1934: A NEW DEAL FOR ARTISTS SMITHSONIAN AMERICAN ART MUSEUM EXHIBITED IN 2009
ALL IMAGES ARE PROPERTY OF THE SMITHSONIAN AMERICAN ART MUSEUM, WASHINGTON, D.C.
In 1934, Americans grappled with an economic situation that feels all too familiar today. Against the backdrop of the Great Depression, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s administration created the Public Works of Art Project—the first federal government program to support the arts nationally. Federal officials in the 1930s understood how essential art was to sustaining America’s spirit. Artists from across the United States who participated in the program, which lasted only six months from mid-December 1933 to June 1934, were encouraged to depict “the American Scene.” The Public Works of Art Project not only paid artists to embellish public buildings, but also provided them with a sense of pride in serving their country. They painted regional, recognizable subjects—ranging from portraits to cityscapes and images of city life to landscapes and depictions of rural life—that reminded the public of quintessential American values such as hard work, community and optimism.
1934: A New Deal for Artists was organized to celebrate the 75th anniversary of the Public Works of Art Project by drawing on the Smithsonian American Art Museum’s unparalleled collection of vibrant artworks created for the program. The paintings in this exhibition are a lasting visual record of America at a specific moment in time. George Gurney, curator emeritus, organized the exhibition with Ann Prentice Wagner, curator of drawings at the Arkansas Art Center.
ROSS DICKINSON
Long before Ross Dickinson received any formal training, he experimented with oil paint and educated himself through reading. Awarded a scholarship to the Chouinard Art Institute in Los Angeles, Dickinson studied with Frank Tolles Chamberlin (1873–1961) and became interested in mural painting.
In 1926 Dickinson spent nine months in New York City studying with John Costigan at the Grand Central School of Art and Charles Hawthorne at the National Academy of Design; he also received a scholarship from the Tiffany Foundation. Dickinson returned to California later that year and studied at the Santa Barbara School of Fine Arts, where he received his first mural commission. He soon married sculptor Daisy Hanson, and they established themselves, albeit under adverse financial conditions, as artists and teachers in Santa Barbara. Dickinson depicted the varying California landscape and men and women at work, which often aligned him with California regionalism.
By 1934 he was involved in the Public Works of Art Project, which led to numerous mural commissions in the mid-1930s. His later work displays a stylistic change, as he moved toward freer brushwork in fast-drying acrylics through the 1950s and 1960s. He continued to work and exhibit in the southern California area until his death in Santa Barbara in 1978.
MARTHA LEVY WINTER SCENE 1934
New York artist Martha Levy trained at the Art Student’s League and attended their summer program in Woodstock, NY from 1926 to 1932. There she focused on landscape painting and honed her skills with her chosen medium, oil over a base of tempera. During the 1930’s, Levy joined the Public Works of Art Program to supplement her income. in 1935, she joined the WPA Federal Art Project where she worked on murals commissioned as part of the New Deal program. Her views of the Maine seaside are painted in the same style as her Woodstock work and are similar to the Realism employed in many WPA mural projects of the time. (Invaluable.com)
MILLARD SHEETS TENEMENT FLATS 1934
Born and lives in California. Painter, etcher, illustrator, designer, who has received numerous prizes for his work. Charles Sullivan, ed American Beauties: Women in Art and Literature (New York: Henry N. Abrams, Inc., in association with National Museum of American Art, 1993) Millard Sheets studied art in California and became one of the state’s foremost artists and architects during his lifetime. He worked hard to make a name for himself early in his career, and by 1935 he had already shown his work in twenty-seven museums across the country. One critic titled a review of Sheets’s New York debut “A Name to Remember.”
Sheets supplemented his income working with architects as a color consultant and designer, and during World War II he worked as an illustrator for Life magazine, traveling to India and Burma. When he returned from the war, he organized an exhibition featuring the work of German and Japanese artists as a gesture of reconciliation. Over the course of his career, Sheets designed numerous buildings, including banks, malls, schools, and private homes. He also produced watercolors, prints, and mosaics while serving as chair of the art department at Scripps College and Claremont Graduate School, and he later directed the Otis Art Institute. (Steadman, Millard Sheets, Scripps College, 1976
CARL GUSTAF NELSON CENTRAL PARK 1934
Carl Gustaf Simon Nelson , born January 5, 1898 in Hörby , Skåne, died in 1988 in Elmhurst , Illinois, was a Swedish-American painter and illustrator . He was the son of the carmaker Johan Nilsson and Christina Olsson. Nelson came to America at the age of five and grew up in Sioux City, Iowa. He began studying art around 1920, first for two years at the Chicago Academy of Fine Arts and then at the Art Students League in New York for five years. He then undertook a study trip through 15 of Europe’s countries.
Since 1935, he has participated in numerous group exhibitions in New York, Boston and Phiadelphia and in the Swedish-American exhibitions in Chicago. He was awarded the Tiffany Foundation Scholarship 1931-1933. In addition to his own creations, he worked as a teacher at the Boris Mirski Gallery in Boston 1945-1947 and the Cambridge School of Design in Cambridge 1948-1952. His art consists of still lifes , figurative motifs,landscapes and non-figurative compositions in oil , gouache and tempera .
Nelson is represented at the US Department of Labor in Washington, the Smithsonian American Art Museum and the Worcester Museum of Art in Massachusetts.
HERMAN MARIL SKETCH OF OLD BALTIMORE WATERFRONT 1934
Maril was a modernist painter whose style reduced figures and objects to their essence. Subjects ranged from urban landscapes to coastal seascapes. Maril’s art from the beginning showed a consistent development: it was nature-based, abstractly organized, and simplified in form and content. The noted artist and critic Olin Dows, wrote about the then 26-year-old artist, “Herman Maril’s painting is reserved, and, like most good painting, it is simple. He is interested in the essentials. Each picture has its core; each is beautifully conceived and organized. It is clothed in a certain poetry.”
KARL FORTESS ISLAND DOCKYARD 1934
Karl Fortess came to America from Belgium and studied art in Chicago and New York. In 1937 the Works Progress Administration sent him and several other artists to Alaska to document the towns, villages, and remote wilderness landscapes (Pemberton, “Alaska art museum collects WPA’s Depression works from the territory,” Columbia Daily Tribune, November 9, 2003). Fortess taught at many different schools, including Boston University School of Fine Art, where he also created an archive of interviews with more than two hundred and fifty American artists.
THOMAS JAMES DELBRIDGE LOWER MANHATTAN 1934
New Yorkers, including the city’s artists, through the worst hardships of the Great Depression. Looking from the dock of a harbor island, Thomas Delbridge showed the dark mouths of Manhattan’s ferry terminals; above them ever taller buildings climb out of red shadows into gold and white sunshine. The crisply outlined forms evoke such famous structures as the Woolworth Building to the left and the Singer Building to the right without placing the buildings precisely or describing specific details. The skyscraper at the center suggests the mighty Empire State Building as it had stood incomplete before its triumphant opening on May 1, 1931. Even as the stock market foundered and thousands were thrown out of work, New Yorkers had gathered in excited throngs to watch their tallest tower rise. The Manhattan skyscrapers in the painting appear to be pushing back dark clouds, creating an oasis of brilliant blue around the island. Image: Thomas James Delbridge, Lower Manhattan, 1934, oil on canvas 26 1/8 x 30 ¼ in. (66.3 x 76.9 cm), Smithsonian American Art Museum, Transfer from the U.S. Department of Labor.
JOHN CUNNING MANHATTAN SKYLINE 1934
Many of us recognize the Empire Stores in t he foreground. The buildings were used as coffee and sugar warehouses from the 1920’s to 1950’s. Abandoned for decades, the buildings were re-imagined into communal and dining spaces in the last few years and continue the restoration of the Brooklyn waterfront, minus the ships, cargo and heavy industry.
DANIEL CELENTANO FESTIVAL 1934
Daniel Celentano (1902–1980) was an American Scene artist who made realistic paintings of everyday life in New York, particularly within the Italian neighborhood of East Harlem where he lived. During the Great Depression he painted murals in the same style for the Public Works of Art Project and the Federal Art Project.
The son of Italian immigrants, Daniel Celentano was born into a large family within an Italian neighborhood of Manhattan. A childhood polio attack left him with only partial use of his right leg. Made homebound by this disability he was unable to attend school and, recognizing his artistic skill while he was still a boy, his parents were able to arrange for art teachers to tutor him at home. Through hard work and perseverance he regained control over his leg by the age of twelve and at that time became the first pupil of the social realist painter Thomas Hart Benton.
In 1918 he won scholarships that enabled him to attend Charles Hawthorne’s Cape Cod School of Art in Provincetown, Massachusetts, New York School of Fine And Applied Art in Greenwich Village, and the National Academy of Design in New York’s Upper East Side. The Cape Cod School taught students during the summer months and the other two gave classes during the rest of the year.
This painting is also called “Festa di Monte Carmela.” It was included in an exhibition called “1934: A New Deal for Artists,” in the Smithsonian American Art Museum. During the 1930s and until the outbreak of World War II Celentano participated in group shows at galleries in New York, Detroit, Philadelphia, and other American cities. His work was first shown to the public in an exhibition of works selected by Alfred Stieglitz that was held at the Opportunity Gallery in 1930. His painting, “Festival,” of a few years later, shows the boisterous community of East Harlem in holiday mode. The Smithsonian’s exhibition label says, “This painting fairly bursts with the raucous sounds, pungent smells, and vibrant characters of Manhattan’s ethnic street life.” Wikipedia
GERALD SARGENT FOSTER RACING 1934
With exhilarating speed yachts sweep across the choppy waters of Long Island Sound, the water foaming white against their hulls. In the foreground, three small Atlantic-class boats lean precariously to stay on the course of their race. In the middle ground, a pair of larger craft catch the wind in bellying spinnakers as they sail in nearly the opposite direction.
Artist Gerald Sargent Foster, an avid yachtsman, often depicted yacht races. He knew every rope and spar of these boats, but minimized such technical details to avoid distracting the eye from the clean geometric shapes that dominate the painting. The artist repeated and overlapped the streamlined hulls and taut sails of the boats, creating an elegant pattern silhouetted against blue sky and water. Yet the geometry is not cool and detached—every line and color speaks of the keen excitement of yacht racing. Even in the teeth of the Depression, this sport of New York’s wealthy continued to be popular.
