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Are Millions in Gold from a British Shipwreck StIll in the East River?
Friday, November 22, 2024
ISSUE #1349
UNTAPPED NEW YORK
The murky waters of Hell Gate, between Queens and Manhattan, hide a mystery that has puzzled historians and treasure hunters for hundreds of years. A British ship, the HMS Hussar, went down in Hell Gate’s perilous waters after colliding with Pot Rock in 1780. The ship was rumored to be carrying a significant British military payroll. Despite these stories, no treasure has ever been recovered. Could remnants of the ship and its gold still lie beneath the waves? Whether or not there is a fortune waiting to be found, there are remnants of the Hussar shipwreck you can see without a diving permit. During the American Revolution, British Admiral George Bridges Rodney ordered the Royal Navy HMS Hussar to set sail for Gardiner’s Bay at the eastern end of Long Island. On November 24, 1780, Captain Charles Pole navigated the HMS Hussar up the East River. He was safeguarding its cargo from French and American troops advancing on New York Harbor.
Captain Pole decided to take a shorter, faster route through the waters of Hell Gate. Unfortunately for him, the strong winds and aggressive currents caused complications for the vessel. Captain Pole pressed on despite the treacherous conditions of Hell Gate, only to meet disaster as the Hussar swept against Pot Rock. The ship and all of its contents sank, but the captain and crew survived the wreck and made it to the mainland on boats.
Plan showing the Inboard profile plan as proposed for Hussar (1763). Image via Wikimedia Commons from Royal Museums Greenwich.
There are conflicting reports on where exactly the ship sank and no official location of the wreck has been determined. The New York Times reported that it sank in the East River in an article from 1985 when a salvage expert believed he had located the wreck off the Bronx shore. A 2002 New York Times piece puts the shipwreck between Port Morris in the Bronx and North Brother Island. There is a belief that the ship, or what is left of it after various 19th-century dynamite blasts in Hell Gate for navigation purposes, may be under landfill in the Bronx. Soon after the disaster, rumors circulated that the Hussar was carrying a significant treasure. While the British denied the presence of valuable cargo, salvage attempts over the years cast doubt on this claim. There was the belief that the British denied the presence of gold on the ship to deter treasure hunters from searching for the cargo. Crew on the ship said they had dropped the precious cargo off before the incident, but the British launched three recovery missions to salvage whatever was on board. These missions stoked suspicion and made treasure hunters even more intrigued. The exact value of the Hussar haul has varied and been distorted by the media. It has been estimated that the frigate was carrying 960,000 British pounds in gold when it sank. According to the Bank of England inflation calculator, that’s almost 143 million pounds (in 2024 currency). According to The New York Times, an international coin dealer estimated the bullion could be worth $576 million. Others believe only two to four million in gold were on board. There were also rumors that the ship held 60 American prisoners; their skeletons sunk in the ocean, still chained.
Early expeditions to explore the Hussar shipwreck involved diving bells—a technology still used today—in which divers would descend into the water inside a small metal chamber. A salvage company partially funded by Thomas Jefferson in 1811 dredged up iron nails and copper, but no gold. Regardless of early failed attempts, the Hussar was the hottest topic of the press in the 1800s. In Baltimore, a man named Samuel Davis began publishing ads in 1819 that aimed to seek funds for finding the vessel.
In 1843, diver George W. Taylor was the first to discover the wreck in a diving suit. However, his illness (and death) stopped his investigation. His protégé, Charles Pratt, took up the mission. Pratt was the most successful of the early Hussar explorers. Over 13 years, Pratt retrieved loads of artifacts from the Hussar shipwreck. His 70-pound submarine diving armor armor, with a hand-cranked pump for air, allowed him to navigate the wreck.
He found cannons, wine bottles, swords, and even human bones still in shackles that were possibly the American prisoners. He also found gold coins that belonged to the crew. The amount of these gold coins was far less than what was believed to be on the ship. Pratt was unable to get to the bottom of the ship where he believed the treasure was stored. His last dive to the Hussar was in 1866.His diving helmet is on display at the Worcester Historical Museum in Massachusetts.
Two cannons found at the wreck were donated to Central Park in 1865. They were originally displayed at a museum inside the former convent of Mount St. Vincent, then installed at Fort Clinton with granite bases. Vandalism caused them to be put in storage in the 1970s. They remerged in 2014 after the overlook at Fort Clinton was rebuilt. You can see them today on the east side of the park near 107th Street. In 2013, restoration workers found that one of the canons was still loaded!
Explosive blasts in Hell Gate performed by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers began in the 1850s. Their purpose was to clear some of the rocky obstructions, including Pot Rock. The Civil War put a halt to this work but it continued in the 1870s. In 1885, the blasts were reported to have been felt 50 miles away. The blasting of Flood Rock was reported as, “The greatest quantity of explosives ever attempted in a single operation.” These explosions likely destroyed and scattered whatever remnants were left of the wreck.
Flash forward to the 1930s, submarine pioneer Simon Lake spent years searching for the Hussar wreck but to no avail. He ventured out in a “baby submarine” that he crafted and a year later informed journalists that he had found the Hussar. It was never proven that he had. In 1985, as reported in The New York Times, salvage expert Barry L. Clifford also claimed to have found the Hussar after a two-year, $1 million search. Clifford claimed he had “found it on the first pass” using the same scanning equipment used to find the Titanic earlier that month. His find also wasn’t the Hussar.
Bronx native Joey “Treasures” Governali also spent a significant amount of time and resources searching for the wreck, which he claims to have located on a misfiled map in the archives of the New York Public Library. When Hurricane Sandy hit in 2013, New Yorker Steven Smith believed he found remnants of the Hussar’s wooden planks washed ashore, “hidden under layers of concrete blocks and building scrap,” according to The New York Times. The ship even makes an appearance in Kim Stanley Robinson’s 2017 novel New York 2140, as the center of the book’s subplot.
Today, the vessel’s possible fortune still stirs the imagination. According to Robert Apuzzo, author of The Endless Search For The HMS Hussar: New York’s Legendary Treasure Shipwreck, “prior to the sinking of the Titanic, there were more newspaper articles pertaining to the HMS Hussar than any other shipwreck in our maritime history. The mystery concerning the HMS Hussar, has baffled, scholars, historians, and treasure hunters for over 244 years, with no signs of going away.” While previous attempts at finding the gold and historical records suggest there was no treasure onboard, the legend of the Hussar persists, calling treasure hunters to the shores of Hell Gate like a siren’s song, fueling hopes that future storms might reveal its hidden riches.
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THE KIOSK IS READY
FOR THE HOLIDAYS
Thursday, November 21, 2024
ISSUE #1348
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JUDITH BERDY
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Twenty-five miles north of New York City on the eastern shore of the Hudson River lies Tarrytown in an area called Tappan Zee (Tappan for the local people of the Lenape; zee is Dutch for sea) in Westchester County, NY. It was home to the Weckquaesgeek who cultivated the land, fished and hunted there.
The European earliest residence in what would become Tarrytown was built in about 1645. Its first white pioneers were farmers, fur trappers and fishermen from the Low Countries. The local soil was light and loamy and suitable for growing wheat. It has been argued that the village’s name was derived from the Dutch word for wheat (tarwe); others maintain that it was named for John Tarry, an early settler from Long Island.
