THIS WEEKEND SHOP THE RIHS KIOSK SATURDAY AND SUNDAY
11 a.m. to 4 pm.
LEAPIN’ LIZZARDS… DINOSAURS ON MAIN STREET!
Dinosaurs on Roosevelt Island! Stephen Blank Well, actually there were no dinosaurs on Roosevelt Island. But read on – explore the very early history of our Island.
First of all, I have learned, we have to think of two different time frames when we explore our deep history. First is the long term – from the beginning (say a billion years ago) to around 50,000 years ago. Then second, the more recent era of the last Ice Age.
In the first period, New York City was shaped and reshaped by enormous transformations in global geography. Turns out we were right on the edge of several of these profound changes – the creation of the supercontinent Pangaea around 300 million years ago and the dissolution of Pangaea when North America and what became Africa separated. The land on which we now live has drifted and changed, been uplifted, folded, submerged, frozen, and melted countless times. These events pushed up and dragged out the bedrock that underlies the New York region.
This bedrock – “schist” – was formed between 450 million and over a billion years ago. But being New York City, it has to be complicated. The City rests on three different strata, formed at different periods over millions of years – Manhattan Schist, Inwood Marble, and Fordham Gneiss. These three strata shape the topography of Manhattan. They aren’t arranged in simple layers like the leaves of a book but are complexly interfolded. It’s still more complicated: Continents drifted – and at some points we were much to the south – and climate changed many times.
A personal moment: Why was I interested in all of this? Answer is that I wondered why our Island existed. It appears to be a little hill (mountain?) of schist sticking up out of what became the East River, which remained as the River deepened and broadened. (This stuff sticking up out of the River was what was quarried here by Blackwell’s Island prisoners for many of the buildings on the Island.) I assumed we were related to Manhattan – same sort of bedrock. But not quite: Roosevelt Island is near the boundary of several of these bedrock regions. But we’re different. While the bedrock making up other nearby East River Islands (i.e. Randall’s or Ward’s Islands) represents their proximity to these various regions, Roosevelt Island is underlain only by Fordham Gneiss, characteristic of much of the south Bronx. This rock dates to the Lower Paleozoic and/or Precambrian Eras, formed approximately 500 to 4500 million years ago, and Roosevelt Island represents one of only a few isolated exposures of Fordham Gneiss in New York City. Who knew?
But while these vast movements over millions of years created the foundations of New York City, the landscaping we recognize was carried out by glaciers. In the second, more recent period (the Pleistocene or “Ice Age” from 1.8 million years ago to 8,000 years ago), glaciers spread southward from eastern Canada. Between 17,000 years ago to 11,000 years ago, large ice sheets bulldozed the landscape. Around 17,000 years ago, the part of Wisconsin glacier covering the New York City was about 985 feet thick (the Empire State is 1250 feet high, not counting the aerial). Rocks with the glaciers scrapped and scratched the bedrock of Central Park, producing long linear striations and grooves. Long Island is composed of rubble that glacier left behind as it melted, and the channel of East River was formed by the retreating/melting of the glacier and advancing of the Atlantic Ocean.
GLACIAL LANDSCAPE IN CENTRAL PARK
So what about dinosaurs? As I said, there weren’t any. Not here at least. But not far.
We had some big, mean critters. A little over 400 million years ago, much of North America, including New York State, was under water. The Eurypterus, a type of marine invertebrate, a giant sea scorpion, lived in this period – and in case you don’t already know, it is the official state fossil of New York. Eurypterus was one of the most feared undersea predators before the evolution of prehistoric sharks and giant marine reptiles. They colonized much of the supercontinent of the time, and are one of the first animal groups to venture from sea to land.
EURYTERUS Dinosaurs seem to have roamed around not far from New York City. In 1972, dinosaur footprints were found in what is now Rockland County, dating to the late Triassic period, about 200 million years ago. The footprints belong to a type of lizard known as a Grallator. This beast was probably coelophysis, a slender, bipedal carnivore that lived throughout the east coast of what we call North America. It’s also found in other parts of the world, because back then, there was no North America. There was no New York, no Hudson River, no Westchester or Rockland Counties. There was only Pangea.
Coelophysis And New Jersey! The first nearly complete dinosaur skeleton in the world was found in Haddonfield in 1858. Sediments from the Cretaceous period revealed a 75-million-year-old fossil of a Hadrosaurus foulkii, the first known duck-billed dinosaur, which have become the most plentiful dinosaur finds from this period on the East Coast. Specimens of giant dinosaurs like Dryptosaurus, a tyrannosaur six feet tall at the hip that may be a cousin of the fearsome T Rex was found in Ellisdale.
So we didn’t have dinosaurs. But we still had some pretty great creatures.
For 64 million years following the great extinction of the dinosaurs and much of life on earth, our region was warm, moist and conducive to the evolution of many of the plants and animals we see today (and more than a few we don’t see anymore). Periodic ice ages brought glaciers that covered the state and then retreated, each time reshaping the landscape, carving rivers and lakes and mountains and killing off many of animals.
As temperatures increased, a variety of flora and fauna spread through the region. At this time, large open forests of spruce, fir, pine, and other tree species expanded across the Northeast, interspersed with open meadows and marshland. Creatures like mammoths, mastodons, giant beavers and sloths, musk oxen, and the giant short-faced bear roamed the land. In 1866, during the construction of a mill in upstate New York, workers discovered the near-complete remains of a five-ton American Mastodon dated to about 13,000 years ago. The “Cohoes Mastodon,” as it became known, testifies to the fact that these giant prehistoric elephants roamed the expanse of New York in thunderous herds
OK, no dinosaurs. But we’ve got Mastodons, Woolly Mammoths and Giant Beavers. What about people?
The earliest “Paleo-Indians” seem to have arrived here between 13,000 and 10,000 years ago. Because of the close proximity of any of their sites to the coastline, few have been preserved in the New York City area. As the glaciers continued to melt, sea levels rose and much of what was once adjacent to the water line became submerged. Only one Paleo-Indian site has been discovered in the entire New York City area—that of Port Mobil, on Staten Island. Some paleoanthropologists believe that the large mega-mammals, like mammoths, were still here when the earliest folks arrived. Some feel that these folks – together with climate change – were responsible for killing off the local plus-sized mammals. Seems like they were tough New York City types – taking on a mastodon with bare hands.
