Over the last many years, the RIHS has received numerous requests from authors, film-makers, playwrights, students and scholars.
Occasionally, we actually see the finished product. Here are some of the end-products:
In 2018 Travis Russ contacted the RIHS about gay prisoners at the Penitentiary on Welfare Island. He and his team scoured our archives and started on a quest that has lead to a new theatrical production “The Gorgeous Nothings” about the “Fag” prisoners in 1930 Penitentiary and Workhouse here.
“The Gorgeous Nothings” is a product of Life Jacket Theatre Co. and has held it’s first reading recently..
Linda Fairstein contacted us when she was still a Prosecutor in the District Attorney’s office about our island history.
Stacy Horn contacted us numerous times while writing “Damnation Island: Poor, Sick, Mad, and Criminal in 19th-Century New York“
Elizabeth Barlow Rogers followed up on her original book “Forests and Wetlands” and used our story to tell of the development of the current island community.
When Bruce Becker was developing the Octagon, the RIHS shared all the information we had on the building architecture. The material we provided was used to obtain approval for the historic restoration and Federal funding of the landmark Octagon.
Ten years ago Architect Tom Fenniman asked for photos of the lighthouse and from them and more research our landmark lamp has been restored to its original appearance.
Plaque with history of the Cornell Tech campus is located at the northeast corner of Bloomberg Center.
Graduate Hotel has a treasury of island history from Nellie Bly, the Penitentiary, Mae West and Queen Kapiolani place throughout the building including the elevators.
When Christies was about to auction “Blackwell’s Island” by Edward Hopper, the RIHS provided historical information, images and details that were used in the catalogue in 2013. The painting was sold to Crystal Bridges Museum in Benton, Arkansas for $17,000,000.
When the RIHS was asking to acquire the trolley kiosk, extensive research had to be done and submitted for the building to be relocated to the island, This lead to an abundance of information on the Queensboro Bridge, Trolley System and development of Queens.
The vent shaft building opposite the subway station has been revealed and soon the wooden covers on the fence will be removed and a lovely mosaic will be revealed.
Text by Judith Berdy Thanks to Bobbie Slonevsky for her dedication to Blackwell’s Almanac and the RIHS Thanks to Deborah Dorff for maintaining our website Edited by Melanie Colter and Deborah Dorff
All image are copyrighted (c) Roosevelt Island Historical Society unless otherwise indicated
Sources
JUDITH BERDY
THIS PUBLICATION FUNDED BY DISCRETIONARY FUNDS FROM CITY COUNCIL MEMBER JULIE MENIN & ROOSEVELT ISLAND OPERATING CORPORATION PUBLIC PURPOSE FUNDS.
What happened to the young couple who held an 1896 winter wedding on Washington Square
December 12, 2022
It’s a lovely wintry scene that captures excitement, romance, and the Gilded Age beauty of a snow-covered Washington Square.
I’ve always been curious about the scene. Who, exactly, is getting married here? A little digging led me to the names of the bride and groom—and what happened after the vows were recited and the reception ended.“This picture shows New York’s upper crust arriving at the Square on the afternoon of December 17, 1896, to attend the wedding reception for Fannie Tailer and Sydney Smith held by the bride’s parents in their home at 11 Washington Square North,” wrote Emily Kies Folpe, in her 2002 book, It Happened on Washington Square. (Above, the row containing Number 11 circa 1900)Fannie Tailer and Sydney J. Smith weren’t just typical new rich New Yorkers. Both came from old and socially prominent families. The Tailers were even part of the “Astor 400″—the infamous list of the highest echelon of society in the city, at least according to Caroline Astor and her social arbiter, Ward McAllister.
The couple met at the annual horse show, one of the events that marked the opening of the social season in Gotham. Tailer was an accomplished rider, while Smith was the scion of an old New Orleans family.Their engagement hit the papers in 1895. Tailer “is justly considered not one of the prettiest but one of the handsomest young women in the ultra-fashionable set,” wrote the New York Times. About Smith, the Times stated that he had “sufficiency of worldly goods, is popular, [and] is more than well endowed with good looks.”The wedding itself took place at 3 p.m. at Grace Church, at Broadway and 10th Street. Though many rich families had moved to elite neighborhoods like Murray Hill and upper Fifth Avenue in the 1890s, Washington Square North was still an acceptable place for a prominent family to live. Grace Church remained the choice place for these Greenwich Village residents to worship.
“The wedding, one of the largest and most fashionable of the season, brought out New York society—Astors, Belmonts, Havemeyers, Cooper-Hewitts, and others,” wrote Folpe. “Lungren seems to have observed the scene from the doorstep of his lodgings at 3 Washington Square, a row house converted into artists’ studios in 1879.”After the swirl and excitement of this much-anticipated wedding, the couple mostly stayed out of the newspapers. Early on, they secured their own house on Washington Square. At some point they took up residence at Four East 86th Street.And then, in 1909, came the split. “Sydney Smith’s Wife Sues for Absolute Divorce,” one front-page headline screamed. “Mrs. Smith did not take her usual place in the fashionable life of Newport last summer, but lived quietly with her children at a boarding house, and stories of marital unhappiness were revived in August when she and her husband [were part of] different parties at the Casino tennis matches, and did not speak to each other,” the story explained.
After the divorce, Mrs. Smith married C. Whitney Carpenter, a “broker” according to the New York Daily News. Still active in society, she seemed to live out her life in privacy, though she divorced a second time. She passed away in 1954, and her estate of $80,000 was divided between her two sons.Sydney Smith also married again, to Florence Hathorn Durant Smith. He died in 1949 at age 81. He held the distinction of being the oldest member of the Union Club, which he joined in 1881, according to his New York Times obituary.[Top image: Wikipedia; second image: New-York Historical Society; third image: Brooklyn Citizen; fourth image: New-York Tribune; fifth image: Baltimore Sun]
A MODEL OF THE KAWAMATA PROJECT IN THE 1980S, SURROUNDING THE SOUTH END OF THE SMALLPOX HOSPITAL WITH A WOODEN CONSTRUCTION
Text by Judith Berdy Thanks to Bobbie Slonevsky for her dedication to Blackwell’s Almanac and the RIHS Thanks to Deborah Dorff for maintaining our website Edited by Melanie Colter and Deborah Dorff
All image are copyrighted (c) Roosevelt Island Historical Society unless otherwise indicated
Following the mid-nineteenth century revolution in steamship building, transatlantic passenger transport became a profitable enterprise. Travel went global, giving rise to an intercontinental “travel industry.”
Commercial oceanic transportation boomed. Bremen-based NDL (Norddeutscher Lloyd) and Hamburg-based HAPAG (Hamburg Amerikanische Packetfahrt Aktiengesellschaft) became the largest shipping companies in the world.
Organized a generation before German unification, the ports of Bremen and Hamburg were semi-independent city states. With a rapid installation of modern facilities, their main stream of revenue became migration. These cities out-rivaled Le Havre, Liverpool, Antwerp and Rotterdam in an increasingly competitive market. By the mid-nineteenth century steamship lines began providing faster and more affordable “services” to migrants.
In spite of improvements, passengers experienced cramped conditions when traveling on migrant ships. All of them were required to provide sufficient clothing and bedding for the voyage. Even cabin class passengers had to outfit their own berths. Handbooks of “good advice” were published to help passengers prepare for the crossing and provide information about the choice of ship, the best time to sail, and give tips on fitting up of a berth. In spite of all that, the transatlantic trek remained a hazardous undertaking.
Fire was a continuous risk. In September 1858, an estimated five hundred migrants died after a blaze on SS Austria on its way from Hamburg to the city of New York. Disease on the long sea voyage was rife and countless passengers died of cholera or typhus on board ship. The ominous spectre of disaster haunted travelers on their seemingly endless journey.
Initially, German vessels were constructed in British shipyards, but by the mid-1890s – helped by Germany’s rapid industrial and technological expansion – companies had started placing orders with local steamship builders. These shipping lines would take the main share in the transportation of two transatlantic flows of mass migration.