LILY FUREDI SUBWAY 1934
Lily Furedi (May 20, 1896 – November 1969) was a Hungarian-American artist. A native of Budapest, she achieved national recognition for her 1934 painting, The Subway, which is a sympathetic portrayal of passengers in a New York City Subway car. Light-hearted in tone, the painting depicts a cross-section of city dwellers from the viewpoint of a fellow commuter.
When Lili Furedi was 31 years old she debarked from the ship Cellina at the port of Los Angeles. She came from Budapest by way of Trieste and on the ship’s manifest she reported her occupation as painter. There is no record of art training she may have received either before or after her arrival in the United States. There is no doubt she was working as a professional artist, however, because in 1931 she won a prize for her painting, The Village, at the annual Christmas show held by the National Association of Women Painters and Sculptors at the Argent Gallery in January of that year.
In 1932 and for much of the rest of the decade she placed paintings in group exhibitions, including: a 1932 exhibition by Hungarian-American artists in which she showed works called Hungarian Village and Hungarian Farm,a 1935 exhibition of the National Association of Women Painters and Sculptors in which she showed a painting called Interior,(3) a 1936 exhibition by the New York Municipal Art Committee, and a 1937 exhibition at the Woman’s Club of Glen Ridge, New Jersey. Reviewing the 43rd annual Women Painters and Sculptors show of 1934,
Lily Furedi, The Subway, 1934, oil on canvas, 39 x 48 1/4 in. (99.1 x 122.6 cm.), created for the U.S. Public Works of Art Project Early in 1934 Furedi was accepted into the Public Works of Art Project. This pioneering federal program employed artists at craftsmen’s wages to make pictures on the theme of “the American scene.
“Her contribution to the project was the painting called The Subway. The picture was one of twenty-five selected for presentation as gifts to the White House. It was also in a group that President and Mrs. Roosevelt had themselves selected as being among the best in the show. Beginning in 1935, when it accompanied a book review in The New York Timeshe painting has frequently been used as an illustration in books, articles, news accounts, and Internet web sites. In examining Furedi’s The Subway, critics and other observers have found much to say. The painting was said to be cheerful and the artist’s interest to be sympathetic. It was seen as vibrant, bright, and optimistic. Its scene was said to be playful, clean, and decorous and its design elements as idealistically deployedOne reviewer saw an influence of “Cézanne’s cubes and cones” in a scene which tells a compelling story of a projected “society in which sex and race are comfortably, if nervously, aligned”and a poet, using the ekphrastic poetic technique, declared that the painting showed the “best in mass transit,” in which “we get to meet, greet, / and saunter through / time and space together.” The poem, by Angie Trudell Vasquez, is called “Eyes Alive.” It closes: “see what beauty / we can make / when all is lit up with color / warm and welcoming, / beckoning you / into the picture, / offering you a seat.” Following the 1934 touring show in which it appeared, The Subway was not again included in a public exhibition until 1983 when it appeared in “Social Concern and Urban Realism: American Painting of the 1930s” at Gallery 1199 in New York’s Martin Luther King Labor Center. It appeared again in “1934: A New Deal for Artists,” a touring exhibition put together by the Smithsonian American Art Museum in 2009
After the Public Works of Art Project was closed down in 1934 Furedi joined the Federal Art Project. She is recorded as being employed in this program in 1937–1939[39] and, specifically as a muralist, in 1940. Furedi’s work was reviewed infrequently after the mid-1930s. In 1941 she painted an altar mural called The Galley Slave which she donated to a Hungarian church in New York. She died in New York at the age of 73 in November 1969.
PAUL KIRKLAND MAYS JUNGLE 1934GALE STOCKWELL PARKVILLE MAIN STREET 1934
Gale Stockwell was a cartoonist for his high school paper, then studied at the Kansas City Art Institute. In 1933 he was hired by the Public Works of Art Project, which paid a small wage to many struggling artists during the Depression. He lost track of a lot of his work after giving it to the government and many years later was not only surprised to find one of his images on a jigsaw puzzle, but also discovered that this same painting was hanging at the White House! Stockwell worked in advertising until 1954, when he retired to devote all of his time to painting colorful images of Missouri towns and landscapes
Unidentified (American), (Underpass–New York), 1933-1934,
Oil on photograph on canvas mounted on paperboard, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Transfer from the Internal Revenue Service through the General Services Administration , 1962.8.41
The street and sidewalks are empty; not a person, car, or even a stray dog is to be seen. What is the viewer supposed to see in this unpopulated street illuminated by glowing street lamps? Do the yellow street sign and the modest fireplug have some unexpected significance? The real subject of the painting turns out to be a newly built underpass designed to safely route cars under the train tracks in Binghamton, New York. During the 1930s several underpasses around Binghamton were upgraded by federal and New York State agencies working to improve city infrastructure while providing employment to those thrown out of work by the Great Depression.
The stark lighting of street lamps at night shows off the clean lines of the freshly cast concrete as if the underpass were a modernist sculpture or an elegant new office building. The Smithsonian owns two other paintings documenting railroad underpasses built elsewhere in the country during the same era. All three were painted by Smithsonian American Art Museum artists working over photographs printed on canvas. Through documentary projects of this kind civil works became allied to artworks, providing employment for builders and artists alike. 1934: A New Deal for Artists exhibition label
This painting was created for the Federal Art Project, a branch of the Works Progress Administration developed to give financial and moral support to artists during the Depression. There is no information about who the painter was, but in 1981 a visitor to the Museum recognized the underpass as one near his home in Binghamton, New York. The artist printed a photograph of the scene onto the canvas, then painted over it in careful detail. The glowing streetlights are like stars brought down to earth from the distant skies, drawing the viewer into the image and through the brightly lit tunnel. The road seems less like an ordinary street in the city and more like a portal into the great empty blackness above
DOUGLAS CROCKWELL PAPER WORKERS 1934
Born Columbus, Ohio Died Glens Falls, New York born Columbus, OH 1904-died Glens Falls, NY 1968 Nationalities American Linked Open Data Linked Open Data URI Douglass Crockwell spent a good part of his career creating illustrations and advertisements for the Saturday Evening Post. His paintings appeared in promotions for Friskies dog food and in a poster for the American Relief for Holland, which won him a gold medal from the Art Director’s Club in 1946. Crockwell created murals and posters for the Works Progress Administration during the Depression, and also experimented with short flip-card films that could be viewed through a mutoscope. A few years before he died, Crockwell estimated that he had drawn four hundred full-page images, of which more than three billion prints had been made (New York Times, December 2, 1968).
DECK AT THE HUNTERS POINT PARK NEAR FERRY TERMINAL
EDITORIAL
We thank the Smithsonian for having marvelous resources of art and the exhibits that were on view . Enjoy these works from 1934. The stories behind these works are fascinating, especially Lily Furedi’s “Subway”. The painting was exhibited and admired and then vanished for decades. Furedi’s other works are just as wonderful as this non-social distancing view or the New York subway in 1934.
Millard Sheets has quite a collection of mosaics. Anyone who has visited Los Angeles has see the Home Banks buildings with mosaics on them. They were done by Sheets.
The mystery behind the “Underpass” is fascinating and many of us know highways that look like this underpass image. Remind me of road leading to the George Washington Bridge in NJ.
More to come tomorrow,
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 ART IN THIS EDITION IS PART OF THE SMITHSONIAN COLLECTION (C) All image are copyrighted (c) Roosevelt Island Historical Society unless otherwise indicated
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THOMSON AVENUE SKILLMAN AVENUE AND INDUSTRIAL NEIGHBORHOODS OF LONG ISLAND CITY
Above and Below The Sunshine Biscuit Company Now La Guardia Community College Thomson Avenue
Following Thomson Avenue Through LIC Long Island City
Mitch Waxman
Newtown Penticle
A dizzying display of industrial and architectural might, on display above, distracts the eye from the subject of this post. Empire State, Chrysler, the entire shield wall of Manhattan – even the sapphire spire which distinguishes modern Long Island City – are all screaming for attention. At the sapphire tower’s base is a white building, a former printing plant and later an Eagle Electric factory, which has long been converted over to luxury condominiums and is known as the Arris Lofts.
At the bottom of the shot is Skillman Avenue, and the tracks of the Sunnyside Yard An enormous concrete and steel bridge, 500 feet long and 100 feet wide, it is hidden in plain sight.
That’s the Thomson Avenue Viaduct. From 1877′s “Long Island and where to go!!: Long Island City is the concentrating point upon the East river, of all the main avenues of travel from the back districts of Long Island to the city of New York. The great arteries of travel leading from New York are Thomson avenue, macadamized, 100 feet wide, leading directly to Newtown, Jamaica and the middle and southern roads on Long Island, and Jackson Avenue, also 100 feet wide, and leading directly to Flushing, Whitestone and the northerly roads. Long Island City is also the concentrating point upon the East river, of the railway system of Long Island.
The railways, upon reaching the city, pass under the main avenues of travel and traffic, and not upon or across their surface. To begin with, lets start with the end.
Thomson Avenue disappears into the modern street grid when it is rudely interrupted by and becomes Queens Boulevard. This is the actual slam bang intersection where the “automobile city” of the 20th century meets the “locomotive city” of the 19th, at the intersection where Thomson avenue meets Queens Boulevard and Van Dam Street.
The “Great Machine” slithers past Thomson, and hurtles eastward along the more modern thoroughfare.
(From Wikipedia: “Queens Boulevard was built in the early 20th century to connect the new Queensboro Bridge to central Queens, thereby offering an easy outlet from Manhattan. It was created by linking and expanding already-existing streets, such as Thomson Avenue and Hoffman Boulevard, stubs of which still exist.”)
Thomson adjoins Jackson Avenue on the northern side of its run, where their junction forms the so called “Court Square,” where the 1990 vintage Citigroup structure might be noticed. There used to be a hospital where the colossus now stands. Overwhelming and out of character with its surroundings, it is the tallest structure on Long Island, and the 56th highest building in New York City – if you’re impressed by that sort of thing.
Across the street is why they call it Court Square, and a historic building discussed in this Brownstoner Queens post is found. Moving in an easterly direction from Court Square, Thomson finds another connection to the automobile city, as one of the off ramps for the upper level of the Blackwell’s Island… Queensboro… Ed Koch… Bridge empties out here, allowing tens of thousands of vehicles to vomit onto Thomson’s parabola every day.