Lords of the Manor
Tarrytown’s history started with the activities of the Dutch merchant and slave trader Frederick Philipse (born Frederik Flypsen in 1626 in Bolsward, Friesland) who had arrived in New Netherland in about 1653 and began buying land. He acquired 90,000 acres and built his estate and gristmill in the nearby town of Sleepy Hollow from where, using an enslaved African labor force, he distributed grain along the Hudson. Philipse was also responsible for erecting the Old Dutch Church of Sleepy Hollow in 1685.
When the English took over the colony, Frederick pledged allegiance to the Crown for which he was granted a Royal Charter in 1693, creating the Manor of Philipsburg. Upon his death in 1702 he was one of the area’s largest landowners. His son Adolph succeeded him as Lord of the Manor, further expanding the family holdings.
By the late nineteenth century Tarrytown had become a favorite residence of many affluent New Yorkers. It was home to a number of industrial giants, representing a very American story of commercial success and cultural investment which resulted in the foundation of some great museums, libraries and institutions of learning.
John D. Rockefeller settled in the town in 1893. His grand mansion Kykuit, located on the highest point in Pocantico Hills and surrounded by fine gardens overlooking the Hudson River, was completed in 1906. The name (meaning “look-out”) is a reminder of Tarrytown’s Dutch heritage. By the mid-1910s the estate symbolized the excesses of unrestrained capitalism.
In 1914, Kykuit and other local residences became the site of numerous anarchist demonstrations and the intended target of several dynamite bombing attacks.
Rockefeller had been preceded by another industrialist. Born in October 1784 in the village of Hose, Leicestershire, Robert Hoe sailed from Liverpool to the city of New York in 1803 after finishing his apprenticeship as a carpenter and joiner.
Having married Rachel Smith in Salem in January 1805, he joined his brothers-in-law Peter and Matthew Smith to establish a workshop Smith, Hoe & Co. at Cedar Street, Manhattan, manufacturing a hand printing press. In 1811, they moved the firm to Pearl Street.
After the death of his partners Robert took charge of the business in 1823, changed the name to Robert Hoe & Co.: Machinists, and moved to the firm to Gold Street. Aware of the growing demand for printing tools, he manufactured what is believed to have been the first cylinder press in America in 1827. Robert introduced the Hoe press and was (probably) the first American machinist to employ steam as a motor for his machinery.
Washington Irving’s Sunnyside
Failing health compelled Robert’s retirement from business in 1832 and he died the following year in Tarrytown. Two years later Washington Irving settled in the area, acquiring a property that was part of the Manor of Philipsburg.
Known as Wolfert’s Roost, the history of the farmhouse dated back to 1650 and had been built by Dutch-born Wolfert Acker, a one-time privy council to Peter Stuyvesant and the second deacon of Sleepy Hollow’s Old Dutch Church (having succeeded his brother Jan Acker in that role). Wolfert acted later as an official of the English colonial government. He featured in Washington Irving’s short story collection Wolfert’s Roost and Miscellanies (1855).
Having renamed the estate Sunnyside, Irving wrote what he considered his “crowning effort” there, the five-volume biography of George Washington, completing the work only weeks before his death in November 1859.
In the meantime, Robert II and Richard March continued the Hoe business. Robert was both an effective manager of the firm and a man of culture who acted as patron of numerous young artists (he died in Tarrytown in September 1884 and is buried in Sleepy Hollow).
Richard by contrast had inherited his father’s inventive mechanical skills. He was a pioneer in developing improved presses that used the novelty of continuous paper rolls. His rotary press (patented in 1847) became known in the trade as Hoe’s “lightning press” as it enabled the printing of newspapers in volume and at speed.
The press gained a world-wide reputation. A later improved version named Hoe’s web perfecting press was first used by the New York Tribune, producing 18,000 sheets an hour, printed on both sides. By 1855 the company employed four hundred people.
In 1873, the Hoe brothers moved the firm to Grant Street, in between Sherrif and Columbia Streets. The business flourished. The era of press barons had arrived.
The mechanical printing press was one of the most significant inventions of the Industrial Revolution. It allowed copies of texts and images to be printed rapidly and cheaply. Newspapers, pamphlets and books were mass produced and distributed, spreading news and propaganda, socio-political campaigns as well as novels and poetry.
Whilst the mass availability of printed materials was celebrated as an step forwards, bibliophiles looked back to the past, lamenting the decline in quality caused by industrial book production.
In 1891, William Morris founded the Kelmscott Press. With carefully crafted publications, he set out to re-awaken the lost ideals of book design and inspire higher standards of production at a time that the printed page was at its poorest. In seven years of operation, Morris’s hand-operated press published fifty-three books in 18,000 copies. William Morris initiated an era of private press experiments which intensified the appreciation for fine printing and revived the skills of design and bookbinding in Europe and America.
Although Robert III (born in March 1839, the eldest son of Robert II) followed in the family tradition of printing press manufacturers, his ambition as a man “infected by book collecting” was to preserve the great history of traditional printing.
As early as 1873, he had reserved nine rooms of his house at 11 East 36th Street (destroyed in 1911) for his collection. Hoe would become one of America’s foremost bibliophiles, assembling a rich variety of illuminated manuscripts, samples of early printing, illustrated books and fine bindings. Catalogues of his library were unique from both a typographical and bibliographical standpoint.
The Grolier Club
The nineteenth century was the age in which reason freed itself from religious restraints by establishing academic institutions. Yet, until late in the century, knowledge formation was not driven by universities, but by an array of learned societies that flourished in both cities and province.
Knowledge was diffused in a context of “club” sociability, creating the charismatic persona of the scholar. These societies were characterized by a cross-disciplinary approach to research rather than by an attempt to divide the domain of knowledge into a set of specialist disciplines.
The trend was set by the founding of London’s Royal Society in 1660 and the Academy of Sciences in Paris six years later. By the turn of the century, learned societies covering a range of subject areas had proliferated.
The American Philosophical Society (APS), founded in 1743 in Philadelphia by Benjamin Franklin, was the nation’s first learned group aimed at promoting knowledge in the humanities and natural sciences through research, publishing and the provision of library resources.
On the evening of January 23, 1884, Robert III invited to his home eight fellow bibliophiles to discuss the formation of a club devoted to the creation of books. Although the nine men differed in age and occupation, they shared the opinion that the arts of printing and typography in late nineteenth-century America were in need of reform. Amongst those present were Manhattan-born William Loring Andrews, book collector and first librarian of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
That same evening a resolution was adopted specifying the purpose of the organization, a committee appointed to select a name and another to draft a constitution. Within two weeks the club was named after the French bibliophile Jean Grolier and a constitution drawn up. The Grolier Club of the City of New York was founded “to foster the study, collecting and appreciation of books and works on paper, their art, history, production and commerce.” Its mission was (and remains) to promote the book and graphic arts through exhibitions and educational programs.
In March 1884, the Club opened its doors at 64 Madison Avenue. Six years later, Robert III provided the land for Grolier’s first building at 29 East 32nd Street. He acted as the Club’s first President from 1884 to 1888 (and was succeeded by William Loring Andrews).