Between 1840 and 1880, German migration to the United States was at its peak. When the number of German emigrants fell sharply in the 1890s, the New York-bound exodus from Central and Eastern Europe took over. Hamburg and Bremen were the nearest ports of embarkation for large numbers of Jewish migrants escaping persecution in the Russian Empire.
Rival companies started competing with each other to make the fastest crossing. To reach New York in record tempo became a race for glory (and customers). By the 1890s the accolade “Blue Riband of the Atlantic” had come into circulation for the ship that completed the trip with the highest average speed (the term itself was borrowed from horse racing). Cunard refused to recognize the title, fearing that pace would be put above passenger safety.
Confessional Migration
In 1871, Otto von Bismarck united a patchwork of self-standing states to form the German Empire. Soon after unification a bitter power battle erupted between the government of Prussia and the Roman Catholic Church. The Iron Chancellor faced Pope Pius IX.
Known as the “Kulturkampf ” (culture war), a series of legislative measures were passed aimed at reducing the influence of the Church in public life, most notably the Pulpit Law (December 1871) which banned members of the clergy from discussing matters of state with their flock. The School Supervision Law (March 1872) curtailed the Church’s influence in education, but more severe measures were being prepared with the intent of eliminating once and for all the “Jesuit Menace” to the new German nation.
The Jesuit Law (July 1872) dissolved the order of the Society of Jesus. Its facilities were closed down and individual members were subject to restrictions of communication and/or movement. The most severe blow to the Catholic Church came with the passing of the Monasteries Act (May 1875) which banned all religious orders from Prussian territory with the exception of those dedicated to the care of the sick and disabled.
Although many of these laws were revoked in the course of subsequent decades, their initial impact was severe. The “struggle for culture” reached both major religious centers and remote villages, as agents of the State banned or arrested priests and closed down gathering places. Protestant polemicists and progressive politicians castigated Catholics as ignorant minions of a clerical hierarchy, hampering the forward march of civil society.
The Kulturkampf triggered not only a campaign of Catholic resistance, either active or passive, but also prompted a wave of confessional migrations, often involving the displacement or repatriation of entire monastic communities. Neighboring Holland and Belgium were the closest destinations for victims driven out by the new Prussian legislation. Others decided to leave Europe altogether and seek a new life the United States.
Whereas previous generations of German migrants originated predominantly from northern territories, under Prussian rule they fled the southern Catholic states.
Rome of the West
The Congregation of Franciscan Sisters, Daughters of the Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary, was founded in 1860 by Mother Clara Pfänder. Three years later a Motherhouse was established in Salzkotten, a (salt producing) town in the district of Paderborn, Nordrhein-Westfalen.
Once Bismarck’s anti-Catholic agenda was set in motion, Clara was compelled to send her sisters into other countries. During that turbulent time she received a request from the Bishop of Paderborn.
In October 1871 a petition had been delivered to Father Ernst Andrew Schindler of St Boniface Catholic Church in Carondelet, a neighborhood in the in the south-eastern part of St Louis, Missouri, requesting the establishment of a local hospital that could cope with the sharp growth in the number of accidents on the railroads and in local factories. Industrialization came at a cost.
Originally populated by French-speaking immigrants before German incomers started to outnumber them, St Louis had a strong Catholic identity which was reinforced when Pope Pius IX elevated the city to an Archdiocese in July 1847. St Louis acquired the nickname “Rome of the West.”
Schindler himself originated from Westfalen. He contacted the Bishop of Paderborn, asking him for support in initiating the medical project in his city. The latter urged Mother Clara Pfänder to accept the challenge as part of her missionary work program which, at the same time, would offer her nuns a chance to escape Bismarck’s repressive regime.
In December 1872 a first group nineteen of sisters arrived from northwest Germany to be employed as nurses in Carondelet’s newly founded Saint Boniface Hospital. Three years later, five more Franciscan sisters set out on the long odyssey to Missouri to take up their duties of care.
Tragedy at Sea
The S.S. Deutschland was an iron emigrant passenger steamship of the Norddeutscher Lloyd. Built by Caird & Company in Greenock, Scotland, she entered service on October 7, 1866, and arrived in New York three weeks later on her maiden voyage.
On Saturday December 4, 1875, Henrica Fassbänder (28 years old), Barbara Hültenschmidt (32), Norberta Reinkober (30), Brigitta Damhorst (27) and Aurea Badziura (24) joined a large group of migrants in Bremerhaven to set sail for New York aboard the Deutschland.
Once at sea, the weather conditions were getting worse by the hour. Caught in a heavy snowstorm, Captain Eduard Brickenstein and his colleagues on the bridge had no idea of ship’s position until, at 05:00 the next day, she struck the notorious Kentish Knock offshore sandbank at the entrance to the Thames Estuary, about 20 miles from the port of Harwich.
Distress rockets were fired to attract the attention of passing ships, but they went unnoticed or were (as was claimed by the Captain in the aftermath of the disaster) discarded by other vessels. The crippled ship began to take on water and as the tide rose she failed to lift off the shoal as had been hoped and expected.
As the wind rose to gale force, command was given to abandon ship. The order caused panic and confusion. One boat reached the shore with only a single survivor. The remaining boats were washed away or destroyed by the stormy seas.
More than twenty-eight hours passed before help arrived at last. The paddle tug Liverpool sailed from Harwich at daylight and rescued sixty-nine passengers and eighty-six crew members who had remained on the wreck. Some sixty people lost their lives.
To this day, the exact identities and numbers of those who perished remain uncertain due to discrepancies and inaccuracies in the passenger lists.
When disaster struck the sisters prayed with fellow passengers, giving priority to them in the rescue attempts whereby they themselves found death in the wild waters. Henrica Fassbänder’s body was never recovered.
Jesuit Priest & Poet
Four dead nuns were brought to St Francis of Assisi Church on The Grove in Stratford, East London. The Funeral Mass was led by Cardinal Henry Edward Manning, Archbishop of Westminster.
In his homily he praised the courage of the victims: “When at length a means of escape was at hand, they refused and allowed others to take their places and to save themselves.” The sisters were buried in St Patrick’s Cemetery in Leytonstone, a mile down the road.
When the widely reported news of the ship’s sinking spread around the globe, Gerard Manley Hopkins was studying for the priesthood at St Bueno’s (Jesuit) College in North Wales, having deserted the Anglican Church. By that time he had decided to stop writing poetry, burning all his poems in a self-ignited bonfire. His religious superior however urged him to dedicate a poem to commemorate the disaster and its tragic loss of life.
For the poet, there was a “personal” aspect to the devastating tale. Hopkins himself was born in Stratford and, for the first ten years of his life, he lived at 87 The Grove across the road from the Church where the funeral service had taken place.
His poem “The Wreck of the Deutschland” touched many hearts, but raised eyebrows too as it did not follow the standard form of English poetry. Incorporating details gathered from extensive press reports that followed the tragedy, Hopkins set out to present man’s struggle to see the hand of God in the midst of apparent evil. But where did this wickedness stem from?
It is a striking fact that the poet does not refer to the nuns as missionaries. Instead, he paints an image of five young women who were driven into exile and paid the ultimate price in their search for religious freedom. As Hopkins put it: “Rhine refused them: Thames would ruin them.”
This poem is not just a lamentation for lost lives. As a literary “intervention” in Prussia’s ungodly and evil treatment of the Catholic Church, its tragic subject served the author to highlight the Jesuit case by using shipwreck as a metaphor for Bismarck’s attack on religion. Drowning migrants were used to direct attention from the sinking ship to an entirely different and essentially politico-religious narrative.
“On Saturday sailed from Bremen, American-outward-bound, Take settler and seamen, tell men with women, Two hundred souls in the round …”
Gerard Manley Hopkins, The Wreck of the Deutschland (1875)
A 2020 performance celebrating Isadora Duncan at the Lighthouse Park.