The rapid progress being made in the grading of Sunnyside yard in Long Island City, the future great terminal of the Pennsylvania Railroad system in New York, and the rapid construction of the eight massive viaducts to provide for the highway and railroad crossings, insure the completion of that section of the great undertaking early next fall. The most massive of the overhead highway crossings is the Thomson Ave. steel viaduct, 100 feet in width and 500 feet in length, passing over the network of tracks of the Long Island and Pennsylvania Railroads at a height of 30 feet.
The Queensboro Bridge extension viaduct, crossing diagonally to the street system of Long Island City, but at right angles to the railroad, is 80 feet in width, and has massive steel girders. The Thomson Ave. crossing, which will be completed next month, and the bridge extension will provide for the traffic over the main arteries of travel, extending through the borough from north to south.
On the side streets which dead end off of Jackson Avenue, like Dutch Kills or Queens or Purves Streets, one can gain an appreciation for the altitude of this Thomson Avenue Viaduct. These roadway artifacts used to proceed through what is now the rail yard, and the historical record is full of lawsuits brought by LIC residents against the Pennsylvania Rail Road or Long Island Railroad companies for damages based on the grade situation or for “dead ending” their street. These lawsuits detail and define the complicated questions of who owns what around and above the yards. Then – however – as now, you can’t fight City Hall if it wants to do something in your neighborhood.
The Sunnyside Yard tends to insulate Long Island City from the rest of western Queens, forcing its residents and businesses to pass through narrow or crowded choke points when leaving or entering the locale. The landward vehicular passages along the East River are defined by Queensboro and the Midtown Tunnel, while the southern ridge (Skillman Avenue) that overlooks the yard leads to residential Sunnyside. The Yard complex allows locomotive access to the both the East River tunnels and to the New York Connecting Railroad, which links Long Island rail to the rest of the continent via the Hell Gate Bridge. Sunnyside Yard continues all the way to Woodside, and sits on an astounding 8,500 foot plot which consumes 192 acres and offers an unbelievable 25.7 miles of track. The viaducts which cross the yards — Hunters Point Avenue, Thomson Avenue, Queens Boulevard are all orientated in a mostly easterly direction, while the 35th Street or Honeywell Bridge, and the 39th Street or Harold Avenue Bridge at Steinway Street offer rare and spread out pinch-points of north south egress across the facility.
The businesses which set up shop around Sunnyside Yard in the early 20th century didn’t much care about auto traffic, they were part of the locomotive city and were here for the rail connections. From 1913′s “Greater New York: bulletin of the Merchants’ Association of New York, Volume 2,” courtesy Google Books: “After luncheon, which was held in the cosy quarters of the Queens Chamber of Commerce on the Bridge Plaza, Long Island City, the party were taken on an automobile drive of about fifty miles, covering the principal points of Industrial interest in Queens. The first stop was made on Diagonal Street which crosses the Long Island Railroad yards. From this point it is possible to see all the features of the industrial development in that part of Queens, especially the development of the Degnon Terminal Company and the new factory of the Loose-Wiles Biscuit Company”.
‘The party then proceeded along Thompson Avenue to Newtown Creek, passing some of the largest factories in Queens, and also the most important industries in New York City, such as the Nichols Copper Company, the General Chemical Company, the National Enameling and Stamping Company, the General Vehicle Company, which is just erecting a large new building, and the Brunswick-Balke-Collender Company. ‘
The naming of Thomson Avenue has always been a bit of a mystery for me. Skillman Avenue, for instance, was named for a farmer that supported the British during the American Revolution and whose lands were confiscated by the victorious rebels (much like DeLancey over in Manhattan). Apparently, there were one or two LIRR and or Pennsylvania RR executives named Thompson – certain older documents refer to this road as “Thompson Avenue” but this is a common typographic error which favors the more widespread surname. There was a Thomson that was an important member of the Queens Chamber of Commerce and LIC community during the 1920′s – but the street dates back to the beginnings of Long Island City and must be named for someone from earlier times.
Newtown Creek Alliance Historian Mitch Waxman lives in Astoria and blogs at Newtown Pentacle.
THOMSON AVENUE MAP
Chiclets Advertising on a wall
THOMSON AVENUE LEADING TO THE VIADUCT TO THE RIGHT AS YOU EXIT QUEENSBORO BRIDGE
CHICLETS FACTORY THE GUM AND SUGAR CAME DIRECTLY INTO THE BUILDING BY RAILROAD.
Now the home of the NYC Department of Design and Construction
DO YOU REMEMBER THE CHICLETS FACTORY?
SKILLMAN AVENUE MAP
ADVERTISED AS OPPOSITE 42 STREET, MANHATTAN
MANY OF THESE AREAS ARE DISAPPEARING AND BEING DEVELOPED
Neptune Meter Works Building was occupied by the company until the 1950’s. It was recently the famous 5 POINTZ Building, famed for its graffiti, now demolished.
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EDITORIAL
Looking east out of my window, one does not imagine that the land beyond is where so much of American industry was born. Many were family businesses that developed into large corporation and companies we all recognize now. It might have been chic and glamorous with landscaped parks and facilities. They had no computers, consultants and tech geniuses to work, just hard labor and ingenuity.
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
THANKS TO MITCH WAXMAN WHO CONTRIBUTED SO MUCH TO THIS POST. CHECK OUT THE NEWTOWN PENTICLE FOR THE LATEST EDITION. All image are copyrighted (c) Roosevelt Island Historical Society unless otherwise indicated
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MORE TREATS FROM THE PAST THEY BUILT THE BEST CARS IN LONG ISLAND CITY
The American Mercedes was made by Daimler Manufacturing Company of Long Island City, New York, USA from 1904 to 1907. They were licensed copies of German Mercedes models. Some commercial vehicles, such as ambulances, were also made. The company was in direct competition with Mercedes Import Co. of New York, which handled the imported Mercedes for the entirety of the United States, at least in 1906.
Manufactured on Steinway Avenue
The Brewster Building is a 400,000-square-foot (37,000 m2) building at 27-01 Queens Plaza North in Long Island City, Queens, New York City. Once an assembly plant for Rolls Royce cars and Brewster cars and Brewster Buffalo airplanes, it is now the corporate headquarters for JetBlue. The building, designed by Stephenson & Wheeler opened in 1911 to handle the assembly of the chassis for the Brewster cars that were being built since 1905 at 47th Street and Broadway in Times Square in nearby Manhattan.
The building was one of the first major developments at the foot of the Queensboro Bridge, opened in 1909, which reduced car transport from Queens to Times Square to a matter of minutes. In 1915 it began building the Brewster Knight.
In 1925, the company was bought by Rolls-Royce of America, which had been operating out of a plant in Springfield, Massachusetts. In 1931, the Rolls Royce Springfield operation ended. From 1931 to 1934, Rolls-Royce Phantom II chassis were shipped directly to the Long Island City plant when Rolls Royce terminated its United States assembly program. From 1934 to 1936, under J. S. Inskip, Brewster automobiles using Ford chassis were built at the plant.
The Brewster operation ceased in 1936. The Brewster Aeronautical Corporation manufactured the Brewster F2A Buffalo and a version of the Vought F4U Corsair known as the F3A-1 during World War II at the plant. The multi-story layout of the building limited airplane production efficiency. The aircraft were flown from Roosevelt Field in Mineola.
PLANES WERE BUILT AT QUEENS PLAZA
The Brewster F2A Buffalo[1] is an American fighter aircraft which saw service early in World War II. Designed and built by the Brewster Aeronautical Corporation, it was one of the first U.S. monoplanes with an arrestor hook and other modifications for aircraft carriers.
PIERCE ARROW BUILDING 34 01 38 AVENUE LONG ISLAND CITY
Pierce-Arrow. The company, based in Buffalo from 1903 to 1938, evolved from a luxury birdcage manufacturer established in 1865, Heinz, Pierce and Munschauer. Henry N. Pierce bought out his two partners and began building and retailing bicycles and motorcycles in 1896, with the leap to automobiles in 1901.
The company’s first success, a two-cylinder auto, named the Arrow, appeared in 1903. The company’s first commercial success, the four-cylinder Great Arrow, arrived in 1904. Though George Pierce sold all his company rights in 1907 and passed away in 1910, the company was known as Pierce-Arrow from 1908 to 1938
Pierce-Arrow Society, dedicated to the preservation of Pierce-Arrow Motor Cars and trucks Pierce-Arrow became known for its luxury autos, as film stars and heads of state made sure to have at least one Pierce in their collection (William H. Taft made the Arrow the first official car associated with the White House). Later, however, since Pierce-Arrow didn’t have a moderate-priced line the company suffered during the Depression and closed its Buffalo factory, which has since been declared a landmark, in 1938.
PHOTO WURTS BROTHERS (C) MUSEUM OF THE CTIY OF NEW YORK, 1921
THE FORD BUILDING THE CENTER BUILDING 33-00 NORTHERN BLVD.
The Ford Building in LIC’s “Carridor” Architecture MITCH WAXMAN
To begin with, the only people who would commonly refer to this enormous example of early 20th century industrial architecture as “Ford” are Kevin Walsh and myself (and possibly Montrose).
Modernity knows it simply as “The Center Building” and it’s found at 33-00 Northern Boulevard at the corner of Honeywell Street (Honeywell is actually a truss bridge over the Sunnyside Yard, just like Thomson Avenue, but that’s another story).
This was once the Ford Assembly and Service Center of Long Island City, which shipped the “Universal Car” to all parts of the eastern United States and for cross Atlantic trade. The recent sale of the building in December 2014, for some $84.5 million, was discussed by Q’Stoner back in 2013.
The term Carridor is one that’s entirely of my own invention. A couple of blocks northeast is the Pierce Arrow Building, and about six blocks from here the Standard Motor Products Building cannot help being noticed. In the early 20th century, this part of Queens was commonly referred to as “Detroit East” for all the automobile companies which manufactured and serviced vehicles here.
The structures built along Northern Boulevard, in particular, were gargantuan. That’s not because of the street, it’s because they backed up on the Sunnyside Yard. The original 1912 section of the building is at Honeywell, and you can see the seam it shares with the 1913-14 expansion by counting three window banks in from the corner.