In fall 1895 a surprise addition was unveiled to the Club’s headquarters. Its unattractive grill room had been transformed into a Dutch-style tapperij (taproom) with an impressive oven, Delft tiles, blue-and-cream dishware, clay pipe racks and smoke-seasoned rafters. Beer was flowing from a cask, whilst small knobbed glass windows reflected the gleam of pewter and brass. Sand was strewn on the floor and some members suggested wearing wooden clogs in the room.
Physician and Club member Frederick A Castle came up with the design of the taproom (on the assumption that bibliophiles love books and beer in equal measure) which was realized by German-American William Shannon Miller. It was as if Washington Irving had made a return visit. Widely reported in the press, the opening of the room rekindled interest in the New Amsterdam era.
During the Club’s move in 1917 to its current home at 47 East 60th Street (designed by Grolier member Bertram Grosvenor Goodhue), the tapperij was dismantled and moved along to the fourth floor of the new base.
Robert III was married to Liverpool-born Olivia James and he spent a good deal of time in Europe to attend some of the major book sales in London, Paris and elsewhere (he actually died in London in September 1909 at his residence at 38 Brunswick Square; by 1911 that property was occupied by members of the Bloomsbury Group).
On April 24, 1911, Anderson Auction Company began The First Sale of the Robert Hoe Library at their (new) premises on Madison Avenue and 40th Street. Elaborate arrangements had been made leading up to the auction. Annotated catalogues were produced by the outstanding bibliographer Arthur Swann which carried a foreword by Beverly Chew, himself a notable bibliophile, who called the collection the “finest the country has ever produced.”
Never before had an American book sale attracted similar public interest. Record-breaking prices paid by intriguing local and foreign bidders were reported as news events in the daily press. Among the treasures were a Gutenberg Bible on vellum (sold for $50,000, then the highest price ever paid for a book), a Shakespeare First Folio, the Book of St Albans (all bought on behalf of the railway magnet Henry Edwards Huntington), a Gutenberg Bible on paper (bought by the London dealer Bernard Quaritch; now at Harvard) and a Morte d’Arthur (acquired by J.P. Morgan).
The sale of some 15,000 lots realized almost $2 million, an auction result that at the time was unprecedented. Some outstanding items made their way back to Europe, but most of the collection remained in America and found its way to various illustrious institutions.
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Illustrations, from above: “The Mill-Dam at Sleepy Hollow” by Currier & Ives, ca. 1857; A map of Philipsburg Manor with current borders overlaid on the property; Christian Schussele’s “Washington Irving and his Literary Friends at Sunnyside,” 1864 (National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian); Hoe & Co.’s powerful presence in Grant Street, 1884 (NYPL); François Flameng’s “Jean Grolier in the House of Aldus Manutius,” 1889 (Grolier Club); The Dutch ‘tapperij’ at the Grolier Club (photo by Nicole Neenan); and Vol. 1 of Robert Hoe’s book sale catalogue, 1911.
JUDITH BERDY
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Roughly seven miles long and running from Greenwich Village to Harlem, Fifth Avenue is arguably New York’s best-known avenue.
It begins at the triumphant arch at Washington Square Park, passes through elegant residential and museum districts as well as pricey retail blocks (and some traffic-choked ones as well), then dead ends at 143rd Street and the Harlem River.
But before Fifth Avenue became synonymous with luxury, style, and architectural beauty, it was just another sparsely populated country road flanked by unspoiled countryside miles from the main city. (Below, the Spingler farmhouse at Fifth Avenue and 14th Street)
This month marks the official opening of the Avenue in 1824, when its first seven blocks went from being a line on the 1811 city street grid originally called Middle Road to an actual (though unpaved) street.
Fifth Avenue’s birthday serves as an appropriate time to look back on its modest beginning. The avenue’s development coincided with Washington Square’s transformation from a potters field to a parade ground (fourth image). The mansions, monuments, and elite shops Fifth Avenue became known for were decades away.
So what was Fifth Avenue like just before the street was laid out? A passage from a 1918 book about Fifth Avenue by newspaper writer and editor Arthur Bartlett Maurice creates a picture of sandy hills, trout-filled waters, and farmland.
“Beginning at the Potter’s Field, the line of what is now Fifth Avenue left the ‘Road Over the Sandhills” or ‘Zantberg’ of the Dutch, later known as Art Street, long since gone from the map, and crossed the Robert Richard Randall Estate.”
For reference, Art Street was the former name of Waverly Place. Robert Richard Randall was a sea captain who owned a 24-acre tract of land north and east of today’s Washington Square. He died in 1801, and his will stipulated that a “sailors’ snug harbor” for aged seamen be built on his property—but ultimately Snug Harbor ended up on Staten Island.
“Thence it ran through the Henry Brevoort Farm, which originally extended from Ninth to 18th Streets. . . .Crossing the tributary stream at 12th Street, it passed a small pond between 13th and 14th Streets, and then ran on, over low and level ground, to 21st Street, then called ‘Love’s Lane.’ To the right was the swamp and marsh that afterwards became Union Square.”
(The map image above notes the Brevoort Farm at about 10th Street, as well as Minetta brook crossing the avenue.)
“Following the trail further, the hardy voyager wandered over ‘hills and valleys, dales and fields’ through a countryside where trout, mink, otter, and muskrat swam in the brooks and pools; brant, black duck, and yellow-leg splashed in the marshes and fox, rabbit, woodcock, and partridge found covert in the thicket.”
Admittedly, Maurice makes the area sound like a paradise of animal life. Yet other early accounts paint an image of colonial Manhattan as rich with all kinds of creatures normally found in woodland regions.
“Here and there was a farm, but the city, then numbered 100,000 persons, was far away,” continues Maurice. “Then, in 1824, the first stretch of the Avenue, from Waverly Place to 13th Street, was opened, and the northward march of the great thoroughfare began.”
That northward march helped turn Washington Square into a park and brought Fifth Avenue its earliest residences. One of the first was a stately Greek Revival home (above image) at the corner of Ninth Street, the site of balls and dinners with well-heeled guests.
This lovely home was occupied by Henry Brevoort, the son of the the farmer whose 84-acre farm was bisected by the new avenue.
“The Brevoorts and other farm owners began building houses that would serve as anchors for other houses to be built and sold on the vacant lots laid out along the avenue and radiating down the adjoining side streets,” wrote Charles V. Bagli in recent New York Times piece on Fifth Avenue’s anniversary.
In the 1840s and 1850s, elite New Yorkers relocated to Fifth Avenue from the posh enclaves of Bond Street and Stuyvesant Square, moving into new and fashionable brownstones. One still extant is the brownstone at Number 47 owned by the Salmagundi Club (above photo), built in 1853 and home to this arts club since 1917.
As more stretches of Fifth Avenue were laid out, more houses were built. Churches came too, including the Church of the Ascension on Tenth Street and Marble Collegiate Church on 29th Street. Farmhouses held out; the above sketch shows one in the 1830s at 23rd Street.
Empty parcels remained as well. One New Yorker who recalled them was Edith Wharton.
Born in Manhattan in 1862, Wharton charted the manners and morals of Gilded Age New Yorkers in fiction and then published her autobiography, A Backward Glance, in 1934.
In her autobiography, she remembers walking up Fifth Avenue as a young child with her father in the 1860s. Possibly she was departing from her family’s home, then on 23rd Street just off Fifth Avenue. Her walk ended at the distributing reservoir (above, in 1845) at Fifth Avenue and 42nd Street, where the New York Public Library stands today.