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)
Gerard Manley Hopkins, The Wreck of the Deutschland (1875)
Illustrations, from above: An 1875 caricature of Bismarck and Pope Pius IX playing a game of chess symbolizing the Kulturkampf (Culture War); “The wreck of SS Deutschland” (Illustrated London News, December 1875); “The Wreck of the Deutschland: Waiting for succour” (The Penny Illustrated Paper, Christmas issue, December 1875); Four nuns in open coffins at St Francis of Assisi Church, Stratford (Photo by local photographer Henry Friedmann); and Garrick Palmer’s “Wreck of the Deutschland,” 1975 (Wood engraving courtesy Aberystwyth University).
THIS PUBLICATION IS FUNDED BY:CITY COUNCIL REPRESENTATIVE JULE MENIN AND DISCRETIONARY FUNDING THRU DYCD
Ten years ago I met Kathleen Griffin and learned of her project to bring aerial butterflies art to the Smallpox Hospital ruins. Like many projects on the island, this one went thru many twists and turns and RIOC administrations. Hundreds of hours were spent designing, engineering, fundraising, making prototypes. Unfortunately, there were so many concerns about the building stability and safety that the butterflies have never flown over the Smallpox Hospital.
I have not been in contact with Kathleen but she has other recent projects on her website and I remember her for her diligence and not being beaten down by the Island administrations.
The “Butterflies of Memory” is a public art piece inspired by the power of hope and transformation. We see the balance of architecture and history, literally shaken down by memories, releasing them as golden butterflies that carry it off into the sky. The project is a gift to the city, and will eventually travel. A shimmering image that reminds us that sometimes, despite life’s harsh realities, life is also more magical, more beautiful that we imagined it could be. Currently proposed for the Small Pox Hospital Ruins on Roosevelt Island, seventeen giant gold butterflies each thirteen feet in diameter will fly between 18 and 36 feet above the building, visually carrying it off. The project will be viewable to millions of New Yorkers. We have an educational outreach program designed to reach 500 New Yorkers as well.
THE RUINS Here is how it starts It’s February 2009. I’m driving down the FDR for the billionth time in my life, feeling sad and overwhelmed. I’m broke and living in a tiny one-bedroom apartment in Astoria, using my living room as a studio. I had come two months before to New York with a plan, and with solid work in place. But everybody I knew had lost their jobs. I remember that January being the longest month. I had been teaching, and doing production design, but it all kept falling through. Or you work on a project and receive a fraction of the pay you were promised or the check bounces. But my sister was in New York, and upstate was lonely…Around 70th Street, as I approach the rust-colored supports of the Queensboro bridge, I start thinking about the Ruins – the collapsed Smallpox Hospital on the southern tip of Roosevelt Island, in the East River. I peer left, out the car window, past oncoming traffic, to see the building that I have loved since I was a little girl. I look to it for the comfort it has always provided me, and instead, I have a vision: Butterflies.There has always been this connection for me. As a child I the early 1980s I’d visit the city several times a week from New Fairfield, Conn. with my mother – a Bronx native. On the ride home we’d get stuck in rush hour traffic, and for me this only heightened my anticipation of leering at the Ruins. I saw the stone structure as an old castle, and I would imagine that someday I would renovate the palace and live there – the Queen of Roosevelt Island. Being a little girl, I always thought it was a castle.My mom was only 33, and I was six or seven, and we’d have these adventures — a return to this magical place, had crummy cars breaking down, and whenever the car broke down, someone would rescue us. New York in the 80s was wild. We’d go to a diner and they’d give us free donuts.Later, when I tell my friend from graduate school at the Rhode Island School of Design about my project, she laughed. I always mentioned the ruins on road trips from Providence, she said. I have imagined them a thousand different ways over my lifetime.But today, I see a swarm of shining yellow butterflies over the building, carrying it off, magically transforming the Ruins; completing, perhaps, an idea I started as a young girl. It was like a dream that had always been floating just above the spires of the old Small Pox Hospital, waiting for me..
This is not at all typical of my sculptural work, which is usually acutely concerned with it’s material reality and physical presence. This piece lingers in a border space, something that is real and yet still feels like you are only seeing it and then finishing it or making it real in your head. Like a piece of poetry made real, crystallizing for a minute. I think the piece will seem very unreal when it is up, the sunlight flashing and flickering on the gold, heightened by the fact that it’s temporary. You will see it and then it will be gone, and you will wonder if you imagined it. It will only continue to exist as long as it is remembered.
STEP 2 DO A LOT OF BAD DRAWINGS
I began drawing butterflies about six years ago. They just started popping into my head. It was strange how they would come, I knew they were an important idea for my work, but it would seem that just as I was understanding why, the idea would disappear, and I was left with the feeling of having forgotten something important. I found myself struggling to remember the idea. So I began to draw butterflies. At that time I was still living and working in Birmingham, Ala.A year later when I moved up to Ithaca, New York, the butterflies were still appearing.I threw away the first year’s worth of my butterfly drawings, because they had no substance, they were just drawings of butterflies, the insect. This is the strange thing about drawing, sometimes you know you are just creating a space for an idea to grow, it becomes more of a muscular activity. I was deeply involved in other work at the time, so the butterflies were sedentary.By the second year, it was clearer that the butterflies were about the pulling of memory. In the drawings they began pulling on things, on buildings, people and objects, tearing them down, carrying them away, lifting them up. Sometimes the drawings were dark and the butterflies destructive, other times they were a rescue or transformation. On my studio wall in pencil, I wrote “the butterflies of memory come in their outrageous beauty, they come to tear the buildings down.” I began to think about architecture and the second construction inside it, the second building, the one created from memory. The building that can linger long after the first one falls.I started making butterfly sculptures and moquettes, but nothing I was happy with. They sort of lingered in my drawing room as piles of drawings began to build up. It was in these drawings that I worked out how the butterflies functioned conceptually, and why even now I think of this piece as much in terms of drawing as I do sculpture – in part because of the scale and visual distance created by the size and location of the piece, but also because of how the piece is meant to function visually.
FIRST PHOTOS OF FINISHED BUTTERFLY
The golden touch
Gold leafing up close
The first gold leafed butterfly
THIS IS THE HELL OR HIGH WATER MARK, WHERE TIME IS CRUNCHING AND STAKES ARE RISING AND WINNING IS NOT ENOUGHThe project is moving faster and gaining steam, I have a series of fantastic new team members and planners. Amazing foundations are actually seeking me out, to become part of the project. But this is the time where failing is about not winning fast enough, so I think that I will be running until three days after the project is up.This is the time where the stakes raise and the partners raise and the numbers on both sides of the budget, in and out, go up. We are through the times of stitching things together with buttons and string. I meet with my business developers at least once a week, in a second floor office on 5th Ave., my business meetings do not include champagne anymore as often as they did this past fall and I am refining and rewriting – it is business.John Babashek, our project manager, and I go over and over our important letters and financial business. Just last week we were contacted by the James Jay Dudley Luce Foundation about working with them and having them join our project. Today I met with Rick Bell and Julie Trebault from the AIA New York Chapter about how to promote our partnership and a summer art show at the Center for Architecture. Friday I am going to Philadelphia with Bullet Magazine to meet with Humankind and check out the butterfly. We are building the structure that can lift the structure, so that I do not get sued, and so that I get everyone what they need so things are done right and well.As Charles, of Skyscraper likes to remind me, there is no turning back now, we’re like the British: “If you stop moving forward, we will shoot you.” So, we keep moving forward.
