CITY COUNCIL REDISTRICTING WOULD MOVE OUR DISTRICT FROM MANHATTAN TO QUEENS.
IT IS YOUR TIME TO WRITE AND COMMUNICATE WITH THE REDISTRICTING COMMITTEE
FROM THE ARCHIVES
WEEKEND, AUGUST 6-7, 2022
THE 747th EDITION
CITY COUNCIL
DISTRICTS
DUE TO BE CHANGED
WE COULD BE IN QUEENS!!
QUEENS???
WE DO NOT LIVE IN QUEENS!
Hi, I am writing to you to tell you that if you live east of First Avenue from 54th street to I believe 79th street (not sure whether it is south or north on 79 Street, Roosevelt Island, down to Sutton Place, down to 54th street — there are some places where it changes, it is not a straight line), the new City Council map puts you in a city council district in Queens which will be folded into an existing Queens City Council district (primarily Sunnyside and Long Island City
There is nothing wrong with Queens, except, of course, that you don’t live there — the practicality of it is that when you have a problem you will have to call your Queens councilperson, and they will be busy with issues from 75% of their consituency that lives in another borough.
It is very important that as many people from the affected area go on record with the Commissioners with respect to their opposition to this redistricting plan as soon as possible. We need as many people as possible to send letters to each of the Commissioners (list attached), as well as to attend and testify at the public hearing, which will be held on Monday August 22, 2022 from 5-9:30 (again details are in the information below and we don’t know yet whether there will be a zoom).
The redistricting plan puts Hunter College in two City Council Districts and all of the hospitals in the Queens district. If you have a small park or perhaps a school or a library that gets the benefit of participatory budgeting, how will that happen when your council person is in Queens?
Also attached is a sample letter (tailor how you wish but remember to mention the criteria in the charter, that is critical).
We need as many people as possible to send the letters and to testify at the public hearings. Please spread this to everyone in your building and in neighboring buildings and any friends you may have in the affected areas. Please email to let me know whether you are writing letters and in addition if you are going to sign up to testify. We are doing this with other concerned community groups and neighborhood assns.
Also annexed is a resolution adopted by Manhattan Community Board 8 which gives an excellent overview of what is happening, opposes the redistricting plan, and offers an alternative that would keep Manhattan i.e., the UES in tact.
THIS IS URGENT AND NEEDS TO GET DONE BEFORE THE HEARING ON AUGUST 22.
JUST ARRIVED CAPS BUCKET HATS AND VISORS SHOP THE R.I.H.S. KIOSK
FROM ED LITCHER Ron and Fay-Vidra Vass – Another brick in the foundation has been lost.
If memory serves, their early connection to the island grew from their connection to Goldwater. They were always a dynamic duo. In the community’s early days, if anything was happening on the island Ron and Fay were always present and were probably in-charge.
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)
SOURCES
ROOSEVELT ISLAND HISTORICAL SOCIETY
GRANTS
CITY COUNCIL REPRESENTATIVE BEN KALLOS DISCRETIONARY FUNDING THRU DYCD
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
FUNDING PROVIDED BY ROOSEVELT ISLAND OPERATING CORPORATION PUBLIC PURPOSE GRANTS CITY COUNCIL REPRESENTATIVE BEN KALLOS DISCRETIONARY FUNDING THRU DYCD
I don’t usually write about subjects that have been well covered elsewhere. Mark Kurlansky’s, The Big Oyster, his history of oysters in New York, is really a good read. But the book came out almost 20 years ago, so let’s take a look at what’s happened to oysters in our fair city since then and what we can (and can’t) expect in the future.
Dear reader, I confess that I love oysters – raw, ultra-fresh, with just a drop of lemon juice – none of the wicked hot sauce that disguises the glorious taste of the sea, which is why we eat them. And yes, I’ve heard the joke – “The bravest man in history was the guy who first ate an oyster.”
New York was Oyster Heaven.
We are told that 350 square miles of oyster beds lined the lower Hudson. Some biologists estimate that our harbor contained half of the world’s oysters. Archaeological evidence gathered from tremendous mounds of oyster shells (“middens”) indicates that our oysters were not only plentiful, but they were huge. Shells from these middens measure up to 10 inches, and early European travelers describe the shellfish as being about a foot in length. So big that the English novelist William Makepeace Thackeray wrote that eating a New York oyster was like eating a baby.
The Landing of Henrick Hudson, based on a painting by Robert Wise, Gilder Lehman Collection’
The Dutch hoped to find pearls among all these oysters, but, alas, not to be. Only good for eating and for some construction – the lime used in Trinity Church was made from ground-up oyster shells.
And New York became the world’s Oyster Capital.
Local varieties included Blue Points, Saddle Rocks, Rockaways, Lynnhavens, Cape Cods, Buzzard Bays, Cotuits and Shrewsburys. People ate them raw on the half shell, as oyster pie, oyster patties, oyster box stew, Oysters Pompadour, Oysters Algonquin, Oysters a la Netherland, a la Newberg, a la Poulette, roasted on toast, broiled in shell, served with cocktail sauce and stewed in milk or cream. They ate fish with oyster sauce, poultry stuffed with oysters, oysters fried with bacon, and oysters escalloped, fried, fricasseed, and pickled. Oystering, from gathering to marketing, was a major New York City industry.
Early on, our oyster became world-renowned. Kurlansky writes, “Before the 20th century, when people thought of New York, they thought of oysters. This is what New York was to the world—a great oceangoing port where people ate succulent local oysters from their harbor. Visitors looked forward to trying them. New Yorkers ate them constantly. They also sold them by the millions.” In the 19th century, when Europe and America were in the throes of an oyster craze, tons of oysters were shipped abroad from New York and many more carried to the far reaches of our country. (Pickled oysters were a huge export product.)
New Yorkers dined on oysters in restaurants (we are told that Delmonico’s popularized oysters raw on the half shell). In oyster cellars (the equivalent of our papaya bar, but most were seedier and often much rougher). In Canal Street oyster cellars, the price was All You Can Eat for 6 Cents (but if you pushed this too far, you might find a bad oyster slipped into the pile). Oysters were our street food, peddled at all hours from pushcarts, along with hot corn, peanuts, and buns. Floating oyster markets were built that could tie up along the Hudson and East Rivers. By the 1880’s the barges had become two stories high, with elaborate ornaments
Thomas Hogan. “Up Among the Nineties.” From Harper’s Weekly, August 15, 1868. Library, Bard Graduate Center.
