limbs with mellow flute, Not always bend to some more subtle brute; We were not made to eternally weep.”
1926: Zora Neale Hurston published “Spunk.” She often wrote in southern dialect:
“But that’s one thing Ah likes about Spunk Banks – he aint skeered of nothin’ on God’s green footstool.”
From literature, the rebirth spread to include the other arts.
According to The Smithsonian: “The Harlem Renaissance encompassed poetry and prose, painting and sculpture, jazz and swing, opera, and dance. What united these diverse art forms was their realistic presentation of what it meant to be black in America, what writer Langston Hughes called an “expression of our individual dark-skinned selves,” as well as a new militancy in asserting their civil and political rights.” At the height of the movement, Harlem was the center of black American culture, with black owned publishing houses, newspapers, music venues and playhouses.
The Kennedy Center’s website –Drop Me Off in Harlem, contains “Faces of the Harlem Renaissance” – photos and short biographies of the musicians, artists, actors, dancers, writers, and activists.
There is also a large map of Harlem with the names and locations of the famous clubs. This was the Roaring Twenties – folks were listening and dancing to jazz and blues everywhere – at the Cotton Club, the Savoy Ballroom, Small’s Paradise and many others.
The Cotton Club was for many years a venue for black musicians playing to white audiences. The Savoy was one of the first to integrate, and Smalls was also integrated and owned by an African American. Billie Holiday and Fats Waller were frequent entertainers at Smalls.
In musical theater, the musical revue “Shuffle Along” made history in 1921 and proved that audiences were interested in African American talent on Broadway. Many other musicals followed, creating a new era and unique art form.
Harlem during this time also had its own LGBTQ scene. According to Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History & Culture, Harlem was a haven for several prominent queer writers and entertainers. Among them were writer Langston Hughes, cabaret performer Jimmie Daniels, and jazz musician Billy Strayhorn. History.com lists another 6:
Wallace Thurman: playwright, poet, and publisher. He wrote The Blacker the Berry: A Novel of Negro Life in 1929. He was also editor of The Messenger,” an African American socialist journal.
Ethel Waters: blues singer – her three marriages ended in divorce, and she also had a relationship with dancer Ethel Williams, and the two were known as “The Two Ethels.” Later in life, she became religious and toured with Billy Graham.
Countee Cullen: poet; he had relationships with black and white men. A few lines from his poem “Heritage”: “What is Africa to me: Copper sun or scarlet sea, Jungle star or jungle track, Strong bronzed men, or regal black Women from whose loins I sprang When the birds of Eden sang?”
Alain Locke: writer, philosopher, patron, and Rhodes Scholar. In 1925 he published the article “Enter the New Negro” – a term meaning advocating for dignity, self respect and refusal to submit to racial segregation.
Gladys Bentley: singer, often using risqué lyrics. She married a white woman in 1930, then married a man later in life.
Richard Bruce Nugent: writer and painter; He was openly gay but later married. According to Wikipedia, he “had a long productive career bringing to light the creative process of gay and black culture.”
Alice Dunbar Nelson: poet, political activist. She married but also had relationships with women.
Angelina Weld Grimke: poet, activist, and journalist who wrote the influential play “Rachel.” The website includes a sample of Angela’s correspondence with Mamie Burrill: “Oh Mamie if you only knew how my heart overflows with love for you and how it yearns and pants for one more glimpse of your lovely face.” She signed the letter, “Your passionate lover.”