That’s the story. From here on, just 10,000 years ago, we’re practically home.
Plaque that was at foot of the Lighthouse commemorating the Asylum inmate who had “constructed” a fort where the Lighthouse was situated. The plaque vanished in the 1970’s. JAY JACOBSON CLARA BELLA GOT IT RIGHT.
EDITORIAL It is Christmas morning and a rather bleak day outside. We (Pat and I) will gather to watch a video of the NYC Ballet Nutcracker video. Then I will make a pork roast and macaroni for dinner.
Last evening my friend Jeong and I feasted on King Crab Legs. I have never had them and they were delicious and a real treat. In Jeong’s homeland, Korea, crab are a New Year’s tradition and we celebrated early this year.
We spoke to my brother last evening and discussed our two dinners. He has more wine and champagne in contrast to my cider.
Our celebrations are not grand this year. Some friends are gone, times have changed but we will be in our pod of neighbors and friends.
HAVE A SAFE AND HEALTHY 2021
JUDITH BERDY
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 Deborah Dorff All image are copyrighted (c)
GOOGLE IMAGES, WIKIPEDIA
ROOSEVELT ISLAND HISTORICAL SOCIETY
FUNDING PROVIDED BY ROOSEVELT ISLAND OPERATING CORPORATION PUBLIC PURPOSE GRANTS CITY COUNCIL REPRESENTATIVE BEN KALLOS DISCRETIONARY FUNDING THRU DYCD
EVERY YEAR THE RECREATION THERAPISTS DO A WONDERFUL HOLIDAY DISPLAY
A HOLIDAY VILLAGE IS GLITTERING IN THE SHOWCASE
YOU ARE GREETED BY KATIE WHO WILL TAKE YOUR TEMPERATURE AND GREET YOU WITH A CHEERFULLY SMILE
THE ELF WORKSHOP IS PREPARING FOR THE GIFT DISTRIBUTION!
ASHLEY, A RECREATION STAFF MEMBER IS BUSY SORTING AND PACKING GIFTS.
MEN’S GIFTS ON ONE SIDE AND WOMEN’S ON THE OTHER SIDE OF THE AUXILIARY OFFICE. SINCE THE RESIDENTS CANNOT GO OUT TO SHOP, HEALTH AND BEAUTY AIDS ARE THE MOST NEEDED AND APPRECIATED GIFTS.
THE GOODY TABLE WHERE THE RECREATION STAFF SELECT OTHER ITEMS FOR THEIR RESIDENTS. EVERYTHING FROM PENS, PUZZLES, NOTEBOOKS, SOCKS, HAIR ORNAMENTS ARE THERE FOR THE RESIDENTS.
LAST MINUTE DETAILS AND JOVEMAY SANTOS, THE DIRECTOR OF RECREATION THERAPY IS ON THE PHONE, AGAIN.
PICKUP TIME ARRIVE AND GIFTS FOR 500 RESIDENTS ARE READY TO GO. ALSO, A SPECIAL CATERED LUNCH TODAY WITH EGG-NOG AND COOKIES FOR DESSERT.
CHRIS IS SELECTING SPECIAL ITEMS FOR THE RESIDENTS IN HIS UNIT.
A LONG DAY AND THE MISSION IS ACCOMPLISHED!!
EDITORIAL
THE GRINCH DID NOT GET TO COLER THIS YEAR!
RECENTLY THERE HAVE BEEN NEGATIVE REPORTS ABOUT COLER AND MANY OF OUR NEIGHBORS FORGET THAT COLER IS A VITAL THRIVING COMMUNITY OF 500 RESIDENTS.
THIS HAS BEEN A TERRIBLE YEAR FOR ALL OF US AND ESPECIALLY CHALLENGING FOR ALL NURSING HOME RESIDENTS.
IN WARM WEATHER THE RESIDENTS ENJOY THE GARDEN AND GETTING OUT OF THE BUILDING. EVERY DAY THAT IS POSSIBLE THE RESIDENTS CAN GO TO THE GARDEN.
THIS YEAR THE AUXILIARY HAS FUNDED SPECIAL LUNCHES AND HOLIDAY MEALS. NO GATHERINGS ARE PERMITTED SO THE CONCERTS, GOSPEL MUSIC EVENTS AND DANCES ARE CANCELED.
IF YOU WOULD LIKE TO HELP IMPROVE THE LIFE AT COLER, PLEASE DONATE TO THE AUXILIARY.
WE THANK THE MEMBERS OF GOOD SHEPHERD CHURCH WHO DONATED GIFTS FOR THIS DISTRIBUTION. THE COLER AUXILIARY NEEDS YOUR SUPPORT TO PROVIDE FOR THE RESIDENTS OF COLER.
PLEASE CONTACT US TO MAKE A TAX DEDUCTIBLE DONATION. JUDITH BERDY CHAIR JBIRD134@AOL.COM MAIL TO: COLER AUXILIARY, 900 MAIN STREET, NY, NY 10044 212-688-4836
Coler Christmas Tree in main lobby Vicki Feinmel got this right
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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 Roosevelt Island Historical SocietyMATERIALS USED FROM: ROOSEVELT ISLAND HISTORICAL SOCIETY (C)
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CITY COUNCIL REPRESENTATIVE BEN KALLOS DISCRETIONARY FUNDING THRU DYCD
Edward Penfield, Harper’s Christmas, ca.1898, color lithograph on paper, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Museum purchase, 1974.
Carl Newman, Spirit of Christmas, ca. 1915-1920, oil and tempera on fiberboard, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of Anna McCleery Newton, 1971.88
Grandma Moses, Christmas, 1958, oil and tempera on pressed wood, Smithsonian American
Grandma Moses painted many winter scenes of farm life in which adults and children happily do their chores and play in the snow. She painted only cheerful images that were based on her memories of growing up on a farm and of being a farmwife herself. In this painting the people talking and laughing together evoke a nostalgic ideal of community life, which the artist emphasized through small stylized buildings and bright colors. The buildings and looping fences create a two-dimensional pattern on the pure white snow that underscores the picturesque, storybook scene.