The Center Building is a multi-tenant combination use office property with ground floor retail and light industrial located on busy Northern Boulevard in Long Island City, borough of Queens, New York City. Located directly on the M&R subway lines and minutes to Midtown Manhattan, the eight-story office building consists of approximately 444,606 rentable square feet situated on 1.44 acre-site.
The Ford Service Center and Assembly Plant, original section, was designed by architect Albert Kahn. Kahn enjoyed a long collaboration with Henry Ford, and designed more than 1,000 commissions for the industrialist. The addition, which continued the motif and overall treatment of the original, was by architect John Graham and expanded the plant’s capacity some 400 percent. This created 500,000 square feet of industrial space. What’s missing from the structure? The large cranes which once transported raw materials into the building from Ford’s 34 car long rail spur.
This was designed as a “fireproof factory,” with five stairwells constructed behind fireproof partitions and self closing doors. The stairs all led to an external exit, and one of the iconic features found on the addition is no mere facade – these balconies over Northern Boulevard are actually a fire tower. Don’t forget that the Triangle Shirt Waist Fire had just taken place over in Manhattan in 1911, which changed EVERYTHING in New York City, as far as industrial architecture and the fire code was concerned. For that generation, the Triangle fire loomed large, just as 9/11 does for ours.
The Ford plant was sold to Goodyear Tires by 1920, as Ford shifted his operations over to a far larger location in Newark. Goodyear sold the place to the Durant Motor Co. of New York in 1921.
STANDARD MOTOR PARTS
The Standard Motor Parts Building has been rebuilt into a contemporary office spaces with a farm on the roof.
Standard Motor Products, Inc. (NYSE: SMP) is a manufacturer and distributor of automotive parts in the automotive aftermarket industry. The company was founded in 1919 as a partnership by Elias Fife and Ralph Van Allen and incorporated by Fife in 1926. It is headquartered in Long Island City, New York, and trades on the New York Stock Exchange. Standard Motor Products, Inc. sells its products to warehouse distributors and auto parts retail chains around the world, under its own brand names such as Standard, BWD Automotive, Blue Streak Automotive, Blue Streak Wire, TechSmart, Intermotor, Factory Air, and Four Seasons, as well as under private labels for key customers.
We sometimes forget the enormous industrial history or Long Island City. Every few months I visit Material for the Arts at 33-00 Northern Blvd. They are located in the former car factory. As one looks out the window you can see where there were railroad sidings to load and unload the delivers to the factories located on the buildings along Northern Blvd. and facing the tracks.
The building with rail sidings and the Sunnyside Yards.
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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)
ARTICLES AND PHOTOS ARE FROM WIKIPEDIA NEWTOWN PENTICLE FORGOTTEN NEW YORK MUSEUM OF THE CITY OF NEW YORK (C)
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THE LAST TROLLEY OVER THE QUEENSBORO BRIDGE AND ITS FATE
WHERE DID THE TROLLEYS COME FROM AND WHERE DID THEY END UP?
THE FIRST TROLLEYS
THE ORIGINAL CARS IN SERVICE WERE FROM 1913 AND ORIGINALLY RAN ON THE MANHATTAN BRIDGE
AS IS TYPICAL WITH QUEENS TRANSIT COMPANIES, THE OWNERSHIP AND OPERATIONS CHANGED MANY TIMES OVER THE YEARS.
THE SECOND AND LAST TROLLEYS
THE TROLLEYS WERE USED IN NEW BEDFORD UNTIL 1948 WHEN THEY WERE REPLACED BY BUSES. THE WERE CLASSY LOOKING IN THEIR DARK GREEN COLOR.
THE TROLLEYS CAME FROM NEW BEDFORD MASS. AFTER THEY USED THEM FROM 1929 TO 1948.
THE NEW BEDFORD CARS WERE NOT REPAINTED FROM THE DARK GREEN COLOR WHEN THEY STARTED TO BE USED HERE
ONE OF THE 5 KIOSKS LEADING TO THE TROLLEY STATION UNDER 59th STREET STATION
1940’S IMAGE OF HOUSES
FARE $.05 ROUNDTRIP
THE TROLLEYS ON THE QUEENSBORO BRIDGE
THE QUEENSBORO BRIDGE RAILWAY CO. SEEMED TO HAVE SOME CARS PAINTED, BUT MOST WERE DILAPIDATED AND RUN-DOWN. SURELY, NOT THE PRIDE OF THE FLEET.
THE LAST TROLLEY ROLLED OVER THE BRIDGE IN 1967. YOU TUBE HAS A VIDEO OF THE LAST RIDE OF THE TROLLEY. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kkPw2IB6ViQ
THE SAD END
THE CARS ENDED UP AT THE KINGSTON TROLLEY MUSEUM. ONE CAR, #601 WAS SITTING IN THE OPEN, ABANDONED, LOOTED AND DETERIORATING UNTIL ABOUT 10 YEARS AGO. THE MUSEUM HAD NO INTEREST OR FUNDS TO RESTORE IT. EVENTUALLY IT WAS USED FOR SALVAGE AND ONLY THE MEMORIES REMAIN.
EDITORIAL Watching and listening to the John Lewis funeral today, I think of politicians. All those present had their challenges in office and we complained about their actions, steps and missteps. We were accepting of them because they were the President and we are proud they served with dignity. They are here today, older a wise. 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
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The Newtown Creek is he border between Brooklyn and Queens
Newtown Creek
Is a 3.5-mile (6-kilometer) long tributary of the East River, is an estuary that forms part of the border between the boroughs of Brooklyn and Queens, in New York City.
In the early days its shores presented a beautiful sight. The Creek’s natural sources were fresh water streams which flowed between wooded elevations and further along lowlands until they mingled with the salt water of the East River. When the tides met, the backing up of these tides caused the stream to overflow into marshes. The creek abounded with fish and shellfish and was also a favorite swimming spot. While the Creek once flowed through wetlands and marshes nearly the entire stretch of the creek now has bulkheads (retaining walls.).
Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries – European Settlement
The Creek has been used by man for hundreds of years starting with Native Americans whose village and fields were at the head of the Creek. Dutch explorers first surveyed the Creek in the seventeenth century. The Dutch, and then the English, used the Creek for agriculture and fledgling industrial commerce, making it the oldest continuous industrial area in the United States Farms and plantations lined both shores of the Creek from the mid-1600’s to the mid-nineteenth century.
The creek begins near the intersection of 47th Street and Grand Avenue on the Brooklyn-Queens border at the intersection of the East Branch and English Kills.
It empties into the East River at 2nd Street and 54th Avenue in Long Island City, opposite Bellevue Hospital in Manhattan at 26th Street. Its waterfront, and that of its tributaries Dutch Kills, Whale Creek, Maspeth Creek, and English Kills are heavily industrialized.
One of the new parks along the Creek
A Polluted Waterway
Up until the latter part of the 20th Century, industries along the creek had free rein over the disposal of unwanted byproducts. With little-to-no government regulation or knowledge of the impact on human health and the environment, it made business sense to pollute the creek. The legacy of this history today is a 17-30 million gallon underground oil spill caused by Standard Oil’s progeny companies, copper contamination from the Phelps Dodge Superfund site, bubbling from the creek bed in the English Kill reach due to increases of hydrogen sulfide and a lack of dissolved oxygen, and creek beds coated with old tires, car frames, seats and loose paper. Nearly the entire Creek had the sheen and smell of petroleum, with the bed and banks slicked black.
The shores of the Newtown Creek in Greenpoint contain some of the most polluted industrial spaces in the United States, befouled by more than a century of oil spills and toxic waste. Soon, they will also be home to a collection of new parks and green spaces, which will open up sections of the waterfront to the surrounding community for the first time in generations.
Each of these projects is a direct result of one of the most complicated and successful environmental justice movements in the city, which has resulted in tens of millions of dollars being granted to a host of ecological restoration projects and new public spaces. After many decades of struggle, the residents of Greenpoint may now begin to see some of the largest environmental projects in their neighborhood finally come to fruition.
NYC DEP WATER TREATMENT PLANT
The Visitor Center is open for education programs by appointment only. If you would like to learn about public tours, please visit the Digester Egg Tour webpage. Located at the Newtown Creek Wastewater Treatment Plant in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, the Visitor Center at Newtown Creek is the only facility within the five boroughs where you can experience New York City’s water infrastructure. Through guided education programs, students can discover the journey our drinking water takes to get to our taps, the process of cleaning our wastewater before it is released into surrounding waterways, and stewardship opportunities.
THE TROLLEY ON THE QUEENSBORO BRIDGE AT THE NORTH TERMINAL AT 60TH STREET AND SECOND AVENUE SHELLY BROOKS, ANDREW SPARBERG, JAY JACOBSON ARE THE WINNERS
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EDITORIAL
When I decided to write about the Newtown Creek, I started reading about the pollution and environmental disaster this waterway has been. For over a century it was a dump site with everything imaginable.
Years ago I took a boat ride on the then be-fouled canal, surely not a pleasant voyage.
In the last decade change is slowly coming to the creek. It may be far from perfect but the efforts of many groups should be recognized:
Check out the NEWTOWN CREEK ALLIANCE UNTAPPED CITIES CURBED NEW YORK NYC DEPARTMENT OF ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION
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
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WEDNESDAY, JULY 29nd, 2020 OUR 117th ISSUE OF FROM THE ARCHIVES
TAKE A FLIGHT OF ART FROM NEWARK FROM LA GUARDIA
NEWARK AIRPORT ADMINISTRATION BUILDING
“THE MECHANICS OF FLYING”
ARSHILE GORKY
MURALS AT NEWARK MUSEUM – NEWARK NJ ADMINISTRATION BUILDING NEWARK AIRPORT
Although the modern style of these brightly colored murals made them were not rediscovered until 1973, when they were found beneath fourteen layers of wall paint at the Newark Airport Administration Building.” (www.philamuseum.org) The originals of the two surviving murals are no longer at the airport, but instead are housed at the Newark Museum.
“Aerial Map” “Aerial Map” Project type: Art, Murals New Deal Agencies: Federal Art Project (FAP), Works Progress Administration (WPA) Started: 1935 Completed: 1937 Artists: Arshile Gorky
Arshile] Gorky painted ten large-scale murals on the theme of aviation for the Newark Airport Administration Building. This mural cycle, known as Aviation: Evolution of Forms under Aerodynamic Limitations, was among the first modernist murals created and installed under the aegis of the Works Progress Administration’s (WPA) Federal Art Project.
