WIKIPEDIA Lee Oscar Lawrie (October 16, 1877 – January 23, 1963
Was one of the United States’ foremost architectural sculptors and a key figure in the American art scene preceding World War II. Over his long career of more than 300 commissions Lawrie’s style evolved through Modern Gothic, to Beaux-Arts, Classicism, and, finally, into Moderne or Art Deco.
He created a frieze on the Nebraska State Capitol building in Lincoln, Nebraska, including a portrayal of the announcement of the Emancipation Proclamation. He also created some of the architectural sculpture and his most prominent work, the free-standing bronze Atlas (installed 1937) at New York City’s Rockefeller Center.
Lawrie’s work is associated with some of the United States’ most noted buildings of the first half of the twentieth century. His stylistic approach evolved with building styles that ranged from Beaux-Arts to neo-Gothic to Art Deco. Many of his architectural sculptures were completed for buildings by Bertram Goodhue of Cram & Goodhue, including the chapel at West Point; the National Academy of Sciences in Washington, D.C.; the Nebraska State Capitol; the Los Angeles Public Library; St. Bartholomew’s Episcopal Church in New York; Cornell Law School in Ithaca, New York; and Rockefeller Chapel at the University of Chicago. He completed numerous pieces in Washington, D.C., including the bronze doors of the John Adams Building of the Library of Congress, the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception south entrance portal, and the interior sculpture of George Washington at the National Cathedral.
Lawrie produced important and highly visible work under Raymond Hood at Rockefeller Center in New York City, which included the Atlas in collaboration with Rene Paul Chambellan. By November 1931 Hood said, “There has been entirely too much talk about the collaboration of architect, painter and sculptor.” He relegated Lawrie to the role of a decorator.
ROCKEFELLER CENTER
Lawrie produced important and highly visible work under Raymond Hood at Rockefeller Center in New York City, which included the Atlas in collaboration with Rene Paul Chambellan. By November 1931 Hood said, “There has been entirely too much talk about the collaboration of architect, painter and sculptor.” He relegated Lawrie to the role of a decorator.[9]
Lawrie’s most noted work is not architectural: it is the freestanding statue of Atlas, on Fifth Avenue at Rockefeller Center, standing a total 45 feet tall, with a 15-foot human figure supporting an armillary sphere.[10] At its unveiling, some critics were reminded of Benito Mussolini, while James Montgomery Flagg suggested that it looked as Mussolini thought he looked.[11] The international character of Streamline Moderne, embraced by Fascism as well as corporate democracy, lost favor during the Second World War.
Featured above the entrance to 30 Rockefeller Plaza and axially behind the golden Prometheus, Lawrie’s Wisdom is one of the most visible works of art in the complex. An Art Deco piece, it echoes the statements of power shown in Atlas and Paul Manship’s Prometheus.
PROGRESS
LEE LAURIE A true icon of the Art Deco style, this bas-relief is allegorical, has bold and flat geometric shapes, strong colors and stylized forms, and, above all, is decorative. The main character is Columbia, the traditional female symbol of America. Here, she is a large athletic figure wearing a simple peasant dress, her face composed and devoid of emotion. She holds the flame of divine fire in one hand, an olive branch, the symbol of peace, in another. The mythological horse Pegasus, the symbol of inspiration, is placed behind her, while an eagle in the foreground symbolizes power. Above 49th Street entrance.
CORNUCOPIA OF PLENTY
This polychrome-painted stone carving depicts a messenger soaring from the clouds, emptying an overflowing horn onto the earth. Lee Lawrie wrote that it symbolizes “the plentitude that would result from well-organized international trade”, a theme compatible to the activities of the building. The figure’s downward angle, her flowing golden hair and the dramatic spilling of contents from her cornucopia all skillfully convey a feeling of motion and energy.
10 West 51st Street
ATLAS
Atlas is a successful collaboration between two talented artists, Lee Lawrie, who conceived the idea and designed the figure, and Rene Chambellan, who modeled the heroic-sized statue from his sketch. A famous figure from Greek mythology, Atlas was a half-man, half-god giant known as a Titan, who helped lead a war against the Olympic gods. After the Titans’ defeat, Atlas was condemned to carry the world on his shoulders as punishment. Atlas is one of Rockefeller Center’s greatest Art Deco icons and has even been used on U.S. postage stamps.
630 Fifth Avenue, main entrance forecourt
WINGED MERCURY
The Roman god Mercury has been used to symbolize Britain’s worldwide strength in the 1930s, and here the gilded figure is depicted on a mission, rapidly flying over blue-green waves. His helmet signifies power and protection, while the small wings on his heels symbolize swiftness. This panel stands for the wealth and vitality of the British merchant fleets that built the empire and sailed the seas. The intaglio relief, meaning carved or engraved into the stone without any areas being higher than the surrounding stone, is a classic Art Deco architectural embellishment.
Above Channel Gardens Entrance of 620 Fifth Avenue
ARMS OF ENGLAND
Three gilded passant-gardant lions (passant means walking; gardant means looking out of the shield) reinforce the presence of the building’s primary tenant, the British monarchy. Lions were first used to decorate the shield of Richard I, who became King of England at age thirty-two and ruled from 1189 – 1199. He had spent most of his lifer in France, his mother’s country, where he received the nickname Coeur de Lion (“lionhearted”), signifying his military prowess. Gilded Tudor roses, carved below the lions, are also important symbols of royalty in Britain.
Above 50th Street entrance of 620 Fifth Avenue
SAINT FRANCIS OF ASSISI WITH BIRDS
The figure of Saint Francis symbolizes love of self and neighbor. In 1212, he founded the Order of Friars Minor (Franciscans), who rejected materialism and, in those days, lived in the streets. In this carving, he wears an austere brown friar’s robe and bare feet. Behind his head is the halo of sainthood with flying gilded doves, the sign of the Holy Spirit. He shares his meager meal with a bird while gazing upward, seemingly thankful. Above 9 West 50th Street entrance of 630 Fifth Avenue
An Art Deco icon, Wisdom famously looms over the entrance to the main building of Rockefeller Center and can be seen from Fifth Avenue. Created by Lee Lawrie, one of America’s foremost architectural sculptors, it is an impressive and imposing focal point. Wisdom is considered the creative power of the universe, and the figure’s commanding slant, intimidating expression and biblical quote help convey his strength, impact and control over man. It is flanked by two other important works by Lawrie: Sound and Light.
Above the main entrance to 30 Rockefeller Plaza
“Story of Mankind” Clock, Bas Relief Sculpture by Lee Lawrie. Art Deco Clock Located At The Entrance of 30 Rockefeller Plaza Manhattan NYC. Built in 1930-1939.
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EDITORIAL
For years I had jobs that were in the neighborhood of Rockefeller Center. There is something about working in a “city” where your can walk underground from 52nd Street to 47th Street. I always liked taking the passageway to lunch or to the bank at the other end of the plaza. I worked in years when the holidays were for a month not 4 months as it was recently.
Thee pre-pandemic days it was more of an obstacle course to traverse the underground passages.
I am looking forward to returning to Rock Center.
Judith Berdy
Text by Judith Berdy Thanks to Bobbie Slonevsky for her dedication to Blackwell’s Almanac and the RIHS Thanks to Deborah Dorff for maintaining our website Edited by Melanie Colter and Deborah Dorff All image are copyrighted (c) Roosevelt Island Historical Society unless otherwise indicated
Wikipedia for both
THIS ISSUE COMPILED FROM THE WONDERFUL ARCHIVES OF THE ROCKEFELLER CENTER WIKIPEDIA
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Biography Isamu Noguchi (1904–1988) was one of the twentieth century’s most important and critically acclaimed sculptors. Through a lifetime of artistic experimentation, he created sculptures, gardens, furniture and lighting designs, ceramics, architecture, and set designs. His work, at once subtle and bold, traditional and modern, set a new standard for the reintegration of the arts.