Harry Cimino, Christmas Card, n.d., woodcut, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of Charlotte Manzari, 1969.31.32
Mildred McMillen, Christmas Greetings 1918, 1918, woodcut on paper, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of Helen Baltz, 1979.28.4
Irving Guyer, Christmas Trees on Second Street, ca. 1935-1943, etching and aquatint on paper, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of Jean Nichols, 1974.38.21
Winslow Homer, Christmas Belles, from Harper’s Weekly, January 2, 1869, 1869, wood engraving on paper, Smithsonian American Art Museum, The Ray Austrian Collection, gift of Beatrice L. Austrian, Caryl A. Austrian and James A. Austrian, 1996.63.70
Leonard Brooks, Christmas Posada, San Miguel de Allende, Mexico, ca. 1953, watercolor and gouache on paper, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of the Ford Motor Company, 1966.36.3
J. Alden Weir, Christmas Greens, 1887-1893, etching and drypoint on paper, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of Brigham Young University, 1972.84.2
Helen Hyde, In Their Holiday Clothes, 1914, color woodcut on paper, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of Hyde Gillette in memory of Mabel Hyde Gillette and Edwin Fraser Gillette, 1992.13.94
Many people mistake days mentioned in the song “The Twelve Days of Christmas” for the days preceding December 25. In actuality, however, the song refers to the twelve days after Christmas. In the United States, our traditions tend to focus on family gatherings, large meals, Christmas trees, Santa Claus, and reindeer. In places across the world, particularly in Spanish speaking countries, January 6 is the main gift-giving holiday. The Day of the Kings, known as the Epiphany in the United States, shares many elements of the Christmas traditions. Children put out treats for the camels, often grass, along with some type of libation for Melchior, Gaspar, and Balthazar on the night of January 5. The kings bring presents only to good boys and girls. Apart from this, each country that celebrates the Day of the Kings has its own unique traditions, like parades, family gatherings or my favorite, eating rosca de reyes (king cake) with figurines hidden inside.
ALTER AT CHAPEL OF THE GOOD SHEPHERD BRENDA VAUGHAN, JOAN BROKKS, VICKI FEINMEL, NINA LUBLIN AND ALEXIS VILLEFANE WERE THE FIRST ONES.
A HOLIDAY MIRACLE…RIOC STYLE
After weeks of seeing this abandoned bicycle obstructing the bus stop at the Chapel, it was time for action……..emails to Shelton. After two days the annoying bike was removed within minutes of another reminder e-mail to him. Now, can we move the trash can and the STOP sign so the bus stop is not obstructed. MERRY CHRISTMAS TO ALL
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)
Smithsonian American Art Museum
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SHOP THE RIHS KIOSK WEDNESDAY / THURSDAY 12 NOON TO 5 P.M.
Hotel Pabst on Longacre Square
WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 23, 2020
OUR 243rd ISSUE OF FROM OUR ARCHIVES
A Christmas feast at Midtown’s new Hotel Pabst
1900
FROM EPHEMERAL NEW YORK (C)
Never heard of the Hotel Pabst? You’re not alone. The nine-story tower with a steel skeleton swathed in limestone only existed from 1899 to 1902—built on the slender triangle formed by Broadway, Seventh Avenue, and 42nd Street at Longacre Square.
Run by the Pabst Brewing Company as part of a short-term effort to acquire hotels, the elegant hostelry at the upper reaches of the city’s theater district and lobster palaces was replaced by the New York Times‘ headquarters in 1904 (and Longacre Square became Times Square).
The eye-popping Christmas dinner menu has been preserved by the New York Public Library in their Buttolph Collection of Menus. Between the carte de jour oyster offerings to the 20-plus desserts (plum pudding! Cream puffs!) are a dozen or so courses that must have taken an army of chefs to prepare.
Many of the dishes are the typical heavy fare of a hotel menu in New York of the era: terrapin a la Maryland, quail, stuffed turkey, filet of sole, prime beef, and lamb chops.
There’s a fair number of items borrowed from French menus, which makes sense, as French cuisine was seen as the most elegant at the time
Some of the dishes are completely foreign to contemporary American tastes, however. Cold game pie, Philadelphia squabs, and reed ducks, anyone?
One thing stands out, though: Christmas dinner at a hotel in 1900 was certainly a feast. By the time you finished your Nesselrode pudding and revived yourself with your Turkish coffee, buttons must have been popping off your clothes!
[Top photo: MCNY 93.1.1.6427; menu: NYPL Buttolph Collection of Menus]
Tags: Buttoph Collection of Menus NYPL, Christmas Dinner Menus 1900, Hotel Pabst Longacre Square, Hotel Pabst New York City, Longacre Square 1900, Longacre Square Times Square, Old Christmas Dinner Menus NYC Posted in Bars and restaurants, Holiday traditions, Midtown, Out-of-date guidebooks, Sketchy hotels
FERRY WELFARE FROM EAST 78 STREET TO DOCK NEAR METROPOLITAN HOSPITAL NOW OCTAGON. SERVICE ENDED IN 1957. JAY JACOBSON GOT IT RIGHT
A FEAST
READING THESE MENUS OF DAYS A CENTURY AGO IS A TRIP THRU TIME WHEN THE WELL-OFF LIVED AND ATE WELL WITH MANY MULTI-COURSE MEALS. CHECK OUT THE ITEMS AND REMEMBER WHEN OUR MEALS WERE HEAVY AND FULL OF CALORIES.