Although still engaged with the Cubist vocabulary of Picasso and Braque, the mechanized forms of these murals also reveal a debt to the work of Fernand Léger, especially his monumental 1919 painting The City, now in the Museum’s collection. Léger’s urban, machine-inspired imagery and vivid colors were particularly suited to express the spirit of aviation, and Gorky clearly studied The City intensely since his color reproduction of the painting is covered with his paint-smeared fingerprints.
Like most WPA murals, the panels were not made in situ, but rather painted in the studio on monumental canvases that were later installed on the walls at Newark Airport–a practice that was in keeping with Gorky’s belief that ‘mural painting should not become part of the wall, as the moment this occurs the wall is lost and the painting loses its identity.’ highly controversial at the time, these large-scale compositions signaled Gorky’s emergence as an abstract painter of great promise. Sadly, eight of the Newark Airport murals were later lost or destroyed, while the two remaining works, Aerial Map and Mechanics of Flying,
Gorky at work for one of the Newark Airport murals.
Study for mural for Administration Building, Newark Airport, New Jersey Arshile Gorky 1904-1948.
RESTORATION OF THE ADMINISTRATION BUILDING FROM UNTAPPED CITIES (C)
Control Tower
Is it possible to have an architecturally significant airport terminal, literally hidden in plain sight? It is, if it’s been picked up and moved a half mile, its original entrance tucked into an internal courtyard, and is forgotten by the public. Such is the understatedly epic story of Building 1, an Art Deco beauty built in 1935 as the original terminal building of what was then Newark Metropolitan Airport. Among its numerous claims to fame: Amelia Earhart, Wiley Post, and Charles Lindbergh all flew in and out of here, including on some record breaking flights. In fact, Newark Airport had the most active landing strip in the United States in the 1920s and ’30s, serving as the East Coast terminus of the Air Mail. Atop Building 1 is one of the first air traffic control centers in the country, and the whole building is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
Richard Southwick, Partner and Director of Historic Preservation at Beyer Blinder Belle, who led the adaptive reuse of Building 1 called it his “favorite project overall,” in a recent interview with us, while discussing his many high-profile restorations over the years including the TWA Hotel, Grand Central Terminal, The Frick Collection, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, the New York Botanical Garden, and many more. He calls Building 1, “the first modern terminal anywhere in the nation.” Upon Southwick’s recommendation, we took a visit last week with the Port Authority of New York & New Jersey.
Occupied by the U.S. Army During World War II, by the end the war, the concrete terminal was considered too small for operations. After years of being used by the United State Postal Service for airmail operation, the terminal fell into disuse. More than half a century later, threatened by the extension of a runway, the entire building was cut into thirds and moved half a mile down the airport taxiway in 1999. It was one of the largest ever building moves undertaken historically in the United States and the adaptive reuse effort saved the building from demolition. The building was seamed back together — you can still see where this was done on the exterior and interior — and expanded with a 70,000 square foot new addition that tripled the size of the building..
Today, it is home to the Port Authority Police Department, airport administration offices, an operations center, and rescue and firefighting departments. The sense of history is palpable throughout the building, going beyond the architecture itself, from historic exhibitions on the ground floor to a restored captain’s quarters on the second floor.
Two of ten original WPA murals by Arshile Gorky from the series “Aviation: Evolution of Forms under Aerodynamic Limitations,” were uncovered in the restoration process, and reproductions are on display on the second floor (the originals are in the Newark Museum). Originally planned for Brooklyn’s Floyd Bennett Field, another historic flight facility in the New York City area, Gorky was reassigned by the Works Progress Administration to Newark Airport where he completed the paintings in 1937.
The former main entrance of the terminal looks plucked straight out of Miami Beach, featuring a semi-circular entrance canopy with Art Deco lettering. Aluminum grillwork showing seagulls in flight sits above the three-section entranceway. The revolving door is enclosed on the sides to further emphasize the verticality of the Art Deco design of the building. The entrance overhang extends beyond other smaller semi-circular elements — the revolving door, the air traffic control tower, the bowed windows on the second floor — throughout the central part of the facade. The first floor begins six steps above ground level, with semi-circular steps leading up to the entrance. Two wings come off of this central block, “bent back from the air-field elevation as if in flight,” according to the description in the nomination form for the building in the National Register for Historic Places.
The 80-foot long main concourse, now the entrance lobby to the building, originally provided access to interior corridors which led to waiting rooms. The walls and columns are faced with polished marble, and bird wings made of plaster come off the top of the columns. According to the National Register for Historic Places, “The design incorporated large areas of glass and contained an interior of fanciful, yet restrained decoration which relied heavily on geometric motifs which were interspersed with references to the theme of flight.” When the building was added to the National Register of Historic Places, much of the original lobby walls was covered in sheetrock and the original lighting fixtures and grillwork were missing, but the terrazzo floor and ceilings were still in place.
The lobby of Building 1 is open to the public, though this is a generally little known fact. Southwick concludes about this very unique adaptive reuse project: “There was a little bit of everything: new construction, old construction, interpretation, historic exhibits, moving the building which is one of the tools in our preservation toolbox. [It was] the biggest move of its type in the history of the country. And it’s open to the public!” Here is a look at the historic exhibitions you can see:
Reproduction of Gorky mural “Flight” on display now.
MARINE AIR TERMINAL
LA GUARDIA AIRPORT
SEAPLANE DOCKED BY THE PIER AT THE TERMINAL FAMOUS PAN AM CLIPPERS DEPARTED FROM THIS TERMINAL
“FLIGHT” MURAL BY JAMES BROOKS 1941-1942
Fiorello LaGuardia bust in restored entry of Terminal EXCERPT FROM THE GUGGENHEIM ON-LINE RESOURCES:
JAMES BROOKS
D. 1992, NEW YORK CITY B. 1906, ST. LOUIS, MISSOURI;
James Brooks was born on October 18, 1906, in Saint Louis, Missouri, and moved with his family to Dallas in 1916. He studied art at Southern Methodist University, Dallas, and, after moving to New York in 1926, took night classes at the Art Students League. Like many other Abstract Expressionists, Brooks painted murals for the Works Progress Administration (WPA) Federal Art Project in the late 1930s and early 1940s. His best-known project was a mural titled Flight (1940–42) at the International Marine Terminal building at LaGuardia Airport. This vibrant, monumental work—the largest of the WPA murals—measures 12 feet high and 237 feet long and depicts the history of flying, from early mythology to the latest innovations, in a clean,social Realist style. From 1942 to 1945.
Brooks served as a combat artist with the U.S. Army in the Middle East and returned to New York in 1946, at the height of what would later be termed the Abstract Expressionist movement. An inveterate risk taker, he soon abandoned figuration for abstraction. He reconnected with Jackson Pollock, a friend from the WPA days. Brooks not only took over their Eighth Street studio when Pollock and his wife, artist Lee Krasner, moved to Long Island, but also credited Pollock with encouraging him to try a more gestural style. During the late 1940s, Brooks’s aesthetic evolved from a loose derivation of Cubism to a moodier, more atmospheric style. In the summer of 1947, Brooks had a breakthrough. He was painting on paper, and glued the paper onto heavy cloth for archival purposes. He noticed that the paste he used to attach the paper to the cloth bled through to the side he was painting on. From then on he would start by working on the cloth and then switch to the front of the painting, combining accidents with deliberate choices in an approach that he used for several years. In the 1960s, Brooks shifted styles again, building compositions out of larger, bolder, and simpler forms. Brooks had his first solo show at the Peridot Gallery, New York (1949), and continued to show regularly in New York galleries over the next 30 years.
In 1963, the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, mounted a retrospective that traveled to the Rose Art Museum, Brandeis University, Waltham, Massachusetts; Baltimore Museum of Art; Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; Washington Gallery of Modern Art, Washington, D.C.; and University of California Art Galleries, Los Angeles. In 1975, Martha Jackson Gallery and Finch College Museum of Art, New York, jointly organized a retrospective that traveled to Guild Hall Museum, East Hampton, New York; Flint Institute of Arts, Grand Rapids Art Museum, and Cranbrook Art Museum, Bloomfield Hills, all Michigan; and University of Connecticut, Storrs. Another retrospective was shown at the Portland Museum of Art, Maine (1983). Among major group exhibitions, his work was featured in the Whitney Annual (later the Whitney Biennial), New York (1950, 1951, 1953–55, 1957–59, 1963, 1967); 12 Americans at the Museum of Modern Art, New York (1956); and Documenta, Kassel, West Germany (1959). He received a John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship (1969). Brooks died on March 9, 1992, in East Hampton.
TRAM Station attendant booth at Manhattan JAY JACOBSON AND NINA LUBLIN GUESSED RIGHT
EDITORIAL Two airports, both from the 1930’s and cherishing a small piece of history at each one. Hopefully, the Newark facility will again be open to the public at some time. Thanks to our friends at UNTAPPED CITIES for the wonderful piece on Newark Airport Administration Building.
At this time I may just book a trip to Buffalo to see the Marine Air Terminal (It is in NY and I won’t have to quarantine and Jet Blue flies there!)
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
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William Henry Johnson Born Florence, South Carolina Died Central Islip, New York 1901-died Central Islip, NY 1970 excerpt from: https://americanart.si.edu/artist/william-h-johnson-2486
By almost any standard, William H. Johnson (1901–1970) can be considered a major American artist. He produced hundreds of works in a virtuosic, eclectic career that spanned several decades as well as several continents. It was not until very recently, however, that his work began to receive the attention it deserves.
Born in South Carolina to a poor African-American family, Johnson moved to New York at age seventeen. Working a variety of jobs, he saved enough money to pay for an art education at the prestigious National Academy of Design. His mastery of the academy’s rigorous standards gained him both numerous awards and the respect of his teachers and fellow students.
Johnson spent the late 1920s in France, absorbing the lessons of modernism. As a result, his work became more expressive and emotional. During this same period, he met and fell in love with Danish artist Holcha Krake, whom he married in 1930. The couple spent most of the ’30s in Scandinavia, where Johnson’s interest in primitivism and folk art began to have a noticeable impact on his work.