The South Florida Sun Sentinel ran an article about gay Harlem in May 2010: “Harlem Renaissance’s Gay Side.” It featured an exhibit at Florida Atlantic University entitled “Gay Voices of the Harlem Renaissance” – black gays and lesbians were said to be “in the life”. They usually found safe spaces in Harlem, including the Hot-Cha Club and the Clam House. They also gathered at rent parties, private nightclubs and drag balls.End of the Renaissance
As the 1920s drew to a close, and the stock market crashed in 1929, the Renaissance began to decline. During the 1930s social and political attitudes began to change, and the culture was becoming more conservative. The increasing poverty of the 1930s plus the race riot in 1935 were ending markers of the Renaissance in Harlem. The ideas it inspired continued for many years, and are still often reflected in today’s culture.The Renaissance RememberedFrom the 1970s through the early 2000s newspaper articles all over the country celebrated and memorialized the Harlem Renaissance:The Tennessean, August 1972 reviewed “The Harlem Renaissance Remembered”, a group of essays edited by Arna Bontemps. “Ask Arna Bonetmps. He was there – in Harlem in the Twenties, a young man sensitive, talented, and creative, when ‘the Negro was in vogue’.”Philadelphia Inquirer, July 1994: “looking Back at the Harlem Renaissance” it mentioned “The Portable Harlem Renaissance Reader” by David L. Lewis.The Journal News (White Plains), December 2000: “Harlem Renaissance Revisited: Library program recalls black culture in Manhattan in ‘20s”.The Daily Press of Newport News, Virginia, August 1987: article about a touring exhibit – “Harlem Renaissance: The Art of Black America”.Rocky Mount Telegram, North Carolina, September 1985: “The Harlem Renaissance is Explosion of Black Creative Expression”: it mentioned an exhibit in Washington, D.C. of writers, poets, painters, and musicians of the Renaissance.Bangor Daily News, March1990: listed the production of a play – “Harlem Renaissance” to be performed in Ellsworth, Maine. The play was on a national tour. Langston Hughes’ poem “Harlem” headed the article – “What happens to a dream deferred? Does it dry up like a raisin in the sun?…Or does it explode?”Macon Telegraph Georgia, January 1996: “Hurston’s Harlem: Festival Celebrates Literary Renaissance of ‘20s”Many books were also written about the Renaissance in the last 30 years, including:Black Culture and the Harlem Renaissance by Cary Wintz, 1988Voices from the Harlem Renaissance by Nathan I. Huggins, 1995I Too Sing America: The Harlem Renaissance at 100 by Wil Haygood et. al., 2018The Harlem Renaissance Remembered: Duke Ellington, Langston Hughes, Countee Cullen and the Sound of the Harlem Renaissance, 2010, is a unique audiobook.You can read more about the Harlem Renaissance in several articles here at New York Almanack.
For years I walked by this abandoned and deteriorated building. Today the interior was landmarked. The hotel has been open for a few years just a minute from City Hall.
PHOTO OF THE DAY
Christina Delfico of I dig2learn and Jovemay Santos, Director of Therapeutic Recreation at Coler worked with a team or residents and staff to do a massive planting around the main entrance yesterday,
CREDITS:
NEW YORK ALMANACK
Illustrations, from above: Allan Rohan Crite’s “School’s Out” (Smithsonian Museum of American Art); United Negro Improvement Association parade in Harlem on August 2, 1920 at 135th Street and Lenox Ave (NYPL); A film still representing gay Black men in Harlem (British Film Institute Gay).
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.
VOLUNTEERS NEEDED FOR THE RIHS TABLE AT ROOSEVELT ISLAND DAY
TEXT OR E-MAIL WITH YOUR AVAILABILITY FROM 10 A.M. TO 2 P.M. (917-744-3721, JBIRD134@AOL.COM).
WEDNESDAY, JUNE 5, 2024
ISSUE #1249
City Landmarks Victorian Atrium at The Beekman Hotel
6SQFT
The nine-story Victorian atrium at the Beekman Hotel is now a New York City landmark. The Landmarks Preservation Commission on Tuesday voted to designate the central atrium at 5 Beekman Street in the Financial District as an interior landmark, recognizing both its stunning architecture and the restoration project that returned the space to its 19th-century glory. Built as part of the commercial building Temple Court, and now the centerpiece for the converted Beekman Hotel, the space consists of eight tiers of galleries topped by a pyramid-shaped skylight.
“The Temple Court Building’s stunning skylighted atrium combined engineering ingenuity with beautiful design and incredible workmanship and helped make this building one of the most celebrated downtown towers of its era,” LPC Chair Sarah Carroll said. “Looking up through multiple stories of decorative cast-iron galleries to the skylight is truly breathtaking.”
“Thanks to a careful and sensitive restoration that adapted this tower and atrium to meet a new use and reopened this space as part of the site’s transformation into The Beekman Hotel, this historic atrium is once again able to be viewed and appreciated, and its designation ensures it will be enjoyed for generations to come.”
Located at the corners of Nassau and Beekman Streets, Temple Court was one of the city’s first skyscrapers when it opened in 1883. The red brick and terra cotta building was designed by Silliman & Farnsworth and featured more than 200 offices opening onto the ornately decorated galleries surrounding the central atrium. At the top, is a pyramidal skylight with decorative metalwork.
Considered to be a fire hazard, the atrium was walled off starting in the 1940s. The last tenants moved out of Temple Court in 2001 and the building sat vacant, and inaccessible to the public, until the restoration was completed in 2016.