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 Deborah Dorff All image are copyrighted (c) Roosevelt Island Historical Society unless otherwise indicated
EPHEMERAL NEW YORK (C)
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SHOP THE KIOSK FOR LAST MINUTE GIFTS TUES., WED. & THURS.12-5
TUESDAY, DECEMBER 22, 2020
The
242nd Edition
From Our Archives
EARLY WORKS
Fête Champêtre/ Festival in the Countryside ca. 1905 oil on canvas / óleo sobre tela 28.5 x 36.4 inches; 72.4 x 92.4 centímetros Museo Andres Blaisten
Alfredo Ramos Martínez
1871-1946
Mexican In the Ranch, Mexico Signed “Ramos Martinez” (lower right); inscribed “In the Ranch, Mexico” (en verso) Oil on board Alongside Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo stands the great Alfredo Ramos Martínez as one of the most important Mexican artists of the modern age. Over a long career, Ramos Martínez produced works in a modern idiom that was both nostalgic and accessible, but never sentimental, and with a remarkable beauty in their simplicity of form and structure. In the Ranch, Mexico offers clear testimony to the artist’s ability to capture the spirit of Mexican life with his distinctive aesthetic sensibility – highly stylized compositions and a palette bursting with rich and earthy color.
Throughout his life, Ramos Martínez composed Gauguinesque representations of Mexico’s indigenous people that promoted a romanticized view of Mexican culture. He was among the first artists of the modern era to paint Mexican subjects while working outdoors with live Indian models, which was very much in the tradition of the French Impressionists painting en plein air. In In the Ranch, Mexico, Ramos Martínez’s figures appear at one with the landscape. He used the same limited color tones to render both the peasants and the building and hills that surround them. The work is clearly a product of its time – Ramos Martínez brings together elements of Art Deco, reducing classical motifs to their essential form through geometric stylization. It is the work’s narrative strength, ascetic palette and purity of line that makes it so compelling even today.
In the Ranch, Mexico was painted at the height of the artist’s career while he was living in California seeking medical care for his daughter. During his self-imposed exile, Ramos Martínez achieved remarkable success in Los Angeles, securing work painting murals almost immediately upon his arrival in 1929. Though his compositions capture the spirit of Mexican life, his success in California proves that his legacy transcended cultural borders, and today he is also considered a major figure of California Modernism as well as Mexican art.
Born in Monterrey in 1871, Alfredo Ramos Martínez began his artistic career at an early age. When he was just fourteen years old, his portrait of the governor of Nuevo León was awarded first prize at an art exhibition in San Antonio. The prize came with a scholarship to the Academia Nacional de Bellas Artes in Mexico City, and thus Ramos Martínez began his studies as an artist.
From the beginning, he rebelled against the strict Academic structure of his classes and his teachers’ adherence to prevailing European aesthetics. Yet, in 1899 Phoebe Apperson Hearst visited the school and was so impressed by Ramos Martínez’s talent that she agreed to finance the young painter’s studies in Paris. His time spent in Europe, where he fraternized with the likes of Claude Monet, Pablo Picasso, Henri Matisse and Joaquín Sorolla, who would significantly influence the trajectory of his career.
Using the techniques he had so faithfully studied and practiced during his European years, Ramos Martínez succeeded in creating a new kind of Mexican art, bringing together an awareness of Mexico’s pre-Columbian history and culture with modern aesthetics. His subjects particularly appealed to a Hollywood clientele who became significant patrons of Mexican art, including screenwriter Jo Swerling; the directors Dudley Murphy and Alfred Hitchcock; and actors John Huston, Corinne Griffith, Charles Laughton and Beulah Bondi. Today, his works are highly prized in private collections, achieving significant prices at auction, and they are held in museum collections around the world, including the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Santa Barbara Museum of Art, Museo Andres Blaisten, San Diego Museum of Art and the Phoenix Art Museum.
M.S. Rau (c)
Portrait of Nahui Olin ca. 191 5 pastel on paper on canvas / pastel sobre papel sobre tela 55 1/8 x 36 3/8 inches; 140 x 92.4 centímetros Private Collection
PAINTINGS OF THE 1930’S AND 1940’S
En el Rancho Mexicano / In the Ranch, Mexico ca. 1936 oil on board / óleo sobre cartón 23.9 x 27.4 inches; 60.6 x 69.5 centímetros
Vendora de Flores / Flower Vendor 1934 oil on canvas/óleo sobre tela 32 x 28 inches; 81.3 x 71.1 centímetros Private collection
Vendeoras de Frutas / Fruit Vendors ca. 1938 oil on canvas / óleo sobre tela 38 1/8 x 31 inches; 96.8 x 78.7 centímetros
Flores Tropicales / Tropical Flowers tempera and Conté crayon on cardboard / temple y crayon Conté sobre cartón 23 ½ x 34 inches; 59.7 x 86.4 centímetros
La Puesta del Sol / Sunrise gouache, Conté crayon, and pencil on paper; guada, crayon Conté, y lápiz sobre papel 22 1/2 x 27 1/2 inches; 57.2 x 69.5 centímetros
MURALS
Hotel Playa Ensenada, Ensenada, Baja California
1929
La Capilla del Cementerio de Santa Bárbara (The Chapel of the Santa Barbara Cemetery)
1934
El Día del Mercado (Market Day) Mural for La Avenida Cafe, Coronado (Now at the Coronado Public Library) 1937
Vendedoras de Flores (The Flower Vendors) Margaret Fowler Memorial Garden, Scripps College 1945-1946
THE ALFREDO RAMOS MARTINEZ RESEARCH PROJECT To see more of this wonderful work go to: alfredoramosmartinez.com All images coyright by the Alfredo Ramos Martinez Project
Courtyard at the Octagon Jinny Ewald ad Gloria Herman got it
CLARIFICATION WE ARE HAPPY TO GIVE WINNERS OF OUR DAILY PHOTO IDENTIFICATION A TRINKET FROM THE VISITOR CENTER. ONLY THE PERSON IDENTIFYING THE PHOTO FIRST WILL GET A PRIZE. WE HAVE A SPECIAL GROUP OF ITEMS TO CHOOSE FROM. WE CANNOT GIVE AWAY ALL OUR ITEMS,. PLEASE UNDERSTAND THAT IN THESE DIFFICULT TIMES, WE MUST LIMIT GIVE-AWAYS. THANK YOU
This morning I was looking thru the NYTimes and spotted an ad from M.S. Rau Antiques. They usually feature very expensive and unique pieces in the ads. Today it was the painting by Ramos Martinez. What a joy to look up the work by this artist. I can only feature a few on the website, so please check out alfredoramosmartinez.com. You will be muy alegre. Feliz navidad y ano nuevo.