This is the New Year.But some years are more difficult than others, so perhaps their endings should be sweeter. The New Year can wake up like morning, as we hope for renewal, the difference between release and forgetting, what knowing makes us become.It has been a hard year.A year that reminds us how ugly the world can be. I grew up two towns from Newtown. In my personal world and in the world at large, sometimes life is uglier than we thought it would be, turning out very different than we imagined. In that you have to make a choice, to use that darkness to become something better or to fall into it – to die of it or to become the golden butterfly. To transcend, to fight back with a deeper commitment to beauty, to what you believe in. To purify that hardship. That destruction and madness can be met by our commitment to something better, purer.As an artist, and I mean that in the broadest sense of the word, particularly in New York City, it can be a very difficult life, and for myself and most creative people I know, you have battle with the question of “why am I doing this?” Why didn’t I become something that just made more money or had a safer track? But when things become horrible it becomes clearer, because it is those visions that allow us to see the world as it can be, who we can be. Medication may stop you from dying, but it teaches you nothing about living, or what is possible.And in those hard moments we turn to things that can. We touch at that moment, the creator and the receiver. Silently. At the moment that somehow lifts us, reminds us of who we are. The receiver, everyone who stands there, listening or looking, in that moment sees themselves more clearly, in a moment of beauty or wonder.That is the moment, together on both sides of that equation, we work towards it, that moment of transcendence.The other day I was hanging out with Charles from SkyScraper Steel. While perhaps not technically the artist, at this point, he is one of the people working almost as hard as I am to realize this, to actualize this particular vision. We were unloading the first golden butterfly next two his two now destroyed houses along the waterfront of Brooklyn. Rather than someone broken, or miserable, I see a friend who is still strong, more refined, who has gathered up his family and is figuring out, despite total destruction, how he will rebuild. He does not skip a beat, he works harder.For myself, it is a faith in this, my religion in a way, a commitment to hope and beauty, sometimes in the face of everything else.People ask me all the time why I am doing this, and I dance around the answer, but really that’s it.This piece is a release of memory, a transformation of it, an image of becoming all that we were meant to be, because, just when the caterpillar thought the world was ending, it became a butterfly.And it is what I want to give to my city, that image, and when you see it, I want you to think of only yourself.
JUST WHEN THE CATERPILLER THOUGHT THE WORLD WAS ENDING, IT BECAME A BUTTERFLY….KATHLEEN GRIFFIN
THE ARCHITECTURE TAKES A STEP FURTHER, IT IS THE CONTAINER THAT HOLDS HOW THE MOTION PLAYS OUT. A GREAT BUILDING RARELY SEEMS TO FORGET ITS DRAWING…KATHLLEEN GRIFFINEarlier this month, I met with with Rick Bell and Julie Trébault of the New York Chapter of the American Institute of Architects (AIA). We talked for a while about Butterflies of Memory, and it brought up issues of both the architecture and drawing of the butterfly. This piece was conceived of over such long period of time, and there are so many day to day technical elements that sometimes the more conceptual and artistic elements can get forgotten. But these points are very important. How the sculpture functions as a drawing – starting and finishing there, how it draws and creates line in the landscape and how its scale pulls us into the drawing.But I should explain more where I am coming from. In my studio process, I go between drawing and sculpture, primarily. I approach drawing as a conceptual thinking space, focusing on the delicacy of the line employed, the physical materials involved and how the two push and pull on the drawing. The lightness of the material creating a flexibility in the thought, a temporal moment like thought itself. The point of the pencil as the point of the thought, held just barely in position by the placement of that graphite and how it touches the paper.So drawing then becomes a kind of physical meditation. Drawing and redrawing the butterflies is, for me, thinking them into existence, thinking them into this space. The drawings are all part of that visual meditation.Also, drawing is an impossible thinking space, unrestricted by anything else. It is captured thought, it is a measurement of it, crystalized. So much more than painting. So much lighter.Then there is sculpture. If you ask me casually what I do, when I am not thinking too much, I will tell you I am a sculptor. More often than not I say artist, and this is why: all of this thinking and drawing, all this creation of conceptual place, hopefully develops ideas enough that they can come and join us here. We do not go to its place, it comes to us.This poetry in reverse, it is my end point. For my work, that is also about impossibility and wonder, making things that seem impossible, a physical poetry or idea, who lives with us, almost in opposition to the world as it is, demanding more, expanding this space, to hold it. Living in the wonder and impossibility of those pure ideas, feeling unrestrained in those possibility, held for a moment between disbelief and wonder. Where poetry is physical and surrounds us, where we are inside the drawing.This is what leads to my concern for material and, as often as possible, locking meaning inside that material – to refuse the illusion and transformation of a picture plane, of drawing or specifically painting or television or the computer, but to create something real. A boat that really is filled with 2,500 pounds of candy, butterflies that actually are gold, that do fly above our city.But in the case of this piece, the piece is so large and so far away, depicting a creature that is in and of itself so temporal, the piece itself will be temporal in that it becomes a drawing again. A butterfly more than perhaps any other creature is so temporal it almost refutes our three dimensions, remaining an idea too, a two dimensional expression. The gold on the butterflies like the gold leaf in the drawings, and it is a drawing in the landscape as well, pulling us into it, a larger drawing of the city. For a moment to look at it will be to be part of that drawing and the 60,000 pounds of steel on the building will be the same as the hard pencil lines that I lay against a ruler. A push-pull and the butterflies are here with us or we are in the drawing with it. It is this vibration that I greatly look forward to. To see if it gets pulled off. To see if it also feels like a drawing just as it seems impossibly real and among us.I have always read with a great jealousy the work of writers and poets whose work pulls us into the delicacy and place of their words. This will be the first piece I will have made whose scale is large enough to pull the viewer into its reality, and still as sculpture remain in ours. I am very excited about this.And then the architecture takes it a step further, it is the container that holds how that motion plays out. A great building rarely seems to forget its drawing. And the Ruins are not a random choice, they come with an intense variation of histories. A building that has lived a large and full life. The meanings also change, as those stories play out. The meaning of the building becomes the content or realization of that first drawing and the realities of those stories. This piece works with that architecture, imaging its content both as it is and could be, playing with and altering its story, flipping that relationship of drawing again. They become so many things twisting together it becomes simple again, it functions again, and as that drawing or poetry, we read into its meanings.
THE MEMORIES OF BUTTERFLIES AN ARTPIECE THAT WAS PLANNED FOR THE SMALLPOX HOSPITAL SITE
Text by Judith Berdy Thanks to Bobbie Slonevsky for her dedication to Blackwell’s Almanac and the RIHS Thanks to Deborah Dorff for maintaining our website Edited by Melanie Colter and Deborah Dorff
All image are copyrighted (c) Roosevelt Island Historical Society unless otherwise indicated
Towering figures made from miles of wire stretch along the Channel Gardens every year at Rockefeller Center. They are winged, robed, and haloed, each holding a 6-foot-long trumpet that heralds the holiday season. Much like the world-famous Rockefeller Center Christmas Tree, these 12 angels, created by the artist Valerie Clarebout in 1955, are an annual presence at Christmastime.
Valerie Clarebout’s Angels in the Channel Garden
It took 75 pounds of wire to build each 8-foot-tall winged figure. The angels are arranged to face one another along the Channel Gardens, the fountains turned off, serenading passersby on the way to Center Plaza. In total, Clarebout used 76 miles of material, including 18 miles of aluminum wire and brass, and thousands of miniature lights to complete the celestial display.
While there is plenty of world-class art to be seen in and around Rockefeller Center, Clarebout’s sculptures are unique in their semi-permanence. “She’s the only artist whose work is regularly installed and removed for a period of time,” explains Christine Roussel, archivist at the Rockefeller Center Archive — where she’s responsible for all the photographs and documents between 1930 and 1996, the year Tishman Speyer acquired Rockefeller Center. Even more unusual, says Roussel, is Clarebout’s continued involvement with the project over the years: “She came back year after year to work on them.”
Born in the early 1900s, Clarebout studied at the Royal Academy of Art in London and Julien Studio in Paris before moving to the U.S. in 1952. Robert Carson, Rockefeller Center’s architect, soon hired the inventive sculptor to design angels for the Plaza. She went on to produce other collections that included jacks-in-the-box, 9-foot-tall snowmen, 12 elegant reindeer, and even one project comprised of 72 animals and four 8-foot-tall trees. She eventually made the angels we see today, working out of her New Fairfield, Connecticut, studio.