“The little girl and her father walked up Fifth Avenue: the old Fifth Avenue with its double line of low brown-stone houses, of a desperate uniformity of style, broken only—and surprisingly—by two equally unexpected features: the fenced-in plot of ground where the old Miss Kennedy’s cows were pastured, and the truncated Egyptian pyramid which so strangely served as a reservoir for New York’s water supply.”
“The Fifth Avenue of that day was a placid and uneventful thoroughfare, along which genteel landaus, broughams, and victorias, and more countrified vehicles of the “carry-all” and “surrey” type moved up and down at decent intervals and a decorous pace.”
Once the Gilded Age began, however, Fifth Avenue’s days as a small town, slow-poke road came to an end. From now on, it would be Gotham’s millionaire mile. (Above photo, Fifth Avenue looking north from 21st or 22nd Street in 1855)
“The directory of 1851 includes a large number of vacant lots between Washington and Madison Squares,” noted Henry Collins Brown, president of the Fifth Avenue Association in 1924 and author of a book honoring the avenue’s centennial, Fifth Avenue Then and Now.
“But after the Civil War, progress was immediate and on a scale of elaborate grandeur never before witnessed in this city, or in the country at large.”
By the early 1900s, you know the rest of the story. This avenue once surrounded by woods, streams, and the occasional farmhouse cemented its place as an iconic New York City address.
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By 1906, New York City had six free municipal-run public bathhouses operating throughout Manhattan. The seventh, at 232 West 60th Street—in a rough tenement enclave between 10th and 11th Avenues—formally opened its doors in June of that year.
A ceremony led by William H. Walker, superintendent of buildings, included a number of speeches. But “before the last orator had said his last word, a young army of West Side youth rushed for the plunges,” according to aNew York Times article that covered opening day.
When the word was finally given to admit the 50 or so waiting boys, “there was a great rush, and in less than a minute the boys had undressed, donned their trunks, and were splashing about in the tank,” wrote the New-York Tribune.
Of course the kids wanted to get inside on that June afternoon. Behind the Beaux Arts-style limestone and brick exterior—featuring two terra cotta sea creatures with their tails entwined—was an upstairs bathhouse offering 80 showers (aka, “rain baths”) as well as something new and special: a ground-floor 35 by 60-foot “plunge,” or swimming pool.
Now, at the dawn of the Progressive Era, people residing on either side of West 60th Street—the mostly Irish Hell’s Kitchen to the south, and the now-defunct African-American San Juan Hill neighborhood to the north—had a place not just to cool down in hot weather, but to bathe all year round.
Even though the Tenement Act of 1901 mandated that all tenement apartment units have bathing facilities, many people occupying older tenements still lived without a bathtub. In the early 1900s around West 60th Street, “a majority of homes lacked indoor plumbing,” states NYC Parks.
The 60th Street public bath was one of 20 public bathhouses across four boroughs constructed in the early 20th century. This bathhouse-building on the part of Progressive reformers capped a series of initiatives dating back to the late 19th century that called for improved hygiene and sanitation: on city streets, in public buildings, and of people themselves.
“Government acceptance of its duty to provide for the cleanliness of citizens was what the reformers had been hoping for; they believed, as Jacob Riis wrote in his 1902 book Battle With the Slum, that soap and water were ‘moral agents of the first value in the slum,’” wrote Christopher Gray in a 2014 New York Times column.
The showers were not unpopular, but the pool may have been the main attraction. It could hold 250 people, featured a supply of continuously filtered water, and offered women-only swimming three days a week, per the New-York Tribune. (The sexes were rigidly separated, with distinct doors for males and females even at the main entrance, as the second image shows.)
While the place was packed in the summer, wintertime use wasn’t very high. “Robert E. Todd of the Bureau of Municipal Research found in 1907 that bathhouse patronage in the winter months fell to as little as 4 percent of capacity,” wrote Gray.
The showers were not unpopular, but the pool may have been the main attraction. It could hold 250 people, featured a supply of continuously filtered water, and offered women-only swimming three days a week, per the New-York Tribune. (The sexes were rigidly separated, with distinct doors for males and females even at the main entrance, as the second image shows.)
While the place was packed in the summer, wintertime use wasn’t very high. “Robert E. Todd of the Bureau of Municipal Research found in 1907 that bathhouse patronage in the winter months fell to as little as 4 percent of capacity,” wrote Gray.
By the 1940s, its days as a public bathhouse were over. At some point one of the entrances was renovated into a window; the tenement next door fell to the wrecking ball.
In 2016, the bathhouse reopened as part of the Gertrude Ederle Recreation Center, which features not just swimming facilities but state-of-the-art fitness rooms and a new building addition.
Who was Gertrude Ederle? This West Side daughter of a butcher became the first woman to swim the English Channel in 1926. Ederle was born in 1906—the same year the bathhouse that now bears her name opened its doors to kids like her.
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Elected in 1880 as the City’s 54th holder of the office, he had made a splendid career as an entrepreneur, but his candidacy was criticized in the editorials of the New York Times and lambasted by opponents who claimed that the new Mayor would hand the metropolis to the “Holy Father of Rome.” But attitudes towards “Popery” were changing as the number of Catholic Americans grew and their influence increased.
During his second term (as 56th Mayor), Grace gratefully accepted the Statue of Liberty as a gift from French citizens to the people of the United States. Towering over the entrance to New York Harbor, the monument would become the world’s iconic tribute to freedom and a beacon of hope for immigrants.
The history of its erection on Bedloe Island (renamed Liberty Island in 1956) highlights the diverse backgrounds and intentions of the project’s advocates.
Meeting of Minds
In June 1865 Édouard de Laboulaye invited a number of friends to dinner. A Professor of Comparative Law at the Collège de France in Paris, he was the author of a three-volume Histoire des États Unis (History of the United States) and translator of Benjamin Franklin’s autobiography. He supported the United States and acted as President of the French Association for the Abolition of Slavery during the American Civil War. He proved that Catholicism was not antithetical to liberal thinking.
The reason for this get together was to rejoice at the crushing of the rebellion against the United States. In his word of welcome, the host talked about an enduring friendship between the two nations and proposed that the French people should present the U.S. with a monument to celebrate its ideals of liberty and democracy.
Having just returned from a trip to Egypt, he was fascinated by the monumental structures of Antiquity and had started designing a lighthouse named “Egypt Carrying the Light to Asia” to be located at the southern entrance to the Suez Canal, then under construction (it opened under French control in November 1869).
In the end, his grand statue of a woman holding a torch was rejected as too costly. Bartholdi embraced Laboulaye’s proposal instead. They called their projected statue “Liberty Enlightening the World.”
The 1870 Franco-Prussian War intervened. Serving as a squadron leader of the French National Guard, Bartholdi took part in the unsuccessful battle for control of Alsace. Outraged by the German takeover, he became an ardent advocate of political self-determination.
The deposition of Emperor Napoleon III was a positive outcome of the conflict. Elected to the National Assembly, Laboulaye participated in founding the Third Republic. The new political conditions were more conducive to generate support for his statue project.
Bartholdi envisaged creating a giant statue that would represent the democratic spirit of America. Armed with letters of introduction, he crossed the Atlantic in the summer of 1871 to gather support for the plan. During the journey he reworked his original Suez sketches and replaced the large figure of an Egyptian woman with “Libertas,” the Roman Goddess of Freedom.