Oysters were the supremely democratic food: Rich and poor New Yorkers slurped the same oysters, often from the same pushcart. Although not many could keep up with Diamond Jim Brady, the legendary New York gourmand, who started his pretheater dinner with three dozen. It was claimed that the very poorest New Yorkers “had no other subsistence than oysters and bread”. Fortunately, oysters are nutritious—rich in protein, phosphorus, iodine, calcium, iron, and vitamins A, B, and C.
Nicolino Calyo. “New York Street Cries: The Oyster-Stand,” 1840–44. Watercolor on paper. Museum of the City of New York
But it was too good to last. New Yorkers overfished (the Dutch had attempted to regulate the oyster catch) and, of course, polluted the oysters’ watery homes. In 1900, we harvested a billion oysters from the lower Hudson. In 1921, the New York City Health Department closed the Jamaica Bay oyster beds, then responsible for 80 million oysters a year, due to fears of food borne illness, including typhoid. From there the end came fast, and six years later, in 1927, the last New York City oyster bed was closed in Raritan Bay.
But change may be on the way. Our waters are much cleaner and wildlife – birds, fish, whales – are returning. Maybe oysters, too.
Just a bit of background here. Oysters reproduce unromantically. Male oysters release sperm into the water, hopefully meets up with eggs released by female oysters. Those that connect become “spat” and spend the next three weeks or so drifting on currents and tides feeding on phytoplankton or microscopic algae. They will develop a thin shell and a slimy foot to help find a location in which to stick itself in place and settle down – an old oyster shell works fine. Once a baby oyster has found a perfect spot, it will secrete a liquid cement-like substance that fixes or glues itself in place to spend the rest of its life in one place.
The sex life of an oyster is striking. Most spat are males with some individuals transforming into females after the first or second spawning. Oysters may go back and forth between sexes several times during their lifetime. (One article says that female oysters are just older male oysters – “their gender is very fluid.”) This all sets the mind to wandering.. An oyster can live between 10 to 20 years, but most will only survive about four or five years. Which years do you think it likes the best?
Our waters are now clean enough that oysters have reappeared here and there around the lower Hudson. Spat were discovered living on a healthy Eastern oyster shell attached to a mushroom anchor in the Navesink River in New Jersey; a large living oyster reef in the Hudson River was removed near the Tappan Zee Bridge before construction began on the new bridge; oysters can now be found growing in Upper New York Bay. Around the Statue of Liberty are some of the plumpest and fastest growing in the whole of New York Harbor. But while welcome, this is still small stuff.
The biggest oyster restoration effort is the Billion Oyster Project, a recovery program from the non-profit New York Harbor Foundation that hopes to restore oyster populations throughout the tidal waters of New York City. The project began in 2012, and so far has returned around 47 million live oysters to the harbor, primarily around Governor’s Island and at the mouth of the Bronx River. The Project is affiliated with the New York Harbor School and teaches New York City teenagers about maritime vocations and ecology by way of oyster restoration.
The Project begins by collecting oyster shells from restaurants around the City. Fifty-five restaurants donate their discarded oyster shells to BOP which hauls them to Governors Island. Once there, they’re dumped at the very end of the pile, where they’ll sit for years. The shells get rained on, snowed on, crisped in the sun and blown around by the wind. Insects pick them clean as possible which ultimately makes them receptive to oyster spat which latch on and grow. The cleaned shells are moved to Billion Oyster Project’s hatchery at the Urban Assembly New York Harbor School, a public high school on Governors Island that offers technical and vocational training in the marine sciences. In an aquaculture classroom’s hatchery, student-grown oysters produce larvae in an artificially induced springtime environment. Each larvae grows its foot and then is moved to a tank full of the shells. This phase is critical: If larvae can’t find a place to attach, they die. One reclaimed shell can house 10 to 20 new live oysters, depending on shell size. The students tend to the spat and recycled shells in floating cages that serve as breeding grounds for the oysters before they are returned to the harbor
Billion Oyster Project has collected more than 1 million pounds of oyster shells so far. Courtesy of Agata Poniatowski
Oysters are not just food. They’re also habitat builders. When oysters join up, they build an “oyster reef,” diverse ecosystems that protect coastlines from the damaging effects of wave action from storms. Oyster reefs provide habitat and shelter for many marine organisms. Our own coral reefs.
Oysters are also filters that naturally clean waters. Oysters use their gills to absorb oxygen and strain food out of the water. One adult can strain plankton and organic matter at a rate of up to 50 gallons per day (or 1500 times its body volume). A healthy oyster reef contributes significantly to overall water clarity in the estuary.
So good to welcome back to New York harbor our friend the oyster. But we’re not going to be able to eat them for a long time. Still too much sewage for the industrious fellow to clean and in any case, they don’t filter out a bunch of toxic substances. A parting thought. I’ve just written on flooding in New York. Odd that some decades out, the oyster may triumph over people, as more and more of the city is under water, with more lovely places for spat to rest and grow.
Yours, as ever,
Stephen Blank RIHS July 28, 2022
FRIDAY PHOTO OF THE DAY
IN MEMORY OF RON VASS, WHO PASSED AWAY ON WEDNESDAY RON AND HIS LATE WIFE FAY WERE WONDERFUL MEMBERS OF OUR COMMUNITY. ALWAYS ACTIVE IN THE ’80’s and ’90’s, RON AND FAY WERE AT THE FOREFRONT OF OUR NEW AND YOUNG ISLAND.
SEND YOUR MEMORIES TO: rooseveltislandhistory@gmail.com
THURSDAY PHOTO OF THE DAY
NEW AMSTERDAM THEATRE IN ITS PRE-DISNEY DAYS
LAURA HUSSEY, ED LITCHER, HARA REISER, ARON EISENPREISS, GLORIA HERMAN, JAY JACOBSON
FROM ARON:The New Amsterdam Theatre on 42nd Street. Wow, what an interesting history (see wikipedia!), and literally saved by Disney. The 11-story building on the 42nd St side is an office building as well as the theater entrance, and the theater itself is on the 41st St side with a much larger footprint. At one time home of the famous Ziegfeld Follies, later NBC broadcast studios used part of the space. The photo’s in the wikipedia article and says it’s from 1905 so that would be the original appearance. Neat!
FROM ED:Photo of the New Amsterdam Theater 42nd Street NYC Circa 1905. One of the oldest surviving Broadway venues, the New Amsterdam was built from 1902 to 1903 to designs by Herts & Tallant and was opened on opening on October 26, 1903.