As part of the hotel-condo conversion led by GFI Capital Resources Group, GKV Architects restored much of the original interior, including the cast-iron balconies, the skylight, the atrium, and the millwork on the doors and window openings surrounding the atrium.
“GFI Development LLC is proud to have restored the Temple Court Building to its former spectacular glory,” Eric Bass, GFI Capital Resources Group Executive Vice President of Development, said. “We are delighted to be the stewards of this newly designated interior landmark which we feel is one of the most architecturally significant interiors in New York City.”
The owner supported the landmarking of the interior but expressed concern about the ability to make changes to non-historic elements, including the first-level bar and some windows and doors. The commission on Tuesday said the regulatory framework will allow for flexibility with the configuration of this level, which includes the two restaurants Le Gratin by Chef Daniel Boulud and Temple Court by Tom Collichio.
The commission calendared the atrium in February and a public hearing was held last month. Tuesday’s designation marks the city’s 122nd interior landmark.
Next to the historic Temple Court building is a new 51-story condo tower dubbed The Beekman Residences, where homes are currently starting at $1,400,000.
For years I walked by this abandoned and deteriorated building. Today the interior was landmarked. The hotel has been open for a few years just a minute from City Hall.
Photo of the Day: The map of Roosevelt Island on exhibit at Gallery RIVAA.
CREDITS:
6SQFT Architect’s Newspaper The Beekman Hotel
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.
On a Saturday in late November 1893, The World ran an article about what headline writers dubbed the “phantom phaeton.”
In the late 19th century city, everyone would have known what a phaeton was—a horse-drawn carriage with short sides and oversize wheels. Wealthier New Yorkers tended to be the ones riding and driving this light, sporty vehicle.
But the phantom phaeton The World wrote about had no horses pulling it, and its driver went unidentified. “For the past week a mysterious, self-propelling carriage has astonished the afternoon throng in Central Park,” the article stated.
“It threads its way easily among the crush of equipages on the East Drive, turning, winding in and out, and checking or increasing speed as readily as any of the vehicles drawn by horses.”
After cruising through Central Park following a 3:30 p.m. stop in front of the Plaza Hotel, the phantom phaeton would then turn west and end up on Riverside Drive. “It moves noiselessly and without smoke, gliding along without any locomotive-like clankings or puffings,” wrote The World.
The phantom phaeton wasn’t New York City’s first automobile; in 1885 a manufacturer on West 53rd Street was making a type of motor car called the Allen.
But it might have been one of the first to make regular appearances along the crowded drives of Central Park, where people were stunned by what The World called “a novelty” that could “cover a mile” in two minutes.
The World addressed the mystery: where did this “motor wagon” with rubber tires come from, and how does it work? A reporter tracked the phaeton to Jones’ Wood, a tract of land between Lenox Hill and the East River that was once considered as the ideal spot for Gotham’s first public park.A specific owner was never identified, but the reporter wrote that it was “of a type said to be popular in Germany….The motor is driven by gas which is generated as needed by ordinary benzine, which is carried in a closed copper tank under the seat….The speed is regulated at will and the steering done by the valves before the seat.”What the article doesn’t say is what we know now: the era of the automobile was beginning. In 1899, the city held its first “automobile parade,” featuring electric and steam-powered cars. (Video below)
To see movie go to:
A year later, Madison Square Garden became the site of the first National Automobile Show (fourth image)—the same year New York State counted 500 registered privately owned cars, and “automobile stages” began ferrying passengers on Fifth Avenue.
By 1910, cars were a regular part of the streetscape, and in 1920 the first traffic signal went up on Fifth Avenue and 42nd Street. (A little too late for Henry Bliss, the first New Yorker to be killed by a car; in 1899 he was struck by an electric taxi at Central Park West and 74th Street.)
The World article ended by asking a coachman who worked at the West Side stable of John D. Crimmins what he thought of the phantom phaeton, which cruised past the stable on its daily trips across Manhattan.
The coachman said automobiles should be a success for country driving. “‘But for city use,’ he added, ‘no machine can take the place of a skilled hand on the box.'”
“But then, people scoffed at Robert Fulton when he began,” concluded The World.
PHOTO OF THE DAY
This food cart sits virtually rent-free at the subway 24/7, taking away business from our island businesses that pay high rents, taxes, and insurance. They struggle while the cart sits comfortably at the prime subway stop, attracting mostly tourists. It’s time to stand up for our island merchants who are losing out to this freeloader.
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.