Judith Berdy
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
ALFREDO RAMOS MARTINEZ RESEARCH PROECT (C) M.S. Rau Antiques
All image are copyrighted (c) Roosevelt Island Historical Society unless otherwise indicated SMITHSONIAN AMERICAN ART MUSEUM PHOTOS BY JUDITH BERDY / RIHS (C)
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There were two Meneely bell founderies, based on either side of the Hudson River in New York state.
The first Meneely bell foundry was established in 1826 in West Troy (now Watervliet), New York,by Andrew Meneely, a former apprentice in the foundry of Benjamin Hanks. Two of Andrew’s sons continued to operate the foundry after his death, and it remained a family operation until its closure.
The second Meneely bell foundry was established in 1870 by a third son, Clinton H. Meneely, across the river in Troy, New York. Initially he was in partnership with George H. Kimberly, under the name Meneely & Kimberly; this second foundry was reorganized in 1879 as the Clinton H. Meneely Bell Company, then later as the Meneely Bell Company.
Like its related competitor, it remained a family operation until its closure. Business cards for both of the competing Meneely bell foundries appearing in the Troy Daily Times May 20, 1891 The two foundries competed vigorously (and sometimes bitterly) with each other.
Together, they produced about 65,000 bells before they both closed in 1952.
OUR BELL WAS PRODUCED BY MENEELY IN WEST TROY, THE ORIGINAL FOUNDRY.
OUR NEIGHBORHOOD BLACK SQUIRREL HER COUSIN IS AVAILABLE AT THE KIOSK NOW, NO PEANUTS REQUIRED. CLARA BELLA GOT IT FIRST!
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TESTING
HOSPITAL WALK IN COVID-19 TESTING NYC HEALTH + HOSPITAL METROPOLITAN 1901 First Avenue, New York, NY 10029 at 97th Street call (844) 692-4692 9AM-3:30PM Daily Free Diagnostic Testing (Third-party Verified) Screening Required No appointment needed
Text by Judith Berdy Thanks to Bobbie Slonevsky for her dedication to Blackwell’s Almanac Thanks to Deborah Dorff for maintaining our website Edited by Melanie Colter and Deborah Dorff All materials in this publication are copyrighted (c)
RIHS ARCHIVES (C) JUDITH BERDY
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Jinny Ewald sent this to us this morning from Long Island
PRISONERS, SWIMMERS AND OTHERS WHO ENDED UP IN THE EAST RIVER
In the East River Our Island is covered – lightly – in the first snow of the year. It is very cold. So it’s a good time to talk about dipping our toes in the East River.
Come with me on a modest tour d’horizon of getting wet in the River. First, getting off the Island the hard way. Did Blackwell’s Island prisoners escape by swimming off the island?
There’s no Blackwell’s Island myth like that of escape from Alcatraz. The place seems to have been buttoned up quite effectively. Visitors were not allowed on the Penitentiary grounds without a permit from the Commissioners. Sentinels were stationed along the water fronts, and guard-boats patrolled the river to prevent the escape of convicts.
Still, despite spite these precautions, the website of Corrections History informs us, “men have succeeded in making their escape to the opposite shore.”
There’s a record of twelve nude men swimming for freedom from the Island in 1853. They were seen coming out of the water at what is now Long Island City, but there’s no record if they were caught. In 1875 Dutch Harmon, a highwayman described by The New York Times as “one of the most desperate criminals in the country,” organized the mass escape of seven prisoners while wearing a ball and chain. Which must have made swimming problematic. And, of course, who could forget the saga of “Oily” Rockford, 22, the lad with a penchant for jail-breaking, who was recaptured in June 1922, a year after having gone missing from the Penitentiary. The Times reported that Rockford promised to escape again in time to bask in the sunshine of September. But we don’t know if he did.
No, getting into the River does not appear to have been a frequent maneuver for prisoners.
Well then, second, what about jumping?
Oddly enough, our bridges seem not to have been favored by the suicide-minded.
More people have tried to leap from the George Washington Bridge and, lesser, the Brooklyn Bridge. And while some have tried our own Queensboro Bridge, the numbers are fairly low. But nothing here compares with San Francisco’s Golden Gate.
Opening Day at the Queensboro Bridge, NYC Municipal Archives
However, more than 235 folks did actually apply for permission to jump off the Queensboro Bridge on the opening day celebration, June 12, 1909. The Celebration Committee analyzed the requests and classified them in this way:
Women (18-32): 30 Professionals: 168 Freaks: 34 Would-be suicides: 9 Unemployed: 24 You may relieved to learn that the Celebration Committee announced that no bridge jumping will be allowed.
OK. What about involuntary swimming? I mean those iconic “concrete shoes”. A myth punctured. The credibility of the “cement shoes” myth is pretty thin.
“The story of cement shoes is, in my opinion, a twisted-over-time variation of something that did actually happen,” said Christian Cipollini, author of Lucky Luciano: Mysterious Tales of a Gangland Legend. He explains that the myth originated in the 1930s and 1940s after the American mafia shifted from bootlegging during prohibition to other illicit ventures like drug trafficking and loansharking, and began infiltrating labor unions, and legitimate industries such as textiles and construction. Cipollini said there are no credible instances of a mafia murder victim being fitted with cement shoes around this time, but there is the story of Abe “Bo” Weinberg, a Jewish mobster in New York who worked closely with prohibition kingpin Dutch Schultz. Weinberg disappeared in 1935, supposedly after Schultz had him killed and disposed of his body in the East River after fitting him with a pair of cement shoes. “That much may indeed be true, but it was one of many of the tall tales that further evolved into a truism of sorts, that was basically ‘accepted’ as such by historians, press and mafia history aficionados.”