FROM JAY:Still going strong on 42nd Street, the New Amsterdam Theater is what a theater interior should look like. I think it is now playing “Aladdin”
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:
WIKIMEDIA COMMONS STEPHEN BLANK
Gwynne Hogan, Millions of baby oysters get a new briny home off the shores of Hudson River Park, NYT, JULY 21, 2022
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Plastered on walls in public spaces and civic buildings, scattered in hotels and restaurants, hidden in private mansions, a plenitude of murals form part of New York City’s infrastructure.
Although American interest in the medium originated in the 1893 World Fair which presented visitors with numerous large-scale murals, the vogue for this form of artistic expression dates back to the Great Depression. With the introduction of Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal in 1933, federal funds were made available to support and promote public art. Muralism became fashionable.
During the 1930s political painting as a “tradition of the people” had been re-invented by Mexican muralists such as Diego Rivera or José Clemente Orozco. Their output influenced many American artists and curators of that era and reinforced the emergence of a socially engaged art.
Political murals energized New York’s visual cityscape. Community walls became prime spaces of interaction from which “site-specific” works emerged. Art was a weapon. Murals were a call to action, an attempt to motivate and organize the residents of a neighborhood. As such, they complement the “official” records that contribute to our historical understanding.
Chicago & Mexico
The 1893 World’s Fair at Chicago featured a large number of murals. Mary Cassatt, the Pittsburgh-born impressionist artist who had made a notable career in Paris, was commissioned to paint a mural for the Woman’s Building at the Exhibition. The neoclassical building itself was designed by Sophia Hayden, the first woman to graduate in architecture at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). The exhibition may have been a male dominated affair, but women were at last allowed (grudgingly) to make their presence felt.
Cassatt contributed a triptych presenting “Modern Woman.” The mural depicted contemporary women passing knowledge to a new generation (central panel), women creating art, and women pursuing their dreams. The work was not well received. It disappeared after the end of the Fair and was destroyed in a fire shortly after. It may well have been the first American mural with a socio-cultural message.
The sight of colorful murals did create a stir. At a time that Gilded Age industrialists and speculators started building their grand urban mansions, large areas of wall and ceiling space were available for decoration. Architects and artists were eager to embrace the medium. Harry Siddons Mowbray painted a mural on the ceiling of the Vanderbilt Mansion in Hyde Park and another one at J.P. Morgan’s Library on Madison Avenue.
Murals were created on a variety of themes and included classical scenes; topographical images (around 1900 William de Leftwich Dodge painted views of ancient and modern New York for the lobby of the Astor Hotel in Times Square); events in American history; and stories of migration.
In 1930 José Clemente Orozco painted a series of murals at the New School for Social Research (NSSR) at West 12th Street. During this same period Diego Rivera presented himself with murals in San Francisco and Detroit. In 1932, he caused a storm in New York City when his mural at the Rockefeller Center was destroyed because it contained a portrait of Vladimir Lenin. Having refused to remove the portrait, Diego was sacked by his patron.
The invasion of Mexican mural art set a precedent. Activist artists found a new way of making highly visible political statements. The ambition to create an “art for the people” proved to be a powerful aesthetic impetus. Muralism seemed to offer an alternative to the traditional relations between the arts, the public, and the political economy.
New Deal
The 1929 economic crash and the subsequent Great Depression struck American culture hard. Artists lost their sources of income as the number of clients dwindled. In that climate, the patronage of the New Deal between 1933 and 1943 proved effective in aiding both established and emerging artists. Many thousands paintings and fine prints were created as well as large numbers of sculptures, innumerable posters, and countless objects of craft. New Deal support for the visual arts helped to establish a program of mural painting similar to that initiated in the 1920s in Mexico.
Born into a family of Islandic immigrants, Holger Cahill started his career at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) under founding Director Alfred H. Barr. He was subsequently appointed National Director of the Roosevelt initiated Works Progress Administration (WPA) Federal Art Project. From the outset he stressed the social relevance of mural art.
In the introduction to the 1936 catalogue of New Horizons in American Art, an exhibition at MoMA of WPA-commissioned work, Cahill stressed that murals are “associated with the expression of social meanings, the experience, history, ideas, and beliefs of a community.” As a result muralism began to flourish in the United States. The Federal projects supplied both the funds and the walls.
Nearly three thousand artists produced over four thousand murals on various New Deal projects, the greatest concentration of which was to be found in New York. The exact number of murals executed in the city is not recorded, but it may have been close to four hundred. Many have been destroyed, but a substantial number has lasted (some in a better state than others) to inspire later generations.
Edward Laning was member of a group of artists known as the Fourteenth Street School. He and his friends ran inexpensive studios near Union Square, Manhattan, where they specialized in depicting “rough” scenes from their neighborhood which was a hotbed of radical politics. In November 1935, he was commissioned by the WPA to paint a mural for the Alien’s Dining Room on Ellis Island. Completed in May 1937, it depicts the role of the immigrant in the building of America and consists of eight episodes, each showing a phase of the immigrant’s contribution to the nation. The mural was seen as a first welcome by thousands of newcomers entering the country.
The WPA funded many murals to be painted for hospitals. In 1936, three African-American artists were commissioned to create a collection of paintings for Harlem Hospital. Vertis Hayes’s eight-panel Pursuit of Happiness follows the history of African-Americans, transporting viewers from Africa to America, then from the agrarian South to the industrialized North. Charles Alston painted two murals, titled “Magic in Medicine” and “Modern Medicine” which form a dialogue between African folk and Western scientific practices.
Georgette Seabrooke’s 1937 mural was named “Recreation in Harlem.” In a series of vignettes, the work depicts people reading, children playing, a couple dancing, a group of women chatting, and other scenes of leisure. More than half of the two dozen figures in the mural are women. The mural was meant to show black residents in Manhattan but, at the insistence of hospital officials, she added white figures as well.
Old King Cole in Manhattan
Early visibility of murals in New York’s public life inspired hoteliers and restaurateurs. They introduced a different and pre-political type of “community” art. It all started in 1906 when John Jacob Astor IV commissioned Maxfield Parrish to create a mural for the bar-room in The Knickerbocker Hotel, Astor’s new flagship hotel on 42nd Street & Broadway. The owner stipulated that the subject of the painting had to be the nursery-rhyme character of Old King Cole and that he himself would stand as model for King Cole’s face.
