OUR HEARTS GO OUR TO OUR FRIENDS, FAMILIES AND NEIGHBORS IN ISRAEL
FROM THE ARCHIVES
THURSDAY, OCTOBER 26, 2023
THE WWII RADIO
TOWERS ATOP
STEINER STUDIO
IN THE
BROOKLYN NAVY YARD
ISSUE# 1110
UNTAPPED NEW YORK
@untappedcities Do you have story on a replica bridge on top of buildings in brooklyn. I can’t find anything on it but i see it from BQE.
— lauren (@nationofnations)
A photo she took from a car gave us the clue we needed: rather than a replica bridge, they’re the WWII radio towers once used by the Navy, specifically the Third Naval District US Naval Communication Center Headquarters. They sit atop the 1940s-era building, 25 Washington Avenue, in the Brooklyn Navy Yard, and part of Steiner Studios.
In this forum, Navy seamen who worked at the station mention using it to communicate with the Bermuda station, with ships coming in and out of the New York City harbor, and one guys mentions tracking Sputnik (which another refutes). The New York Postwrites, “The spidery structures uncannily conjure the era of warships in the roiling Atlantic with which they communicated.”
Andrew Gustafson, vice president of Turnstile Tours, a company that gives tours of the Navy Yard, confirms that there isn’t too much well-documented information about the towers themselves. He says, “You may find reference to it being ‘strong enough to reach Puerto Rico, which was in the Third Naval District,’ which is not correct. That is not a comment on the power of the antenna – again, I have no idea – but on the fact that Puerto Rico was in the Third Naval District only from 1903 to 1919, long before this building existed.
Dennis Riley, archivist for the Brooklyn Navy Yard shared with us architectural drawings related to the towers
He continues, “The transmitter sits on top of Building 1 or Building 291, which was built in 1942 as the Material Sciences Laboratory. This building housed much of the primary research operations of the Yard, including testing the resilience and properties of materials and equipment used by the navy, as well as developing radio, radar, sonar, and other electronics and navigation equipment. Much of navigation system for the Polaris nuclear submarines was developed in this building.”
Studios Chairman Doug Steiner also had the radio towers lit up too, “in an understated, blue-and-white way. They’re not going to blink,” reports the Post. Today, the building holds not only Steiner Studios but also Carnegie Mellon’s Integrative Media Program and Brooklyn College Graduate School of Cinema.
OUR HEARTS GO OUR TO OUR FRIENDS, FAMILIES AND NEIGHBORS IN ISRAEL
FROM THE ARCHIVES
WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 25, 2023
THE LITTLE PRINCE
ON FIFTH AVENUE
ISSUE# 1109
UNTAPPED NEW YORK
A bronze statue of the Little Prince now gazes wistfully toward the trees of Central Park in Manhattan’s Upper East Side. The titular subject of Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’s 1943 children’s novel is celebrating his 80th birthday, and sculptor Jean-Marc de Pas’s four-foot-tall version arrived yesterday, September 21, in front of Villa Albertine, the French Embassy’s bookshop and cultural center in New York. The story of the beloved figure has been translated into more than 500 languages and dialects.
Saint-Exupéry wrote Le Petit Prince (The Little Prince) while living in New York after escaping the Nazi invasion of his native France. The book tells the story of a young boy who lands in the Sahara desert from a faraway planet. A pilot crashes and meets him, jumpstarting a winding tale of friendship filled with insightful commentary on the human condition. As the pair wanders through the barren landscape, the Little Prince tells the man about his travels to six planets. He met a different person at each location, each of whom was entangled in his own habitual folly. Saint-Exupéry’s tale offers meditations on how to live a worthwhile life — and how not to fall into the trappings of cynicism and adulthood.
Gaëtan Bruel, the director of Villa Albertine and cultural counselor for the French Embassy, said in an interview with Hyperallergic that the Little Prince is perhaps the most universal character in French literature. Bruel spoke to the importance of the lessons in the story, among them kindness, wisdom, dialogue, and the acceptance of differences.
After his time in New York, Saint-Exupéry served as a reconnaissance pilot for the French Air Force. In 1944, he died in a plane crash, likely shot down by enemy fire.
The new sculpture sits on a low stone wall in front of the gilded-age Payne Whitney House that hosts Villa Albertine. A row of small palm trees blow in the wind behind the prince as he gazes skyward.
One passerby, self-proclaimed arts lover and hobbyist photographer Timothy Arena, stopped to look at the sculpture on his way from the Frick’s Breuer location to the Metropolitan Museum of Art a few blocks north of Villa Albertine.
“I’ve walked by here dozens of times,” he said, noting that the shiny bronze of the sculpture and plaque had caught his attention. He was familiar with the subject, especially after visiting an exhibition on The Little Prince at the Morgan Library and Museum last winter. Seeing the sculpture, he said, made him want to read the book.
Film stylist Meghan Kleinheinz strolled along Fifth Avenue and paused to examine the work and take a photograph. “The texture of the bronze really gives it a lot of movement,” Kleinheinz told Hyperallergic. “It looks perfect — with the breeze coming through and hitting the paint and with the palms.”
“It catches you,” added Kleinheinz, who remembers reading the story as a child.
Gaëtan Bruel, the director of Villa Albertine and cultural counselor for the French Embassy, said in an interview with Hyperallergic that the Little Prince is perhaps the most universal character in French literature. Bruel spoke to the importance of the lessons in the story, among them kindness, wisdom, dialogue, and the acceptance of differences.
“He’s a quite political figure — not a partisan one — but someone who can inspire a generation of minds,” Bruel said. The antifascist biography of the Little Prince’s creator contributes to the tale’s significance as well.