Noguchi, an internationalist, traveled extensively throughout his life. (In his later years he maintained studios both in Japan and New York.) He discovered the impact of large-scale public works in Mexico, earthy ceramics and tranquil gardens in Japan, subtle ink-brush techniques in China, and the purity of marble in Italy. He incorporated all of these impressions into his work, which utilized a wide range of materials, including stainless steel, marble, cast iron, balsa wood, bronze, sheet aluminum, basalt, granite, and water.
Born in Los Angeles, California, to an American mother and a Japanese father, Noguchi lived in Japan until the age of thirteen, when he moved to Indiana. While studying pre-medicine at Columbia University, he took evening sculpture classes on New York’s Lower East Side, mentoring with the sculptor Onorio Ruotolo. He soon left the university to become an academic sculptor.
In 1926, Noguchi saw an exhibition in New York of the work of Constantin Brancusi that profoundly changed his artistic direction. With a John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship, Noguchi went to Paris, and in 1927 worked in Brancusi’s studio. Inspired by the older artist’s forms and philosophy, Noguchi turned to modernism and abstraction, infusing his highly finished pieces with a lyrical and emotional expressiveness, and with an aura of mystery.
Returning to New York City as well as traveling extensively in Asia, Mexico, and Europe in the late 1920s through the 1930s, Noguchi survived on portrait sculpture and design commissions, proposed landscape works and playgrounds, and intersected and engaged in collaborations with a wide range of luminaries. Noguchi’s work was not well-known in the United States until 1940, when he completed a large-scale sculpture symbolizing the freedom of the press, which was commissioned in 1938 for the Associated Press Building in Rockefeller Center, New York City. This was the first of what would eventually become numerous celebrated public works worldwide, ranging from playgrounds to plazas, gardens to fountains, all reflecting his belief in the social significance of sculpture.
The Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor and the backlash against Japanese Americans in the United States had a dramatic personal effect on Noguchi, motivating him to become a political activist. In 1942, he cofounded Nisei Writers and Artists Mobilization for Democracy, a group dedicated to raising awareness of the patriotism of Japanese Americans; and voluntarily entered the Colorado River Relocation Center (Poston) incarceration camp in Arizona where he remained for six months.
Following his release, Noguchi set up a studio at 33 MacDougal Alley in Greenwich Village, New York City, where he returned to stone sculpture as well as prolific explorations of new materials and methods. His ideas and feelings are reflected in his works of that period, particularly the delicate slab sculptures included in the 1946 exhibition Fourteen Americans at The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Noguchi did not belong to any particular movement, but collaborated with artists working in a range of disciplines and schools. He created stage sets as early as 1935 for Martha Graham, beginning a lifelong collaboration; as well as for Merce Cunningham, Erick Hawkins, and George Balanchine and composer John Cage. In the 1960s, Noguchi began working with stone carver Masatoshi Izumi on the island of Shikoku, Japan; a collaboration that would also continue for the rest of his life. From 1961 to 1966, he worked on a playground design with the architect Louis Kahn.
Whenever given the opportunity to venture into the mass-production of his designs, Noguchi seized it. In 1937, he designed a Bakelite intercom for the Zenith Radio Corporation, and in 1947, his glass-topped table was produced by Herman Miller. This design and others—such as his designs for Akari light sculptures which were initially developed in 1951 using traditional Japanese materials—are still being produced today. In 1985, Noguchi opened The Isamu Noguchi Garden Museum (now known as The Noguchi Museum), in Long Island City, New York.
The Museum, established and designed by the artist, marked the culmination of his commitment to public spaces. Located in a 1920s industrial building across the street from where the artist had established a studio in 1960, it has a serene outdoor sculpture garden, and many galleries that display Noguchi’s work, along with photographs, drawings, and models from his career. He also indicated that his studio in Mure, Japan, be preserved to inspire artists and scholars; a wish that was fulfilled with the opening of the Isamu Noguchi Garden Museum Japan in 1999.
Noguchi’s first retrospective in the United States was in 1968, at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York City. In 1986, he represented the United States at the Venice Biennale. Noguchi received the Edward MacDowell Medal for Outstanding Lifetime Contribution to the Arts in 1982; the Kyoto Prize in Arts in 1986; the National Medal of Arts in 1987; and the Order of the Sacred Treasure from the Japanese government in 1988. He died in New York City in 1988.
IN THE GARDEN
LEFT ABOVE
Behind Inner Seeking Shiva Dancing 1975 – 1981 Basalt The large section removed from the back of the 1974 sculpture called The Great Rock of Inner Seeking, now in the East Wing of the National Gallery in Washington, remained waiting. Two years later I was able to start and eight more to finally conclude what was for me an intense dialogue with the possibilities of stone. Rising out of destruction came the dance of Shiva.
RIGHT ABOVE
The Well 1982 Basalt, Water I have made many experimental versions of “tsukubai,” including this one for this garden. The water is introduced from within and recirculated. What is created is a fountain, contrary to the traditional “tsukubai.”
THE ABOVE ART IS ALL ON VIEW AT:
The Isamu Noguchi Foundation and Garden Museum 9-01 33rd Road (at Vernon Boulevard) Long Island City, New York 11106 718.204.7088 info@noguchi.org
NOGUCHI’S OTHER WORKS
This piece depicts five journalists going for a news story. This is located at the former Associated Press Building in Rockefeller Center, NYC,
“Radio Nurse”1937
Noguchi worked in a variety of media and Radio Nurse was his first major industrial commission. Together with a separate enameled metal receiver called the Guardian Ear, this piece functions as a baby monitor, transmitting sounds from the baby’s room to the receiver. The highly sculptural form evokes an abstracted human head: the eponymous surrogate nurse. Made of Bakelite, a plasticlike, malleable material that could be dyed almost any color, Radio Nurse is an excellent example of the new, industrial material’s sculptural qualities.
PLAYSCAPE Designed with Louis Kahn is preserved in Atlanta, GA.
Red Cube Sculpture, 1968, 140 Broadway Between Cedar and Liberty Streets, Financial District in Lower Manhattan, New York, USA, photo: CC BY 2.0) by Yiie
THE FORMER SOHMER PIANO FACTORY ON VERNON BLVD Jay Jacobson, Nina Lublin, Clara Bella, Ed Litcher ( WE OMITTED OUR WINNERS ON FRIDAY, SORRY FOR THE GOOF)
CLARIFICATION
WE ARE HAPPY TO GIVE WINNERS OF OUR DAILY PHOTO IDENTIFICATION A TRINKET FROM THE VISITOR CENTER. ONLY THE PERSON IDENTIFYING THE PHOTO FIRST WILL GET A PRIZE. WE HAVE A SPECIAL GROUP OF ITEMS TO CHOOSE FROM. WE CANNOT GIVE AWAY ALL OUR ITEMS,. PLEASE UNDERSTAND THAT IN THESE DIFFICULT TIMES, WE MUST LIMIT GIVE-AWAYS. THANK YOU
October is the beginning of our annual membership drive. The RIHS has served the community since 1976. In ordinary times, we sponsor programs, lectures, tours, classes and many community events that the RIHS participates in. Our dues are very reasonable and we need your support to keep our activities coming as soon as we are able. To join the RIHS go to our membership link at: https://rihs.us/join-us/ Thanking you in advance for your support Judith Berdy
Text by Judith Berdy Thanks to Bobbie Slonevsky for her dedication to Blackwell’s Almanac Thanks to Deborah Dorff for maintaining our website Edited by Melanie Colter and Deborah Dorff All materials in this publication are copyrighted (c)
PHOTOS FROM JUDITH BERDY COPYRIGHT RIHS/2020 (C) TEXT FROM THE ISAMU NOGUCHI FOUNDATION AND MUSEUM GARDEN
MATERIAL COPYRIGHT WIKIPEDIA, GOOGLE RIHS ARCHIVES AND MAY NOT BE REPRODUCED WITHOUT PERMISSION (C)
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Join us online for a lively discussion of the enduring legacy ofthe 40-year Dutch rule of New York City, 1624-1664.