Francene BenjaminArline L. Bronzaft, Ph.DCaptain Dania CastroLindsey CormackGladys DixonEmily EleusizovElyse Foladare, Esq.Barbara Hannah GruffermanWendy L. Hersh CRC, LMHCFior HidalgoSahar HusainMonique C. James, MDGunisha Kaur, MD, MAElana KoenigDora MarcialMonica McKane-SanchezLaurette D. Mulry, Esq.Diane Reidy-LagunesAmy Schwartz, MPAMelanie Steele, MPHElizabeth TimbermanZiyue Louise Wang
ISLAND HONOREES
FRANCINE BENJAMIN GLADYS DIXON WENDY HERSH ZIYUE WANG EMILY ELEUSIZOV
FRANCINE BENJAMIN AND GLADYS DIXON , REPRESENTING COLER LONG TERM CARE FOR THEIR WORK TO MAKE RESIDENT’S LIVES BETTER. (MS. DIXON WAS UNABLE TO ATTEND)
ISLANDERS AT THE EVENT: WENDY HERSH, BARBARA PARKER, MILLER PEREZ, JUDITH BERDY, JOVEMAY SANTOS
ON SATURDAY, ISLANDERS WERE INVITED TO TAKE UP TO 7 PIECES OF GENTLY USED EILEEN FISHER CLOTHING. THIS IS AN ANNUAL EVENT INVOLVING A DEDICATED GROUP OF VOLUNTEERS WHO SORT THE ITEMS AND WORK AT THE TABLES DURING THE 3 HOUR EVENT.
FASHION GIVE-AWAY
ON SATURDAY, ISLANDERS WERE INVITED TO TAKE UP TO 7 PIECES OF GENTLY USED EILEEN FISHER CLOTHING. THIS IS AN ANNUAL EVENT INVOLVING A DEDICATED GROUP OF VOLUNTEERS WHO SORT THE ITEMS AND WORK AT THE TABLES DURING THE 3 HOUR EVENT.
5 MINUTES BEFORE THE CROWDS ARRIVE A GROUP PHOTO OF THE VOLUNTEERS LED BY LISA FERNANDEZ, CENTER DIRECTOR
LISA COULD NOT RESIST READY TO PHOTOGRAPH THE SCENE AS THE DOORS OPENED!
PHOTO OF THE DAY
ALL STOP SIGNS THAT WERE MOUNTED IN THE CENTER OF MAIN STREET ARE GONE, BROKEN AND MISSING, MAKING CROSSING MORE HAZZARDOUS THEN EVER.
CREDITS:
Judith Berdy OFFICE OF REBECCA SEAWRIGHT
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.
On June 12th, uncover more sordid tales of the Gilded Age with Carole Lawerence, author of the novel Cleopatra’s Dagger. This virtual talk is free for Untapped New York Insiders! Not an Insider yet? Become a member today with promo code JOINUS and get your first month free!
Cleopatra’s Dagger follows the story of fictional 19th-century journalist Elizabeth van den Broek. When Elizabeth and her bohemian friend Carlotta Ackerman find a woman’s body wrapped like a mummy in a freshly dug hole in Central Park―the intended site of an obelisk called Cleopatra’s Needle―the macabre discovery leads Elizabeth on an investigation through New York City’s darkest shadows. Her hunt for the truth takes Elizabeth to the Bowery where she braves the debaucherous crowds of Harry Hill’s to get information on the mysterious murder.
In his 1882 work New York by Sunlight and Gaslight, James McCabe describes concert saloons as “places where the devil’s work is done.” He goes on to describe the scene inside: “They provide a low order of music, and the service of the place is rendered by young women, many of whom are dressed in tights and all sorts of fantastic costumes, the chief object of which is to display the figure as much as possible.” These fantastically costumed women were “waiter girls” who served drinks.
These venues likely sprang up in the years preceding the Civil War and grew in popularity over the next decade. They were a combination of the English music hall and American tavern. According to the book The New York Concert Saloon: The Devil’s Own Nights by Brooks McNamara, there were roughly seventy concert halls operating in Manhattan by 1862. They tended to be concentrated in rougher parts of the city like the Bowery (described as “the centre of one of Satan’s strongholds”), Hell’s Kitchen, and the Tenderloin. Harry Hill’s was located at Houston and Crosby, just a few blocks west of the Bowery and east of Broadway.
Harry Hill’s Dance Hall was remembered in a December 1927 issue of The New Yorker in an article recalling “When New York was Really Wicked.” The report described Harry’s as a “sprawling, dingy, two-story frame house which had two front entrances, a small door for the ladies who were admitted free, and a larger one for gentlemen, who paid twenty cents.”