The statue was sponsored by the American Society of Le Souvenir Français nonprofit and the children’s advocacy group Antoine de Saint Exupéry Youth Foundation. Bruel discussed the statue’s connection to Villa Albertine, which hosts an artist residency program. Like the Little Prince, he said, these artists are travelers who have much to learn and share.
Bruel recalled the first time he read the story. His mother was a preschool teacher, and when he was the same age as her students, she read him the book while they were traveling on their sailboat.
“There is no sailboat in The Little Prince,” said Bruel. “But I felt a connection. I remember that the sky in the book reminded me of the sky above the sea.”
DUE TO LATENESS OF THE HOUR, OUR WEDNESDAY PHOTO WILL RETURN ON THURSDAY
TUESDAY PHOTO OF THE DAY
WWII RADIO TOWERS ATOP STEINER STUDIOS IN BROOKLYN NAVY YARD
CREDITS
UNTAPPED NEW YORK
HYPERALLERGIC JUDITH BERDY
MAYA LEVANON-PHOTOS TIK TOK & INSTAGRAM
All image are copyrighted (c) Roosevelt Island Historical Society unless otherwise indicated
At the turn of the last century the neighborhood north of 34th Street and west of Fifth Avenue was a mish-mash of old brick-faced houses and small commercial buildings four or five stories tall. The millinery and apparel districts had already begun inching northward; but it would be several years before the neighborhood would earn the title of The Garment District. Instead, now, it was the theaters and entertainment houses around Herald Square that drew the most attention.
But on December 12, 1901 the Pennsylvania Railroad made an announcement that would change the area forever. The company planned to spent $150 million to join New Jersey and Manhattan with an under-river railroad tunnel terminating in a monumental station facing engulfing Seventh to Eighth Avenues from 31st Street to 33rd Streets—the Pennsylvania Station.
Developers were quick to recognize the potential in the surrounding blocks—soon to be swarming with businessmen and tourists coming and going from the station. Within the year ground was broken for R. H. Macy’s enormous department store facing 34th Street, far above the established shopping district, and brothers James and David Todd laid plans for upscale hotels.
At the time of the Pennsylvania Railroad’s announcement the Doherty brothers, John and William, lived in the house at No. 488 Seventh Avenue. William was an architect and John earned a living as a mason. The Dohertys would soon be moving out.
James and David Todd engaged architect Harry B.Mulliken to design the Aberdeen Hotel at No. 17 West 32nd Street. Ground was broken in 1902, the same year that Mulliken teamed with Edgar J. Moeller to form the partnership of Mulliken & Moeller. Perhaps that firm’s firm commission was also for the Todds—another hotel nearby on the side of the Doherty house and its neighbors at the corner of Seventh Avenue and 36th Street—the Hotel York.
Completed in 1903 the Hotel York was a standout. A two story base of rusticated limestone was topped by a third floor of planar stone. Above this nine stories of red brick and limestone erupted skyward in a profusion of turn-of-the-century architectural ostentation. A residential wedding cake, the Beaux Arts façade was frosted with carved urns, garlands, cartouches, and grotesques. Balconies of carved stone or cast iron broke the flat planes
The facade boiled over with carved ornamentation. photo by Nicolas Lemery Nantel / salokin.com
The Hotel York opened as both a transient and residential hotel. The lavish public spaces mimicked the exterior with gushing molded plaster festoons and scrollwork, marble columns and expensive carpeting and draperies. Guests and residents enjoyed amenities like the in-house barber shop. The hotel’s proximity to the theater district made it an immediate favorite with the acting profession
The elaborate public rooms were often the scene of formal functions — photo by Byron Company, from the collection of the Museum of the City of New York
Among the first of these was well-known actor E. M. Holland. In February 1904 the 56-year old was much annoyed with hotel security. He lived in room 455 on the 10th floor on and February 7 went to bed with his door open. According to The Sun the following day, “When he woke up his overcoat, a derby hat and $17 in money were gone.”
Holland dressed for his part as Eben Holden in 1901 — copyright expired
The newspaper noted that “Holland was pretty sore over his loss.” His professional pride was perhaps bruised since, at the time, he was playing the great detective Bedford in the play Raffles.
Also living in the hotel at the time were, according to The Sun, “Mrs. Nellie Stevens, an actress out of a job, and her friend, a Miss Goodrich, an actress in better luck.” In November that year the two women met at the Liberty Theatre to see a play. Nellie Stevens was running late and tossed her rings into a handkerchief, hoping to save time by putting them on in the hansom cab.
No sooner had she settled into her seat in the theater than she noticed one of her rings—a diamond valued at $400 (about $10,000 today) was missing. She rushed back to the York Hotel and notified the house detective Andrew Hanley. He traced the cab back to Sullivan’s Stables on West 35th Street; only to find out that in the day or two it took him to track it down the cabbie, James Lawrence, had been laid off.
When Lawrence arrived back at the stables on November 14 to pick up his pay the detective was notified. He and Mrs. Stevens rushed the one-block distance to confront him. Lawrence admitted to finding the ring, stuck his hand in his pocket and announced “And here it is.”
“Mrs. Stevens, with a little shriek of joy and gratitude, seized the ring. She looked at it. Then she shrieked again.,” said The Sun.
It wasn’t her ring. “This is a phony diamond. The ring is a ringer, and a poor ringer at that,” she exclaimed. She pressed charges of grand larceny against cabbie with grand larceny. But she was out a diamond ring, nevertheless.