And from another expert: “So let’s review what we know: (1) Underworld gossips have repeatedly insisted that mob hit men sometimes encase a victim partially or completely in concrete. (2) However, the one confirmed instance of a concretized corpse we’ve been able to turn up wasn’t a mob hit. (3) In cases of mob hits definitively known to involve concrete, we’re not talking concrete shoes so much as concrete anchors, in the form of blocks used to keep the body submerged. We have no evidence of a mob hit in which the killer mixed up concrete, planted a victim in it, and (not to fixate on this, but one has to consider the practical aspects) waited for the stuff to dry. Conclusion: Either custom concretewear is 100 percent effective, and the victim invariably vanishes forever from the ken of man, or the whole thing’s a myth.”
We know there were floating baths in the late 1800s. The barge-shaped, wooden structures surrounded a pool—open on top to the air and to the dirty river water on the bottom. In 1915, there were 15 baths berthed around the city, but by 1940 or so they had all closed because of water pollution.
And we know that in 2004, the Neptune Foundation purchased the C500, one of dozens of single-hull, flat-top, metal barges flooding the market. The vessel, renamed The Floating Pool Lady, was repurposed with a half-Olympic-sized pool, sunk into a cutout in the barge.
But while the picture shows kids having fun, the baths were made less for recreation than to remedy New York’s dire public health plight. Political reformer Josiah Quincy said: “The advance of civilization is largely measured by the victories of mankind over its greatest enemy – dirt.” And public bathing was at the forefront of this.
The floating baths were built along the East and Hudson Rivers from 1870, and by 1888 around 2,500,000 men and 1,500,000 women used them every year during bathing season (June to September). The baths were free. However, they were such a welcome relief from the summer heat that there was often conflict.
The city imposed a 20-minute time limit in an effort to restrict lingering. But there were accusations of patrons bribing attendants to turn a blind eye. Young boys were more innovative, and often went from one bath to another, dirtying themselves on the way so as not to be denied admittance.
Early in the 20th century, pollution of the river water reached serious levels and so, in 1914, all floating baths were required to be watertight. If river water was used, it had to be purified and filtered. The need for year-round bathing also meant the need for indoor public baths.
But if we want to think of swimming in the East River, let’s end this odd tour with several works by Thomas Eakins & George Bellows, who really caught the idea.
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City Hospital with the Nurses Residence to the south, pier for steamer landings, with Queensboro Bridge north.
Jay Jacobson got it right!!
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Nicola Victor Ziroli, Bridges in Winter, 1934, oil on canvas, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Transfer from the U.S. Department of Labor, 1964.1.88
Bridges in Winter is an example of the urban scenes that were popular with artists working for New Deal art programs in the 1930s. The snow-covered bridge in the painting is similar to the series of bridges (including the Clark Street Bridge) that span the Chicago River, providing an essential link between the two halves of the city. The bridges can be raised easily to allow river traffic to pass through when needed. Chicago’s bridges may have served as inspiration for the artist, as he spent a great deal of time there. In the foreground a crowd of people gather at one end of the bridge, with more people behind them in the distance. A newspaper boy waves his arm in the air as he hawks his newspapers. The stormy sky could be the customary chill gray of a Chicago winter, or it could allude to the troublesome times Americans faced during the Great Depression.
Birge Harrison, Winter Sunset, ca. 1890, oil on wood mounted on wooden cradle, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Museum purchase, 1984.23
In his 1909 book, Landscape Painting, Birge Harrison described color as “dancing” in nature, and he was especially fascinated by the subtle tones in a wintry landscape. In this image, he painted the pinks and purples of a winter sunset reflected and diffused across broken ice. The dark boats trapped by the frozen water and the pale colors evoke an environment that is both harsh and beautiful.
“Color is very closely allied to music. Both are sensuous and [passionate], playing directly upon the emotions …” The artist, in his book Landscape Painting, 1909
George Catlin, Buffalo Chase in Winter, Indians on Snowshoes, 1832-1833, oil on canvas, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of Mrs. Joseph Harrison, Jr., 1985.66.416
In the summer, plains bison led mounted pursuers on dangerous chases. Winter snows, however, made tracking buffalo safer and easier, slowing the animal’s escape and allowing Indian hunters on snowshoes to move easily over the ground. Catlin traveled in the West in the warmer months and never witnessed such a hunt, but he undoubtedly heard descriptions from both Indians and whites and may have seen the first known representation of it, by the Swiss-Canadian artist Peter Rindisbacher. Catlin painted this work in his studio during the winter of 1832–33.
John Henry Twachtman, End of Winter, after 1889, oil on canvas, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of William T. Evans, 1909.7.65
Twachtman drew inspiration from his seventeen acres of land in Greenwich, Connecticut, and his paintings of the property express the emotional and spiritual comfort he found there. This image describes the beginning of the seasonal transition from winter to spring. Twachtman depicted bare trees and an icy, swollen brook, but allowed the brown primed canvas to show through his thinly applied paint so that a feeling of warmth and regeneration could emerge. Twachtman created many images of streams and brooks, and these ceaselessly moving bodies of water might have held a deeper significance for him. By the time Twachtman painted his Connecticut landscapes, American artists and intellectuals had been interested in Buddhism for more than two decades, and the artist himself had studied Zen philosophy and Japanese art. (Pyne, “John Twachtman and the Therapeutic Landscape,” in Chotner et al., John Twachtman: Connecticut Landscapes, 1989) This may account for the meditative quality of his pictures, the sense of looking not at an actual landscape, but at an inward image of something seen long before.