A year before passing away in 1982, Clarebout spoke to the New York Times about the angels, saying: “I love them. I love this time of year. Since I was a child I had a tremendous feeling for Christmas quite apart from a religious holiday. I used to lie on the ground and I thought I could feel the earth being reborn. That’s how I always thought of Christmas—as the rebirth of the earth. And now, of course, every year I think of it as bringing the angels back to life.”
In addition to her love of the Christmas season, Clarebout’s work and artistic style had a variety of other influences. She was an adventurer and traveled extensively to Mexico, South America, and Africa. Through her travels, she learned about practices in places around the globe and developed an interest in local crafts. Her mother was also a dressmaker, and can perhaps be credited with Clarebout’s fascination with embroidery. With the angels, in particular, she incorporated crafting techniques as a part of her process. “The angels’ wings, for instance, have this very thin wire mesh which she considered embroidery,” says Roussel.
Another source of inspiration, notes Roussel, was the song “All Things Bright and Beautiful” by Cecil Frances Alexander. The Anglican hymn, first published in Alexander’s 1848 book Hymns for Little Children, alludes to elements of the natural world. Clarebout’s interest in the natural world, which she also touches on in her comment to the New York Times, can be seen in her choice of material. While she used her signature wire to sculpt the angels and accompanying snowflakes, Clarebout chose, in this case, to paint the metal white, creating an illusion of birch or tree twigs that twist upward.
When the angels aren’t on display during the holiday season, they are stored in a climate-controlled warehouse. It takes the Rockefeller Center crew around 10 total hours to install and remove the angels and their bases each year, with each angel weighing 50 pounds. While Clarebout continued to care for them herself during her lifetime, they are now maintained and wrapped each year by decorators.
THURSDAY PHOTO OF THE DAY THE FORESTS AND WETLANDS OF NEW YORK CITY
BY ELIZABETH BARLOW The first book I read about Roosevelt Island and it’s history.
Text by Judith Berdy Thanks to Bobbie Slonevsky for her dedication to Blackwell’s Almanac and the RIHS Thanks to Deborah Dorff for maintaining our website Edited by Melanie Colter and Deborah Dorff
All image are copyrighted (c) Roosevelt Island Historical Society unless otherwise indicated
ROCKEFELLER CENTER
THIS PUBLICATION FUNDED BY DISCRETIONARY FUNDS FROM CITY COUNCIL MEMBER JULIE MENIN & ROOSEVELT ISLAND OPERATING CORPORATION PUBLIC PURPOSE FUNDS.
Contagion of Liberty: Politics of Smallpox in the American Revolution
Inoculation, a shocking procedure introduced to America by an enslaved African, became the most sought-after medical procedure of the eighteenth century. The difficulty lay in providing it to all Americans and not just the fortunate few. Across the colonies, poor Americans rioted for equal access to medicine, while cities and towns shut down for quarantines. In Marblehead, Massachusetts, sailors burned down an expensive private hospital just weeks after the Boston Tea Party.
The Revolutionary War broke out during a smallpox epidemic, and in response, General George Washington ordered the inoculation of the Continental Army. But Washington did not have to convince fearful colonists to protect themselves against smallpox ― they were the ones demanding it.
In The Contagion of Liberty: The Politics of Smallpox in the American Revolution (Johns Hopkins Univ. Press, 2022) Andrew M. Wehrman describes a revolution within a revolution, where the violent insistence for freedom from disease ultimately helped American colonists achieve independence from Great Britain.
The Contagion of Liberty is a timely and fascinating account of the raucous public demand for smallpox inoculation during the American Revolution and the origin of vaccination in the United States.
This thought-provoking history offers a new dimension to our understanding of both the American Revolution and the origins of public health in the United States. The miraculous discovery of vaccination in the early 1800s posed new challenges that upended the revolutionaries’ dream of disease eradication, and Wehrman reveals that the quintessentially American rejection of universal health care systems has deeper roots than previously known.
During a time when some of the loudest voices in the United States are those clamoring against efforts to vaccinate, this richly documented book will appeal to anyone interested in the history of medicine and politics, or who has questioned government action (or lack thereof) during a pandemic.
Andrew Wehrman is a historian, writer, and associate professor of history at Central Michigan University. He received his Ph.D. from Northwestern University, and M.A.T. and B.A. from the University of Arkansas. He previously taught at Marietta College in Marietta, Ohio. His research and teaching focuses on Colonial and Revolutionary America and the history of medicine, disease, and public health. In addition to the book, The Contagion of Liberty, Wehrman has written articles for The Washington Post, The Boston Globe, and NBC News among others.
From Joseph Ellicott’s arrival in Buffalo and his radical radial street grid, through the role played by Frederick Law Olmsted and his unique parks and parkways, this book reveals the stories of those who created a neighborhood using Olmsted’s blueprint for gracious living. It also follows the devastating 50-year decline that boarded up mansions and emptied the rust belt city, reducing it to a shadow of its Gilded Age size and prominence.
Olmsted’s Elmwood looks at how the Elmwood District, now on the National Register of Historic Places, survived intact until the desire for walkable neighborhoods and its passionate residents sparked the renewal that is underway today. The authors suggest that Elmwood be considered a model for America’s cities, and look into the neighborhood’s future as it grapples with growth.
Buffalo native and historic preservation architect Clinton Brown, FAIA, founded Clinton Brown Company Architecture, Buffalo, which successfully nominated the Elmwood Historic District for the National Register of Historic Places.
Ramona Pando Whitaker is an ardent preservationist in her adopted hometown of Buffalo, New York, and a professional editor.
Book Purchases made through this Amazon link support the New York Almanack’s mission to report new publications relevant to New York State. Books noticed on the New York Almanack have been provided by their publishers.
Washington’s Revenge: The 1777
New Jersey
In late August 1776, a badly defeated Continental Army retreated from Long Island to Manhattan. By early November, George Washington’s inexperienced army withdrew further into New Jersey and, by the end of the year, into Pennsylvania. During this dark night of the American Revolution — “the times that try men’s souls” — Washington began developing the strategy that would win the war.
During his retreat across New Jersey, Washington reconceived the war: keep the army mobile, target isolated detachments of the British Army, rely on surprise and deception, form partisan units, and avoid large-scale battles. This new strategy first bore fruit in the crossing of the Delaware on Christmas night 1776 and the attack on the British at Trenton and Princeton.
From there, Washington took up winter quarters at Morristown, New Jersey, and moved into the mountains, an ideal position from which to check British movements toward Philadelphia or north up the Hudson. The British tried and failed several times to coax Washington into a decisive battle.
Stymied, the British were forced to attack Philadelphia by sea, and they would not be able to seize Philadelphia in time to support the British invasion of upstate New York which ended in defeat at Saratoga.
Arthur Lefkowitz is an independent historian whose previous books are The Long Retreat, the Calamitous Defense of New Jersey; The American Turtle Submarine, The Best Kept Secret of the American Revolution; George Washington’s Indispensable Men, The 32 Aides-de-Camp Who Helped Win American Independence; Benedict Arnold’s Army, The 1775 American Invasion of Canada During the Revolutionary War; Eyewitness Images from the American Revolution; Benedict Arnold in the Company of Heroes, The Lives of the Extraordinary Patriots Who Followed Arnold to Canada; and Colonel Hamilton and Colonel Burr, The Revolutionary War Lives of Alexander Hamilton and Aaron Burr. He lives in New Jersey.
The Revolutionary: Samuel
Adams
Thomas Jefferson asserted that if there was any leader of the American Revolution, “Samuel Adams was the man.” With high-minded ideals and bare-knuckle tactics, Adams led what could be called the greatest campaign of civil resistance in American history. Adams amplified the Boston Massacre and helped to mastermind the Boston Tea Party.
He employed every tool available to rally a town, a colony, and eventually a band of colonies behind him, creating the cause that created a country. For his efforts he became the most wanted man in America: When Paul Revere rode to Lexington in 1775, it was to warn Samuel Adams that he was about to be arrested for treason. Despite his celebrated status among America’s founding fathers as a revolutionary leader however, Samuel Adams’ life and achievements have been largely overshadowed in history books.