Another actress to cross the threshold of the Hotel York was the young and beautiful Evelyn Nesbit. She had been married to millionaire Harry Kendall Thaw in 1904; however she carried on a dalliance with architect Stanford White. The affair would end with the renowned architect dead on the floor of his magnificent Madison Square Garden on June 25, 1906, the victim of an enraged husband.
During the murder trial, White’s chauffeur testified to driving Evelyn here and there on certain occasions, including one night in September 1905 when he dropped her off at the Hotel York.
A long, permanent marquee sheltered arriving guests from the elements — photo by Irving Underhill, from the collection of the Museum of the City of New York
On October 26, 1907 the new Italian conductor of the Metropolitan Opera House arrived from Europe and moved into his apartments in the hotel. The famed conductor would be in friendly surroundings—the Hotel York was a favorite home for many of the opera house’s singers and workers.
Not all the residents, of course, were in the theater. Mining engineer Thomas R. Marshall lived here in 1907, and earlier that year the hotel had been forced into the awkward situation of evicting a Duke.
In 1904, a day or two following his brother James B. Duke’s wedding, tobacco millionaire Brodie Duke went on a binge of drinking and partying. The spree lasted for several days and along for the ride much of the time was Alice Webb, whose reputation was not altogether without stain. On December 19, 1904 the pair was married in the Madison Square Presbyterian Church—although Brodie later denied remembering any of it.
Duke won a divorce decree on March 27, 1906 and a year later Alice was living in the York Hotel. But on May 2, 1907 the hotel was forced to evict the 38-year old for failing to pay her board. On Saturday night, two days later, around 9:30 she showed up at the hotel drunk “and was unable to take care of herself,” according to the New-York Tribune. “She rejected an offer of the clerk who wished to show her to a room, to protect her, and she left the hotel.”
While the Duke name was normally engraved on invitations to the balls and dinners at the highest levels of Manhattan society; that night it would be written in the ledger of the West 38th Street police station. Alice Duke was arrested around midnight incapacitated with drink. “The woman was well dressed. She wore a big straw hat and big pearl earrings,” said the Tribune. She had with her “numerous bonds and several thousand dollars of stock of the American Tobacco Company.”
The following year on December 1 the Todds sold the Hotel York to Columbia University professor William M. Sloane for $825,000—a substantial $20 million in today’s dollars. Seven days later Sloane resold the property to the Stanworth Company of which Sloane was a director.
The English actress Maud Odell, known in the theatrical world as “The $10,000 English beauty,” was staying in the York while playing at the American Theatre in November 1909. She was terrified when she received a letter threatening to disfigure her face with acid.
“If you do not pay Mr. Mudd $100 on Wednesday following your matinee performance do not be surprised to be shot during your next performance or to have your face marred by acid. A man will come up to you and say, ‘Have you a package for Mr. Mudd?’ Then you are to turn over to him a package containing 100 iron men. Do not notify the cops; they will not do you any good. You will see this insignia in your sleep.”
The unsigned letter bore a sketch of three daggers forming a triangle above a larger dagger.
Police were notified by the theater’s agent and a few days later the actress received a second envelope. In it was a card with the words “La Signa Monte Secunda” and the triangle of daggers—this time with a numeral 3 in the center.
Understandably, the Edwardian actress became hysterical. Two detectives were assigned to escort her back and forth between the York Hotel and the theater in a taxi.
After the completion of Pennsylvania Station in 1910, the Hotel York was quick to market its location, a “two minute walk.” The hotel still soared above the neighboring buildings.
The Italian opera singers sometimes upset the harmony of the upscale residence hotel and it all came to a head in April 1911 when singers Didur, Gilly, Pini-Corsi, and Rossi; the chorus master Romel; and the Italian conductor Signor Podesti were told to leave. Both Podesti and Didur lived in suites with their wives; the others were single. Trouble came when the conductor’s wife tried to scrimp by cooking Italian dishes in their rooms.
“The Italian singers, being of a thrifty disposition, did not eat at the hotel, but preferred the restaurants run by their own countrymen, where they could get macaroni and spaghetti flavored with the grated cheese and washed down with flasks of red chianti,” explained The New York Times.
That was all well and good until Signora Podesi bought a chafing dish and, according to the newspaper, “prepared with a spoonful of butter, a grating of full-flavored cheese, an onion, grated bread crumbs and a strong suspicion of garlic, suppers for herself and spouse. The odor of this dish spread along the corridor, it is said, to the rooms occupied by a learned professor from Chicago. He protested that the perfume of the onion disturbed him.”
Hotel management informed the conductor that cooking in the rooms was forbidden. Repeatedly. Each time Signor Podesti would bow and apologize and his wife would go on cooking. It ended with everyone associated with the Metropolitan Opera Company receiving letters of eviction.
Podesti and his wife, carrying her Pekingese toy dog Winki under her arm, stormed into the office of the Met’s press agent. The agent was already in stress because Caruso could not sing that night. Mrs. Podesti lamented that they would sleep on the street and her husband waved the eviction notice in the air.
While “the Italians held an indignation meeting around him,” the agent phoned Jay G. Wilbraham, resident manager of the York Hotel. The agent heard of garlic and onion odors and complaining guests; Wilbraham heard of the long-term happy relationship the Met had with the York. In the end the troupe was allowed to stay “if Signora Podesti stopped cooking in her room.” The tempest in the pasta pot was allayed.
Perhaps the hotel’s most poignant story played out in 1922 when the former stage star Rose Coghlan checked in to the Hotel York for the last time. One of the best known actresses in America for over 50 years, she reminisced about her glory days in the 1880s and ‘90s on April 7, 1922 “Lord! How fine I used to think myself with my little old one-horse barouche and my $25-a-month coachman here in gay New York. I really felt quite grand as I drove through Central Park and returned the bows of the society elite. I used to board the horse in a livery stable. His name was Pete. I wonder what’s become of the poor chap.”