Shorto and Lewis will trade observations about how our democratic institutions, rule of law, hyphenated nationality, entrepreneurial spirit, multiculturalism, and vocabulary are indebted to our Dutch origins.
Conversation will be pre-recorded, with a Live Q+A to follow
Reservations Are Required a Zoom link and password will be emailed to registered participants the day before the event.
ADMISSION: $15 Free for Patrons, Students and New York City Tour Guides
LEN TANTILLO, ARTIST
Len Tantillo (b. 1946 – ) is a graduate of the Rhode Island School of Design. Tantillo is a licensed architect who left the field of architecture in 1986, to pursue a career in the fine art of historical and marine painting. Since that time, his work has appeared internationally in exhibitions, publications and film documentaries. He is the author of four books, and the recipient of two honorary degrees. He is a Fellow of the American Society of Marine Artists. His work is included in the collections of the Fenimore Art Museum, the Minnesota Museum of Marine Art, numerous historical societies, and corporate and private collections in the USA and abroad. In 2004 he was commissioned by the Metropolitan Museum of Art to create a painting depicting the Daniel Winne house as it may have appeared in 1755. He has produced over 300 paintings and drawings of New York State history. In 2016 he was elected a Fellow of the New York Academy of History.
17TH CENTURY
Fort Amsterdam
Arent Van Curler’s bark passes Fort Amsterdam, Manhattan, 1650
Fort Amsterdam had a long and peculiar history. In 1626, the Dutch West India Company directed Kryn Fredericksen to construct a fort at the tip of Manhattan Island. Fredericksen was instructed to build a substantial stone fortification following the specifications of the prototypical 17th century Dutch design. This design took many years to complete. Along the way the fort underwent numerous alterations. The painting depicts this fort as it may have appeared in its final iteration under English control as a stone structure.
Curiosity of the Magua
Mohawk warriors approach the ship of Arent Van Curler, 1650
This is the second in a series of paintings which depicts the bark of Arent Van Curler. The setting is the summer of 1650, looking southeast between Curler Island and Hill House Island, about 6 miles north of Fort Orange (Albany , New York). The Hudson River is in the background. Van Curler is approaching his farm, located on what today is referred to as Schuyler Flatts in the Town of Colonie (Menands , New York). At that time Van Curler was living on the eastern edge of Iroquois territory. There are two horses on deck that Van Curler purchased to add to his livestock. Mohawk warriors in elm bark canoes are making their way out to Van Curler’s ship to investigate his unusual cargo. “Magua” was the seventeenth century term used by the Dutch for the Mohawk people. Although the Mohawk were curious about horses neither they or any other tribe of the Iroquois nation were ever interested enough to actually trade for them
Manhattan, 1660
A view of Dutch Manhattan from Governor’s Island, circa 1660 Sometime around 1670, a surveyor from Belgium named Jacques Cortelyou created a birdseye view of Manhattan. His map provides us with the only detailed contemporary image of New York City as the Dutch community of New Amsterdam. Cortelyou’s drawing, commonly referred to as the “Costello Plan,” survives to this day in a museum in Florence, Italy. The first challenge Tantillo faced was how to correct the Costello Plan to get it to dimensionally agree with the actual scale and street layout of modern Manhattan. He accomplished this by locating an early survey of the city made with precision instruments. Tantillo used a detailed survey of lower Manhattan produced in the late 1890s. This scaled site map was very well drawn and contained numerous property line measurements. His hope was that some of the street patterns of Dutch Manhattan had survived and would be visible in the latter map. Tantillo was pleased to discover that most of what he was looking for was there. Once the Costello Plan was redrawn to scale, Tantillo had a realistic base on which to set adjusted property lines and buildings. It’s important to note that a plan is just a footprint of an object. No matter how carefully crafted and researched this two-dimensional representation may be, problems instantly present themselves when speculative buildings emerge from the ground plane. Relying on many years of architectural experience, Tantillo tried to imagine what influences the environment and the individual resident would have on the overall look of a period structure. Although much of the visualizing process is conjectural, his decisions are based on closely examined factual data, no matter how fragmentary.
A View of Fort Orange, 1652
The Dutch merchant ship “Flower of Gelderland” at anchor,1652
By the 1650’s the Dutch settlement of Fort Orange and Rensselaerswyck had evolved into a thriving community of great diversity. What began as a simple fur trading outpost in 1614, now included agricultural development, lumber production, brick-making, brewing, and shipbuilding. New immigrant colonists mostly from the Netherlands were arriving on a regular basis. This painting features the arrival of the ship, Flower of Gelderland. Fort Orange and the houses of Beverwyck are seen in the right background. The arrival of large merchant ships in 17th century Albany was a rare occasion and always a cause for celebration and anticipation of news from home.
The Ferry
Dutch settlers cross the Hudson River near Fort Orange, 1643
TROLLEY AT QUEENS PLAZA 1950’S CLARA BELLA WAS THE FIRST TO GET IT RIGHT!
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EDITORIAL
Our friends at the New Amsterdam History Center have sent us information on the upcoming program on October 6th. Russell Shorto and Barry Lewis are wonderful speakers and it will be a great presentation. To register, see the link above.
Enjoy the art of Len Tantillo. There are many more images on his website for you to study.
Text by Judith Berdy Thanks to Bobbie Slonevsky for her dedication to Blackwell’s Almanac and the RIHS Thanks to Deborah Dorff for maintaining our website Edited by Melanie Colter and Deborah Dorff Roosevelt Island Historical SocietyIMAGES ARE COPYRIGHT
LEN TANTILLO ART (C)
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The Municipal Archives collects all sorts of photos taken for research, special events or just for the record. You never know what you will fine. Enjoy the results.
ELEVATOR STOREHOUSE BUILDING
TO REACH THE ISLAND YOU WENT THRU THE ELEVATOR STOREHOUSE BUILDING. YOU DRIVE TO A MIDPOINT OF THE LOWER LEVEL OF THE QUEENSBORO BRIDGE AND CROSSED OVER A SHORT BRIDGE.
YOU DROVE ONTO TOP LEVEL OF THE BUILDING AND TOOK ELEVATOR TO STREET. ON THE FLOORS OF THE STOREHOUSE, WERE THE WAREHOUSES FOR THE ISLAND INSTITUTIONS. TRUCKS COULD BE TAKEN DIRECTLY TO EACH FLOOR FOR UNLOADING.
VIEW OF ELEVATOR STOREHOUSE FROM LOWER LEVEL OF QUEENSBORO BRIDGE.
IMAGE OF SUPER HELIX TO THE ISLAND… NEVER BUILT
CHAPELS
ABOVE IS GOOD SHEPHERD COVERED IN IVY
BELOW IS HOLY SPIRIT CHAPEL, WITH PERGOLA NEXT TO IT.