In The Revolutionary: Samuel Adams (Little, Brown and Co., 2022), Stacy Schiff examines Adams’ life, including his transformation from the listless, failing son of a wealthy family into the tireless, silver-tongued revolutionary who rallied the likes of John Hancock and John Adams behind him. Schiff returns Adams to his seat of glory, introducing us to the shrewd and eloquent man who supplied the moral backbone of the American Revolution.
Poor Richard’s Women: An
Intimate Portrait of Benjamin
Franklin
Everyone knows Benjamin Franklin — the thrifty inventor-statesman of the Revolutionary era — but not about his love life. The most prominent among them was Deborah Read Franklin, his common-law wife and partner for 44 years.
Long dismissed by historians, she was an independent, politically savvy woman and devoted wife who raised their children, managed his finances, and fought off angry mobs at gunpoint while he traipsed about England.
The new book Poor Richard’s Women: An Intimate Portrait of Benjamin Franklin (Beacon Press, 2022) by Nancy Rubin Stuart looks at the long-neglected voices of the women Ben Franklin loved and lost during his lifelong struggle between passion and prudence.
Weaving detailed historical research with emotional intensity and personal testimony, Nancy Rubin Stuart traces Deborah’s life and those of Ben Franklin’s other romantic attachments through their personal correspondence.
The reader is introduced to Margaret Stevenson, the widowed landlady who managed Ben’s life in London; Catherine Ray, the 23-year-old New Englander with whom he traveled overnight and later exchanged passionate letters; Madame Brillon, the beautiful French musician who flirted shamelessly with him, and the witty Madame Helvetius, who befriended the philosophes of pre-Revolutionary France and brought Ben to his knees.
Set two centuries before the rise of feminism, Poor Richard’s Women depicts the feisty, often-forgotten women dear to Ben’s heart who, despite obstacles, achieved an independence rarely enjoyed by their peers in that era.
Nathaniel and Victoria Koplik are thrilled at the wonderful holiday windows designed by Melanie Colter (right) The windows are on view in Rivercross thru December 31st.
THURSDAY PHOTO OF THE DAY
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WEDNESDAY PHOTO OF THE DAY MEDICAL RESIDENTS IN FRONT OF CITY HOSPITAL BLACKWELL’S ISLAND, EARLY 1900’S
Text by Judith Berdy Thanks to Bobbie Slonevsky for her dedication to Blackwell’s Almanac and the RIHS Thanks to Deborah Dorff for maintaining our website Edited by Melanie Colter and Deborah Dorff
All image are copyrighted (c) Roosevelt Island Historical Society unless otherwise indicated
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THIS PUBLICATION FUNDED BY DISCRETIONARY FUNDS FROM CITY COUNCIL MEMBER JULIE MENIN & ROOSEVELT ISLAND OPERATING CORPORATION PUBLIC PURPOSE FUNDS.
American photographer Marion Post Wolcott (1910-1990).
Early lifeMarion Post was born in Montclair, New Jersey on June 7, 1910, to Marion (née Hoyt; known as “Nan”) and Walter Post, a physician.[1][2] She grew up in the family home in Bloomfield, the younger of two daughters in the Post family.[3] Her parents divorced when she was thirteen and she was sent to boarding school, spending time at home with her mother in Greenwich Village when not at school.[4] Here she met many artists and musicians and became interested in dance. She studied at The New School.Post trained as a teacher, and went to work in a small town in Massachusetts. Here she saw the reality of the Depression and the problems of the poor. When the school closed she went to Europe to study with her sister Helen. Helen was studying with Trude Fleischmann, a Viennese photographer. Marion Post showed Fleischmann some of her photographs and was told to stick to photography.
CareerWhile in Vienna she saw some of the Nazi attacks on the Jewish population and was horrified. Soon she and her sister had to return to America for safety. She went back to teaching but also continued her photography and became involved in the anti-fascist movement. At the New York Photo League she met Ralph Steiner and Paul Strand who encouraged her. When she found that the Philadelphia Evening Bulletin kept sending her to do “ladies’ stories”, Ralph Steiner took her portfolio to show Roy Stryker, head of the Farm Security Administration, and Paul Strand wrote a letter of recommendation. Stryker was impressed by her work and hired her immediately.Post’s photographs for the FSA often explore the political aspects of poverty and deprivation. They also often find humour in the situations she encountered.In 1941 she met Leon Oliver Wolcott, deputy director of war relations for the U. S. Department of Agriculture under Franklin Roosevelt. They married, and Marion Post Wolcott continued her assignments for the FSA, but resigned shortly thereafter in February 1942. Wolcott found it difficult to fit in her photography around raising a family and a great deal of traveling and living overseas.[5]In the 1970s, a renewed interest in Post Wolcott’s images among scholars rekindled her own interest in photography. In 1978, Wolcott mounted her first solo exhibition in California, and by the 1980s the Smithsonian and the Metropolitan Museum of Art began to collect her photographs. The first monograph on Marion Post Wolcott’s work was published in 1983.[6] Wolcott was an advocate for women’s rights; in 1986, Wolcott said: “Women have come a long way, but not far enough. . . . Speak with your images from your heart and soul” (Women in Photography Conference, Syracuse, N.Y.).[5]Post Wolcott’s work is archived at the Library of Congress and the Center for Creative Photography at the University of Arizona in Tucson, Arizona.[7]
DeathPost Wolcott died of lung cancer in Santa Barbara, California, on November 24, 1990.[1]
Hog killing Halifax County Marion Post Wolcott 1939.jpeg“Hog killing on Milton Puryeur place; He is a Negro owner of five acres of land; Rural Route No. 1, Box 59, Dennison, Halifax County, Virginia; This is six miles south [on Highway No. 501] of South Boston; He used to grow tobacco and cotton but now just a subsistence living; These hogs belong to a neighbor landowner; He burns old shoes and pieces of leather near the heads of the slaughtered hogs while they are hanging to keep the flies away.” Photograph by Marion Post Wolcott from the U.S. Farm Security Administration, courtesy of the New York Public Library Digital Collection
Dymaxion House – LOC 8c14948v.jpgHistoric photograph of the Diamaxion (Dymaxion) house, metal, adapted corn bin, built by Butler Brothers, Kansas City. Designed and promoted by R. Buckminister Fuller. Kansas City, Missouri, USA, from the Library of Congress. Wolcott, Marion Post, 1910-1990, photographer; created 1941 May for the U.S. Farm Security Administration / Office of War Information. This photograph is in the public domain because it was created by the United States Government.
No beer sold to indians.jpgBirney, Montana. August 1941.”People who came to Saturday night dance around the bar.”Bar has a sign that reads “POSITIVELY NO BEER SOLD TO INDIANS”
Tony Bacinos NOLA 1941 MPWolcott.jpg French Quarter, New Orleans, Louisiana, 1941. “Old buildings in New Orleans, Louisiana”Shows Bourbon Street; Tony Bacino’s bar at right was at downtown river corner with Toulouse Street.
WEDNESDAY PHOTO OF THE DAY
TUESDAY PHOTO OF THE DAY
The Harriet Tubman Memorial, also known as Swing Low,[1] located in Manhattan in New York City, honors the life of abolitionistHarriet Tubman.[2] The intersection at which it stands was previously a barren traffic island, and is now known as “Harriet Tubman Triangle”.[1][3] As part of its redevelopment, the traffic island was landscaped with plants native to New York and to Tubman’s home state of Maryland, representing the land which she and her Underground Railroad passengers travelled across.[3]
The statue depicts Tubman striding forward despite roots pulling on the back of her skirt; these represent the roots of slavery. Her skirt is decorated with images representing the former slaves who Tubman assisted to escape. The base of the statue features illustrations representing moments from Tubman’s life, alternated with traditional quilting symbols.[1]
In 2004, the traffic island and the statue received a Public Design Commission Award for Excellence in Design.