Inside there were multiple rooms and bars and a small simple stage where various acts were performed. The proprietor himself took to the stage every week to recite some of his own poetry. Mark Twain wrote of his visit to Harry’s in 1867, describing the female dancers who “did spin around with such thoughtless vehemence that I was constrained to place my hat before my eyes.”
Harry posted a list of rules for his establishment on the wall including no profanity, no loud talking, and no drunkenness. Thanks largely to the owner’s low tolerance for any truly disruptive behavior, Harry’s was a cut above the worst of the dance halls where robbery and violence were rampant, but still on a lower rung than the more reputable theatres of Broadway further uptown. In his New York Times obituary, Harry Hill was described as “a queer combination of the lawless, reckless, rough, and honest man.”
In April 1862, New York passed the Concert Saloon Bill. The New York Times reported that this ambiguous bill would “purge our places of public amusement of most of their evils” and” to “make respectable and popular those that are properly conducted.” Essentially, the bill required all venues to obtain a license for any spoken or sung performances, though no licenses were granted to places that served alcohol or had waiter girls. Hefty fines were imposed on venues that skirted these rules, though many concert saloon proprietors took their chances, either ignoring the bill entirely or finding crafty way around the new rule.
At Harry’s, the entertainment offering shifted to boxing matches. Some of the most well-known boxers got their start on Harry’s stage. Hill even put on a fight between two female boxers.
Due to financial struggles from his other business ventures, Harry was forced to close the dance hall in the 1880s. By the turn of the 20th century, most concert saloons had closed but their influence led to other forms of entertainment like burlesque and vaudeville.
PHOTO OF THE DAY
EARLY PHOTO OF A TRAIN ON THE UPPER LEVEL OF THE QUEENSBORO BRIDGE THE UPPER LEVEL WAS RESERVED FOR PEDESTRIANS AND THE SUBWAY TRAINS. THINK OF THIS AS YOU ARE ON A SINGLE LANE, AS THE UPPER LEVEL IS REBUILT, 115 YEARS AFTER OPENING
CREDITS:
Judith Berdy UNTAPPED NEW YORK
All image are copyrighted (c) Roosevelt Island Historical Society unless otherwise indicated THIS PUBLICATION FUNDED BY DISCRETIONARY FUNDS FROM CITY COUNCIL MEMBER JULIE MENIN & ROOSEVELT ISLAND OPERATING CORPORATION PUBLIC PURPOSE FUNDS.
On May 14th I looked at these two USPS Relay Boxes in front of 510 Main Street.
They were in very poor condition, rusted and peeling paint. I asked one of our postal carriers if the boxes were used. The answer was negative. These boxes are used when more mail is delivered to a relay box and the carrier picks it up while on their route. This is service is not needed now on Roosevelt Island.
The boxes were eyesores, I decided to e-mail the USPS and see if they could be removed.
I sent an e-mail to the USPS on their website on the 14th. Three days later I got a call from Erica, the manager of our Post Office on Main Street. She told me she would visit the site and see the boxes condition in person.
Yesterday the boxes were gone. All that remained were some nuts and bolts.
A clearing in the sidewalk with no more eyesores.
A few years ago the mailbox in front of 552 Main Street was removed by the USPS. Try e-mailing the USPS and maybe you will have good luck and a box will be placed there again.
You never know, maybe one will be placed back, send an e-mail:
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.
It looked like an elegant streetlight: a slender pole of bronze standing on a granite base 18 feet high over a circular sitting area that’s part of Riverside Park.
Planted into a bed of flowers and shrubbery at 72nd Street and the beginning of Riverside Drive, the globe-topped monument consisted of inscriptions and bas reliefs inspired by Henry Hudson, whose namesake river ran just to the west.
You won’t find the monument there anymore; it’s long since been carted away.
So how did a memorial to Henry Hudson end up on Riverside Drive, opposite the Drive’s row house mansions and free-standing palaces, including the 75-room, Chateau-like Schwab Mansion (at right)—and why was this remnant of early 1900s Gotham removed?
The idea for the Hudson monument goes back to the turn of the century city. That’s when New York began planning the Hudson-Fulton celebration—a massive two-week event commemorating the 300th anniversary of Henry Hudson’s exploration of the river that bears his name, as well as the 100th anniversary of Robert Fulton’s Clermont paddlewheel steamboat.
The celebration would run from September 25 to October 9, 1909. Festivities in the works were unlike anything the city had ever seen, at least since the Washington Centennial in 1889.