Returning with Holcha to the U.S. in 1938, Johnson immersed himself in the traditions of Afro-America, producing work characterized by its stunning, eloquent, folk art simplicity. A Greenwich Village resident, he became a familiar, if somewhat aloof, figure on the New York art scene. He was also a well-established part of the African-American artistic community at a time when most black artists were still riding the crest of the Harlem Renaissance.
Although Johnson enjoyed a certain degree of success as an artist in this country and abroad, financial security remained elusive. Following his wife’s death in 1944, Johnson’s physical and mental health declined dramatically. In a tragic and drawn-out conclusion to a life of immense creativity, Johnson spent his last twenty-three years in a state hospital on Long Island. By the time of his death in 1970, he had slipped into obscurity. After his death, his entire life’s work was almost disposed of to save storage fees, but it was rescued.
GOING TO CHURCH 1939-1940
DR. GEORGE WASHINGTON CARVER 1945 OIL ON CARDBOARD
VIELLE A MAISON AT PORTE 1927 OIL ON BURLAP
One of the most brilliant yet tragic careers of an early twentieth-century African-American artist was that of William H. Johnson. Originally from the Deep South, Johnson became a world traveler who absorbed the customs and cultures of New York, Europe, and North Africa. He completed hundreds of oils, watercolors, gouaches, pen-and-ink sketches, block prints, silk screens, and ceramics. Johnson’s career also spanned a gamut of styles from the academic, through Impressionism, Cubism, Fauvism, and German Expressionism, to, finally, a “conscious naiveté”.
Johnson was born on March 18, 1901,in Florence, South Carolina. The eldest of five children, he dropped out of school at an early age to help support his family. As a child he frequently copied cartoons from local newspapers, an activity that developed his ability to tell a story in witty pictures. Johnson left Florence around 1918 and moved to New York where he enrolled in the National Academy of Design and worked notably with the painter Charles Hawthorne. In 1926 Hawthorne raised funds to send Johnson abroad to study.
During the winter of 1926 Johnson traveled to France where he studied and painted in Paris, Moret-sur-Loing, and Cagnes-sur-Mer. From 1927 to 1929 he also visited Corsica, Nice, Belgium, and Denmark. Johnson’s earliest works in Paris and Corsica were impressionistic landscapes and cityscapes. He quickly developed a short-hand technique that included only the essentials of design. In late 1929 Johnson returned to New York with a number of his French-Corsican paintings. He exhibited some of these works in the Harmon Foundation show of 1930 and received the coveted gold medal.
Following this success, Johnson returned to Europe and married a Danish textile artist, Holcha Krake, whom he had met in southern France. The newlywed Johnsons traveled across France and Belgium to Denmark where they settled in the small fishing village of Kerteminde, near his wife’s home. The people of Kerteminde welcomed Johnson warmly and were fascinated by his paintings of gardens, old houses, and scenes of marine life.
HONEYMOONERS 1941-1944
BOYS SUNDAY TRIP 1939-1942 TEMPERA ON PAPER
LUNCHTIME REST 1940-1941
In 1933 the Johnsons spent several months in North Africa where they delighted in the colorful Arabian bazaars and mosques, painted numerous portraits of the residents, worked in ceramics, and were taught age-old secrets of glazing and firing. The couple then traveled across Norway by bicycle. Johnson’s paintings of that period capture the fresh atmosphere of spring with blossoming trees, the clear water of the deep fjords, and the blues of distant snow-capped mountains. Sailing next from Aalesund, Sweden, north to Tromsö, the two artists continued to paint and immerse themselves in the beauties of nature. They lived in Svolvær in the Lofoten Islands where Johnson painted and Holcha painted and wove her copy of the Baldishol Tapestry.
The threat of World War II prompted Johnson to return to the United States in 1938. In a pronounced and unexpected transition in his style, Johnson became interested in religious paintings and his subjects were almost exclusively African American. Using a palette of only four or five colors and painting frequently on burlap or plywood, Johnson developed a flat, consciously naïve style. During the early 1940s, war activities, the Red Cross, and other related events interested Johnson and provided grist for his widely exhibited narrative paintings.
In January 1944 Johnson’s wife Holcha died of cancer, an event that nearly shattered both his life and career. In June 1944 Johnson traveled to Florence, South Carolina, to visit his mother for the first time in fourteen years. There he painted a number of portraits of family and friends, as well as a series of paintings portraying seated women staring directly at the observer.
In 1945 Johnson began his final paintings; social, historical, and political panels including a series of narrative themes built around single subjects such as Booker T. Washington and John Brown. These paintings were exhibited only once in the United States. Late in 1946, still despondent over his wife’s death, Johnson packed all of his art and returned to Denmark where he hoped to find peace among his wife’s family in the country that he had grown to love. He exhibited his historical and political paintings in Copenhagen in March 1947, which was the last exhibition of his works held during his lifetime. There is quite a bit of Matisse’s worship of unrestricted colors in his pictures,” wrote a Danish critic of Johnson’s last show, “But where Matisse is an aesthetician, Johnson goes further and shows us the working people of the southern states, the Negroes and their leaders, and their entirely strangely colorful world.…”
Johnson, whose peculiar behavior had been noticed by close friends, became mentally ill shortly after his last show in Denmark. He was cared for temporarily in Denmark and later sent back to New York where he was hospitalized. On April 13, 1970, Johnson died at Central Islip State Hospital on Long Island, where he had spent the last twenty-three years of his life in obscurity, unable to produce any art. Today Johnson is considered one of the most important African-American artists of his generation.
Regenia A. Perry Free within Ourselves: African-American Artists in the Collection of the National Museum of American Art (Washington, D.C.: National Museum of American Art)
MONDAY PHOTO OF THE DAY BLOOMBERG CENTER CORNELL TECH WINNER IS JOAN BROOKS
WINNER IS JOAN BROOKS
EDITORIAL
Watching the services for Congressman John Lewis reminded my of our trip to Selma.
in 2011 Robin Lynn and I visited Selma, Alabama. In the 1950’s my uncle was the rabbi of the reform Jewish congregation in Selma. I knew his widow who would visit us. When she passed away her son sent us her & her husband’s marriage license and his rabbinical ordination. That lead to curiosity’s and I spotted an article about southern Judaism and the Harmony Club, the Jewish social club being restored in Selma. With a sense of exploration, Robin and I set off for an interesting visit thru Judaism, the south, Selma, civil rights and America. One day I will continue the story.
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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 Melanie Colter and Deborah Dorff Robert Johnson art courtesy Smithsonian Museum of American Art
All image are copyrighted (c) Roosevelt Island Historical Society unless otherwise indicated
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LET’S TAKE THE FERRY FROM LONG ISLAND CITY TO MANHATTAN IN 1910
(AND STOP FOR SOME SHOPPING AND BAR BRAWLS WHILE WAITING FOR THE FERRY)
Wandering Thru Long Island City……………….
After walking past all the dining spots I was at the end of Vernon Blvd. I saw the LONG ISLAND CITY Long Island Railroad Station. Is it still used? It seemed to be a mid-day parking lot for trains.
It was time to contact LIRR historian Andrew Sparberg:
Long Island City Station is still in use. Current timetables are shown below. 4 AM peak trains arrive, and 4 PM peak trains depart. No trains in or out during midday, evenings, or weekends. Tracks are used for train storage between the rush hours. Trains shown on the timetables that end or begin at Hunterspoint Ave. without a LI City time shown are stored in the yard between rush hours, so this location is still active and important.
A LITTLE MORE HISTORY
This station was built on June 26, 1854, and rebuilt seven times during the 19th Century. On December 18, 1902, both the two-story station building and office building owned by the LIRR burned down.
The rebuilt, and fire-proof, station opened on April 26, 1903. Electric service to the station began on June 16, 1910. Before the East River Tunnels were built, this station served as the terminus for Manhattan-bound passengers from Long Island, who took ferries to the East Side of Manhattan, specifically to the East 34th Street Ferry Landing in Murray Hill, and the James Slip Ferry Port in what is today part of the Two Bridges section of Lower Manhattan.
The passenger ferry service was abandoned on March 3, 1925. A track spur split from the Montauk Branch east of the Long Island City station, running along the south border of the station before curving north to the North Shore Freight Branch running between 48th and 49th Avenues, where there were connections to car floats at what is today the Gantry Plaza State Park.
These car floats carried freight trains to and from Manhattan and New Jersey until the mid-20th century. Today, ferry service is operated by NYC Ferry. The station house was torn down again in 1939 for construction of the Queens–Midtown Tunnel, but continued to operate as an active station throughout the tunnel’s construction and opening. (Wikipedia)
Page from “300 Years of Long Island City History 1630-1930” Vincent Seyfried
This 1904 map was put out by Wanamaker’s Department Store. I will feature enlargements of the island and ferry routes in a future issue.
” I found this essay in typescript in my parents’ basement several years ago. Thinking it an interesting personal account of the western Queens section known as Long Island City I scanned and posted it on the Internet, soliciting information about its author R. Leslie Smith. I don’t know if the December 1959 date on the typescript is the date Smith wrote the essay or simply the date someone retyped it. That he refers to Woolsey, Remsen and other street names that were changed during the late 1920s, could date it to that era. In 2001, I received a e-mail from a Queens researcher who informed me that Smith was a prominent lawyer in Woodside in the early part of the century. There is a little information about him in Catherine Gregory’s book “Woodside A Historical Perspective,” “Woodside on the move.” Smith’s widow (Jennie Olivia JONES) sold their family home after his death in 1960, and it was my e-mail correspondent who purchased the house from her. A few biographical highlights, based on Smith’s 1918 draft registration and items in the New York Times, most importantly his obituary (Aug. 29, 1960. p. 25): His full name was Robert Leslie Smith, born Oct 7, 1880. This would date the earliest memories in this piece to the 1890s. He graduated from Columbia Law School in 1901 and while in private law practice, served as a civic and business leader in Woodside throughout his life. He was the founder and president of Woodside National Bank and chairman of the Woodside Community Baptist Church. Smith has included some street name changes in parenthesis. I’ve made similar annotations, but in square brackets to differentiate my own from the original. I’ve also added scans of a few related postcards. Otherwise, the essay is as I found it. -‘
LOOKING AT OLD LONG ISLAND CITY ACROSS THE LINE By R. Leslie Smith
Traveling down Jackson Avenue and continuing on Borden Avenue to the 34th Street [Manhattan] ferry , there were several buildings of some historical interest. Right opposite the ferry was the Queens County Bank, the only bank at that time between Flushing and the East River. This bank used to open at eight o’clock in the morning in order to enable depositors coming in on trains to the Long Island Depot to make bank deposits and then catch the ferryboat for New York.