Parrish was not keen to accept the commission. He was an independent mind, unwilling to take instructions. Coming from a non-drinking Quaker family, Parrish was reluctant to create a painting to decorate a bar. Moreover, he had already painted a version of King Cole for the Mask and Wig Club, a private theater society in Philadelphia. However, a generous fee of $5,000 was too tempting to refuse as he and his wife had just resettled from Philadelphia to Cornish, New Hampshire, where they built a house and studio which they named “The Oaks.”
He began work on “Old King Cole” in a studio that was too small to hold the whole mural, so he painted the three panels one at a time. He placed the king in the center, flanked by jesters and guards. When it was installed at the hotel in 1906, it instantly became part of the fabric of a vibrant city that was eager for amusement. The Roaring Twenties were around the corner.
When the Knickerbocker closed in 1920, the mural went into storage, then briefly hung in a museum in Chicago, and was finally installed at the St Regis Hotel at 2 East 55th Street in 1932. There, at the heart of “Millionaires’ Alley,” it made the transition from artwork to icon.
The mural served as backdrop for scenes in The Godfather and other movies and the bar was frequented by the likes of Salvador Dali, Ernest Hemingway, Marlene Dietrich, and Marilyn Monroe, who were happy to enjoy a Red Snapper (the original name for a Bloody Mary concocted in 1934 by the hotel’s bartender Fernand Petiot) and pose in front of King Cole.
Café des Artistes
The studio-style residential edifice named Hôtel des Artistes at 1 West 67th Street, near the west side of Central Park, was designed in 1916 and completed a year later. This ornate seventeen-story Gothic building had squash courts, a swimming pool, a theater, and a ballroom. It has been home to a long list of artists, performers and writers, including Isadora Duncan, Noel Coward, Fannie Hurst, Alexander Woollcott, and Norman Rockwell.
Located on the ground floor of the Hôtel was a restaurant. The Café des Artistes served the tenants who lived upstairs (their apartments did not have kitchens) as well as the general public. Among other patrons of the restaurant were luminaries such as Marcel Duchamp, Rudolph Valentino, and others.
One of the residents of the Hôtel des Artistes was Howard Chandler Christy, a painter and illustrator who today is remembered for his Scene at the Signing of the Constitution of the United States (1940), hanging in the US Capitol. Much in demand as a portrait painter, Christy had a long list of sitters, from William Randolph Hearst and Edward VIII (Prince of Wales) to Benito Mussolini and the First Lady Grace Coolidge.
In the early 1930s, the Café fell on hard times as New York suffered from the effects of the Great Depression. Christy offered to paint a mural with the promise that it would bring back “crowds” of curious customers. He composed nine panels of nudes in bucolic settings (the first of which was completed in 1935), frolicking in water, playing on swings, or posing with parrots. One of his models was Elise Ford, his companion in later life. The dreamlike quality of the work and its salacious nature both shocked and enticed the public. Christy’s prediction was correct. The Café became a hub where the creative, business and press communities met and mingled.
George Lang’s Stewardship
Restaurateur and food writer George Lang was born György Deutsch in Székesfehérvár, Hungary, the son of a Jewish tailor. He was trained to become a violinist, but war intervened. Aged nineteen, he was imprisoned in a concentration camp during the Second World War. His parents were murdered in Auschwitz. György survived the war, changed his name to George Lange (using his mother’s maiden name), and moved to the United States in 1946.
He settled in New York to pursue a musical career but failed. Reflecting on that stage in life, Lang remembered in his delightfully titled autobiography Nobody Knows the Truffles I’ve Seen (1998) that on the occasion he heard Jascha Heifetz play a Mendelssohn concerto, he tossed his violin aside, realizing that he would “never be able to play like that.”
Instead, he used his creative drive to achieve perfection in the kitchen. After a successful career as a chef and banquet manager at the Waldorf Astoria Hotel that included preparing state dinners for Queen Elizabeth II (1957) and Nikita Khrushchev (1959), he was awarded the Hotelman of the Year Award in 1975. The same year, he bought and revitalized the Café de Artistes without damaging its original ambience.
Sadly, the Café des Artistes was hit by the Great Recession of 2007. Steadily mounting losses forced him to close the famous restaurant in 2009. Two years later, the restaurant was re-opened under a new (Italian) management team and renamed The Leopard at des Artistes. Howard Chandler Christy’s nudes survived and the murals remain there to excite new generations of diners.
AMDY SPARBERG, ARON EISENPREISS, JAY JACOBSON, ALEXIS VILLAFANE, HARA REISER, LAURA HUSSEY, & GLORIA HERMAN GOT THIS ONE! HOT DOG!!
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)
Sources
NEW YORK ALMANACK JAAP HARSKAMP
Illustrations, from above: Harry Siddons Mowbray’s ‘Renaissance’ murals at J.P. Morgan’s Library on Madison Avenue; Edward Laning and assistants working on his mural project at Ellis Island, January 1937 (Archives of American Art Journal, vol. 12); Recreation in Harlem, 1937 by Georgette Seabrooke; Maxfield Parrish, Old King Cole at the St Regis Hotel, East 55th Street. (View from the hotel bar); and the Leopard at des Artistes, formerly: Café des Artistes on West 67th Street, with one of Howard Chandler Christy’s murals.
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Bajo el manto de la selva / Under the Cover of the Jungle Commissioned by Arts Brookfield for Brookfield Place New York.
This summer, Arts Brookfield has awarded visual artist Tatiana Arocha with the Brookfield Place New York Annual Arts Commission from which she will present her first large-scale sculptural work in the Winter Garden. For the project, Tatiana Arocha has created a lush, suspended sculpture made of hand-made paper, tree branches, reed, fique and wood. Titled, Bajo el manto de la selva / Under the Cover of the Jungle, the work is representative of the artist’s layered relationship with the ecology of Colombia, her home country.
ARTIST STATEMENT: Growing up, Arocha often journeyed to the Colombian rainforests where she saw Indigenous and Afro-Colombian lands and lifeways caught in the middle of eco- and genocidal forces of the drug trade. She came to the United States as an adult to pursue a design career, and while she succeeded, she struggled with the limited ethnopolitical identities afforded her as a Colombian American immigrant.
The dizzyingly biodiverse Colombian forest, and the complex social and economic histories that have threatened its existence since the colonists arrived, remain indelibly imprinted in Arocha’s psyche, and emerge in her artistic practice in the form of texturally detailed forest landscapes. Her process starts from botanical field work that includes drawing, rubbing, photographing, preserving, and tracing the bark, seeds, and leaves of the forest. These experiences are further enriched through conversations with Indigenous peoples for whom forests are more than places dense with resources to be extracted. From them, she learned that forests can be sustainably cultivated into spaces for creating eco-systemic, social and spiritual relationships across generations and species.