WELFARE ISLAND BRIDGE GRAND OPENING
THE PENITENTIARY
ABOVE: THE PENITENTIARY BEING DEMOLISHED IN 1936.
BELOW: STAIRCASES TO PRISON CELLS IN THE PENITENTIARY
NEW YORK MAGAZINE EXTOLLING TH VIRTUES OF THE NEW TOWN
FROM JAY JACOBSON:
Yes. We made it here on January 15, 1977! Our 14 year old daughter was complaining about being hassled on the street in the West Side Urban Renewal Area. Our 10 year old son hated leaving his pals from 94th and Amsterdam. And I can’t imagine how Pat did it as exams were looming at the of her first year at law school. But that first evening — after an exhausting day — we walked north towards the helix and saw people flooding the area across the street from the helix to make an ice skating rink. It was then that our youngsters thought we could give living here a chance.
JOAN BROOKS AND CLARA BELLA GOT IT RIGHT ALSO!!!
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DAMNATION ISLAND $18- TEN DAYS IN A MAD HOUSE $12-
We were walking south from Octagon and noticed that THE PROW may soon capsize. There is a giant hole in the bow and the ship may be taking on water!! Hope the SS RIOC will soon come to the rescue.
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 ALL PHOTOS ARE FROM THE MUNICIPAL ARCHIVES OF THE CITY OF NEW YORK, FUNDING PROVIDED BY ROOSEVELT ISLAND OPERATING CORPORATION PUBLIC PURPOSE GRANTS CITY COUNCIL REPRESENTATIVE BEN KALLOS DISCRETIONARY FUNDING THRU DYCD
Howard Hack, Window Number 22, Parenti’s Market, 1967, oil on canvas, Smithsonian
This painting is part of Howard Hack’s Window series of the 1960s, which show “landscapes” of objects seen through glass storefronts. The reversed numbers and small orange pump identify this as a view of a Union 76 gas station, seen perhaps from the inside of an abandoned market where only a weighing scale and empty ceiling hooks remain.
Shadowed corners underscore the emptiness and silence, and the texture of the painted window evokes layers of undisturbed dust. Hack painted some objects to appear both inside and outside the glass, creating a confusing sense of depth and making it difficult to distinguish between the real objects and their reflections.
Howard Edwin Hack (July 6, 1932 – June 11, 2015) was a San Francisco Bay Area representational painter and graphic artist with works in numerous museum collections. Known for an innovative approach to a variety of media, as well as use of traditional oil paints, Hack began working in the late 1940s.
GHANDI
Howard Hack, (From Blue Print series) #6, Gandhi, 1972, blue print on paper, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of Larry Epping Building Co., 1981.29.7
Howard Hack, (From Blue Print series) #10, Curtain, 1973, blue print on paper, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of Larry Epping Building Co., 1981.29.11
SEWING MACHINE
Howard Hack, (From Blue Print series) #18, The Sewing Machine, 1975, blue print on paper, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of Larry Epping Building Co., 1981.29.17
BI-CENTENNIAL EAGLE
Howard Hack, (From Blue Print series) #24, Bi-Centennial Eagle, 1976, blue print on paper, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of Larry Epping Building Co., 1981.29.2
THE WHISK BROOM
Howard Hack, Silverpoint #35, The Whisk Broom, 1967, blue print on paper,
BI-CENTENNIAL LIGHT BULB
Howard Hack, (From Blue Print series) #25, Bi-Centennial Light Bulb, 1976, blue print on paper, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of Larry Epping Building Co., 1981.29.24
CAREER
Upon returning to the U.S., Hack resumed painting, using images from his stay in Korea, and scenes from Oakland. Hack occupied studio space and lived in the Spreckels Mansion, also known as the Ghost House (1150 Franklin Street, San Francisco), along with other artists, including Wally Hedrick, Jay DeFeo, and Hayward King.
From the Ghost House Hack attended the gathering at the nearby Six Gallery (the Six Gallery Reading at 3119 Fillmore Street, San Francisco), where poet Alan Ginsberg debuted his poem Howl on October 7, 1955.
Between 1957 and 1959, Hack lived primarily in San Miguel de Allende, in the central Mexican state of Guanajuato, a haven adopted by American artists and bohemians after WWII. In 1959,
Hack returned to the United States, enrolling as a philosophy undergraduate at the University of San Francisco. At USF Hack studied the theories of the neo-Kantian idealist philosopher Ernst Cassirer (1874-1945), in particular his concepts of symbolism.
Howard Hack, (From Blue Print series) #14, Cushion and Stool, 1973, blue print on paper, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of Larry Epping Building Co., 1981.29.14
EXHIBITIONS
In 1967, the M.H. De Young Museum, San Francisco, exhibited Hack’s “Window Series,” oil paintings depicting scenes from San Francisco’s South of Market area designated for demolition. In his review of the show San Francisco Chronicle art critic Alfred Frankenstein referred to the works as “magic realism,” a phrase coined in 1943 by Alfred H. Barr Jr., founding director of the New York Museum of Modern Art. (In her “Foreword and Acknowledgment” to the MoMA catalog for the exhibition Realists and Magic Realism, Dorothy Canning Miller referred to Barr’s definition of magic realism as “a term sometimes applied to painters who by means of an exact realistic technique try to make plausible and convincing their improbable dreamlike or fantastic visions.”)
Frankenstein noted: “Hack has lived for a long time with the moods of windows…. (T)hey display for him the humble machinery of everyday living – shoemaker’s equipment, the chairs and cabinets of a barber shop, a tailor’s padded pressing iron – always silent, always at rest, intensified to the highest degree by isolation and close scrutiny.
But his collection of Sunday morning glimpses into little offbeat shops is neither a social document, in the manner of Edward Hopper, nor a celebration of the mechanized, in the style of Charles Sheeler. It is a document of Howard Hack’s perceptions, reactions, and experiments.”In 1981, the California Palace of the Legion of Honor presented a collection of works in silverpoint by Howard Hack. The show’s catalog curator Robert Flynn Johnson wrote: “What will people think of Howard Hack’s art one hundred years from now? What will they think of the time, patience and concentration necessary to create these works? What will they think of his seductive style and idiosyncratic subject matter? I believe that Howard Hack’s art will age far more gracefully than the strained and artistic fashions that currently strut upon the stage of history.
Time will tell.” In San Francisco, Howard Hack was represented by several galleries, including Richard Gump’s and John Bolles. In New York, Hack’s works were sold through Lee Nordness Gallery.
His studio was left abandoned for more than 15 years, but sold in 2016 for 1.5 million dollars despite decrepit conditions.
WARDEN’S HOUSE NORTH OF THE PENITENTIARY WITH IN-GROUND SWIMMING POOL
EDITORIAL
Hack, an artist of San Francisco and its unique position in 1960’s and 1970’s art!!
JUDITH BERDY
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Text by Judith Berdy Thanks to Bobbie Slonevsky for her dedication to Blackwell’s Almanac and the RIHS Thanks to Deborah Dorff for maintaining our website Edited by Deborah Dorff All image are copyrighted (c) Roosevelt Island Historical Society unless otherwise indicated
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City Home: Group on ferry “Col. Clayton.” Patients, staff on outing, 1947
The Almshouse, later called the City Home existed on the island from the late 1820’s until 1953 when it closed permanently. The residents were called inmates, at times. The treatment varied according to differentl stories. The home was located mid-island around the Chapel of the Good Shepherd which opened in 1889.
All the images here are on the website of the Municipal Archives of the City of New York, To see larger more clear versions, go to nyc.gov/records, then to Historical Records, then to Collections. Check Digital Collections and input WELFARE ISLAND CITY HOME.