Now, at 70 years of age, she was penniless. Theater folk heard of her plight and sent checks—David Belsaco’s was for $100. Telling a reporter that she was suffering “a temporary embarrassment,” she sat in the bed and laughed “The ‘financial whirl’ got me. It gets the best of us, especially we women of the stage.”
The New-York Tribune described her rooms in the York as “sunny quarters on an upper floor.” The newspaper said “The veteran actress, suffering from a nervous breakdown, wept as she extolled the generosity of her friends in helping her get these new and comfortable quarters.”
After recollecting her days of stardom she cautioned “Don’t imagine I’m repining, though. I’m not. My friends are dear, the kindest and best of friends. My daughter is the dearest and most capable of daughters. Without her I’d have been poor indeed. Now I’m rich.” She wiped a tear from her eye and continued, “I’m rich because the sort of folk I always wished to have love me still do. That, I assert, is fortune enough.”
Rose Coghlan and her husband, Charles, perform in the 1894 play Lady Barter. Photograph by Byron Company, from the collection of the Museum of the City of New York
Rose’s daughter was there to take the aged actress to her home on Long Island. Her mother told the reporter “You mustn’t think I’m living in the past, though. I’m going back to the stage. In a few months with the sunlight and the lovely outdoors I’ll be myself again. It isn’t in me to be an invalid…In three months from now I’ll be kicking up my heels like a schoolgirl—just like a schoolgirl—just..” And in the middle of her sentence the elderly woman who had brought audiences to their feet for decades had fallen asleep.
In 1925 the hotel was renovated to accommodate stores at street level. Throughout the next few decades fewer and fewer of the theatrical crowd would live here as newer hotels opened closer to Times Square—now the undisputed center of the theater area.
With the entertainment district gone, the Garment District took over. By the 1960s the York Hotel was occupied mostly by traveling salesmen. Only two floors of the hotel were now rented for guests; the rest having been taken over by garment salesmen as would-be showrooms, especially during market weeks. The salesmen and buyers who managed to get one of the rooms for sleeping would pay $15.65 for a single with bath.
In March 1968 a young designer took room 613 in order to market his first collection—a total of nine designs. It was Calvin Klein’s foot in the door of the Seventh Avenue fashion industry.
A modern glass marquee stretches the near-length of the first floor. photo by Nicolas Lemery Nantel / salokin.com
In 1986 Martin Swartzman & Partners purchased the 12-story building and commissioned architect Costas Kondylis to converted it to mixed commercial and residential space. Completed in 1986 the former hotel opened with 108 rental apartments.
Although the street level has been brutalized with unsympathetic storefronts and an out-of-place green glass marquee; the grand 1903 former hotel—once home to actresses and divas—still drips with Edwardian decoration.
100 % COTTON 48″ x 60″ MADE IN USA $75- CHARGE CARDS ACCEPTED ORDER YOURS TODAY OR AVAILABLE AT RIHS KIOSK. ORDER FROM US BY CHARGE CARD AND WE WILL SHIP TO YOUR FRIENDS AND FAMILY ($22- SHIPPING AND HANDLING)
OUR HEARTS GO OUR TO OUR FRIENDS, FAMILIES AND NEIGHBORS IN ISRAEL
EDITORIAL
After listening to our neighbors discuss the tram crowding tonight, here are my thoughts: Line monitors are a great idea. We use it at elections where they keep order in the line and let seniors/disabled go ahead. Someone in a bright vest can be an obvious choice. It can be a diplomatic, pleasant, patient person who can gently keep order.
Poma staff are better at customer service and putting up signs is only part of their job. Give them funding to have more staff on hand to deal with the turnstiles. It is exhausting to spend a shift dealing with unruly crowds. Let’s keep order on-line, before the turnstiles, and a limit on 100 persons on the platform.
PSD can be at the base of the staircase to prevent staircase lines.
The tram is being denied staffing, security and customer service. RIOC should let the tram staff manage the platform and fund extra staffing.
We need large obvious signs that seats are for senior disabled only. Signs above seats on cabins and above bench on Manhattan platform.
We love our visitors most of whom tell us how great the island is. Take a look at any of the attractions below and we know that there is organization at these attractions.
Remember, many of them stand on long organized lines for the following.
FOR COMPARISON, PRICES FOR A VIEW: ONE VANDERBILT $42 EMPIRE STATE 44 EDGE 36 TOP OF THE ROCK 34
AND WE ONLY CHARGE $2.90!!!!!
Let’s get our act together and get a calm organized tram ride.
In 1929, Sea View Hospital was in crisis. The now-partially abandoned Staten Island medical facility was experiencing a mass exodus of white nurses while simultaneously handling an overwhelming amount of tuberculosis patients. To remedy the situation, New York City officials began recruiting Black female nurses from the South, offering freedom from the oppression of Jim Crow and the benefits of good pay, education, housing, and employment. The stories of these trailblazing nurses have gone largely untold for nearly a century, but now, author Maria Smilios sheds light on their achievements in her new book TheBlack Angels: The Untold Story ofthe Nurses Who Helped Cure Tuberculosis.\
In the early half of the 20th century, tuberculosis killed over 5.6 million Americans. The disease was especially devasting to cities like New York where it ran rampant through crowded tenement houses and spread rapidly among poor communities. Those suffering from the disease were sent to various healthcare facilities around the edge of the city in hopes of containing the spread and giving patients clean, fresh air.Tuberculosis patients filled the rooms of healthcare facilities such as the now-abandoned Neponsit Beach Hospital in the Rockaways and Sea Breeze Hospital in Coney Island as well as a tuberculosis pavilion on North Brother Island. Some were even quarantined on ferry barges converted into floating wards run by Bellevue Hospital. One of the most famous tuberculosis sanitoriums, and the largest at one point, was Sea View Hospital in Staten Island.