As Bartholdi’s ship sailed into New York Harbor, he decided that Bedloe Island would be the perfect location for the monument. During that visit, President Ulysses S. Grant – the commanding General who had led the United States Army to victory against the Confederate States of America – promised him that using the site would be a possibility.
The Year 1876: Immigration Issues
In the decades following the Civil War, the United States emerged as an industrial giant with a railroad system that connected all parts of the country into a national market economy. Millions of people migrated from rural districts to cities that struggled to keep up with the pace of expansion.
Various crises in Europe saw the number of immigrants surge as America maintained open borders to settle its empty lands. By the mid-nineteenth century, streams of Chinese workers attracted by the California Gold Rush, entered the country. The influx of newcomers was seen as a necessity, but there were growing concerns about disunity and disharmony. Immigration became an issue.
Some states enacted statutes to limit the entrance of “unwanted” incomers, but these controls were challenged by stakeholders. The flow of destitute migrants from Europe and China to the United States offered lucrative opportunities for shipping lines. The interference of authorities impacted negatively on their economic prospects.
The case of Henderson v. Mayor of City of New York took place during the Supreme Court’s 1875/6 session. The Scottish Henderson brothers ran the Anchor Line, a merchant shipping company.
When SS Ethiopia arrived from Glasgow at New York Harbor, they challenged the statutes of New York and Louisiana that required ship owners to post a “bond” for landing immigrants that would cover indemnities in case any of them needed state support. The Court agreed with the plaintiffs, arguing that the responsibility for immigration policy rested exclusively with the federal government.
That same year, California’s Supreme Court came to a similar verdict in the case of twenty-two women (including a lady named Chy Lung) who had arrived from China in San Francisco on board SS Japan.
The immigration commissioner identified them as “lewd and debauched.” The ship’s captain refused to pay a (substantial) bond for their admittance, while Chy Lung resisted deportation. The Court decided in her favor, insisting that the federal government was in charge of immigration policy and diplomatic relations. It was not up to California to impose restrictions.
Having assumed command as a result of these verdicts, the federal government commissioned a study to determine the best place for a reception station in New York Harbor. By 1892, officers on Ellis Island began the inspection and processing of immigrants.
There were few options. Workers could either work in the “satanic” cotton mills, join the army or emigrate. Considering their lineage, it is not surprising that the majority sailed towards New England.
Edward Moran was born in 1829 in Bolton-le-Moor, Lancashire, to a struggling family of handloom weavers. Set to work as a child, he found solace in sketching. In 1844, his parents moved the family to Maryland and settled in Philadelphia a year later. The youngster was employed in a textile factory. His supervisor recognized Edward’s artistic talent and encouraged him to pursue his interest.
Around 1845, Moran was apprenticed under Belfast-born James Hamilton who taught him the skills of marine painting. He was also instructed by Paul Weber, a German landscape artist – one of the “Forty-Eighters” – then living in Philadelphia.
In March 1871 Moran showed seventy-five paintings at James S. Earle & Sons gallery at Chestnut Street, Philadelphia, in an exhibition called “Land & Sea.” The show’s catalogue contained over seventy lithographs after the paintings. He donated proceeds from the exhibit to support the victims of the Franco-Prussian War.
The painter moved to Manhattan in 1872 where he lived until his death in 1901. An associate member of the National Academy of Design, he focused on New York Harbor scenes which were widely acclaimed.
Having met Bartholdi in 1876, he learned about the project. The idea inspired him. That same year he created an imagined spectacle of “The Commerce of Nations Paying Homage to Liberty,” which was then displayed at various fundraising events for the statue’s construction.
In the painting, “Lady Liberty” stands as a towering figure with a torch raised to the sky. In her other hand, she holds a tablet with the date of the Declaration of Independence. Surrounding her, a ceremonial scene shows a multitude of wooden boats with onlookers flying flags that represent different countries and communities. Moran’s image was a celebration of inclusiveness.
Franco-American Union
The response to Bartholdi’s first promotional trip to America had been disappointing. Undeterred, Laboulaye founded the Franco-American Union to raise funds. The statue would be constructed in Paris, whilst American participants were requested to finance the pedestal. The fact that French monarchists opposed the initiative was an additional motivation for him to press on with the plan.
Money was collected from all sections of society. A gathering at the Paris Opera on April 25, 1876, featured a newly composed cantata by Charles Gounod titled “La Liberté éclairant le monde.”
Industrialist Pierre-Eugène Secrétan donated 60,000 thousand kilos of copper to the project. The foundry of Gaget, Gauthier & Cie, located at Rue de Chazelles, was given the task of assembling the monument. Work started with the construction of head, arm and torch. Lady Liberty was born in bits.
In May 1876, Bartholdi attended Philadelphia’s Centennial Exhibition. The completed arm and torch arrived too late for them to be recorded in the catalogue, but the exhibits became popular as the torch’s balcony offered a fine view of the fairgrounds.
These parts were then displayed at Manhattan’s Madison Square Park before being transported back to Paris. The head and shoulders were completed in 1878 and put on show at the Universal Exposition in Paris. The world started to take notice.
Viollet-le-Duc was invited to design the statue’s internal structure. The latter died suddenly in 1879 and Gustave Eiffel, then a promising engineer who specialized in metal construction, was employed to finish the job. The statue was assembled between 1881 and 1884. Parisians were astonished to see a colossal figure growing above the roof of buildings that surrounded the workshop.
Laboulaye encouraged his friends at the Union League Club to take responsibility for the pedestal. William Maxwell Evarts, President of the New York City Bar Association, took charge of the American Committee for the Statue (which included nineteen-year old Theodore Roosevelt).
Joseph Pulitzer, a Hungarian Jewish immigrant and publisher of the New York World, used his newspaper to promote the project. Richard Morris Hunt (architect of the Tribune Building at Printing House Square) was commissioned to design the pedestal. Construction started in 1884.
On July 4, 1884, the statue was formally handed over in Paris to Levi P. Morton, the American Minister to France (he was later U.S. Vice President and Governor of New York). Disassembled into 350 pieces, packed in 214 crates (thirty-six just for the rivets and bolts), it was transported by train to Rouen and shipped to New York aboard the Navy frigate Isère.
The French government borne the cost of the crossing, its only financial contribution to the scheme. Laboulaye would not see the final result of his determined efforts. He had died in May 1883.
On October 26, 1886, more than a million people attended the unveiling ceremony led by Grover Cleveland, former New York State Governor and the first Democrat President after the Civil War. In the presence of Edward Moran, Bartholdi revealed Lady Liberty’s face by removing the French flag that covered it.
The moment was greeted by cannon shots and ship sirens. Manhattan’s bells rang in the distance, while suffragists ridiculed the use of a female figure symbolizing freedom when women were denied the right to vote.
Chemistry & Psychology
The copper statue took four months to assemble and twenty years to transform from the original shiny reddish color into its iconic green through the natural chemical process of “patination” which prevented corrosion of the copper beneath.
Despite the statue’s age and exposure to the elements, the underlying structure remains unscathed. The change in color had a psychological effect too.
Laboulaye was a figure with lofty liberal ideals. His concept of a Statue of Liberty was intended as a tribute to freedom and equality (and the abolishment of slavery). From the outset he had his own agenda.