OUTSIDE THE CHAPEL
City Home: Catholic Church under construction. Our Lady Consoler of the Afflicted
IN THE DINING ROOM
City Home, Male Dining Room. Elderly men seated at large round tables.
IN THE KITCHEN
City Home District: Worker stands next to coffee roasting machine. (DPC first roasted its own coffee in 1914.) Our first Starbucks?
City Home: General Kitchen; workers in aprons stand in brick-walled room.
Butchers at work in main kitchen, 1950
City Home: Kitchen workers at stoves, stirring huge vats, etc., 1950
RECREATION
City Home, Indoor Recreation Center (“Klondike”). Long single-story structure; male patients seated outside.
City Home: Male Day Pavilion. One-story multi-windowed structure. Outdoor benches alongside.
City Home: Men seated on benches in Recreation Hall. The hall was nick-named the Klondike. It had glass walls and families of the staff would join the residents for entertainment
City Home Orchestra entertains elderly residents in courtyard of large building, Welfare Island.
City Home, Summer Recreation Program. Outdoor orchestra (Welfare Island?)
City Home, Recreation Park, showing bandstand. Patients seated on benches under trees in background.
Ladies seated in wooded area.
City Home: Large group of old men crowded in grounds, as if waiting to enter through gate in foreground.
City Home: Large group of old women seated on benches in clearing in front of stone building. All wear bonnets.
CELEBRATIONS
Ladies dressed up for special occasion.
Many years of birthdays been celebrated.
“FASHION COMES TO THE POORHOUSE” October 10, 1938
New York…An inmate of the Home for the Aged on Welfare Island is shown here exhibiting her new gown to other inmates after the Department of Hospitals had approved the first change in garb for the city guests in nearly 100 yeas, The shapeless Cotton “Mother Hubbard”worn by the women are now being replaced with flowery percales in the latest fashion. The new styles will be distributed among 1,724 guests at the Home for the Aged and 1,103 guests at the City’s farm colony in West Brighton, Staten Island…
THE ACCOMMODATIONS
City Home main street: one- and two-story brick buildings; men seated and walking down the street. The original Main Street, 1948
City Home: Female barracks; 2-story stone building with 1st and 2nd floor balconies
City Home, Women’s Blind Ward. Elderly woman sits by bed, holding pocketbook. Empty beds. (Most patients are outdoors.)
City Home, Male Ward, showing crowded conditions.
OCCUPATIONAL THERAPY
Two images of blind men weaving rugs.
THE STAFF LIVED HERE TOO
City Home District: Officers’ residences. Two-story wooden bungalows. These were located near Blackwell House.
City Home: Exterior of old 3-story brick building containing main kitchen and help’s dormitory.
City Home District Fire Department Engine #49 (Tall 3-story building and 1-story extension.)
City Home, Two old women with wooden pails scrub entry to South Pavilion.
City Home: Ten old women holding buckets, standing in front of 1-story wooden house wedged between 2-story houses.
BLACKWELL HOUSE FACING QUEENS, WHICH WAS THE ORIGINAL FRONT ENTRY No one guessed!!!
OOPS… WE MISSED THIS ONE. THIS IS THE LAMP FROM INSIDE THE R.I. LIGHTHOUSE WHICH WAS ON THE WEEKEND’S EDITION.
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Today are images, all from the Municipal Archives of the City Home. The home is long gone and in 1953 the remaining residents were discharged to Coler Home of the Staten Island Farm Colony.
Many of the buildings would have been worthy of exterior restoration, but in the 1970’s demolition was the order of the day.
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
Wikipedia for both
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Biography Wikipedia Hildreth Meière was born in New York City in 1892. After studying at New York’s Manhattanville College of the Sacred Heart, Meiere studied in Florence. Upon studying the works of the Renaissance Masters, she is quoted as saying, “After that I could not be satisfied with anything less than a big wall to paint on. I just had to be a mural painter.” She furthered her studies at the Art Students League of New York, California School of Fine Arts, San Francisco (now San Francisco Art Institute), the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, New York School of Applied Design for Women and the Beaux Arts Institute of Design.
After training as a mapmaker, Meière served her country as a draftsman in the U.S. Navy during World War I. Finding work in a male-dominated field was difficult for her, so she began her career as a costume designer for theater actresses, a field more common for women at the time.
In 1923 she was commissioned to decorate the dome of the National Academy of Sciences in Washington, D.C. by architect Bertram Grosvenor Goodhue. Meiere and sculptor Lee Lawrie became members of the loose “repertory company” of artists assembled by Goodhue, and she came to work on many different projects with him.
One of these, the Nebraska State Capitol in Lincoln, which she began before the NAS dome was even completed, became her pièce de résistance featuring eight separate examples of her work
During Meiere’s successful career, spanning 30 years and working on over 100 commissions, she became well known for contributing well-integrated public art mosaics to many landmark buildings and is most closely associated with the Art Deco movement.
Some of Meiere’s best work is visible throughout her hometown of Manhattan, although reportedly she was proudest of her work on the Nebraska State Capitol.
*When World War II broke out, Meiere served on the Citizen’s Committee for the Army and Navy, providing portable altar pieces for military chaplains. This campaign created over 500 mobile 4 ft × 6 ft (1.2 m × 1.8 m) triptychs, 70 of her own design which could be used on base-camps, battleships, and hospitals worldwide.
She taught first aid for the Red Cross after the US entered World War II.[6] Asked how to say her name, she told The Literary Digest (which spelled the name Meière) “It is of French origin and I pronounce it mee-AIR. My father’s family anglicized the pronunciation to meer, but I have always used the more proper form.”
*Two examples of portable altarpieces created for military chaplains.
NEBRASKA STATE CAPITOL
Architect Bertram Grosvenor Goodhue (1869-1924) commissioned the young Hildreth Meière to decorate his yet unfinished Nebraska State Capitol and had approved her preliminary designs for the vestibule dome at the north entrance before his death in 1924.1 Meière continued to work with his successor firm, Bertram Goodhue Associates, later Mayers, Murray, & Phillip, on eight separate decorative commissions at the capitol in a variety of mediums.
The capitol was built and decorated in four stages around an earlier capitol building between 1922 and 1932 to save the cost of relocating workers to temporary offices during construction. The vestibule inside the north entrance of the cruciform building was built during the first phase of construction (1922-24). The foyer, rotunda and dome, and Senate Chamber were built during the second phase (1925-28). The tower was added to the rotunda during the third phase (1928-30). The west-center section of the capitol, including the House of Representatives, was completed during the fourth phase (1930-32).
By the time the capitol was complete, Meière had decorated the domes of the vestibule, foyer, and rotunda, and the ceiling of Senate Chamber in glazed ceramic tile; the floors of the vestibule, foyer, and rotunda in marble mosaic and inlaid marble; the walnut beams below the ceiling of the House of Representatives in a gold-leaf frieze; and the beams of the House Lounge in oil-based paint. She also designed tapestries in wool for the Senate Chamber, and entrance doors to the House of Representatives in painted and gilded leather.
When Nebraska became unicameral in 1937, the Senate Chamber became a conference room known today as the Warner Chamber. The larger House of Representatives, or West Legislative Chamber, became the main legislative chamber. Meière’s designs at the capitol depict an iconographic program developed by the philosopher and anthropologist Hartley Burr Alexander. Alexander’s symbolism relates the History of Nebraska to the Ideals of Western Civilization. Following Goodhue’s death, Alexander became Meière’s mentor. He not only provided her with iconography, but guided Meière in the creation of her designs.