Text by Judith Berdy Thanks to Bobbie Slonevsky for her dedication to Blackwell’s Almanac and the RIHS Thanks to Deborah Dorff for maintaining our website Edited by Melanie Colter and Deborah Dorff
All image are copyrighted (c) Roosevelt Island Historical Society unless otherwise indicated
Sources
WIKIPEDIA WIKIMEDIA COMMONS
THIS PUBLICATION FUNDED BY DISCRETIONARY FUNDS FROM CITY COUNCIL MEMBER JULIE MENIN & ROOSEVELT ISLAND OPERATING CORPORATION PUBLIC PURPOSE FUNDS.
“Obvious Delight” with Jefferson Market Courthouse
EPHEMERAL NEW YORK
As a prolific painter living on Washington Place and working out of a high-floor studio at West Fourth Street, John Sloan had a wonderful window into the heart of the Greenwich Village of the 1910s—its small shops, bohemian haunts, immigrant festivals, and all the life and activity of the elevated trains up and down Sixth Avenue.
He also had a view of Jefferson Market Courthouse. Once the site of a fire tower and market that opened in 1832, the Victorian Gothic courthouse with its signature clock tower replaced the original structures at Sixth Avenue and 10th Street in 1877.Like contemporary New Yorkers, he seemed to be enchanted by the Courthouse, which functions today as a New York Public Library branch. He was so entranced by it, Sloan put it in several of his works, either as the main subject or off to the side.[“Jefferson Market, Sixth Avenue,” 1917]
[“Sixth Avenue El at Third Street,” 1928]”Sloan obviously delighted in the irregular rooftop patterns and the spires of several other structures beyond, contrasting the soaring tower and the gables of the courthouse with the swift rush of the Sixth Avenue elevated railroad below,” explained William H. Gerdts in his 1994 book, Impressionist New York.His interest wasn’t just in the building’s architectural value. Sloan, a keen observer of what he described as New York City’s “drab, shabby, happy, sad, and human life,” regularly visited the notorious night court there to witness the human drama that appeared before judges—men and women typically brought in for drunkenness, prostitution, and petty crime.
[“Jefferson Market Jail, Night,” 1911]”This is much more stirring to me in every way than the great majority of plays. Tragedy-comedy,” he said about the night court, per Gerdts’ book.”Sloan was obviously drawn to the building’s. picturesque mass as well as its physical and symbolic situation with Greenwich Village, and no other New York structure, not even the Flatiron Building, enjoyed such distinctive monumental rendering by him,” wrote Gerdts.“Snowstorm in the Village,” an etching from 1925, shows Jefferson Market Courthouse’s gables and turrets covered in snow and is worth a look here.[Top image: Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts; second image: Whitney Museum; third image: paintingstar.com]
VISIT OUR TABLE AT THE POP-UP SALE ON SATURDAY, DEC. 10TH, 546 MAIN STREET 9 A.M. TO 5 P.M.
CORNICE OF SMALLPOX HOSPITAL RUIN NOT MUCH HAS CHANGED FOR THE BETTER SINCE THIS PHOTO WAS TAKEN IN 2011 ARON EISENPREISS AND HARA REISER GOT IT RIGHT
Text by Judith Berdy Thanks to Bobbie Slonevsky for her dedication to Blackwell’s Almanac and the RIHS Thanks to Deborah Dorff for maintaining our website Edited by Melanie Colter and Deborah Dorff
All image are copyrighted (c) Roosevelt Island Historical Society unless otherwise indicated
OUR ANNUAL WINDOW DISPLAY IS NOW ON VIEW IN THE RIVERCROSS DISPLAY WINDOW.
CAN YOU GUESS HOW MANY OWLS ARE FEATURED IN THE DISPLAYS? THANKS TO MELANIE COLTER, GLORIA HERMAN AND JUDY BERDY FOR BRINGING THIS CHEERFUL HOLIDAY TRADITION BACK THIS YEAR.
CAN YOU IDENTIFY THE TYPES OF OWLS IN OUR WINDOW DISPLAY?
*THESE ARE REPRODUCTION “STUFFED” OWL TOYS FROM DOUGLAS CO. AND ARE REPRESENTATIONS OF ACTUAL OWLS.
ORIGINAL SITE SURVEY FOR R.I. TRAM, APPROXIMATELY 1972
IN MEMORY OF RUTH BERDY DEC. 5, 1917- MAY 23, 2012
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)
CREDITS MELANIE COLTER, GLORIA HERMAN, JUDITH BERDY – PHOTOS DOUGLAS COMPANY PLUSH TOYS
THIS PUBLICATION IS FUNDED BY:CITY COUNCIL REPRESENTATIVE JULE MENIN AND DISCRETIONARY FUNDING THRU DYCD
Lexicographer Eric Partridge was an intriguing figure. Born in New Zealand, he was educated in Queensland, Australia, served in the First World War and finished his studies at Balliol College, Oxford. He would spent the rest of his life in Britain, working as a researcher and lecturer. The Library of the British Museum (now: British Library) became his second home. Always seated at the same desk (K1), he produced numerous books on the English language.
A surprising aspect of this unassuming man’s career was his interest in slang and offbeat language (which apparently was rooted in his wartime experiences), culminating in 1937 with the publication of a Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional English. From this rich offering of linguistic treasures, many words have been “dropped” over time or changed their original meaning.
We tend to assume today that because of social media new (slang) terms are transmitted around the world in record time. That may be true. Etymologists, however, have always been aware of the swift introduction, spread and passing of such words. One of those is “scorcher.” Once a hotly debated Anglo-American concept of the 1890s, the term quickly lost its relevance (its present meaning is entirely different) and was not included in Partridge’s Dictionary.
Reckless Riders
Nineteenth century social commentators were deeply concerned that the noxious conditions and pressures of city-life would lead to a decline in bodily and mental health. Social Darwinists fanned fears that a horde of degenerates was dragging down civilized society into biological decay. The “survival of the un-fittest” was a peril that had to be confronted. Sport, gymnastics and out-of-door activities provided one solution in the battle for regeneration.
Cycling was seen as an exertion that benefited the emerging dogma of exercise. It offered physical well-being and spiritual refreshment to unhealthy and fatigued (middle-class) city dwellers. Physicians stressed the bike’s curative powers. Pushing the pedals – they claimed – improves digestion; strengthens muscles and heart; reduces rheumatism, gout or hernia; lessens obesity; and calms the nerves.
The rage for cycling had its opponents too. In Britain, the “outrage” of uncontrolled bikers was widely discussed in the press. Critics hated the presence of such maniacs on public roads. One adversary sent a letter to The Times of London (1892), in which he described a group of scorchers descending a hill “like a horde of Apaches or Sioux Indians, conches shrieking and bells going; and woe betide the luckless man or aught else coming in their way.”
The emotionally loaded term spread fast. A scorcher was a cyclist who rode his/her bike aggressively at high speed in public spaces risking crashes with fellow riders, pedestrians or other users of the road. Since bicycles of the day either had either no or else poor brakes, accidents were reported frequently. A scorcher was a reckless two-wheeled speed merchant.
By November 1895 the word had crossed the Atlantic when an indignant reader of the New York Times submitted a letter of complaint to the editor about the hazard of cyclists racing each other on Manhattan’s streets, sidewalks and avenues. Hoodlums ‘scorching … with heads down’ were a menace to pedestrians.
The Upper West Side was particularly popular with competing cyclists. From Columbus Circle to Grant’s Tomb on Riverside Drive, the district’s broad avenues were packed with riders who turned the roads into makeshift velodromes. New York’s pedestrians demanded protection and stricter law enforcement. The presence of scorchers, not just young males but ‘wild’ women as well, had to be curtailed.
The bike was a symbol of the New Woman, an agent for change and a tool of emancipation. Riding a bike was a statement of self-reliance and independence. As traditional dress hampered free movement, outfits were adjusted and streamlined, infuriating traditionalists. Women on wheels wearing bloomers and skimpy garments were accused of outraging public decency. Calling a woman bicyclist a scorcher had profoundly negative and sexist connotations.