For Arocha, the process of making the commission for the Winter Garden enabled her to continue both her artistic and ecological education. With a female coop in Barichara, Colombia, she learned how to make paper from fique and pineapple fiber. The paper has been lovingly shaped into the leaves of the Yarumo tree, ferns, and balazos, which have interlocking uses that range from ritual and medicinal purposes to fiber for weaving baskets and bags, and food. Bajo el manto de la selva represents the abundance and intelligence that the forest offers us if we look and listen deeply.
With this work, Arocha invites us to embark on the long journey of challenging the hierarchies of knowledge given to us. Only then might we truly comprehend the immensity of what we would lose if we do not act to protect these complex ecosystems.
Bajo el manto de la selva / Under the Cover of the Jungle was made in collaboration with Fundación San Lorenzo de Barichara papermakers: Yadira Bueno, Serafina Sánchez, Margarita Suárez, Hercilia Velásquez, Aida Janeth Velásquez, Amparo Angarita, Ana Lucila Sánchez, Gloria María Sánchez, Deysi Viviana Viviescas, Julieth Romero, Luz Mery Rivera; and nest weaving by Marcela Carrasco Sua-ty Textil.
Text by Prerana Reddy.
Tatiana Arocha (1974) is a New York-born Colombian artist, living in Brooklyn on Lenape ancestral lands. Her art practice explores intimacy between people and land, rooted in personal memory and her immigrant experience, and centers on community through public art interventions and transdisciplinary knowledge exchange. Most often, Arocha’s works vivify and reconstruct the vulnerable tropical forests of her homeland, confronting the ecological, emotional, and cultural loss caused by extractive economies and colonial practices. In weaving together historical and contemporary technologies, Arocha’s unconventional process and craft express her layered relationship with nature and cultural transformation.
She has held residencies at The Wassaic Project, LABverde, Centro Selva, Arquetopia, Sinfonia Tropico, and Zea Mays Printmaking. Arocha has received funding from The Sustainable Arts Foundation, Brooklyn Arts Council, and City Artist Corps.
Solo exhibitions include Sugar Hill Children’s Museum of Art & Storytelling, BioBAT Project Space, Queens Botanical Garden, and site-specific installations at BRIC, Brookfield Place/Winter Garden, MTA Arts, Goethe-Institut Kolumbien, and Hilton Bogota Corferias. She has participated in group exhibitions at Smack Mellon, Wave Hill, BRIC, The Wassaic Project, ArtBridge, KODALab, and The Clemente.
About San Lorenzo de Barichara Foundation The San Lorenzo de Barichara Foundation was created 20 years ago to promote the development of Barichara, a town in Santander, Colombia. Its purpose is to bring together the community in Barichara and the surrounding rural area, collect the diverse knowledge of the people, review local materials, and honor Santander’s traditions and expertise in botany and art. From plants such as fique and pineapple, long fibers are extracted that are intertwined with each other in an artisanal way until a strong, resistant paper surface is obtained that is suitable for drawing and painting.Ten female heads of households work in this space using natural fibers and dyes under the maintenance and care of an ecological path that showcases how numerous plants can become paper. From time to time, the workshop travels to nearby schools to pass down their knowledge, while supporting neighbors who are related in one way or another to their trades. Collectively they cultivate the fibers that are needed to weave a community.
EDITORIAL
As you might have seen lately, the RIHS is still fighting the battle of the Hot Dog Vendor. The vendor has been parking his cart next to the kiosk entrance for weeks. No matter of pleas or complaints to RIOC will move him. Our problem with this vendor is:Dirty cartHe wears one glove when serving food and violates health rules.Banners hanging from artNo license with letter rating, though yesterday one appeared stating that the cart was inspected in January!!No price listOur major complaint is that he has ruined out business. Beverage sales add up and we have hardly sold any since he is there.
The Tram staff have made numerous complaints about him being in front of the station (prior to construction fences) to no resolution. His cart attracts rats and vermin also gives off charcoal and fuel odors.
There is no reason why RIOC cannot move him 100 feet away from our entrance so visitors have easy access to our kiosk.
It is funny that RIOC defends the rights of this cart over an island organization and kiosk that has served the community for 15 years.
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:
BROOKFIELD PLACE
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COURTESY OF THE MUNICIPAL ART SOCIETY OF NEW YORK (MAS)
Doris and Alan J. Freedman Gallery
Rick Secen’s A Light in the City is Now Online
The Municipal Art Society of New York (MAS) is delighted to introduce the latest exhibition in the Doris C. and Alan J. Freedman Gallery: a collection of paintings by artist Rick Secen. Capturing scenes of New York City life with a particular eye for the changing character of light, Secen’s art evokes the experience of the seasons in the five boroughs.
From the bright skies of spring and the enveloping rays of summer sun, to the sharp shadows of fall and the cool softness of winter light, A Light in the City depicts a year in the life of an ever-evolving metropolis. This exhibition is the first collection of paintings to be featured in the Freedman Gallery.
Relaunched in 2020 in a new digital format, the Doris C. and Alan J. Freedman Gallery highlights the work of artists based in or inspired by New York City, whose work deepens our understanding of the relationship between people and the built environment. Since its relaunch, the Freedman Gallery has featured work by Giles Ashford, James & Karla Murray, Stanley Greenberg, Jeff Chien Hsing Liao, Chris Weller, and Melissa O’Shaughnessy.
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Rick Secen is a Brooklyn-based artist who has been working primarily in oil painting since 2015. After graduating from the Savannah College of Art and Design in 2005, he moved to New York City to pursue sound editing for film.
Coming from a film-making background, his instinct in painting leans heavily on the art of storytelling. In 2018, Rick had his first solo exhibition, titled City Witness, featuring a series of paintings themed on stories from his community in the Lower East Side.
In January 2022, he had his second solo exhibition titled Guiding Lights, which portrayed characters in isolation having a direct interaction with a light source. The series was directly born from pandemic living.
Along with works of art containing narrative, Rick is also pursuing a personal on-going documentary project. By filming and interviewing local artists in their studios, discussing their projects, their processes, and their stories, he discovers the many ways there are to be a working artist.
The inspiration for this collection of paintings finds its true source from the people I witness every day and the city that they are perpetually molding.