To honor these maritime pioneers, officials scheduled a (above) flotilla of naval ships (with replicas of the Clermont and Hudson’s Half-Moon), fireworks, two parades, signal fires from Governor’s Island to Spuyten Duyvil, and the nighttime lighting of bridges, statues, and city buildings with thousands of incandescent bulbs.
Amid the excitement of all these plans, the Colonial Dames of America decided to build the bronze monument to Hudson. It was unveiled on September 29, 1909, in then middle of the Hudson-Fulton Celebration, to a crowd of Americans and Dutch dignitaries.
“There was a great fanfare of trumpets, a little woman in a pongee suit pulled a cord and ran from under, the Stars and Stripes came down, the Dutch colors followed, and the tall bronze and granite shaft . . . stood revealed,” wrote the New-York Tribune.
For the next five decades, the Hudson Memorial remained on Riverside Drive. And it might be there today if it wasn’t “toppled by a truck in the 1950s” as NYC Parks put it.
Evidently it was too damaged to repair, or perhaps the popularity of the monument had run its course—especially in a city that honored Hudson with an eponymous river, a northern Manhattan bridge, and a parkway.
But there is a memorial at this circular spot once again: a sculpture of Eleanor Roosevelt. Dedicated in 1996, “this piece depicts Roosevelt in heroic scale half-seated against a boulder with her hand on her chin in contemplation,” notes NYC Parks.
Surrounded again by greenery, the circle is a gathering spot for strollers and loungers. Instead of the magnificent Schwab mansion, the memorial stands in the shadow of Schwab House, the red-brick co-op that replaced the chateau in 1950.
It’s a fitting tribute to a New York City-born First Lady, and like the sculpture of Joan of Arc 21 blocks north at Riverside Drive and 93rd Street, it’s one of the few statues in a city park that honors a woman who actually lived—not a mythological or fictional female.
Riverside Drive is lined with fascinating memorials from the early 1900s, from recognizable figures like Joan of Arc to dramatic monuments honoring fallen firefighters and Civil War veterans. Find out their backstories by signing up for Ephemeral New York’s Riverside Drive Mansions & Monuments walking tour. Sunday, June 16 still has openings—click here for more info!
WEEKEND PHOTO
CHAPEL OF THE GOOD SHEPHERD ROSE WINDOW ED LITCHER GOT 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.
At the corner of Broadway and Wall Street is a hidden gem. Art aficionados might be aware that a floor to ceiling mosaic room exists inside One Wall Street, but it has been closed off to the public for decades. That is soon going to change when the transformation of One Wall Street, the 52-story former Irving Trust Company skyscraper is complete. Visitors to the staged apartments can already see this famous “Red Room” which is being used as the sales gallery.
The dazzling array of red and gold mosaics inside the Red Room, the former banking room of the building, are by the famous Art Deco artist Hildreth Meière. Her works can be found all over the United States and elsewhere in New York City at Radio City Music Hall, Temple Emanu-El and St. Bartholomew’s Episcopal Church. The tiling was pre-fabricated in pieces in Germany, each stamped so that the installers, the Ravenna Mosaic Company, could put it all together. The Ravenna Mosaic Company also installed the mosaics in Rockefeller Center and Meière’s design in the Basilica Cathedral in St. Louis. The Red Room was a private banking hall for the wealthiest of clients, and was never intended to be the lobby of the building. Inside there were desks with matching lamps for the bankers and chairs for clientele. It is one of the only abstract mosaics by Meière, and thus all the more rare.
Photo from the Ralph Walker Archives, courtesy Macklowe Properties
Meière created additional mosaics in the main lobby of One Wall Street, but they were already removed before Macklowe Properties purchased the building in 2014. Macklowe has recreated the entrance along Broadway using architect Ralph Walker’s original drawings and added a new canopy which was approved by the New York City Landmarks Commission but not part of Walker’s original design.
Photo: DBOX for Macklowe Properties
The interior of One Wall Street is not landmarked, but Macklowe put in a little over a million dollars in the restoration of the Red Room alone, mostly in cleaning and repair. “It wasn’t in terrible condition, it just needed some TLC and we had to bring it up to code with sprinklers, lighting, things like that.” says Richard Dubrow, Properties Director at Macklowe Properties. Nothing was modified or attached to the original walls. The plan is for the room to eventually become a retail space.