There were two lines of ferryboats running from the ferry slip at the foot of Borden Avenue, one to 34th Street, New York, and the other called the Long Ferry to James Slip, which was located to the north of Fulton Street, New York. Many people taking this ferry would walk over to the Wall Street district, which was pleasant until you had to pass the Fulton Fish Market and inhale the various fish odors emanating therefrom.
There was another steamboat line which ran a double-deck passenger boat from the Borden Avenue slip to the foot of Wall Street. This was called the “Bankers Line” and the fare was considerably more than on the ferries.
At the 34th Street ferry slip the Long Island Railroad built a shed and which Patrick J. Gleason, several times Mayor of Long Island City and the last Mayor before consolidation, claimed that several posts supporting the shed encroached on street property. He personally went on the promises with an axe and chopped down the posts. From then on he was called “Battle Axe Gleason”, a name he became so proud of that he used to wear a diamond stickpin in the shape of a battle axe.
Prior to the building of the elevated railroad structures on Second and Third Avenues [formerly Debevoise and Lathrop Aves., now 31st and 32nd Streets], there were two steamboats on the East River running from lower New York to Harlem, one known as the “Sylvan Dell” and the other the “Sylvan Stream”. The large bell on one of these boats was later acquired by the Woodside Hook & Ladder Company and, on its dissolution, became the property of St. Sebastian’s Catholic Church.
The steamboats used to stop at the foot of Broadway, Long Island City and residents living up as far as Steinway Avenue would walk to the East River and board the boats for downtown New York, Coming back to the foot of Borden Avenue, at the intersection of Front Street [now 2nd Street], was located Miller’s Hotel, which was a rendezvous for Queens politicians. The Queens County Republican Committee used to meet there and after the burning of the Queens County Court House the Queens County Bar Association held meetings there for a time.
History has it that one of the Presidents of the United States used to stop there on his way for a weekend visit to one of his cabinet secretaries who lived out on the island. Many businessmen bound for Long Island trains would stop at the hotel for liquid refreshment. Borden Avenue, from the ferry up to Jackson Avenue, was the early business section of Hunterspoint. Some of the early lawyers had offices there, including Alvin T. Payne, father of Alvin T. Payne, Jr., and Benjamin Payne.
The shopping center of Hunterspoint- in the early days was on Vernon Avenue, between Borden Avenue and 3d Street [now 51st Ave.], where starting northward from the corner was Schwalenberg’s Hotel, Brodie’s Hardware & Plumbing Supply Store, with Fox’s Photographic Gallery upstairs, then Schweikart’s Mens Furnishing Store and New’s Grocery Store on the next corner, Coming up Jackson Avenue, George W. Clay, real estate broker, built the first office building with an elevator; and north of the corner of Borden Avenue on the-other side of Jackson Avenue was Dillon’s Department Store, which later became the Borough Hall and Tax Office.
VERNON AVENUE
LONG ISLAND RAILROAD TERMINAL DISEMBARK FOR FERRY TO MANHATTAN
GANTRY FOR FREIGHT CARS LOADING
BANANA CARRIER 1940 COLOR WOODCUT ON PAPER
PATRICK J. GLEASON
ANOTHER COLORFUL CHARACTER IN HISTORY
Political life Gleason held “truly remarkable sway over Long Island City’s affairs” for years when his power was in its prime “by his keen personal hold on the majority of the people he ruled. By nature and by political preference he was a Democrat, but he was voted for simply as ‘Paddy,’ he was obeyed as ‘Paddy,’ and the people whom he had once autocratically governed, and a respectable portion of whom had been hostile to him, remembered him as ‘Paddy’ to the day of his death.”[
The growth of industry in Long Island City in the 1890s was accompanied by a growth of graft, and Gleason acted in Long Island City as Boss Tweed had decades earlier in Manhattan. As mayor, he owned trolley lines under city contract, leased personal property to the school district, and he formed the “Citizens Water Supply Co.” and attempted to sell water to Long Island City from his wells.
When the railroad installed a fence to block traffic on the ferry, he personally chopped it down, earning the nickname “Battle-Axe.” Gleason’s personality was legendary. Gleason’s volatile temper got him arrested, and his relationship with the board of aldermen was tempestuous.
The newspapers, which loathed him, refused to publish his photograph. When The New York Times printed an article detailing how Gleason had used to office of mayor to enrich himself, Gleason bought almost every newspaper printed to reduce the impact. In 1890, Gleason drunkenly approached Associated Press reporter George B. Crowley in a hotel lobby and repeatedly insulted him, calling him a loafer and a thief Crowley ignored Gleason at first and then replied that Crowley was not as much a loaf as Gleason. With that, Gleason punched Crowley in the face and kicked him repeatedly in the face.
Bystanders took the bloodied Crowley into the hotel’s restaurant. Crowley returned to the lobby to look for his eyeglasses, which had fallen off during the assault. Gleason grabbed him and threw him against a cigar stand, breaking the glass. Because Gleason was the mayor, police declined to arrest Gleason without a warrant from a judge. Gleason was eventually arrested and indicted for assault in the third degree.
Gleason was convicted and sentenced to five days imprisonment in the county jail, with a fine of $250. The following year, Gleason dislocated the shoulder of a man at a meeting of the Board of Health. Gleason was arrested and charged with assault in the second degree.
PS1, which was built during Gleason’s tenure. The school later called P.S. 1, the largest high school on Long Island when built, was Gleason’s legacy to the community’s children. When Gleason died bankrupt and discredited a few years out of office, hundreds lined the route to his interment in Calvary Cemetery. Gleasonville, a former neighborhood in Woodside, Queens, north of Northern Boulevard, was named after him.
FOOD-ETORIAL
This afternoon it was time to leave the island, I was off by ferry to Long Island City. Vernon Blvd. which used to have 3 or 4 dining spots is now full of tempting choices for out-of-door dining. In contrast to our scene ( or lack there of) many of the establishments have gone thru great expense and effort to have attractive dining spots. BLEND had contractors still completing a wood paneled area. On that block and the next few I noticed Bareburger with about 20 tables, Cafe Henri, Woodbines, LIC Slice, Centro Pizza, and the long standing Tournesol, all ready to welcome customers. I am not a restaurant critic but will be heading east to dine since we can only eat on Roosevelt Island.
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)
IMAGES FROM “OLD QUEENS, N.Y. IN EARLY PHOTOGRAPHS
300 YEARS OF LONG ISLAND CITY HISTORY 1630-1930 VINCENT SEYFRIED AND WILLIAM ASADORIAN (C)
THIS IS THE 114th ISSUE OF FROM THE ARCHIVES JULY 25-26, 2020 WEEKEND EDITION
THE GOLDWATER
MURALISTS’
OTHER WORKS
ILYA BOLOTOWSKY
Th Bolotowsky mural while it was at Goldwater before removal and restoration.
In the Barber Shop, 1934 Ilya Bolotowsky
Oil on canvas, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Transfer from the U.S. Department of Labor, 1964.1.79 Brilliant reds, blues, and greens illuminate this ordinary New York barbershop.
Ilya Bolotowsky, who made this painting for the Public Works of Art Project, a pilot program of government support for artists, expressed the challenge “to show a typical average drab barbershop and at the same time get a decorative effect through color.” Ordinary details come to life with vivid hues: the barber using a straight razor to shave the man in the chair, the red cash register ready to ring up the bill, the spittoon sitting on the floor, and rows of bottles reflected repeatedly in “the endless corridor of two oppositely situated mirrors.”
A Russian immigrant himself, Bolotowsky enticed fellow immigrants to pose for him, including all four people pictured here, carefully selected by the artist. For him, people from around the world gathered in a New York barbershop embodied the American scene.
Ilya Bolotowsky, Cane Press, Untitled, from the portfolio American Abstract Artists, 1937, offset lithograph on paper, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of Patricia and Phillip Frost, 1986.92.114.4Ilya Bolotowsky, Cane Press.
Ilya Bolotowsky, Architectural Variation, 1949, oil on canvas, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of Patricia and Phillip Frost, 1986.92.4
Williamsburg Murals
The exceptional murals installed in this area, executed by the pioneer American abstractionists Ilya Bolotowsky, Balcomb Greene, Paul Kelpe, and Albert Swinden, were commissioned by the Works Progress Administration/Federal Art Project in 1936 for Brooklyn’s Williamsburg Houses, one of the earliest and best public housing projects in New York City. Designed by pioneering modernist architect William Lescaze, the four-story houses included basement community rooms decorated with murals in “abstract and stimulating patterns” designed to aid relaxation.
Burgoyne Diller, the New York head of the Mural Division, recruited younger, innovative artists for the project, reiterating Lescaze’s viewpoint that standard realist subject matter, which celebrated productivity, would not be a source of relaxation for waterfront and factory workers. While the prevailing subject matter in American art—and especially WPA-funded works—centered on narrative scenes of American life, these murals were virtually unique, in that they were the first non-objective public murals in the United States, containing no recognizable figures, symbols, or objects.
Fortunately, though the murals suffered from neglect over the years, they were rediscovered in the late 1980s under layers of paint. After a painstaking restoration, they were returned to public view at the Brooklyn Museum, on long-term loan from the New York City Housing Authority.
Ilya Bolotowsky, Main Entrance Lobby Mural, 1975, synthetic polymer: acrylic on paper, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Transfer from the General Services Administration, Art-in-Architecture Program, 1977.47.40.
The Swinden mural at its new home in Tata Innovation Center at Cornell Tech.
ALBERT SWINDEN
Albert Swinden, Untitled, from the portfolio American Abstract Artists, 1937, offset lithograph on paper, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of Patricia and Phillip Frost, 1986.92.114.28
Albert Swinden, Untitled (Abstraction), 1945, gouache on paper, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of Alice Swinden Carter, 1988.90.1
Albert Swinden, Untitled, from the portfolio American Abstract Artists, 1937, offset lithograph on paper, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of Patricia and Phillip Frost, 1986.92.114.28
JOSEPH RUGOLO
FISHERMAN’S BAY The Rugolo mural after restoration. It will be installed at Cornell Tech at a future date.