As Napoleon III’s Second Empire was a repressive regime, the proposed gift to the American people was an attempt to infuse the ideals of Republican democracy into the consciousness of fellow French citizens. At the early stage of instigation, the plan was an act of political rebellion.
The son of a Protestant counselor to the prefecture, Bartholdi received a liberal education. Having experienced the loss of Alsace to German troops, his stance took a sharper political edge. Witnessing deep divisions within Europe, his interpretation of the project was as much an alarm call as it was a salute. His message had an undertone of gloom.
Edward Moran on the other hand was an immigrant whose family members had escaped grinding poverty in Lancashire. He proceeded to become a celebrated artist. He joined the Liberty project to honor the country that had freed him from the shackles of deprivation.
To all these participants, the copper color of Lady Liberty was a metaphorical red warning light: if democracy and peaceful co-existence were not established in the “Old Continent,” then America would become an alternative to disillusioned Europeans.
That perception modified over time. As the Statue of Liberty was visible from every ship approaching New York Harbor, it provided a first glimpse of the new “promised” land to countless immigrants. She emerged as the “Mother of Exiles,” giving a green light of hope and expectancy to millions of newcomers.
THE SLEIGH IS BACK ON THE CHAPEL PLAZA!!
CREDITS
NEW YORK ALMANACK
JAAP HARSKAMP
JUDITH BERDY
All image are copyrighted (c) Roosevelt Island Historical Society unless otherwise indicated THIS PUBLICATION FUNDED BY DISCRETIONARY FUNDS FROM CITY COUNCIL MEMBER JULIE MENIN & ROOSEVELT ISLAND OPERATING CORPORATION PUBLIC PURPOSE FUNDS.
One of the stops on our Remnants of the World’s Fairs Tour will soon disappear. Since 1997, a series of mosaic medallions commemorating the 1939-40 and 1964-65 World’s Fairs have decorated the ground at David Dinkins Circle. Now, the tiled works of art—severely damaged over time—will soon be another lost relic of Flushing Meadows Corona Park’s past.
The news wasn’t much of a surprise to Untapped New York’s Chief Experience Officer and creator of our World’s Fairs Tour, Justin Rivers. “I have watched the mosaics decay for years now and as Parks started cementing over certain ones periodically, I knew their days were numbered,” he says.
Photo by Michael Perlman
The Parks Department attributes the significant deterioration of the mosaics to natural weather conditions. Because loose and missing tiles can lead to trips and falls, the works of art have been deemed a safety hazard. Patchwork cement repairs are evident on all the medallions, with graffiti marks, footprints, and tire tracks visible.
The Department says a mosaic art studio determined that the works were “not salvageable” after an analysis, and recommended against recreating them, “as in-ground mosaics cannot sufficiently withstand environmental conditions.” The plan is to remove the mosaics and replace them with pavers similar to those in the surrounding plaza to create a level walking surface.
Photo by Michael Perlman
The Parks Department attributes the significant deterioration of the mosaics to natural weather conditions. Because loose and missing tiles can lead to trips and falls, the works of art have been deemed a safety hazard. Patchwork cement repairs are evident on all the medallions, with graffiti marks, footprints, and tire tracks visible.
The Department says a mosaic art studio determined that the works were “not salvageable” after an analysis, and recommended against recreating them, “as in-ground mosaics cannot sufficiently withstand environmental conditions.” The plan is to remove the mosaics and replace them with pavers similar to those in the surrounding plaza to create a level walking surface.
Photo by Michael Perlman
Installed in 1997, the Passarelle Plaza Mosaics depict various elements of the two World’s Fairs in Queens. It is believed that 10 of the original mosaics have been lost. Two have been covered by cement and five are still visible. Elsie The Cow (1939), a smiling portrait of Robert Moses by Andy Warhol (1964), the New York Hall of Science and Rocket Park (1964), Fountain of Planets (1964), and Venus by Salvador Dali (1939) make up the five that have survived.
“My favorite of the five, honors the work of the legendary Salvador Dalí who designed the ‘Dream of Venus’ pavilion for the 1939 Fair,” says Ray Victor, a Queens native and Untapped tour guide who leads our World’s Fairs tours, “Like many of my guests, I have been amused by the Andy Warhol inspired mosaic of Robert Moses. And a smile was brought to my face by the Elsie the cow mosaic which recalls the children who enjoyed that magnificent fair with their families almost a century ago, children whose innocence would be shattered only two years later as America entered WWII.”
One of the lost mosaics
Known missing medallions include mosaics depicting a work called EAT by Robert Indiana (1964), the Billy Rose Aquacade (1939), the New York State Pavilion (1964), New York City Pavilion (1939) (now the Queens Museum), and two medallions about the Westinghouse time capsules from each fair (1939 & 1964).
The mosaics are the last vestige of many World’s Fair structures that have already been lost. The Aquacade was demolished in 1996, though you can still find a few remnants in the park. Dali’s Dream of Venus theater was taken down in 1940 along with the majority of pavilions built for the 1939 fair. Some elements, like Robert Indiana’s EAT sculpture, which was affixed to the facade of Theaterama during the 1964 fair, found homes outside New York (in this case at the Farnsworth Art Museum in Rockland, Maine).
Photo by Michael Perlman
The Passarelle Plaza Mosaics are not the only mosaics at the former fairgrounds. The floor of the New York State Pavilion’s Tent of Tomorrow was once covered by a terrazzo map of New York State that stretched over 9,000 square feet. Made of 567 terrazzo mosaic panels, the map depicted every Texaco gas station in the state. When the Pavilion’s roof was removed in the 1970s, the Texaco map—like the mosaic medallions—was left exposed to the elements and quickly fell into a state of decay. Only a few tiles remain preserved today.
Michael Perlman—a 5th generation Forest Hills resident, author of Legendary Locals of Forest Hills and Rego Park, Chairman of Rego-Forest Preservation Council, and longtime member of the Four Borough Neighborhood Preservation Alliance—has been campaigning to save the Passarelle Plaza mosaics since 2022. He recently teamed up with Gloria Nash, author of the forthcoming World’s Fair book, Looking Back At The Future, and Kevin Walsh of Forgotten New York, for his latest push to preserve the art.
Earlier this month, Perlman sent a proposal to Flushing Meadows Corona Park Administrator Anthony Sama that included an offer from a salvage expert willing to carefully remove the mosaics at no cost to the Parks Department. “Furthermore, they would be restored off-site before finding a future home, and the Parks would not have to pay for that either,” Perlman explains, “Passion and teamwork are inspiring our generous proposal.”
What would happen to the mosaics after they are removed is still unknown. “We envision the mosaics being on display in a public or private space, either outdoors or indoors, where they can be readily accessible for the public’s continued appreciation and education,” Perlman says, “Our first priority is taking them out of needless harm.”
While Perlman waits for a response to his proposal, the Parks Department has committed to partnering with the Alliance for Flushing Meadows Corona Park to ensure that the Alliance’s Art in the Park Grant will prioritize Dinkins Circle as a location for at least one public art installation each year the grant is funded. The grant supports two local artists by awarding $10,000 to display a yearlong installation.
“New York is home to an army of amazing artists who could truly breathe new life into these wonderful reminders of our city’s past,” says Victor, “I say to our city leaders, let them.”