The Irving Trust Company was looking to make its mark when it moved from the Woolworth Building to One Wall Street. According to Dubrow, Irving Trust “bought the most expensive piece of real estate in Manhattan, here on the corner of Wall and Broadway. In the ’20s, the closer you were to the New York Stock Exchange, the more prestigious you were. So they are about thirty feet away from the stock. You can’t get any closer. They hired the most famous architect of the day, Ralph Walker.” Walker is also known for his other New York City masterpieces 100 Barclay (the former New York Telephone Building), Stella Tower and Walker Tower.
One Wall Street was so connected with Walker’s persona that he dressed as the building itself at the 1931 Society of Beaux-Arts Architects Ball. Dubrow says, Walker “was looking to celebrate the machine age with the design. Not so much the power of the machine but the precision of the machine” which is reflected on the relief sculptures and pattern of the limestone-clad facade of the building. The interiors of One Wall Street were treated with equal attention.
On the terraces of the apartments at One Wall Street, you can see how the limestone facade undulates
STONE QUARRIED AT THE SOUTH END OF CORNELL CAMPUS. STONE WAS REMOVED FROM SITE IN 2015,
CREDITS:
UNTAPPED NEW YORK
All image are copyrighted (c) Roosevelt Island Historical Society unless otherwise indicated THIS PUBLICATION FUNDED BY DISCRETIONARY FUNDS FROM CITY COUNCIL MEMBER JULIE MENIN & ROOSEVELT ISLAND OPERATING CORPORATION PUBLIC PURPOSE FUNDS.
The United Workers Cooperative Colony (called “the Coops” or the “Allerton Coops” by residents), located at 2700 Bronx Park East, was a radical experiment in cooperative housing in the 1920s. Large numbers of Jews, fleeing oppression in the Russian Empire, began settling in Manhattan’s Lower East Side in the late nineteenth century.
Some had already been involved in revolutionary politics in their homelands. Crowded living conditions, high rent, and economic exploitation in their new home attracted more to various alternatives to capitalism.
The United Workers Cooperative Association was one among many of these alternatives developed by working-class Jews, most of whom were laborers in the needle trades, one of the largest industries in New York City at the time.
The Association focused much of its early cooperative efforts on Harlem. Its largest and most ambitious project, however, was in the northern Bronx, where it bought land on Bronx Park East in 1926 in order to build a large complex of cooperative housing.
The Coops sold financial stakes in the cooperative to “tenant investors” at the rate of about half a year’s salary for working-class people at the time. As shareholders, residents had a say in the operation of the cooperative.
The Coops were a nonprofit cooperative, meaning apartments could not be sold by individuals. Departing tenants received their initial investment back, with interest, and the board of directors, elected by the tenants, decided which new applicants got the vacant apartments.
In the 1940s, the board implemented an occupancy policy that gave priority to Black applicants. A small number of Black tenants were already present as early as 1935, but thanks to this policy, the Coops became one of the first significantly interracial housing complexes in New York City, long before the end of Jim Crow in the South and de facto segregation in the North.
As the rendering from 1926 above illustrates, beauty was a chief concern of the shareholders of the Coops, many of whom had lived in the squalid tenements of the Lower East Side.
Apartments were designed with high ceilings, healthy ventilation, and windows oriented so that direct sunlight would fall into at least one room. Further, spaces in the complex were designated for a library, daycare, Yiddish-language schools, youth club rooms, a cooperative restaurant, and a lecture hall,
Ravaged financially during the Great Depression, the Coops began to recover slightly during World War II and was offered new mortgage terms by the bank in 1943 that included rent increases. The Coops was deemed a financial liability by banks and insurance companies at the time for a variety of reasons, including its small but significant number of Black residents.
Tenants voted against accepting the new mortgage, the bank refused to negotiate different terms, and the Coops became privately-owned apartment buildings.
Nevertheless, the legacy of housing cooperatives remains alive and well in The Bronx, with historic examples like the Amalgamated Housing Co-operative, built shortly after the Coops and remaining a cooperative to this day, and Co-Op City, the largest cooperative housing development in the world, built starting in the late 1960s and located along the Hutchinson River in the northeast Bronx.
This essay was first published in The Bronx County Historical Society’s newsletter. The Bronx County Historical Society, founded in 1955, is a non-profit educational and cultural institution chartered by the New York State Board of Regents. The Society is dedicated to the collection, preservation, and interpretation of the history and heritage of The Bronx.
Illustrations, from above: Artistic rendering of the Allerton Coops, ca. 1926, from the At Home in Utopia Collection of The Bronx County Archives; and Allerton Coops in 2017 (courtesy Wikimedia user Jim Henderson)
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.