Sea View Hospital in an abandoned state
Sea View Hospital opened in 1913 and was comprised of thirty-seven buildings. The sprawling complex sat at the second highest point on Staten Island, once the site of a grand hilltop estate called “Ocean View.” By the 1920s, when the 2,000-bed hospital was running out of nurses, it was called a “pest house” and a place where “no one left alive.” The Black Angels changed that.
Over the course of twenty years, women like Edna Sutton, Missouria Louvinia Meadows-Walker, Clemmie Philips, Janie Shirley, and Virginia Allen, bravely marched to the front lines of the epidemic and cared for patients who others turned their backs on. Not only did these women work grueling hours day in and day out and put themselves at risk to care for New York’s sick, but they did so while also fighting racism and discrimination.
Photo Courtesy of NYCHHC Sea View Archives
At the time, most of New York City’s more than two dozen municipal hospitals discriminated against Black nurses in some way, whether that meant they simply were not allowed to be hired or there were quotas that limited the number of Black nurses who could be employed. While the medical breakthroughs of white, male doctors and researchers at Sea View who found a cure for tuberculosis have long been celebrated worldwide, the contributions of the Black nurses – who were among the first to administer the groundbreaking drug, isoniazid – have largely been kept alive in the memories of their families, friends, and local communities.
Photo Courtesy of James Williams
Using first-hand interviews and never-before-accessed archives, Smilios brings the stories of the Black Angels to centerstage, highlighting how their efforts helped to desegregate the New York City hospital system, stop discriminatory practices in medical education and medical research, and ultimately save countless lives. Learn more about The Black Angelsfrom the author in our upcoming virtual talk, and get your own copy of The Black Angels, out now!
Sea View Hospital: Panoramic View. Wards, gardens, curved paths leading to 1-story building, and covered corridors.
OUR JULIA GASH TAPESTRY THROWS HAVE ARRIVED.
100 % COTTON 48″ x 60″ MADE IN USA $75- CHARGE CARDS ACCEPTED ORDER YOURS TODAY OR AVAILABLE AT RIHS KIOSK. ORDER FROM US BY CHARGE CARD AND WE WILL SHIP TO YOUR FRIENDS AND FAMILY ($22- SHIPPING AND HANDLING)
OUR HEARTS GO OUR TO OUR FRIENDS, FAMILIES AND NEIGHBORS IN ISRAEL
EDITORIAL
After listening to our neighbors discuss the tram crowding tonight, here are my thoughts: Line monitors are a great idea. We use it at elections where they keep order in the line and let seniors/disabled go ahead. Someone in a bright vest can be an obvious choice. It can be a diplomatic, pleasant, patient person who can gently keep order.
Poma staff are better at customer service and putting up signs is only part of their job. Give them funding to have more staff on hand to deal with the turnstiles. It is exhausting to spend a shift dealing with unruly crowds. Let’s keep order on-line, before the turnstiles, and a limit on 100 persons on the platform.
PSD can be at the base of the staircase to prevent staircase lines.
The tram is being denied staffing, security and customer service. RIOC should let the tram staff manage the platform and fund extra staffing.
We need large obvious signs that seats are for senior disabled only. Signs above seats on cabins and above bench on Manhattan platform.
We love our visitors most of whom tell us how great the island is. Take a look at any of the attractions below and we know that there is organization at these attractions.
Remember, many of them stand on long organized lines for the following.
FOR COMPARISON, PRICES FOR A VIEW: ONE VANDERBILT $42 EMPIRE STATE 44 EDGE 36 TOP OF THE ROCK 34
AND WE ONLY CHARGE $2.90!!!!!
Let’s get our act together and get a calm organized tram ride.
Judith Berdy
FROM THE ARCHIVES
FRIDAY , OCTOBER 20, 2023
Restoration of Richard Haas’
trompe-l’oeil mural in Soho begins
CITY Arts
ISSUE# 1105
The original mural in 1974
112 Prince Street mural in 1974 (left) and during the current restoration project (right). Photos: CITYarts
About
For the first time in over four decades, artist Richard Haas’s landmark 112 Prince Street mural will be restored. Under Haas’s leadership and creative direction, muralist Robin Alcantara will work with a team of painters to restore the mural at the recommendation of Tsipi Ben-Haim, the Founder, Executive and Creative Director of 34-year-old public art and education nonprofit, CITYarts, Inc., which has been the project’s fiscal sponsor since 2015. Created in 1974 under the aegis of public art pioneer Doris Freedman, the 75-foot wide, five-story-high trompe l’oeil mural on the corner of Prince and Greene streets was Haas’s very first outdoor mural. Now largely decayed and covered in graffiti, the original mural was painted to resemble the cast-iron facades typical of 19th-century buildings distinguishing the historic district of SoHo and included the depiction of a cat in one of the windows that belonged to a longtime owner. It was, as Haas describes, “a catalyst that led to the creation of over 100 interior and exterior murals throughout the world.” In a 1989 New York Times review of his public art, architecture critic Paul Goldberger called Mr. Haas “the great architectural muralist of our time.”