“They feel like windows into the World’s Fairgrounds,” says Perlman of the medallions, “They celebrate our local and international culture, and architecture from the Fairs, and also offer a lesson in art, history, and craftsmanship.”
Victor echoes Perlman’s sentiment, “Not that long ago, Grand Central was almost the victim of architectural homicide when development efforts in the 1960’s and 70s threatened to destroy that magnificent centerpiece of our city. I am sure many might say preserving the mosaics in question is not the same as saving Grand Central, but we should all realize that saving the artistic and cultural history of our city, like every journey, has a first step.”
Weather-Related Delays for Planned SS United States Move
Cruise passengers are used to tropical storms and hurricanes impacting itineraries, and now, potential development in the western Caribbean is delaying the tugboat-driven relocation for the SS United States.Okaloosa County, which is supervising the operations to move the once-iconic ocean liner from Philadelphia to Mobile for refitting as an artificial coral reef, released notice of the delayed departure just days before the ship was scheduled to get underway.“Operations to move the SS United States (SSUS) have been delayed to ensure logistical details and procedures maintain ideal conditions for the move,”the statement read.“Okaloosa County is also monitoring a tropical disturbance in the Gulf of Mexico that could impede safe delivery of the vessel to its destination in Mobile, Alabama.”While the tropical disturbance has not yet developed into an official tropical storm and is far from hurricane status, it is projected to get better organized and potentially develop in the coming days.This could mean a tropical storm or late-season hurricane might move across the Gulf of Mexico over the next 2-3 weeks, just when the SS United States would be making her gentle way to the refurbishment yard.The ship was scheduled to begin her final oceangoing voyage on Friday, November 15, but because of this potential poor weather, as well as “logistical details” that departure date has now been delayed.No new date has been set, and undoubtedly it will be necessary to plan around tidal schedules, maritime traffic, tugboat and pilot availability, and other factors to ensure the ship can be moved as smoothly and efficiently as possible.Okaloosa County is aware of the extreme interest in this unique operation, and is dedicated to the vessel’s preservation and safe journey from Pennsylvania to Alabama.“The County understands that there is considerable interest in the SS United States and her move from Pier 82 and that plans have been made by interested parties,”the statement read.“Like most large, multi-faceted operations, this move involves coordination with multiple agencies and dates, times, and other logistics are subject to change to make certain the vessel is moved safely.”Viewing sites have been announced for the ship’s move, and different special events – including a viewing excursion – have been planned to commemorate the ship and her departure. Whether those events are rescheduled or not will be up to the individual organizers.
SS United States Docked in Philadelphia (Photo Credit: Patty Ballay)
At this time, the ship remains docked at Pier 82 in Philadelphia, which has been her home since 1996. Once conditions are right for her move, the SS United States Conservancy will be sure to be on hand to record the historic occasion and permit interested parties and individuals to bear witness to the record-breaking ocean liner’s final journey.
GOOD IDEA
BAD LOCATION RIOC RECENTLY INSTALLED THIS MONITOR WITH ISLAND INFORMATION. THE PROBLEM IS THAT IS IS DIRECTLY OPPOSITE THE EXITING CROWDS FROM THE NORTH TRAM IN THE PATH OF THOSE GOING DOWN THE RAMP. A TRAFFIC JAM WILL ENSURE.
All image are copyrighted (c) Roosevelt Island Historical Society unless otherwise indicated THIS PUBLICATION FUNDED BY DISCRETIONARY FUNDS FROM CITY COUNCIL MEMBER JULIE MENIN & ROOSEVELT ISLAND OPERATING CORPORATION PUBLIC PURPOSE FUNDS.
Whatever the reason, there’s a line outside this corner meat market, with customers eyeing the goods while others gather outside a dry goods shop, its entrance also illuminated in the night.
“Bleecker Street, Saturday Night” is a 1918 painting by John Sloan. Born in Pennsylvania, Sloan but by this time was a Village denizen who famously depicted the ordinary street life of his new neighborhood—from the flower vendors on Sixth Avenue to the rush of the elevated train and crowds of commuters scurrying under the track.
There’s a lot going on in this highly detailed image. Sloan introduces us to a cross-section of people, from young children to older adults, all going about their lives amid the Belgian block pavement and wood and brick buildings of a corner I wish I could identify. The rooftops get higher from right to left, shifting the perspective. The open basement doors add more drama.
“When Sloan painted this scene, the city was undergoing rapid change. Residents navigated the streets and shops late into the evening hours thanks to the recent introduction of electric lighting. New construction projects led to buildings, such as the white one pictured here, getting partially or fully demolished. The painting represents both what once was and the inevitable change that comes with industrial development.”
Painting shows interior of Renganeschi’s Restaurant, 139 West Tenth Street, New York City, filled with patrons dressed in the fashion of the time. Couples sit at tables. At right a waiter stands at a table where 3 women are seated.
After the war, Valland worked for many years with the Monuments Men, helping to restore looted items to their original owners. It’s estimated that, thanks to her, more than 60,000 items were recovered for France. She also served as a witness at the Nuremberg Trials.
For her heroic efforts, she received multiple honours in later life, including a Resistance Medal. The French government named her both an Officer of the Legion of Honour and a Commander of the Order of Arts and Letters. She was awarded the Medal of Freedom by the United States, too
BAD LOCATION RIOC RECENTLY INSTALLED THIS MONITOR WITH ISLAND INFORMATION. THE PROBLEM IS THAT IS IS DIRECTLY OPPOSITE THE EXITING CROWDS FROM THE NORTH TRAM IN THE PATH OF THOSE GOING DOWN THE RAMP. A TRAFFIC JAM WILL ENSURE.
LET’S TRY A BETTER LOCATION!!!
CREDITS
EPHEMERAL NEW YORK WIKIMEDIA COMMONS JUDITH BERDY
All image are copyrighted (c) Roosevelt Island Historical Society unless otherwise indicated THIS PUBLICATION FUNDED BY DISCRETIONARY FUNDS FROM CITY COUNCIL MEMBER JULIE MENIN & ROOSEVELT ISLAND OPERATING CORPORATION PUBLIC PURPOSE FUNDS.
How Rose Valland helped the Monuments Men to recover Nicolas de Largillierre’s Portrait of a Woman
Monday, Nov. 11, 2024
Veterans Day
Christies
ISSUE #1341
Valland, a museum employee and a member of the French Resistance, recorded the systematic theft of artworks by the Nazis, taking note of their German inventory numbers. Her information led the Monuments Men to Neuschwanstein Castle, former home of a king of Bavaria, where the looted property had been hoarded
US Seventh Army soldiers carry paintings down the steps of Neuschwanstein Castle near Füssen, Germany, in May 1945. Behind them stands Lieutenant James Rorimer, a ‘Monuments Man’ who later became director of New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art. On the right is Portrait d’une femme, à mi-corps by Nicolas de Largillierre, which will be offered at Christie’s in Paris on 21 November 2024. Photo: Universal History Archive/Universal Images Group via Getty Images Rose Valland was a humble administrative functionary at the Jeu de Paume museum in Paris — or so believed the German forces who occupied the city during the Second World War. In fact, she was a curator at the museum in question, which was being used by the Nazis to warehouse the tens of thousands of artworks they were looting from French collections, particularly those with Jewish owners.