Temple Emanu-El New York
Temple Emanu-El is the largest synagogue in the world, seating 2,500 people. Designed by Kohn, Butler, and Stein, the Moorish-Romanesque facade symbolizes a mingling of Eastern and Western cultures. Associate architects Mayers, Murray & Phillip were responsible for the interior decoration. They called upon Hildreth Meière to provide Byzantine-style glass mosaic decoration for the eight-story-high arch of the main sanctuary that encases the altar (bema), and the Ark housing the Torah scrolls on the eastern wall behind it.1
Meière was asked to decorate the arch with Judaic symbols, which she incorporated into a complex, geometric, Art Deco pattern on eight-story-high vertical bands. The eleven symbols she represented include (clockwise from the bottom of the arch) the Tree of Life, Prayer Shawl, Seven-branched Menorah, Eternal Light, Star of David with Kiddush Cup (wine goblet), Day Two of Creation, Shofars (rams’ horns), Open Torah Ark, Table of Shewbread, Wedding Canopy, and Two Sabbath Candles:
National Academy of Sciences
Washington, DC
Architect Bertram Grosvenor Goodhue gave Hildreth Meière her first major architectural commission, the decoration of the Great Hall of the National Academy of Sciences.1 She intuitively grasped the collaborative role that Goodhue required. Her job was to enhance his vision of a building by depicting an iconography in visually striking symbols that would convey the building’s purpose and be integral to the architecture.
Radio City Music Hall
New York, NY
Relief sculpture on 50th Street facade
Hildreth Meière’s roundels of Dance, Drama, and Song on the 50th Street facade of Radio City Music Hall are her most visible work. Often cited as iconic examples of Art Deco design, the roundels were fabricated in mixed metal and enamel. A recently developed process that kept dissimilar metals from affecting each other when used together out of doors made it possible for Meière to select metals for their color potential and combine them on a scale never before attempted. Each roundel is eighteen feet in diameter.
While at the Pühl & Wagner factory in 1927, Meière posed holding a mosaicist’s double-edged hammer, but she herself was never a mosaicist. She was a muralist who designed for a variety of mediums, including mosaic.
Ed Litcher and Jay Jacobson Got or right This is the original section of the Steam Plant in 1939 before and addition was constructed in the 1950’s.
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WE HAD A GREAT TIME AND VERY SUCCESSFUL EVENT ON SATURDAY IT WAS GREAT TO SEE FRIENDS AND NEIGHBORS STOP BY AND SHOP FOR GREAT READING.
BARBARA SPIEGEL AND JUDY BERDY SPENT A FUN DAY AT OUR BOOK SALE ON SATURDAY. ALL THE BOOKS ARE AVAILABLE AT THE RIHS VISITOR CENTER KIOSK,
EDITORIAL
For a few years, I worked at the Skirball Center at Temple Emanu-El. One of the best, probably the best part of the job was working is such a wonderful building. The first year I was there, the rear portion of the massive sanctuary was under restoration. The entire auditorium was a sea of scaffolding. Just in time for the High Holidays, the rear section was complete and after the holidays the front of the sanctuary was scaffolded and restored.
In about 9 months, the restoration revealed the masterpieces that HIldreth Meier designed and they were gorgeous. When the pandemic ends, please step into the temple and enjoy her masterpiece.
Judith Berdy
Text by Judith Berdy Thanks to Bobbie Slonevsky for her dedication to Blackwell’s Almanac Thanks to Deborah Dorff for maintaining our website Edited by Melanie Colter and Deborah Dorff All materials in this publication are copyrighted (c)
PHOTOS FROM JUDITH BERDY COPYRIGHT RIHS/2020 (C) MATERIAL COPYRIGHT WIKIPEDIA, GOOGLE RIHS ARCHIVES AND MAY NOT BE REPRODUCED WITHOUT PERMISSION (C) FOR THIS ISSUE: INTERNATIONSL HILIDRETH MEIERE ASSOCIATION (C) TEMPLE EMANU-EL WIKIPEDIA
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SEPTEMBER 26-27, 2020
167th Edition
FREDERICK CHILDE HASSAM
BY STEPHEN BLANK
FLAGS, LOTS OF FLAGS
When I think of Childe Hassam, I think of flags. Lots of flags, flying out from buildings on 5th Avenue. But he also painted pictures of islands, in particular Appledore, the largest of the Isles of Shoals, off the Maine coast at the border with New Hampshire. It happens that Appledore Island was once named Hog Island, which was also the early name of our own Roosevelt Island (back in Dutch days). This is the only connection Hassam has to us since he didn’t paint Blackwell’s Island (that was Edward Hopper), nor, so far as I know, any pictures of hogs. But he did paint people and, most of all, landscapes, rocky coasts, and the white churches of Gloucester and East Hampton.
Childe Hassam, The South Ledges, Appledore, 1913, oil on canvas, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of John Gellatly, 1929.6.62
Childe Hassam, In the Garden (Celia Thaxter in Her Garden), 1892, oil on canvas, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of John Gellatly, 1929.6.52
A PROLIFIC ARTIST
Indeed, Childe Hassam painted a lot. Art historians say that he treated his art much like a business, aggressively marketing himself and churning out canvases and works on paper “by the carload”, and building networks of artists around him to increase his fame. He certainly seems to have been successful, building a major reputation and fortune over a career spanning more than fifty years.
Childe Hassam, The Island Garden, 1892, watercolor on paper, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of John Gellatly, 1929.6.64
Childe Hassam was born in Dorchester, Massachusetts in 1859. When his father’s business was destroyed by a fire in 1872, Hassam was forced to leave school and take a job to help support the family. The story (charming but unverified) goes that when he was fired after only three weeks in the accounting department of a publishing company, his supervisor suggested that since he spent all of his time drawing, he might consider a career in art. Taking this advice, Hassam obtained a job in a wood engraving shop, where he quickly rose to the position of draftsman. (Apparently, one of his works that he drew there, an intricate panorama of Marblehead Harbor, graced the editorial page of Marblehead’s newspaper at least until 1975, which was the most recent image I could find.) In 1882, Hassam became a free-lance illustrator, (known as a “black-and-white man” in the trade), and established his first studio. He specialized in illustrating children’s stories for magazines such as Harper’s Weekly, Scribner’s Monthly Magazine, and The Century. In that year, he had his first solo exhibition of around fifty watercolors at a Boston gallery, which included works depicting what would become one of his popular themes, landscape paintings of places he visited, such as Nantucket.
Childe Hassam, Ponte Santa Trinità, 1897, oil on canvas, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of John Gellatly, 1929.6.61
It’s not easy to classify Hassam’s work. Hassam is widely considered one of the giants of American Impressionism. He visited Paris in 1883 and sixty-seven of the watercolors (absolutely gorgeous, my opinion) he did on his trip formed the basis of his second exhibition in 1884. He married Kathleen Doan, a childhood friend, after his return to the US and they then spent several years in Paris. There’s a wonderful story (again unverified) from this time: In the summer of 1889, he rented a studio in Paris’ Montmartre district. Littering the space were unsold canvases abandoned by the previous tenant—“un peintre fou,” the concierge called him. The “mad painter” was Pierre-Auguste Renoir. The young American had never heard of the artist, a leader of the French Impressionists, but he was intrigued by his work. “I looked at these experiments in pure color and saw it was what I was trying to do myself,” he recalled 38 years later. We do know that Hassam earned a good living in Paris doing magazine illustrations and painting pictures which he sent home to dealers. They were able to find a well-located apartment/studio with a maid near the Place Pigalle, the center of the Parisian art community and lived among the French and socializing little with other American artists studying abroad.