Health warnings were issued to women who had fallen for the ‘wheeling’ mania. Cycling, it was suggested, came at a price. Young women risked losing their femininity by developing a “Bicycle Face” (flushed face with dark circles under bulging eyes). Medical magazines and popular press reports raised warnings about the danger of infertility. To hard-line moralists the bicycle seat spelled loose morals which, in the worst cases, would lead to prostitution.
The criticism of female bicyclists as rebellious and unrespectable diminished by the mid-1890s as more and more women took to the road. The trend is reflected in a number of songs that during the decade were inspired by lady scorchers in particular (ragtime was the perfect genre to reflect the biker’s rhythmic movement).
Scorcher Squad
On January 1st, 1895, Republican politician William Lafayette Strong was appointed New York City’s 90th Mayor. A reform-minded leader, he invited Theodore Roosevelt to take on the role of Police Commissioner with a brief to eliminate corruption amongst the ranks and make the police department a more professional unit. William Strong’s choice of candidate was well-considered. Roosevelt had served the previous six years on the Civil Service Commission fighting favoritism and nepotism in federal nominations.
For Roosevelt this appointment was an opportunity to impose his presence in the political arena. Cleaning up New York would strengthen his political clout. During his two-year spell as Police Commissioner, he set out to implement a series of structural reforms and innovations.
As President of the Board of Commissioners, he shook up the police force by enforcing regular inspections of firearms, appointing recruits based on their physical and mental suitability rather than political affiliation, closing corrupt stations and introducing a range of service awards and medals. He was also the first official to employ a female member of police staff.
During his tenure in New York, Roosevelt’s right-hand man was a former military man named Avery Delano Andrews. The latter was also a cycling enthusiast. Concerned about the long hours and heavy workload that officers had to face in an ever-expanding city, he suggested to put policemen on bicycles to quicken up response time and release the fatigue caused by lengthy foot patrols.
Roosevelt was initially skeptical about the idea, but in the end the Board relented and agreed to begin a trial period with a squad of four officers on bikes, all of them former champions or experienced cyclists. The officers wore uniforms with eye-catching yellow leggings, nautical caps and long (winter) coats. They were instructed to reel in and fine “scorchers,” chase down drunk drivers, guide traffic where needed and protect female cyclists (even if in bloomers) from insults and cat calls.
The squad was led by Brooklyn-born Charles Minthorn Murphy. A record-holding cyclist, he was the first person to race a mile in less than a minute. The feat took place between Farmingdale and Babylon on Long Island on June 30th, 1899. He finished the distance 57.8 seconds, a time he achieved by slip-streaming behind a railroad boxcar. Acknowledged as the world’s fastest man on wheels, he became known as Charles “Mile a Minute” Murphy.
The policing trial proved to be a resounding success. The squad was so effective that their numbers increased rapidly. In his 1913 Autobiography Theodore Roosevelt looked back with admiration to the achievements of his Bicycle Squad officers, praising them for their “extraordinary proficiency on the wheel” in the battle against scorchers and other law breakers.
King of Speed
As cycling became regulated and a start was made with the laying out of designated bike lanes (the six-mile long Ocean Parkway from Prospect Park, Brooklyn, to Coney Island was the first of such paths where scorchers would be stopped and fined for speeding), the Squad’s days were numbered. With the arrival of the automobile on the streets of New York, the passion for pace moved from bike to car. The career of one young immigrant encapsulates that change.
On May 20th, 1905, a car race took place at the old Hippodrome in Morris Park, Bronx, in which two renowned drivers named Barney Oldfield and Walter Christie took part. Their presence was overshadowed by a young man driving a ninety-horse powered Fiat who sped around the track at sixty-eight miles per hour, barely slowing down at the curves and taking unbelievable risks. His name was Louis Chevrolet.
Born in December 1878 in La Chaux-de-Fonds, a clock-making centre in the Swiss canton of Neuchâtel, his father’s skill as a watchmaker may have inspired his passion for mechanics and precision engineering. Hit by economic setbacks the large family moved to Beaune, a small town in the Burgundy region of France, when Louis was a child.
Times remained difficult for the family and Louis left school at eleven to take up a job at a local bicycle factory. The job sparked his interest in building and handling speed machines. In 1895, Chevrolet enrolled in the town’s bicycle racing association and success ensued almost immediately. For three years he showed a fierce competitive spirit, clinching numerous victories on the track, earning some much needed prize money to help his struggling family and, at the same time, celebrating a French public obsession with bike racing that Ernest Hemingway in A Moveable Feast would describe as the “driving purity of speed.”
When he was offered a job at the Darracq automobile company near Paris, he did not hesitate to grasp the opportunity. It was his first step towards a dazzling career. Louis moved to New York to work for the French De Dion-Bouton Motorette Company which, located in Brooklyn, began manufacturing cars under license in 1901. The venture was in operation for only one year, but Louis was soon given the opportunity to drive a racing car for Fiat in New York. Between 1905 and 1910, Chevrolet amassed a string of triumphs and records.
His “heroic” driving fame caught the attention of William Durant, the owner of the Buick Company and founder of General Motors in 1908. Louis opened up his first garage in Detroit in 1909 and a year later he partnered with Durant to design his first car. The rest is – as they say – history. The Chevy became an American icon. Chevrolet’s place among racing legends and car makers was secured in 1969 when he was elected to the Automotive Hall of Fame.
Addiction to time was a by-product of the technological explosion of the late nineteenth century. Our obsession with speed began on a bicycle and was intensified with the arrival of motor vehicles. Modernism moved on wheels. Chevrolet and other racing drivers exploited the might of the machine by clocking fast and faster times. Henry Ford’s assembly line increased the pace of production by cutting the completion span of a car from twelve hours to ninety-three minutes. The clock became society’s Supreme Leader.
QUEEN LATIFAH AND STARS OF THE EQUALIZER OUTSIDE COLER WHERE THEY ARE FILMING AN EPISODE OF THE SHOW. NINA LUBLIN AND GLORIA HERMAN GOT IT RIGHT
Text by Judith Berdy Thanks to Bobbie Slonevsky for her dedication to Blackwell’s Almanac and the RIHS Thanks to Deborah Dorff for maintaining our website Edited by Melanie Colter and Deborah Dorff
All image are copyrighted (c) Roosevelt Island Historical Society unless otherwise indicated
NEW YORK ALMANACK
JAAP HARSKAMP
THIS PUBLICATION FUNDED BY DISCRETIONARY FUNDS FROM CITY COUNCIL MEMBER JULIE MENIN & ROOSEVELT ISLAND OPERATING CORPORATION PUBLIC PURPOSE FUNDS.
THE RUINS
This is not at all typical of my sculptural work, which is usually acutely concerned with it’s material reality and physical presence. This piece lingers in a border space, something that is real and yet still feels like you are only seeing it and then finishing it or making it real in your head. Like a piece of poetry made real, crystallizing for a minute. I think the piece will seem very unreal when it is up, the sunlight flashing and flickering on the gold, heightened by the fact that it’s temporary. You will see it and then it will be gone, and you will wonder if you imagined it. It will only continue to exist as long as it is remembered.
STEP 2
The golden touch
Gold leafing up close
The first gold leafed butterfly
THIS IS THE HELL OR HIGH WATER MARK, WHERE TIME IS CRUNCHING AND STAKES ARE RISING AND WINNING IS NOT ENOUGHThe project is moving faster and gaining steam, I have a series of fantastic new team members and planners. Amazing foundations are actually seeking me out, to become part of the project. But this is the time where failing is about not winning fast enough, so I think that I will be running until three days after the project is up.This is the time where the stakes raise and the partners raise and the numbers on both sides of the budget, in and out, go up. We are through the times of stitching things together with buttons and string. I meet with my business developers at least once a week, in a second floor office on 5th Ave., my business meetings do not include champagne anymore as often as they did this past fall and I am refining and rewriting – it is business.John Babashek, our project manager, and I go over and over our important letters and financial business. Just last week we were contacted by the 