Unbeknownst to them, she was also fluent in German, a meticulous note-taker, and a member of the French Resistance. Risking her life in the process, Valland performed the remarkable feat of keeping track of work after work that came into the Jeu de Paume, and work after work that subsequently left it.
‘Almost everything I saw and heard ended in my notes,’ she said. At the war’s end, these actions would prove crucial when it came to discovering repositories of looted art and returning myriad items to their rightful owners.
One painting tracked down and returned in this way was Portrait d’une femme, à mi-corps (Portrait of a woman, half-length) by Nicolas de Largillierre, which is being offered in the Maîtres Anciens: Peintures — Dessins — Sculptures sale at Christie’s in Paris on 21 November 2024.
With propitious timing, Valland’s wartime memoir, Le front de l’art: Défense des collections françaises 1939-1945, originally published in French in 1961, has just been translated into English for the first time. It is being published on 22 November 2024 under the title of The Art Front: The Defense of French Collections 1939-1945, with a launch event in December at Christie’s in New York.
Born in Paris in 1656, Nicolas de Largillierre was one of Europe’s leading portrait painters in the final decades of the 17th century and the initial decades of the 18th. He spent much of his early career in England, as assistant to Sir Peter Lely, Principal Painter to King Charles II.
He executed Portrait d’une femme, à mi-corps around 1700, after his permanent return to France. It depicts a now unknown woman from the aristocracy or haute bourgeoisie. Boasting porcelain skin and wrapped in a shimmering red and silver cape, she is elegantly integrated into an outdoor setting, with some trees on the left and a rock face on the right. The picture showcases many of the gifts for which Largillierre is renowned, including sumptuous surfaces and gorgeous colours.
Fast-forward to the late 1930s, and the painting was in the collection of Baron Philippe de Rothschild, a successful Jewish winemaker who — through management of the family vineyard, Château Mouton Rothschild — was helping popularise Bordeaux wines worldwide.
Aware of the antisemitic measures being adopted by the Nazis in Germany, and also the threat posed by Hitler’s expansionist foreign policy, Rothschild packed up his artworks (including the Largillierre) in crates and put them into storage.
Upon the Nazi occupation of France in 1940, however, Rothschild was arrested by the Vichy government and stripped of his French citizenship. His assets were seized — vineyard and art collection included. His crates were found in a bank vault outside Bordeaux and removed to the Jeu de Paume in February 1941.
There, the works were processed by the Einsatzstab Reichsleiter Rosenberg (ERR), a task force specially created by the Nazis to appropriate art from Jewish dealers, gallerists and collectors, alongside other cultural property from across occupied Europe. The ERR decided to transfer Portrait d’une femme and the rest of Rothschild’s collection to Neuschwanstein Castle in south-east Germany.
Neuschwanstein Castle in Bavaria, which was used as a repository for treasures looted by the Nazis. Photo: Scala, Florence / bpk, Bildagentur für Kunst, Kultur und Geschichte, Berlin
Located in the foothills of the Alps, this fairytale-like fortress had been the brainchild of King Ludwig II of Bavaria in the 19th century. Now it was being used as a depot for thousands of paintings and other items (such as furniture, sculptures and jewellery) that were among the nearly 22,000 objects stolen by the Nazis in France.
The ERR established a number of such repositories in Germany and Austria between 1941 and 1945, the one at Neuschwanstein foremost among them. In the words of Lynn H. Nicholas, in her 1994 book The Rape of Europa: The Fate of Europe’s Treasures in the Third Reich and the Second World War, their plan was ‘the complete rearrangement of Europe’s entire patrimony in accordance with Nazi ideology’. This was to include the building of a super-museum in Hitler’s name in his home town of Linz in Austria.
There was a war to fight first, though. And the Nazis had no idea that Valland, the quiet, bespectacled employee at the Jeu de Paume, was eavesdropping on their conversations and taking secret notes on the destinations of train and truck shipments. The ERR gave each work an inventory number, and Valland also recorded these — in the case of Portrait d’une femme, à mi-corps, ‘R437’, a number still marked on the stretcher of the canvas.
When Paris was liberated in 1944, Valland shared her information with Lieutenant James Rorimer, one of some 350 members of the Allied forces’ Monuments, Fine Arts and Archives programme. Colloquially known as the ‘Monuments Men’, these were museum curators, art historians, architects, artists and librarians tasked with finding and protecting as many looted items as possible. Their story was told in a 2014 movie starring and co-written by George Clooney, The Monuments Men.
Armed with Valland’s information, Rorimer — a curator at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, who would later go on to become its director — set out for Neuschwanstein. There, on 4 May 1945, in the war’s final days, he and a small number of troops at his disposal found the vast trove that Valland had told him about. In the nick of time, too, before the Germans had had the chance to move the items on again, or worse, destroy them.
The Monuments Men’s whole operation is immortalised in a now iconic photograph of Rorimer, together with a trio of US Seventh Army soldiers, on the steps of Neuschwanstein. Standing to the rear with a notebook, he looks knowingly at the camera, while the other three men each hold a rescued painting — including, on the far right, Portrait d’une femme, à mi-corps by Largillierre, now being offered at Christie’s.
The back of the portrait by Largillierre. Its ERR inventory number ‘R437’ can be seen on the vertical stretcher bar, matching its catalogue entry in ERR Album 6
The photograph has been reproduced countless times over the years, having featured on the original cover of The Monuments Men: Allied Heroes, Nazi Thieves, and the Greatest Treasure Hunt in History by Robert M. Edsel and Bret Witter — the million-selling 2009 book on which Clooney’s film was based.
The Largillierre portrait was returned to Paris in November 1945, before being officially restituted to the Rothschild family six months later. It remained in their collection until 1978, when it was acquired by its current owner.
Edsel recently described the painting as ‘a piece of history that takes us to ground zero of the greatest theft in history’.
The photograph has been reproduced countless times over the years, having featured on the original cover of The Monuments Men: Allied Heroes, Nazi Thieves, and the Greatest Treasure Hunt in History by Robert M. Edsel and Bret Witter — the million-selling 2009 book on which Clooney’s film was based.
The Largillierre portrait was returned to Paris in November 1945, before being officially restituted to the Rothschild family six months later. It remained in their collection until 1978, when it was acquired by its current owner.
Edsel recently described the painting as ‘a piece of history that takes us to ground zero of the greatest theft in history’.
After the war, Valland worked for many years with the Monuments Men, helping to restore looted items to their original owners. It’s estimated that, thanks to her, more than 60,000 items were recovered for France. She also served as a witness at the Nuremberg Trials.
For her heroic efforts, she received multiple honours in later life, including a Resistance Medal. The French government named her both an Officer of the Legion of Honour and a Commander of the Order of Arts and Letters. She was awarded the Medal of Freedom by the United States, too.
READY FOR HOLIDAY SHOPPING
Our sloths are back, and ready for new homes
CREDITS
CHRISTIES JUDITH BERDY
All image are copyrighted (c) Roosevelt Island Historical Society unless otherwise indicated THIS PUBLICATION FUNDED BY DISCRETIONARY FUNDS FROM CITY COUNCIL MEMBER JULIE MENIN & ROOSEVELT ISLAND OPERATING CORPORATION PUBLIC PURPOSE FUNDS.