His work shares a lot with the French impressionists, in particular his concern with the interaction of light, weather, and surface. But he seems to have been rather sensitive about his debt to French impressionists, insisting that the modern movement in painting was founded on John Constable, William Turner, and Richard Bonington. Hassam helped create a strand of Impressionism that was distinctly American. American artists, he said, were clearly able to claim a school of their own. “Inness, Whistler, Sargent and plenty of Americans just as well able to cope in their own chosen line with anything done over here…An artist should paint his own time and treat nature as he feels it, not repeat the same stupidities of his predecessors…The men who have made success today are the men who have got out of the rut.” Still, Hassam remained connected with the European Art of the 1870s and ’80s.
Hassam was unusual in the 1880s for attempting to make art out of urban streetscapes. American painting was focused then on faraway places and times. In his view, the urban scene provided its own unique atmosphere and light, one which Hassam found “capable of the most astounding effects” and as picturesque as any seaside scene. The grittiness of his urban work may also distinguish it from the work of French impressionists. His city paintings, often of pavements in the rain, were unorthodox at the time and remain much admired. During the summers, however, he would work in a more typical Impressionist location, such as Appledore Island, then famous for its artist’s colony.
Childe Hassam, The Billboards, New York, 1916, etching on paper, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Transfer from the National Museum of American History, Division of Graphic Arts, Smithsonian Institution, 1971.222
Childe Hassam, Lillie (Lillie Langtry), ca. 1898, watercolor and gouache on paperboard, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of John Gellatly, 1929.6.57
He and his wife returned to the US in October 1889 and settled in New York City where he helped to found the New York Water Color Club. He developed a deep friendship with fellow artists John Twachtman and J. Alden Weir over a shared affection for and desire to create Impressionist works. This focus was deepened by a friendship with Theodore Robinson, who had worked in Giverny with Claude Monet. But Hassam was drawn largely to the streets of New York. He kept a succession of studios on or near Fifth Avenue and seldom traveled more than a few blocks to paint. Sometimes he worked from a window or balcony, but often he sketched the passing crowds at street level from a parked carriage, using the opposite seat as his easel.
Feeling that the Society of American Artists was hostile to the Impressionist style they had adopted, Hassam, Twachtman and Weir left the Society in December 1897 and soon recruited seven other painters to form the Ten American Painters. The aim of The Ten was to create an exhibition society that valued their view of originality, imagination, and exhibition quality. The Ten achieved popular and critical success, and lasted two decades before dissolving.
From the late 1890s onward, Hassam’s style became even more impressionistic with quick brushstrokes that were so thin, one could almost see the canvas beneath. The increasing modernity of the city with the newly built skyscrapers, along with new summer locations he visited such as East Hampton, Long Island where Hassam would eventually buy a home, provided exciting subjects for the artist.
The outbreak of World War I was a source of inspiration late in Hassam’s career became the theme of one of Hassam’s greatest series, paintings of American and other flags that lined the many streets of New York City. Capturing the intense patriotism of the period, the works helped raise funds for the war effort while simultaneously raising the American spirit.
Childe Hassam, Noon above Newburgh, 1916, watercolor on paper, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of John Gellatly, 1929.6.59
Flags on Fifth Avenue
Childe Hassam, New York Bouquet, 1917, lithograph on paper, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Transfer from the National Museum of American History, Division of Graphic Arts, Smithsonian Institution, 1971.231
Flags on 57th Street
Despite his emergence as one of the leaders of a new American art movement, Hassam became increasingly vocal near the end of his life against developing styles of modernism as well as European artists. He ridiculed non-representational abstraction in painting (which he called “Ellis Island paintings”) even after its acceptance as cutting-modernism by American critics in the interwar period.
An interesting character, Hassam was known for his dapper style, often wearing tweed suits and sometimes even a monocle. One art historian notes that “Hassam was a large, red-faced gentleman, proud of his New England ancestry. His life was without trials. He was lively and cheerful, rather aggressive and outgoing”, although another says he suffered from failing health and increased bouts of drinking before his death in 1935.
Hassam is viewed as a precursor in the development of a home-grown, distinctively American subject matter, who helped pave the way for other artists such as Edward Hopper, Charles Burchfield, and Andrew Wyeth, who, while they differed from him stylistically, shared the same commitment. On a personal note, I, like probably many of you, have seen many Childe Hassam paintings. But other than the flag series, I’m not sure I took much else seriously. Preparing this brief note for Judy opened a much wider vision of his work, particularly his wonderful work in watercolor. This has been a splendid, colorful experience and I strongly recommend his work.
Childe Hassam, Easthampton Elms in May, 1925, etching on paper, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Transfer from the National Museum of American History, Division of Graphic Arts, Smithsonian Institution, 1971.218
Childe Hassam, Tanagra (The Builders, New York), 1918, oil on canvas, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of John Gellatly, 1929.6.63
Steam Plant one east side of island, now in back of tram station. Jay Jacobson was the first to get it!!
Funding Provided by: Roosevelt Island Operating Corporation Public Purpose Funds Council Member Ben Kallos City Council Discretionary Funds thru DYCD Text by Judith Berdy
Edited by Deborah Dorff ALL PHOTOS COPYRIGHT RIHS. 2020 (C) PHOTOS IN THIS ISSUE (C) JUDITH BERDY RIHS
Thanks Stephen
Thanks to Stephen Blank for today’s feature on Childe Hassam. Enjoy the lightness and joy in his paintings. These are just a few of many that he painted. We can picture someone loved his work, knew his audience and kept everyone happy.
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THE GLORY OF GLAZED BRICK
The McGraw Hill Building at 330 West 42nd Street is a 35-story, 485-foot-tall (148 m) building[6] located in the Hell’s Kitchen section of Manhattan, New York City. The exterior walls of the building are panels of blue-green terra cotta ceramic tiles, alternating with green-metal-framed windows, with a strongly horizontal orientation. The building was the only skyscraper in the city displayed in the influential International Style exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in 1932, and as such, it has also been cited as a landmark of Art Deco design. Located on West 42nd Street, between Eighth and Ninth Avenues, above the Port Authority Bus Terminal, the McGraw-Hill Building was the tallest building in the Hell’s Kitchen neighborhood for decades. WIKIPEDIA
THE BANDS OF METAL AND TERRA COTTA GLOW AT THE ENTRY
A LITTLE HISTORY
From The NY Times by Christopher Gray (c)
OVER the last year little splotches of vermilion, green and blue have been popping up on the top of the old McGraw-Hill building, at 330 West 42d Street. They seem aimless, but it turns out they are the opening strokes in a restoration campaign for one of New York’s most colorful skyscrapers.
James McGraw, who began publishing in 1885, joined in 1917 with a competitor — James A. Hill, who began in 1901 — to form the McGraw-Hill Publishing Company. The new company’s offices and presses occupied the spare, white terra-cotta Hill Publishing Building, built in 1916 at 475 10th Avenue, at 36th Street. The company grew until, by 1929, it published more than 30 trade journals, among them Coal Age, Radio Retailing, Engineering News-Record and Electric Railway Journal.
As space grew tight, McGraw wanted to be near the concentration of engineers and architects in midtown, but the 1916 Zoning Resolution restricted new factories — including printing plants — to an outer ring beginning at Eighth Avenue.
After considering a site on the northeast corner of 41st Street and Eighth Avenue, in 1929 McGraw settled on a midblock plot just west of Eighth, from 41st to 42d Streets. The stock market crash in October slowed but did not stop his plans, and McGraw-Hill bought the land in early 1930. The first rivet was driven in December 1930, and McGraw-Hill occupied the building in October 1931.