From the street corner, I watch hundreds of people hustling about, getting it done, surviving the day, and beating the odds in a city that moves at a relentless speed.
While the day is unpredictable and each morning seems to burst into disarray, we may pause and discover that there is also a wonderful rhythm written into the fabric of the urban experience.
The streets move to the beat of traffic lights. Trains burst violently into stations, load passengers, and depart over and over again. Boats eb and flow, slicing through the harbor. Helicopters launch and land in rhythmic order. The whole city moves to an unseen conductor.
This collection, which is composed of works from the last seven years, features paintings of our city which were constructed using methods that capture this dual nature of city life.
The paintings are full of texture and vibrating color, while being sequestered to strong shapes. Light and atmosphere churn into the perfect lines of city perspective. Both light and air are depicted as characters themselves, moving between the buildings, under the bridges, through our parks, and coming into direct contact with the people who live here, where together they share a moment of silent chaos.
ABOUT THE DORIS AND ALAN J. FREEDMAN GALLERY
The Doris C. and Alan J. Freedman Gallery was housed at the former offices of MAS at the Villard Houses prior to the organization’s move in 2010. In 2020, the gallery was reimagined as a digital space made accessible to visitors from across the city and world. Both the digital gallery and its original programming at the Villard Houses have been made possible through the generosity of the Freedman Family.
Doris Freedman (1928–1981) served as New York City’s first Director of Cultural Affairs and founded the Public Art Fund in 1977. Alan Freedman (1923–1982) was the founder and chairman of the WNYC Foundation, which raised private financing to support public radio broadcasting in New York. Both Doris and Alan Freedman served as Presidents of MAS in the late 1970s and early 1980s.
STEAM VENT AT NIGHT
STOP LIGHT IN THE CLOUDS
RAIN CROSSING MANHATTAN BRIDGE
ELIZABETH STREET GARDEN
RUSTED BEAM BLUE ROCKS
HOT DOG VENDOR
CHINATOWN IN THE RAIN
Black Liberty Leading, June 2020, Columbus Circle, Trump Tower,
The Umbrella’s markings are ALL CARS LEAD TO BLOOMINGDALES” the motto of the 59th Street Store. The motto told that all streetcar routes lead to the store.
Gloria Herman and Laura Hussey 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
Sources RICK SECAN ART courtesy of the Doris and Alan J. Freedman Gallery Municipal Art Society Elizabeth Goldstein, President
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Robert Motherwell, Capriccio, 1961, color collotype and photo-silkscreen on paper, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Museum purchase, 1965.47
Robert Motherwell, Saint Louis Symphony Orchestra, 1973, color lithograph poster, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of Telamon Editions Limited, 1976.152.2
BURGOYNE DILLER
Burgoyne Diller, Untitled, 1930, ink on paper, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of Halley K. Harrisburg and Michael Rosenfeld, 1999.85.6
The American Abstract Artists (AAA) group was formed in 1937 with the aim of exhibiting nonobjective art, educating the public, and encouraging dialogue among abstract artists. Among the artists who participated in AAA exhibitions and meetings were Burgoyne Diller, John Ferren, Dwinell Grant, and John Sennhauser, who shared an interest in pure geometric form and balance of color. Diller’s drawing is an example of the artist’s early austere style and interest in spatial relationships.
Unable to sell such works during the depression, Diller accepted a position as co-director of the Mural Division of the New York Federal Art Project of the Works Progress Administration, where he played an important role in the promotion of abstract art in America. While the public preferred a more readable and realist style, Diller managed to hire abstract artists for several major mural projects, including murals at the New York World’s Fair of 1939 – 1940 and the Williamsburg Housing Project.
Burgoyne Diller, Untitled, 1948, graphite and crayon on paper, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of Halley K. Harrisburg and Michael Rosenfeld, 1999.85.1
A pioneer of American abstraction, Ferren created this composition during a seven-year sojourn in Paris. He began his career as a sculptor, but turned to painting after he saw an exhibition of work by Henri Matisse and recognized the power of color. In the mid-1930s he worked at Stanley William Hayter’s printmaking workshop in Paris, Atelier 17, where he was encouraged to imprint his engraved and inked plated on wet plaster. When the plaster block dried, it showed the lines of the plate. He then carved into it to create à bas-relief sculpture of modeled and curved planes. Blue in Space resembles one of these carved plasters, translated into two dimensions with the planes defined by the rich colors of soft pastels.
Graphic Masters II: Highlights from the Smithsonian American Art Museum, 2009
BROOKLYN SURROGATE COURT AND POST OFFICE ANDY SPARBERG AND SUMIT KAUR GOT IT!!!
FRIDAY PHOTO OF THE DAY
ORIGINAL WPA HEADQUARTERS IN WASHINGTON, DC
THURSDAY PHOTO OF THE DAY
OVERPASS ON WEST STREET TO NEW JERSEY FERRY TERMINAL GLORIA HERMAN GOT IT !!!
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)
Sources
SMITHSONIAN AMERICAN ART MUSEUM
GRANTS
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SIMPLE, DIRECT MESSAGING WAS THE HALLMARK OF THE 1930’S ART FROM THE WORKS PROGRESS ADMINISTRATION. SOME AREAS THAT WERE PUBLICIZED BY THE WPA WERE TRAVEL, HEALTH, NUTRITION AND LATER NATIONAL SECURITY.
TODAY IS TIME FOR A SUMMER TRIP…
FROM THE ARCHIVES
WEEKEND, JULY 30-31, 2022
THE 741st EDITION
W.P.A. ART GOES
ON A
SUMMER TRIP
LOCAL ATTRACTION NEAR THE 1939 WORLD’S FAIR, WHO KNEW?
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)
All image are copyrighted (c) Roosevelt Island Historical Society unless otherwise indicated
SOURCES
WIKIMEDIA COMMONS
GRANTS
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Feiner, left, at a Perkins&Will design review meeting in 2016, is credited with having transformed the architecture of federal buildings.
Photo courtesy Perkins&Will
Edward A. Feiner, who spearheaded the General Services Administration’s design excellence program as GSA’s chief architect from 1996-2005, died on July 1. The cause of death was a brain tumor. Feiner was 75.
“Ed’s intellect, his passion, his energy,” and his outsized personality made him “a force to be reckoned with,” says Leslie L. Shepherd, Feiner’s second-in-command at GSA and successor as chief architect.
“He changed the design and construction of public buildings,” adds Shepherd, who left his post in 2016 and is currently a vice president and national director of GSA programs at Leo A Daly, a multidisciplinary design firm.