During a visit to the Roebling Museum on Sunday, the guide discussed the many generations of the Roebling family. Apparently, not every descendant was destined to lead the family business. Washington A. Roebling, a race car aficionado, ventured into race car manufacturing and driving. The guide also mentioned that a Roebling traveled to Europe with a member of the Blackwell family, Stephen Weart Blackwell, from Hopewell Junction, NJ. The majority of the Blackwells migrated from Astoria to the Trenton area, and here was one of them!
Both perished on the Titanic, but the chauffeur and car made it back to the U.S. on a later sailing.
TUESDAY, MAY 21, 2024
ISSUE #1240
THE ROEBLING-BLACKWELL
CONNECTION
TRENTON SPACES JUDITH BERDY
Washington Augustus Roebling II
Washington Augustus Roebling II in driver’s clothes.
Washington Augustus Roebling II was an American businessman and early automobile manufacturer who perished in the sinking of RMS Titanic.
Washington August Roebling was born in Trenton, New Jersey on March 25, 1881 into the prominent Roebling family of American Industrialists. He was the son of Charles Roebling and Sarah Mahon Ormsby. He was named after his famous uncle Washington Roebling, a Civil War Colonel and supervising engineer for the construction of the Brooklyn Bridge. Friends would call him ‘Washy’. Washington II attended the elite Hill School in Pottstown, Pennsylvania where he was an adept football player. After working with his father in the family business, for the John A. Roebling Sons Company, he switched to the Walter Automotive Company as its Secretary.ADVERTISEMENT
The 1911 Mercer Raceabout, which took second in the hands of Washington Augustus Roebling II at the 1911 International Light Cars Race.
In 1909, Washington Roebling II arranged to take over the Walter Automobile Company from William Walter because of its mounting financial issues. The company was moved to an abandoned brewery owned by the Kuser family in Hamilton, New Jersey, outside of Trenton. Washington Roebling II’s father, Ferdinand Roebling was made President, John Louis Kuser, the twin brother of prominent New Jersey businessman Anthony R. Kuser was made Secretary-Treasurer, and Washington was made General Manager of the new enterprise, Mercer Automobile Company.
The company marketed itself to the high end and racing markets. He worked with noted French auto designer Etienne Planche, designing the Roebling-Planche Racing Car which performed well in auto races of the time. Roebling tested all Mercer Models before they entered market, and participated in racing.
As an amateur, he finished an astounding second at the International Light Car Race for the Savannah Challenge Trophy in November 1911, with the Mercer Raceabout. He had a collision with a palmetto tree at the last lap, damaging his control levers. This must have cost him a victory, since he lost 12 minutes in the collision, and the damage it caused must have had an affect on the speed of the car, which still ran at an impressive average of 61 mph, Washington only finished 8 minutes behind the winner after a race of 277 miles.
Titanic
In early 1912, he took a long European road trip with his friend and Trenton native, Stephen Weart Blackwell and Chauffeur Frank Stanley in a Mercer Fiat. While touring Italy and France, Blackwell and Roebling meet the Bonnell and Wick families, and decided to join them on their return trip to United States on the new ocean liner RMS Titanic. Because of illness, Frank Stanley stayed behind in Europe with Roebling’s car. Both Blackwell and Roebling stayed in First Class accommodations, Roebling boarded the ship at Southampton, England, on April 12, 1912, for its Maiden Voyage. He was 31 years old at the time, and stayed in cabin A-24.
When the ship struck and iceberg on April 14, 1912 at 11:40 P.M, the ship started sinking. On April 15, Washington was seen helping the women of the Bonell and Wick families into a lifeboat, telling them reassuredly “you will be back with us on the ship soon”. Blackwell and Roebling’s bodies were never found. Because of a miscommunication his Roebling cousins traveled to Halifax, believing him to be among the survivors picked up by the RMS Carpathia. The Mercer Motor Company was taken over by outsider investors in 1919, going into receivership in 1925 and folding not long after that.
A NEW RESIDENT RI PLANNING TASK FORCE IS ANNOUNCED
MATT ALTWICKER HAS SET UP A QR CODE LINK TO COMMUNICATE WITH YOUR THOUGHTS FOR A PLANNING TASK FORCE. HAVE CONCERNS, IDEAS, SUGGESTION, SEND THEM TO MATT.
The Albert Swinden mural looks down at activities at the Tata Innovation Center on Friday, where the graduates were showcasing their projects/
CREDITS:
ROEBLING MUSEUM
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.