Saul Kovner, Winter, n.d., lithograph, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of Audrey McMahon, 1968.98.15
Henry Gasser, Winter Parking, ca. 1935-1945, watercolor and pencil on paper, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of Paul W. Doll Jr., 1979.120.1
Benson B. Moore, Winter on the Anacostia, n.d., softground etching and drypoint on paper, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of Sade C. Styron, 1970.149
Henry Carter Johnson, Winter Landscape, 1939, oil on canvas, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Transfer from the U.S. Department of Labor, 1964.1.184
Aldro T. Hibbard, Rockport in Winter, ca. 1940, oil on canvas, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of International Business Machines Corporation, 1969.122
Harold Weston, Giant Winter Evening, 1932-1958, oil on canvas, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of Mrs. Faith Weston, 1977.124.2
FORMER CITICORP BUILDING IN 2005, WHEN THERE WERE NO OTHER STRUCTURES NEAR THE SITE. ALEXIS VILLEFANE GOT IT RIGHT
TUESDAY PHOTO OF THE DAY
New York City Waterfalls is a public art project by artist Olafur Eliasson, in collaboration with the Public Art Fund, consisting of four man-made waterfalls placed around New York City along the East River. The most famous was at the Brooklyn Bridge in lower Manhattan.BILL SCHIMOLER GUESSD 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) Smithsonian American Art Museum
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Janet E. Turner, Wintering Snow Geese, 1968, color linoleum cut and screenprint, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of the artist, 1973.21.2
WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 16, 2020
OUR 237th ISSUE
OF
FROM OUR ARCHIVES
SNOW AS A WORK OF ART
FROM THE SMITHSONIAN AMERICAN ART MUSEUM
Everett Warner, Falling Snow, New York, 1922, oil on canvas, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Bequest of Henry Ward Ranger through the National Academy of Design, 1978.63
Isadore Weiner, Snow Shoveller, 1939, color lithograph on paper, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of Jean Nichols, 1974.38.31
Frank McClure, Snow on the Window, 1969, linoleum cut, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of Frank McClure, 1970.108
William B. Post, Path in the Snow, ca. 1897, platinum print, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Museum purchase from the Charles Isaacs Collection made possible in part by the Luisita L. and Franz H. Denghausen Endowment, 1994.91.147
Fairfield Porter, Snow Landscape, ca. 1960-1965, lithograph on paper, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of Arnold Elser, 1981.154.101
Fritz Scholder, Indian in the Snow, 1972, acrylic on canvas, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of Benjamin P. Nicolette, 1980.107
Howard Cook, Street in Snow (Houses in Snow) (Illustration for The Checkerboard), 1931, wood engraving on paper, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of Barbara Latham, 1980.122.145
Carl W. Peters, Little Village, ca. 1930, oil on canvas, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of Mrs. Carl W. Peters, 1984.77
Carl William Peters loved to paint snow scenes because of the delicate effects of light on the frozen, white landscape. He never traveled far from his home in Fairport, New York, and this image probably shows a view of a town close to his studio. The bright sunshine suggests a cheerful scene of people walking along the snow-covered sidewalks. But Peters did not beautify the small rickety houses, which look like they would struggle to keep their occupants warm. In this way, he captured both the charm and the hardships of an older America that still existed in small country villages.
William H. Johnson, Snow Peaks and Blossoms, ca. 1935-1938, oil on burlap, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of the Harmon Foundation, 1967.59.938
Harry Shokler, Waterfront–Brooklyn, ca. 1934, oil on canvas, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Transfer from the U.S. Department of Labor, 1964.1.121
Leslie Umberger is the Curator of Folk and Self-Taught Art at SAAM.
Turkeys is a classic Grandma Moses painting depicting the annual Thanksgiving ritual of catching the holiday bird. Moses captures the cold November sky and an early snow, contrasted by the bright colors worn by both the poultry and the people. Moses gives an unusual amount of detail to the turkeys themselves, paying tribute to the noble bird that Ben Franklin called “a true original of North America.” Moses, a lifelong farm woman, understood the nature of growing crops and raising livestock, yet still pitied the poor turkey for being so widely regarded as delicious. Thanksgiving only became an official American holiday when Moses was a child, yet its role as a family-centric and gratitude-based holiday gave it a special place in her oeuvre.
Moses began painting when she was in her sixties, looking back to the rural ways of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Her art became wildly popular after 1939, when the Museum of Modern Art acclaimed her as a “modern primitive,” a label that attached her to the developing American art world as much as it distanced her from it. In the 1940s and especially in the 1950s, her accessible style and subjects were viewed as both quintessentially American and the perfect antidote to a postwar modern art that felt cold and arcane.
The Marchbanks Calendar December by Harry Cimino, n.d/ . We’ve just turned the last page on this year’s calendar and it’s time to count down the days remaining in 2008. To take a good look at the last month of the year, I’ve chosen December from Harry Cimino’s Marchbanks Calendar. The artist was born in Indiana in 1898 and died in New York in 1969. Not the longest life on record but certainly one that saw its share of changes, beginning while Queen Victoria was still in power, and ending when men were putting their footprints on the moon. Somewhere in between (as this woodcut is undated), Cimino crafted this image. From what I can gather, the work was likely done in the 1920s.
For me, it has that Currier and Ives feel of Americana deepened by the artist’s choice of color. The red is vital to the sky and the church windows, while the gray-blue of the horse and riders carries most of the action (though the horse’s hind legs seem to be lacking a certain rhythm). I like the woosh of the woman’s scarf and the almost opposite effect of the man’s blanket, which seems to be melting into the snow.
Cimino produced a calendar for the Marchbanks Company, and many of the illustrations are in American Art’s collection. I hope we can look at more because they create miniature worlds that capture a time and place. Cimino also created woodcuts for book illustrations that also endear . . . and endure.
MONDAY PHOTO OF THE DAY Elevated #7 Flushing Line Train along Queens Blvd in 1917 at Rawson Street Bill Schimoler, Andy Sparberg and Nina Lublin were the first to have the answer.
SNOW IS COMING!!!
ENJOY THE ARTISTIC VERSIONS OF SLUSH-FREE WINTER PANORAMAS WITH NO ICE TO SLIP ON AND LOOSING YOUR SHOE IN A SNOWDRIFT. WHAT A WONDERFUL DAY TO SLIDE DOWN THE HILLS SOUTH OF CORNELL TECH!!!