In announcing his retirement from GSA in early January 2005, Feiner, then 58, said, “I felt this was a very good time to do it, because we have some very good leadership [at GSA] that believe in the importance [of] design and GSA’s role as a leader in design and construction.”
He added that his biological clock was running out. “This can’t be a nursing home,” he said, hoping change would come “in an elegant and graceful manner.”
ALFONSE D’AMATO FEDERAL COURTHOUSE, EAST ISLIP, NY, RICHARD MEIER AND ASSOCIATES-ARCHITECTS
Crew Cut and Cowboy Boots
The New York City native, known for his unbridled enthusiasm, his crew cut and his cowboy boots, joined GSA in 1981. After leaving in early 2005, Feiner worked at architect-engineer Skidmore Owings & Merrill and the Las Vegas Sands Corp. before landing at Perkins&Will in 2009, where he became director of the firm’s design leadership council.
When Feiner retired from GSA, Robert C. Hixon, Jr., who spent nearly 35 years at GSA before moving to the Architect of the Capitol’s office in 2004, said, “Ed has done a phenomenal job.”
Comparing the boxy buildings GSA built in the 1960s and 70s and the ones constructed after the design excellence program began, in 1994, Hixon called the difference “unbelievable.”
GSA’s construction excellence program was then shaped after the design excellence program. Even State Dept. buildings were affected by GSA’s design excellence, says Shepherd, who had breakfast every week with Feiner for the last 17 years and was at his bedside when he died.
Under the program, a board composed of GSA and private-sector members—architect peers—reviews submissions from design firms and draws up a short list. After much study, the peer-review panel ranks the submissions and GSA selects a winner.
Feiner personally reviewed and approved the conceptual designs of all federal courthouses developed by GSA from 1985 through 2005. He said in a 2005 interview with ENR that after putting design firms through the “torture” of GSA reviews and his own comments, “part of me wanted to be in that back room,” where the private architects on the peer review panel grappled with how to react.
The position of supervising architect of the U.S. dates back to the early 19th century at the Treasury Dept. But it was abolished in the 1930s. In 1996, Robert Peck, GSA’s Public Buildings Service commissioner at the time, decided to re-establish the chief architect’s position and picked Feiner, who basically, but unofficially, had been the agency’s lead design official.
“Ed’s accomplishment consisted of coming from within and knowing how to institutionalize the change,” Peck said, at the time of Feiner’s retirement.
OKLAHOMA CITY FEDERAL BUILDING, BENHAM ARCHITECTURE
GSA’s Green Buildings Standard
As chief architect, Feiner also set the course for GSA’s green buildings standard and for a performance-based approach to designing federal buildings for security.
He is a Fellow of the American Institute of Architects. His other honors include the Augustus St. Gaudens Award in 1997 from the Cooper Union Alumni Association, the AIA Thomas Jefferson Award for public architecture, an ENR Newsmaker award in 2001 for the design excellence program and the Presidential Rank Award for Meritorious Service in 2003.
Before his tenure at GSA, Feiner spent 11 years with the Naval Facilities Engineering Command, interrupted by a job with Gruen Associates. At NAVFAC, he focused mainly on planning, and rose to be become head of its master planning branch.
Feiner is a graduate of Cooper Union with a bachelor’s in architecture and the Catholic University of America, with a master’s in architecture in urban design.
At the time of Feiner’s retirement from GSA, then Public Buildings Service Commissioner F. Joseph Moravec said his “commitment to the proposition that our public buildings should reflect the best aspects of American civilization has helped to establish our agency as one of the nation’s premier patrons of architecture. His work has had a profound impact on communities across the country, and his legacy will endure as long as our buildings stand.
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There were two Meneely bell founderies, based on either side of the Hudson River in New York state.
The first Meneely bell foundry was established in 1826 in West Troy (now Watervliet), New York,by Andrew Meneely, a former apprentice in the foundry of Benjamin Hanks. Two of Andrew’s sons continued to operate the foundry after his death, and it remained a family operation until its closure.
The second Meneely bell foundry was established in 1870 by a third son, Clinton H. Meneely, across the river in Troy, New York. Initially he was in partnership with George H. Kimberly, under the name Meneely & Kimberly; this second foundry was reorganized in 1879 as the Clinton H. Meneely Bell Company, then later as the Meneely Bell Company.
Like its related competitor, it remained a family operation until its closure. Business cards for both of the competing Meneely bell foundries appearing in the Troy Daily Times May 20, 1891 The two foundries competed vigorously (and sometimes bitterly) with each other.
Together, they produced about 65,000 bells before they both closed in 1952.
1891-05-20 dueling Meneely ads. Our bell was made by Meleely & Co., West Troy. Next time you are at the Farmer’s Market, check out the markings on the bell and hanger.
The bell placed awkwardly on a concrete slab with the inappropriate benches around it. Not a pleasant site, since trash blows into the area and the walk is never power washed.
Kids love to look into the bell to discover there is no clapper.
The Meneely name is on the iron saddle holding the bell at an awkward position.
Stains have not been removed from the bronze.
RIHS Calendar…Coming Events this fall
FREE Roosevelt Island Historical Society Lecture Series in conjunction with the New York Public Library. Attend in person at the NYPL Branch, 504 Main St., or on Zoom. Registration links will be posted.
Tuesday, September 20, 6:30–7:30
Pack Horse Librarians Before there were bookmobiles, there were Appalachian women who delivered books, Bibles and magazines on horseback during the Depression. Jeffrey S. Urbin, Education Specialist and Director of the Pare Lorentz Film Center at the Roosevelt Presidential Library and Museum in Hyde Park, talks about this little known activity of the Works Progress Administration (WPA).
Tuesday, October 18, 6:30–7:30
A Queer History of the Women’s House of Detention Hugh Ryan, historian and author of The Women’s House of Detention: A Queer History of a Forgotten Prison, sheds light on this Greenwich Village Landmark that, from 1929 to 1974, incarcerated many women simply for the crimes of being poor and insufficiently feminine.
Tuesday, November 15, 6:30–7:30
Benedict Arnold: Hero Betrayed Before he was a turncoat, he was an American hero. James K. Martin, Professor Emeritus at the University of Houston and author of Benedict Arnold, Revolutionary Hero: An American Warrior Reconsidered, reveals the strategic genius of Arnold, his essential contributions to the Revolutionary War, and his mistreatment at the hands of his superiors.