For years the sculpture BOOMERANG by Owen Morrll was perched on the south side of the building. It was removed in the 1990’s.CHICAGO TRIBUNE TOWER
McGraw chose one of the most flamboyant and provocative architects possible: Raymond Hood. Hood had struggled in obscurity until 1922, when he won a competition for the Chicago Tribune Tower with a streamlined Gothic shaft.
Hood was prone to embrace provocative ideas; he was one of the few to defend, even advocate, urban congestion as a strength, not a weakness. He also had anti-traditional ideas about design: ”If you owned a mountain, would you embroider it?” he told The New York Sun in early 1931, criticizing the designs of traditional New York skyscrapers with historical decoration. At the same time he had a hard-headed, engineer’s approach to building projects, which had brought him commissions like Rockefeller Center and the Daily News Building, at 42d Street and Second Avenue.
Hood designed the inside of the 35-story McGraw-Hill Building with loftlike finishes — plain concrete ceilings and walls — in many areas, even in the office portions. McGraw-Hill rented out the ninth through 15th floors. The lower floors held the printing operations: composing room on the seventh floor, press room on the sixth, the bindery on the fifth. The exterior was a startling statement, even to those familiar with Hood’s advanced ideas: horizontal bands of factory-style windows framed by fields of green-blue terra cotta, becoming bluer with height to almost merge with the sky.
DAILY NEWS BUILDING
The 37-storey facade is characterized by vertical stripes of windows, with brown brick in the spandrels between the vertically aligned windows, and white brickwork forming the separating vertical piers. Limestone, preferred by Hood, was discarded as a too expensive material. Curiously, the size of the windows — and thus the width of the window stripes — was determined by the size of a window that could be effortlessly opened by a single office worker.
The tops of the window stripes are decorated with ornamentated spandrels extending all the way to the top, sloping there inward, splitted by a narrow pier. The “razed” flat top at 145 m influenced a host of future skyscrapers and Hood himself used the form of the building tower as an influence for the forthcoming RCA Building in Rockefeller Center.
AMERICAN RADIATOR BUILDING
The answer to where we are.
ROCKEFELLER CENTER
Hood took the colors seriously: he had also considered red, yellow, orange and gray for the terra cotta, and he fine-uned the design with a gray-green for the window bands, with a stripe of vermilion at the top of each. Hood also called for buff-colored window shades, with a green stripe running down the center; the building staff wore green uniforms trimmed with silver.
Traditionalists had fits: a modernistic building was bad enough, but a modernistic blue building was like serving a bacon burger to a vegetarian. The critic Arthur North, writing in American Architect in early 1932, called it ”a storm center” that showed ”disregard for every accepted principle of architectural designing in the most flagrant manner.” But he thought the building was worth studying. Lewis Mumford defended most modern architecture but wrote in his New Yorker column that the building was just ”a stunt,” in part because it did not have cantilever construction to allow corner windows. He thought the colors were ”heavy and unbeautiful.”
McGraw-Hill kept boosting its far-west location, but the striking green tower remained isolated. The company even sold off an adjacent plot to the west, which it had held for possible future expansion. As West 42d Street declined from honky-tonk to unmentionable, its building became a liability;
in 1972 the company moved to its present skyscraper at Sixth Avenue and 48th Street, and its old headquarters has passed through several owners. SINCE 1994 it has been owned by Deco Towers Associates, a foreign investment group. Val Kaminov, the building manager, said that the owner has put $4 million into mechanical upgrades over the last four years and is now in the middle of a $3 million facade restoration, including complete reconstruction of all the parapets and repainting the windows and metalwork to the original paint colors.
Over the last year test patches and primer coats have been sprouting around the top of the building in a project that is now in full swing and is to be finished by September. Mr. Kaminov said that the 550,000-square-foot building is 99.9 percent leased. ”When I came here we were happy to get $15 per square foot” in annual rent, he said. ”Now we have leases on some upper floors at $35 per square foot.” The building was designated a landmark in 1979. Last year the owners removed ”Boomerang,” an angular metal sculpture by the artist Owen Morrel installed in 1981, which hung suspended from the side of the building. Philip Trost, counsel for Deco Towers, said the sculpture was dismantled and either junked or recycled. Analysis of the original terra cotta and paint color was carried out by Integrated Conservation Resources. Richard Lefever, restoration engineer for the supervising design firm, Facade Maintenance Design, said that about 10 percent of the terra cotta is being replaced. Mr. Lefever said that Hood clearly designed his building to be ”the shocking pink of its era.” It will be interesting to watch the restoration of the intricate color scheme, which New Yorkers originally considered so astounding.
UPDATE OVER THE LAST FEW YEARS THE ENTIRE EXTERIOR OF THE MC GRAW HILL BUILDING HAS BEEN RESTORED AND SHINES GLORIOUSLY ON WEST 42nd STREET
Exterior yard of new NYPL branch awaiting RIOC to restore area LISA FERNANDEZ, JAY JACOBSON, ALEXIS VILLEFANE AND VICKI FEINMEL WERE THE FIRST TO GUESS.
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ITEMS OF THE DAY
FROM THE KIOSK
GREAT STUFF FOR ALL OCCASIONS
GREAT BOOKS FOR KIDS THIS SATURDAY AT THE FARMER’S MARKET
EDITORIAL
Last evening I was watching a presentation of conservation awards by the New York Landmarks Conservancy. One of the recipients was the restoration of the former McGraw Hill building at 330 West 42 Street.
I remember working nearby and admiring the building from my window. At that time in the 1980’s I could see the sculpture hanging of the building and watched Times Square. The Marriott hotel was under construction and I was a window superintendent for the project.
Working near Times Square, which we avoided we watched the ball being lifted every year for New Year’ Eve.
Judith Berdy
Text by Judith Berdy Thanks to Bobbie Slonevsky for her dedication to Blackwell’s Almanac and the RIHS Thanks to Deborah Dorff for maintaining our website Edited by Melanie Colter and Deborah Dorff Roosevelt Island Historical Society CREDTIS NY TIMES CHRISTOPHER GRAY WIKIPEDIA NY DAILY NEWS ATLAS OBSCURA ALL IMAGES AND TEXT (C)
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JANE’S CAROUSEL BOOKLYN BRIDGE PARK ALEXIS VILLEFANE LISA FERNANDES HARA REISER WERE THE FIRST TO GUESS CORRECTLY
CLARIFICATION WE ARE HAPPY TO GIVE WINNERS OF OUR DAILY PHOTO IDENTIFICATION A TRINKET FROM THE VISITOR CENTER. ONLY THE PERSON IDENTIFYING THE PHOTO FIRST WILL GET A PRIZE. WE HAVE A SPECIAL GROUP OF ITEMS TO CHOOSE FROM. WE CANNOT GIVE AWAY ALL OUR ITEMS,. PLEASE UNDERSTAND THAT IN THESE DIFFICULT TIMES, WE MUST LIMIT GIVE-AWAYS. THANK YOU
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COMMENT
A few weeks ago a tree was cut down on the turnaround by the Octagon. The triangle was demolished and the seats were replaced by this large sign for the OCTAGON. Though the intention is good, adding the “888” on top of the sign is a bit much. Just hope the 8’s do not spin around.
The tree and seating area are gone now..
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
FUNDING PROVIDED BY ROOSEVELT ISLAND OPERATING CORPORATION PUBLIC PURPOSE GRANTS CITY COUNCIL REPRESENTATIVE BEN KALLOS DISCRETIONARY FUNDING THRU DYCD