Approximately eight years ago, after an article written by David Dunlap appeared in the New York Times describing how the Richard Haas mural in SoHo had faded almost beyond recognition, the artist received a call from David Walentas of Two Trees, the developer and creator of the Dumbo residential district, offering a substantial gift to kick start the fundraising campaign to restore the mural. Encouraged by Mr. Walentas’ donation, the artist and his wife, Katherine Sokolnikoff, selected CITYarts, Inc. to assume the role of fiscal sponsor for the project, and together with assistance from Kenisha Thomas, Alina Slonim, and Pauline Rumore, they were able to secure enough funding from additional philanthropies, like the Bloomberg Foundation, the Silverweed Foundation, and Agnes Gund, as well as 75 private donations to restore the mural. The successful campaign can be largely attributed to the late Doris Freedman, who founded and ran the public art nonprofit CityWalls and was deeply involved in the public art scene in New York City in the early 1970s as the main supporter and dynamo behind the most important early murals and public art projects in NYC—including Haas’s work. In Freedman’s honor, the Bloomberg Philanthropies made a generous grant and proposed that the repainting of the mural be done in Doris’s honor, and the consensus among several other major donors was that this was an excellent idea. The artist was pleased with this plan as well as he has a deep respect and affection for Ms. Freedman as she truly put him on his life’s journey in the public art field through her original support of the 112 Prince Street project.
After the COVID-19 pandemic interrupted the project and stalled its progress, the two new owners of the 112 Prince Street Co-op became interested in seeing the mural restored and joined with Haas in efforts to move the project ahead. The new Co-op President had one request for Haas: to add her dog, rescued from Aleppo, Syria, as one of the pets painted into the windows of the mural. Mr. Haas was pleased to oblige.
Finally, in May of this year, Landmarks gave their approval for the mural restoration, prompting Tsipi Ben-Haim to continue her advocacy by garnering the support of local businesses and fellow SoHo residents. Acting as the public art advisor and community liaison of the project, Ms. Ben-Haim also successfully recruited the support of Manhattan Borough President Mark Levine and SoHo Councilman Christopher Marte. After years of planning and anticipation, the SoHo community is thrilled to have Haas’s historic mural brought back to life.
The repainting of the wall will begin in late September 2023 and is set to take approximately three to four weeks—weather permitting.
About the Artists
Richard Haas is best known for his large-scale architectural murals with his signature trompe-l’oeil style that are exemplified in more than 100 public art projects across New York, Chicago, Miami, Los Angeles, and Munich, Germany that began with SoHo’s 112 Prince Street mural in 1974. He is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship and his numerous awards include the Medal of Honor from the American Institute of Architects. The Prince Street Mural project has also received a grant from the National Academy of Design’s Abbey Mural Fund. Haas’s works have been featured in exhibitions at major museums and galleries and his work is represented in the collections of the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Museum of Modern Art, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, and the Smithsonian Museum among others. http://www.richardhaas.com/
Robin Alcantara founded Blazay LLC in 2020. Alcantara is a 30-year-old artist and muralist from Yonkers, NY. After earning his degree from the University of the Arts in Philadelphia, Alcantara honed in on his craft of hand-painting large-scale murals nationally while working at the award-winning Colossal Media. From 2015-2020, Alcantara served as an expert painter for Colossal working on campaigns for international brands including Adidas, Doyle Dane Bernbach, HBO, and Gucci. Since 2020 Alcantara has focused on crowd-funded projects highlighting current events, local heroes and legends, and other private commissions. He also works with CITYarts and NYpublic schools leading workshops and creating murals with community youth.
OTHER MURALS
Homage to the Chicago School 1211 North LaSalle Street, Chicago, IL. (1980)
Keim silicate paint, 1800 square feet
Executed by Evergreene Painting Studios, New York
The mural, which is painted on three sides of an eighteen-floor apartment house, follows the color and lines of the finished front facade and reflects Louis Sullivan’s decorative style.
Fountainebleau Hotel Miami Beach, FL (1985-86 destroyed)
Keim silicate paint on brick, 19,200 square feet
Commissioned by the Muss Corporation
Executed by American Illusion, New York
The large Art Deco “Arc de Triomphe” offers a view onto the original Fountainebleau Hilton Hotel, designed by Morris Lapidus, and is “lit” by two sixty-five feet high grand lamps in the form of caryatids.
110 Livingston Street Brooklyn, NY. (2007)
This very large project on the former Board of Education building in downtown Brooklyn was completed in the Spring of 2007.
Blackwood Rosen Apartment, Alwyn Court New York, NY. (1977)
10′ x 12′
Nashville Public Library Nashville, TN. (2000-01)
Executed by Jason Gaillard and Chris Semergieff for Robert A. M. Stern Architects
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FROM THE ARCHIVES
THURSDAY , OCTOBER 19, 2023
HEMLINES FROM SKYLINES
601 LEXINGTON AVENUE
(FORMERLY CITICORP BUILDING)
ISSUE# 1104
JUDITH BERDY
After visiting the NYU medical offices in the former Citicorp Building, I discovered that the ground level area has been reimagined into 15 restaurants and an exhibit area. We all remember Conran’s, Barnes and Noble stores in the area starting in 1977. This busy lunchtime spot seems to attract the new generation of workers and is thriving.
The area is now called THE HUGH, after Hugh Stubbins the architect of the building.
On the balcony is the exhibit of clothing designed with the theme of HEMLINES FROM SKYLINES.
It is worth a visit to see the creativity of SVA students. It is difficult to photograph the models in the glass cases, so stop by to enjoy in person.
Hemlines From Skylines
“Hemlines to Skylines is a tribute, a thank you, to the concrete and steel beauty we experience every day as New Yorkers. It is a reminder to stop looking at our cellphones and look up. It’s much more interesting. Embrace it!”