Joseph Rugolo, Mural of Sports ca. 1937-1938, oil on linen, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Transfer from the Newark Museum, 1966.31.16
Rugolo with above mural.
DANE CHANASE
Dane Chanase at work at Goldwater. The mural featuring musical instruments was never located and was lost.
He was born in Palermo, Italy. He exhibited at the Salon d’Automne. He served in World War I. He married artist Sheva Ausubel (1896–1957). He was a member of the Federal Art Project. He created a mural for the School of Industrial Art, Brooklyn. His work is held by the Smithsonian American Art Museum. His papers are held at the Archives of American Art.
SUPPORT THE R.I.H.S. WE ARE OPEN EVERY SATURDAY AND SUNDAY DO YOUR GIFT SHOPPING WITH US!!
FRIDAY IMAGE OF THE DAY PLINTH WHERE LAMP-POST WAS SITUATED AT CORNER OF SECOND AVENUE AND 60 ST. JAY JACOBSON AND ALEXIS VILLEFANE WINNERS
EDITORIAL
I have not written about our friends at Coler for a few weeks. The good news is that the nursing home is free of Covid-19 cases. All residents and staff are tested every week. The special hospital unit that treated Covid-19 patients is officially closing at the end of the month. It will be ready to re-open if there is a need.
Many organizations have supported the staff and residents. The other day when I was at Coler six giant gift baskets were sent for the staff and residents from a consulate of a foreign nation. The staff and residents have benefited from many corporations and organizations that have realized that our long term care facilities need ongoing support.
As head of the Coler Auxiliary, we are re-evaluating our work this year since much funding cannot be used for original purposes and will be spent of activities and needs that are in-line with the continued limitations.
I wish I could say that there are visitors at Coler. Visitors are not permitted at any nursing home. Coler is in the same situation as every nursing home in New York City. If there are no Covid positive tests in 28 consecutive days visiting can resume on very tight regulations. Coler is no different from the fanciest private home. The three pages of rules apply to all. To see the rules see: https://coronavirus.health.ny.gov/system/files/documents/2020/07/health-advisory_nursing-home-visitation_final-7.pdf
Some of our neighbors continue to antagonize the administration of Coler. It is time to support Coler and stop rubbing salt in old wounds. We must go beyond what happened to every nursing home in New York and make Coler a better home for all New Yorkers who need the care and dedication of the staff.
Judith Berdy
Funding Provided by: Roosevelt Island Operating Corporation Public Purpose Funds Council Member Ben Kallos City Council Discretionary Funds thru DYCD Text by Judith Berdy Thanks to Bobbie Slonevsky for her dedication to Blackwell’s Almanac and the RIHS Thanks to Deborah Dorff for maintaining our website Edited by Melanie Colter and Deborah Dorff ALL PHOTOS COPYRIGHT RIHS. 2020 (C) PHOTOS IN THIS ISSUE (C) JUDITH BERDY RIHS PHOTOS CREDITS: SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION MUSEUM OF AMERICAN ART (C) BROOKLYN MUSEUM (C) NYC HEALTH AND HOSPITALS (C)
The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex.
THE SUNFLOWER STAIRS AT THE FDR FOUR FREEDOMS PARK
LESCAZE AT THE WILLIAMSBURG HOUSES
The Williamsburg Houses
were built in 1936–1938 under the auspices of the Housing Division of the Public Works Administration (PWA). The project was originally segregated, only allowing white residents. It was one of the first and most costly (in 1937 dollars) of New York City housing projects. New York City Mayor Fiorello La Guardia poured the first shovel of concrete for the project and was a strong supporter of the project despite its cost ($12.5 million in 1936).
The site is the former home of Williamsburg Continuation School and the Finco Dye and Print Works Inc. Leonard and Scholes Streets in 2012.
The chief architect of the project was Richmond Shreve, and the design team of nine other architects was led by the Swiss-American modernist William Lescaze, whose Philadelphia Saving Fund Society building of 1928-32 was one of the first major International Style buildings in the United States. The construction contract was awarded to Starrett Brothers & Eken, which had worked closely with Shreve on the Empire State Building and later built the housing developments Parkchester, Stuyvesant Town, and Peter Cooper Village.
The housing project was conveyed by the federal government to the NYCHA in 1957. A $70-million-dollar renovation was done in 1999 by the NYCHA’s architect David J. Burney. Design Standing between Maujer and Scholes Streets, and Leonard Street and Bushwick Avenue, its 20 four-story residential buildings occupy twelve city blocks.
The buildings of the Williamsburg Houses are positioned to allow a sequence of courtyards, playgrounds, and ball courts between them; a school and community building are part of the site plan, and two curving pedestrian pathways cut through the grounds. all in three shapes; a capital “H”, lowercase “h,” and a “T” shape. The “T” shaped buildings are in the middle of the complex with both “H” shaped buildings surrounding them. The houses are oriented towards the sun at a 15-degree angle.
1940’S IMAGE OF HOUSES
William Lescaze was born in Onex, Switzerland. He studied at the Collège Calvin and at the École des Beaux-Arts, before completing his formal education at the École polytechnique fédérale de Zurich in Zurich where Karl Moser was a teacher, receiving his degree in 1919. He contributed to the post-war reconstruction effort of Arras, and then immigrated to the US in 1920.
He worked for some time at the architectural firm of Hubbell & Benes in Cleveland, Ohio, and taught French during night classes at the YMCA . In 1923, he was offered a modeling job and moved to New York City where he set up his business. His first major work was the design of the Oak Lane Country Day School outside Philadelphia. In 1929, Philadelphia architect George Howe invited William Lescaze to form a partnership, Howe & Lescaze. Within just a few weeks after joining forces, the duo began work on a large project for downtown Philadelphia.
The resulting structure, completed in 1932, was the Philadelphia Savings Fund Society (PSFS) Building, which is today generally considered the first International Modernist skyscraper, and the first International Style building of wide significance in the United States. It was also the first building with full air conditioning. Lescaze is generally given credit for the design: letters from Howe to Lescaze quote the former insisting to the latter that “the design is definitely yours.” The structure replaced the bank’s former headquarters in Philadelphia, a classicist structure near Washington Square built in 1897. In 1930, Howe & Lescaze submitted a design for the new building of the Museum of Modern Art in New York.[3] The wood and metal model was donated to the MOMA in 1994.
In 1935, William Lescaze established his own architecture firm, Lescaze & associates. His 1937 Alfred Loomis house in Tuxedo Park, NY is regarded as an early experiment in double-skin facade construction.[4] In 1939 he designed a futuristic “House for 2089” which included a helipad on the roof. Lescaze was also the design lead for the 1937 Williamsburg Houses in Brooklyn, a pioneering 20-building modernist housing project modeled on European examples. He later taught industrial design at the Pratt Institute (1943–1945).
Among his built works were the CBS West Coast studios Columbia Square on Sunset Boulevard (1938). William Lescaze also designed the office building at 711 Third Street, the city and municipal courts building in the Civic Center in Manhattan, and the High School of Art and Design. From 1949 to 1959, he served at the State Building Code Commission William Lescaze died on 9 February 1969 of a heart attack at his New York home. He was a proponent of modern architecture, stating it was the only architecture that could solve the housing problem.
WPA MURALS AT WILLIAMSBURG HOUSES
A SERIES OF ABSTRACT MURALS WERE INSTALLED IN THE BUILDINGS. SOME WERE DISCOVERED IN THE 1980’S AN ARE NOW ON EXHIBIT AT THE BROOKLYN MUSEUM. ONE WAS DONE BY ARTIST ILYA BOLOTOWSKY.
IN A COINCIDENCE LESCAZE WAS THE ARCHITECT OF THE GOLDWATER ACTIVITIES BUILDING WHICH WAS A FEW FEET AWAY FROM THE LOCATION OF THE BOLOTOWSKY MURAL
LESCAZE, ARCHITECT OF ACTIVITIES BUILDING AT GOLDWATER
THE ACTIVITIES BUILDING HELD 3 CHAPELS, AUDITORIUM AND CRAFTS ROOMS FOR THE GOLDWATER RESIDENTS.
A WONDERFUL OUT-OF-DOOR TERRACE UNITED THE OLD AND NEW BUILDINGS AT GOLDWATER
THE PROTESTANT CHAPEL SOUTH FACING STAINED GLASS WINDOWS BROUGHT A SPECIAL GLOW TO THE CHAPEL.
THE MOSAIC ARTIST WAS NEVER FOUND. THE MOSAIC IS NOW AT COLER.
DATE OF SUPPORT COLUMN OF THE QUEENSBORO BRIDGE CORRECT ANSWER ALEXIS VILLAFANE
A LETTER FROM JAY JACOBSON
Thanks, JB, for finding a photo of my fantasy sailboat.
We were never (!) so elegant. In the late 1990s, I was sailing in Maine with a group of friends. We knew that the New York Yacht Club, a venerable and distinguished institution was holding its annual cruise in the same area in which we were sailing.
The NYYC often had crew to help sail their elegant yachts and, being the NYYC, the crew were often outfitted in “uniforms” which had the name of the yacht on which they were employed embroidered on their J. Crew (really!) shirts.
Among other jobs, the crew on the elegant yachts were tasked with shopping for their vessels when the NYYC was at one of their overnight anchorages. While our boat didn’t have anyone as crew other than ourselves, I did think that we should have crew shirts to wear when we rowed our little dinghy ashore to do our marketing.
So, late on the second afternoon of our voyage, when we realized that we were going to be in the same harbor as the NYYC fleet and would doubtless meet some of them shopping ashore, I handed out our bright orange tee shirts with contrast green lettering. Most other crew shirts bore the name of the yacht on which the crew worked. Ours said: Department of Sanitation, City of New York.
Text by Judith Berdy Thanks to Bobbie Slonevsky for her dedication to Blackwell’s Almanac and the RIHS Thanks to Deborah Dorff for maintaining our website Edited by Melanie Colter and Deborah Dorff
All image are copyrighted (c) Roosevelt Island Historical Society unless otherwise indicated
FUNDING PROVIDED BY ROOSEVELT ISLAND OPERATING CORPORATION PUBLIC PURPOSE GRANTS CITY COUNCIL REPRESENTATIVE BEN KALLOS DISCRETIONARY FUNDING THRU DYCD