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 Deborah Dorff All image are copyrighted (c) Roosevelt Island Historical Society unless otherwise indicated
SMITHSONIAN AMERICAN ART MUSEUM
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News and Stories about the Waterways of New York and New Jersey
Ann Buttenwieser’s
NYC History in 10 Barges
March 16, 2018
What can we learn about New York City and its waterfront from its boats? Waterwire is inviting those across the maritime world and beyond—historians, planners, artists, business people, scientists—to share their perspectives on NYC History in10 Boats.
Ann Buttenwieser, the driving force behind a giant barge refurbished into a floating pool, is known as the Floating Pool Lady (as is the pool itself). The co-founder of the Council for Parks and Playgrounds (which later merged with what is now New Yorkers for Parks) and the founder of the nonprofit Neptune Foundation,
Ms. Buttenwieser spent more than two decades working to recreate the floating baths of the 19th century, her mission to get recreationally underserved New Yorkers into the water. Ann is currently writing a book about that adventure. Here is her NYC History in 10 Barges.
(For RIHS, with Stephen Blank)
Hopper Barge: Michael Hughes came from Ireland in 1843 and began to build wooden hopper barges in New Brunswick, New Jersey. A hopper barge is a type of ship used primarily in marine construction, dredging, and marine salvage that isn’t mechanical and that cannot self-propel (with exceptions). It is ideal for carrying materials like grain, sand, coal, soil, sugar, timber products, and rocks and for dumping those materials. Hopper barges typically have double-hull construction, which means that the bottoms and sides of their cargo remain separate from the hull with the use of empty spaces. Two common types of hopper barges are box hopper barges and raked hopper barges. A raked hopper barge has a curved bow, often at the head of the tow, which minimizes resistance when the barge is being pushed. This allows a raked hopper barge to move faster on the water than other types. Raked hopper barges can also be double-raked, which further decreases their resistance on the water and increases how fast they can move. Hughes’ early vessels carried coal between Pennsylvania and New York. Today, Hughes Marine is famous for its specialty flat-top metal barges, which provide sets for musical performances, movies, and send up the Macy’s July 4th fireworks.
Floating Baths: In 1880, Boss Tweed opened New York City’s first floating baths. The barge-shaped, wooden structures surrounded a pool—open on top to the air and to the dirty river water on the bottom. In 1915, there were 15 baths berthed around the city, but by 1940 or so they had all closed because of water pollution.
Oil Barge: An award for bravery in the 1916 Black Tom Explosion gave Captain Fredrick Bouchard funds to found the Bouchard Transportation Company. In order to meet federal restrictions on single-hull vessels after the Exxon Valdez oil spill, the company constructed 400-foot-long, double-hull, metal barges that can each carry 138,000 barrels of oil in holds under the deck, thus removing an estimated 650 trucks per barge and untold pollution from the roadways.
Floating Island: In 1970, Artist Robert Smithson, famous for his Great Salt Lake work Spiral Jetty, sketched a toy boat pulling a barge that resembled a park. Smithson died three years later. In September 2005, as part of a Whitney Museum retrospective, Smithson’s wife, artist Nancy Holt, created a real floating island on a barge. For eight days, the art work, with a lawn, rocks and trees, circled Manhattan.
Mobro: Unlike the appealing Floating Island, the Mobro carried 3,100 tons of trash, with which contractor Lowell Harrison hoped to start a business producing methane. For two months in 1987, the barge hauled the same load of garbage from Long Island to six states, three countries, and back to Brooklyn, seeking landfill space but continually turned away. The trash was finally incinerated in Brooklyn, and the episode touched off a national discussion about waste disposal.
Bargemusic: At Fulton Landing in Brooklyn, music lovers enjoy concerts while floating on the East River. Bargemusic, an intimate, unique chamber music hall, was the brainchild of violinist Olga Bloom, who in 1976 repurposed a metal barge that 100 years earlier had transported sacks of coffee beans.
The River Café: A year later, across the foot of Old Fulton Street from Olga’s Bargemusic, after a 13-year struggle with federal and state regulations and fire codes that applied only to land-based buildings, restaurateur and Waterfront Alliance board of trustee, Michael O’Keeffe opened the now legendary floating restaurant on another converted coffee barge.
Waterfront Museum: More than a century ago, the wooden Lehigh Valley Barge #79 moved cargo from ships to rail. In the 1950s, containerization took the vessel out of its middleman position. David Sharps rescued the mired-in-mud vessel in 1985 and brought it to Red Hook, Brooklyn. Now on the National Register of Historic Places, the artifact is a museum where visitors can enjoy theater, educational programs and exhibitions about the waterfront
New York New Jersey Rail: Until the mid-20th century, and because the nearest railroad bridge crossing was in Albany, railroad companies saved time and money by operating barges across New York Harbor. Known as car floats, the barges carried rail cars from tracks that ended at the New Jersey waterfront to those that began in Manhattan and Brooklyn. When trucking boomed, railroads soon went bankrupt and the car floats mostly disappeared from the harbor. In 2008, however, The Port Authority of New York & New Jersey took over the last remaining car float operation in New York Harbor—called New York New Jersey Rail—and invested millions of dollars to modernize the service. Each car float can shuttle 18 rail cars, with more than a thousand tons of freight, between the Greenville Yard in Jersey City, and the 65th Street Yard in Brooklyn.
The Floating Pool Lady: In 2004, the Neptune Foundation purchased the C500, one of dozens of single-hull, flat-top, metal barges flooding the market. The vessel, renamed The Floating Pool Lady, was repurposed with a half-Olympic-sized pool, sunk into a cutout in the barge.
HOPPER BARGE
FLOATING BATHS
FLOATING ISLAND
MOBRO
BARGEMUSIC
RIVER CAFE
MUGS FOR ALL YOUR DRINKS
WATERFRONT MUSEUM
NEW YORK NEW JERSEY RAIL
THE FLOATING POOL LADY
MONDAY PHOTO OF THE DAY
ARTICLE COURTESY OF THE WATERFRONT ALLIANCE WATERWIRE (C) 2018
Text by Judith Berdy Thanks to Bobbie Slonevsky for her dedication to Blackwell’s Almanac Thanks to Deborah Dorff for maintaining our website Edited by Melanie Colter and Deborah Dorff All materials in this publication are copyrighted (c)
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