—SVA’s 3D Design Chair Kevin O’Callaghan (2014 Art Directors Hall of Fame inductee), co-curator. Hemlines From Skylines features designs by students from SVA’s BFA Design and BFA Interior Design: Built Environments programs. The inspiration for the show came from the infamous 1931 Beaux-Arts Ball where architects wore costumes that looked like the buildings they had designed. Some of those iconic buildings, such as the Empire State Building and our very own 601 Lexington, were the references for the designs in this show. Some students were inspired by more recent modern-day buildings or significant New York City institutions.
The sculptures are made of resin, fabric, a variety of metals and welded steel, stones, rope, grouted tiles, spoons, stained glass, and even Cheerios cereal! This installation was co-curated by SVA alumnus and 3D Design Chair Kevin O’Callaghan and BFA Interior Design: Built Environments Chair, Dr. Carol Bentel.
The Dream Hotel and Empire State Building
The Plaza Hotel
Gramercy Park
Guggenheim Museum
The Cloisters
Broadway
Murals adorn the walls
he clock seems to float in the light fixtures
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FROM THE ARCHIVES
WEDNESDAY , OCTOBER 18, 2023
SHEILA SCHWID
&
RIFKA MILDER
ISSUE# 1103
JUDITH BERDY
The other day while returning from Brooklyn on the NYC Ferry I met artist Rifka Milder.
We discussed her art and that of her mother Sheila Schwid. Below are some of their works, which are now on view on their websites. In the past both have exhibited at the Carter Burden Gallery in Chelsea.
SHEILA SCHWID
These oils are all in the series “Reflections on 14th Street”
“When a Shadow and a Fragment Are Not Enough” diptych, each stretcher 5’x4’ mural is 5’x8’ 2021
“I Can Wait.” 30”x24” oil on linen 2022
“Around We Go” 40”x32” oil on linen 2022 sold
“Best Buy” 30”x24” oil on linen on panel 2018
RIFKA MILDER
Cake Walk 2020 oil on canvas 48 X 60 inches
Penelope 2020 oil on canvas 48 X 60
SET DESIGN
The Ugly Duckling 2014 house paint on the wall 11 X 22 feet I painted the set for a dance choreographed by Rachael Kosch
SET DESIGH Circus Works 2018 oil on canvas 4 paintings 72 X 60 inches each
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FROM THE ARCHIVES
WEEKEND, OCTOBER 14-15, 2023
SHOPPING IN MANHATTAN
A WHILE BACK
ISSUE# 1100
SHORPY
HISTORICAL AMERICAN
PHOTO ARCHIVE
Enjoy this walk thru city shopping from years past.
New York circa 1931. “R.H. Macy & Co. Building, Broadway & 34th Street.” The original “big box” retailer. Irving Underhill photo. View full size.
Circa 1903. “Shoppers on Sixth Avenue, New York City.” 8×10 inch dry plate glass negative, Detroit Publishing Company. View full size.
June 9, 1948. New York. “Schrafft’s, Esso Building, Rockefeller Center. 51st Street exterior. Carson & Lundin architects.” Ubiquitous in urban areas, slightly upscale, tastefully decorated — Schrafft’s was something like the mid-century restaurant version of Starbucks. Gottscho-Schleisner photo. View full size.
New York circa 1910-1915. “N.Y. Drug Store, Pennsylvania Station.” 8×10 inch dry plate glass negative, Detroit Publishing Company. View full size.
New York circa 1906. “14th Street Store.” Several subplots here, involving roofs, windows and hair. Detroit Publishing glass negative. View full size.
June 20, 1952. “Scarves by Vera, 417 Fifth Avenue, New York. Vera at door. Marcel Breuer, architect.” If you hope to see some actual scarves here, you are hopelessly unsophisticated. Gottscho-Schleisner photo. View full size.
April 28, 1949. “Barton’s, business at 790 Flatbush Avenue, Brooklyn, New York. Exterior.” 4×5 inch acetate negative by Gottscho-Schleisner. View full size.
Jan. 17, 1953. New York. “Schrafft’s, New Chrysler Building. Interior IV.” Highly developed example of a genre of eatery once known as “quick service lunch,” now more generally called “fast food.” Gottscho-Schleisner photo. View full size.
September 24, 1944. “Jay Thorpe Inc., West 57th Street, New York City. General view to entrance from rear.” A retail fairyland of fire sprinklers and cove lights. Large-format acetate negative by Gottscho-Schleisner. View full size.
December 1942. “New York. Corset display at R.H. Macy & Co. department store during the week before Christmas.” Behold the $12.29 “average figure” corselette. Photo by Marjory Collins for the Office of War Information. View full size.
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FROM THE ARCHIVES
FRIDAY, OCTOBER 13, 2023
What the 1910s Stained Glass
Windows
Say About a 19th century
Brooklyn Tavern
ISSUE# 1099
EPHEMERAL NEW YORK
What the 1910s stained glass windows say about a 19th century Brooklyn tavern
With its tin ceiling, mosaic tile floor, and handsome mahogany bar, Teddy’s Bar and Grill is like stepping into a late 19th century time machine.
This corner tavern on Berry and North Eighth Streets in Williamsburg opened in 1887 as a family-run Irish tavern, according to Teddy’s website. At the time, Brooklyn was a separate city and Williamsburg was a working-class district of Irish and German immigrants, many of whom worked along the waterfront a few blocks away in sugar refineries and other industrial plants.
Take a seat at the bar inside, and you can almost imagine the flickering gas lamps softly illuminating the barroom, and men—only men, as women were not welcome in taverns at the time—coming by for growlers of beer and community.
Outside the bar, there’s one aspect of Teddy’s that I couldn’t take my eyes off: the multicolor stained-glass windows above the entrance. It’s not unusual to see stained glass like this in an old-school New York bar—delicately wrought with gorgeous colors and design motifs.