Tuesday, Dec. 13, 6:30–7:30
Back Number Budd Victorians did not consider old periodicals valuable and did not save them, which severely limited the resources of researchers—unless they knew Robert M. “Back Number” Budd. Prize-winning author Ellen G. Garvey, PhD, tells about this African-American dealer who stockpiled millions of newspapers that he collected from hotels, clubs and libraries.
SARATOGA RACE TRACK ENTRANCE ED LITCHER, TRACY ROBILOTTO AND LAURA HUSSEY GOT IT RIGHT.
MONDAY PHOTO OF THE DAY
(A LITTLE LATE) THE ROMAN BATHS, BATH ENGLAND ED LITCHER, LAURA HUSSEY 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:
WIKIMEDIA JUDITH BERDY
RIHS (C) FUNDING PROVIDED BY ROOSEVELT ISLAND OPERATING CORPORATION PUBLIC PURPOSE GRANTS CITY COUNCIL REPRESENTATIVE BEN KALLOS DISCRETIONARY FUNDING THRU DYCD
In the more than two hundred years of its existence, the historic village of Ballston Spa in Saratoga County, NY, has possessed one building which achieved national, perhaps even world-wide, renown.
I refer, of course, to the Sans Souci Hotel, which graced the east end of Front Street near Milton Avenue for some 84 years in the 19th century. To more precisely orient the modern reader, while you are enjoying your favorite beverage in a well-known Ballston tea shop, which is exactly opposite the north end of Low Steet, you are sharing the space previously occupied by the main lobby of the Sans Souci Hotel and metaphorically rubbing shoulders with the likes of Joseph Bonaparte, ex-king of Spain and brother of Napoleon.
It is Nicholas Low, owner of the tract which became Ballston Spa, and a man who knew how to think big, to whom must be given the credit for guiding and financing the project which breathed life into the idea of this village becoming a successful resort.
He was advised that the best way to profit from his holdings was to attract visitors to the mineral spring located at the southwestern edge of his property. So Low first built in 1792 a lodging house and a bathing facility hard by the original spring and just opposite the hotel which later became Brookside.
Very soon, more springs were discovered to the east of the original one, in the valley of Gordon’s Creek, an area known as the Flats. From the initial steps to capitalize upon these new resources came the idea of a larger hotel located on high ground slightly to the east of the Flats.
It is said that the name comes from the 18th century royal palace called the Sanssouci (meaning carefree) in Potsdam, Germany. Another common assertion is that the design of the building was copied from either the Potsdam palace or from the more famous Palace of Versailles in France. There is no evidence that either of the latter is true.
However, the source of the building plans seems indeed to have been Europe, acquired somehow by that famous reprobate Gouverneur Morris and possibly conveyed to America by his servant, a native of Germany, Martin Bromeling, who was to play an important part in the project.
Construction of the hotel started in the summer of 1803 with Martin Bromeling being paid $1500 to be the superintendent of the work for the period through 1805. Andre Berger, an immigrant from France, and said to be a protégé of Low, also was involved. Berger would be the hotel manager on startup. Captain James Hawkins, who owned a local carpentry firm, did the bulk of the construction of the all-wood building.
The hotel had a frontage of 160 feet facing east-west along Front Street and was three stories high (see the photograph of the hotel ca 1875). At each end were wings about 150 feet in length also three stories in height facing to the north. This gave the hotel almost an E shaped footprint Initially the hotel’s capacity was said to be 150 guests, but later on 300 was the advertised figure.
Ancillary buildings included a workshop, and woodshed and, across Washington Street, a bathhouse, ice house, wash house, coach house and stables. Other work involved canalizing Gordon’s Creek to reduce flooding of the Flats, and constructing a conduit known as the “Waterworks” to supply water from a reservoir further uphill around the area of the current High Street.
One of the lasting features of the hotel was added early in the construction when 30 young trees were planted. Furniture installed included 526 chairs, 139 beds and 50 tables.
The hotel was ready to receive its first guests in the summer of 1805. Andre Berger was the manager, or boniface, the 19th Century term for his job. Original documents disclose that the total project cost to Low was $43,000 and that James Hawkins’ company took home $26,300 (61%) of this sum. (I asked an expert if Hawkins did good work for that impressive pay. It turns out that at best it might be judged inconsistent. – something to do with the doors not opening correctly at the “Grand Opening”!)
The hotel did very well during Nicholas Low’s ownership, which lasted through the 1822 season. Andre Berger seems to have been manager for that entire period. But in early 1823 Low sold the hotel and all his Ballston Spa property to Harvey Loomis. Loomis held on to the hotel for about ten years but thereafter the ownership changed frequently, because of competition from the rising power of Saratoga Springs and the failure of the original springs at Ballston Spa.
In 1849, for the first time the Sans Souci was out of the hotel business and converted into a Law School. This sabbatical lasted till 1853. In 1863 the hotel was converted into a “ladies seminary” but returned to hotel work in 1868, partly because new mineral springs were being developed again in Ballston Spa by the deep drilling technique. Indeed, the Sans Souci Hotel in 1870 activated its own “spouter” by drilling in the rear of the building, directly behind the main lobby.
Nevertheless, time was running out for the venerable institution. The hotel closed permanently in 1883 and was sold to Eugene F. O’Connor in 1887. He was intent on developing the hotel lot for an opera house and retail space, so he had the hotel demolished in the winter of 1887-88.
But in an important sense it lives on still in the form of its spring. The spring operated as a retail outlet of potable mineral water until 1967. Later, the water was piped to a free drinking fountain at Wiswall Park until a few years ago. The spring water is still available at the Medbury Spa on Front Street.
A LITTLE MORE HISTORY
History
The village was first settled in 1771. In 1787 Benajah Douglas, grandfather of 1860 presidential candidate Stephen A. Douglas, built the first tavern and hotel at Ballston Spa. It was located near the natural spring.[6]
In 1803, Ballston Spa’s Sans Souci Hotel, at the time the largest hotel in the United States, was built by Nicholas Low. Presidents, senators and governors stayed there, as well as many wealthy private citizens.[7] Ballston Spa was incorporated as a village in 1807.
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 NEW YORK ALMANACK
Photo of Sans Souci Hotel, Ballston Spa, ca 1875.
Sam McKenzie received a PhD in Chemistry from St. Andrews in Scotland, then worked in the petrochemical industry for 33 years. Since 2015 he has been a volunteer researcher for Brookside Museum. His research interests have included the history of the Mineral Springs of Ballston Spa, and is now studying the lives of the brothers Isaac and Nicholas Low.
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