But the words emblazoned across the front intrigued me: “Peter Doelger’s Extra Beer.” Who is Peter Doelger? The answer lies in the next chapter of Teddy’s, after it traded hands in 1911.
“The place was purchased by a Bavarian German immigrant named Peter Doelger who was one of New York’s most successful brewers,” explains a 2018 post from the Greenpointers website.
“Doelger, who had started a brewery on the Lower East Side in 1859, is largely responsible for introducing lager beer into New York. The New York Sun wrote that before Doelger opened his Lower East Side brewery, lager beer, in the brewing of which he was to make a fortune, was an exotic and unappreciated drink…a mysterious German drink, as remote from most of the community as pulque or vodka is today.’”
By the 1910s, Doelger’s brewery operated on East 55th Street near the East River. He “was looking to purchase New York bars as an outlet his beers, so his establishment exclusively served Doelger’s brews,” states Greenpointers.
The stained-glass windows are over a century old, but they’re a good 30 years younger than the bar’s other anachronisms, like the tin ceiling and interior woodwork.
Doelger died in 1912, and his brewery, run by his sons, shut down for good in 1947. Teddy’s (above in 1940) entered a new era after it was bought by Teddy and Mary Prusik, who renamed the bar in the 1950s, per Teddy’s website.
The Prusicks were Polish immigrants, and at the time they purchased the bar, the north side of Williamsburg had become a Polish enclave, according to Greenpointers.
The couple operated the tavern until 1987, when it was sold to new owners who added a kitchen and a dining room in an old carriage house next door, states Teddy’s.
In 2015, Teddy’s landed its current owners, and the clientele tends to reflect the demographics of Williamsburg in the 21st century. It’s a bar with a wonderful old-school vibe, but I wonder if the name of a 19th century beer baron in glass above the entrance holds any weight.
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THURSDAY PHOTO OF THE DAY
Rough sketches of Roosevelt Island by Edward Hopper I saw them at the Whitney exhibit –which was gorgeous! I actually went back to the exhibit several times….;^) (I know you saw & enjoyed that exhibit as well) THOM HEYER
CREDITS
Judith Berdy
EPHEMERAL NEW YORK
MAYA LEVANON-PHOTOS TIK TOK & INSTAGRAM
All image are copyrighted (c) Roosevelt Island Historical Society unless otherwise indicated
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FROM THE ARCHIVES
THURSDAY, OCTOBER 12, 2023
THE FLOATING BOAT
AT AN
ORIGINAL BROOKLYN
IRT SUBWAY ENTRANCE
ISSUE# 1098 UNTAPPED NEW YORK
The subway entrance above Brooklyn’s Atlantic Avenue-Barclays Center station has a secret wellspring of life inside: a three-piece art installation called Hook (Archean Reach), Line (Sea House), and Sinker (Mined Swell) by the artist George Trakas. Commissioned by MTA Arts & Design and created in collaboration with di Domenico and Partners, the pieces take up the entire original Beaux-arts fare control center and calls on the history of the area for inspiration. The centerpiece of the installation is a giant steel boat figure that floats above the sea of commuters.
The preexisting configuration of subways and rails at the Atlantic Avenue-Barclays Center station, in conjunction with its location at the lip of the LIRR’s Terminal, presented the perfect challenge for a joint effort that incorporated both art and architecture. The space below the original kiosk, which was designed by Heins & LaFarge and constructed in 1908, is far taller and more spacious than it appears from the outside. Trakas and the architects collaborated on a redesign of the station in 2004 and made the spaces airier, with the installation of a skylight in the ceiling, and aesthetically cohesive with Trakas’ art
From outside the above-ground kiosk, visitors can look through a peephole equipped with a lens to see the boat-shaped contraption made of stainless steel hanging just underneath the glass. This part of the installation is called Line (Sea House). The shape is both symbolic and practical as the steel structure serves as a rolling gantry that maintenance workers can access through a locked door and step onto in order to reach the lights floating high in the empty space above the station floor.
The art piece continues down from the lighthouse-like space into the subway station below as large panels of granite cover the walls. The panels are broken by a stair-shaped cut-out which serves to mark where the original staircase once stood in the 1908 structure. The granite stonework continues into Hook (Archean Reach), an undulating band that rolls like waves from the Pacific Street entrance to the tracks. The wave “crests” at the meeting place between the passageways that link Atlantic Avenue and Pacific Street. Sinker (Mined Swell) is a wide, rough-faced strip of granite that appears between the staircases connecting the main station exits and train tracks.
The project’s aquatic-inspired name recognizes the convergence of the two streets named after the two major oceans. In some ways, subway stations are like oceans, constantly moving and churning out tides on a regular schedule, and Brooklyn is at its heart a waterfront town. Hook, Line, and Sinker (the name for the entire work)takes note of these roots as well as its location’s contemporary needs to create a place that is at once a hub of travel and a still place in the midst of the rushing sea.
Trakas drew inspiration from sources as varied as the piazzas of Italian hill towns. A self-described environmental sculptor, Trakas was born in Quebec but has lived in New York City since 1963. He often uses recycled materials in his work and has designed a waterfront nature walk at the Newtown Creek Wastewater Treatment Plant in Brooklyn, among other installations.
Trakas’s innovative subway station design has opened a portal to the world above, serving as a way for passengers to orient themselves after being spun around several times by the frequently disorienting train rides. This portal allows for something especially rare to happen: on sunny days, the subway station fills with light from the skylight above, reminding travelers on the often stormy sea of New York City’s transit maze that there is a world outside the underground.
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