A hot summer Sunday. I stopped off at the kiosk where have been very busy selling cold water to visitors or the last 2 months. I decided Ellen would be at kiosk this afternoon and I was off to take the ferry. The site of gorgeous sallboat passing was another motive to make me set sail
After a quick ferry ride, I was into Building 77 at the Brooklyn Navy Yard. On a quiet Sunday Russ & Daughters was open and ready to serve my need for appetizing. I left with bages, smoked salmon, whitefish salad,ruggelah and some other delicacies. I tasted some and decided it was time to take an Uber tothe Weir Greenhouse outside Green-Wood Cemetery.
When exiting the Navy Yard, I spotted the Sand Street entrance. All entrances to the yard are secured and you must have permission to entrance. Remember for over 200 years the yard has buit ships and served military and civilian needs therefore the restricted entrance to most areas.
The gates were restored in 2015 and one of them now is home to the Kings County Distillary venue and distillary in the old Paymaster Building, nearby.(Open for tours and tastings)
While traversing Brooklyn of the very deteriotated BQE, I spotted the bridge that has been in service since 1883, Thanks Roeblings!
This mural was the only distraction from the onslaught of high rise structures blocking the harbor view.
(not my photo) There it was! After decades of starts and stops the greenhouse is now a visitor center for the Green-Wood Cemetery. For years the buiding was closed and an eyesore, finally the cemetery acquired the remains of the building and how it is fully restored and a visitor center is adjoining.
Inside the greenhouse is a large multi sided room with the wonderful glass walls and images of the cemeteries history on the walls. There is seating and guests are welcome to bring snacks and refreshments.
Adjoining the reception area is a gallery with the history of Green-Wood, displays and relics of times past. It is a great illustration of how Green-Wood was developed and the importance it is to our countries and cities history.
In an adjoining gallery is the wonderful installation CELADON LANDSCAPE by Jean Shin
Thousands of broken celadon pottery surround the works and you can recognize some and a few still in their original unbroken state.
The R train station is only a block away from Green-Wood. This abandoned house was en-route, straight our of a Halloween movie…and very spooky looking.
Happily the R train was running thru Roosevelt Island this Sunday, so I did not have to change trains, thus I had about a 24 station ride back to Roosevelt Island.
THE LOSS OF A DEAR FRIEND AND NEIGHBOR
It is with a heavy heart that we notify you that our longtime volunteer, Pilar Sierra, has passed away on Thursday, August 6th. Pilar will be missed dearly by the Roosevelt Island Older Adult Community. Her family has kindly invited the community to attend. All memorial details have been posted outside the Older Adult Center.
“Wherever a beautiful soul has been, there is a trail of beautiful memories.”
-Roosevelt Older Adult Center
CREDITS
Judith Berdy
All image are copyrighted (c) Roosevelt Island Historical Society unless otherwise indicated THIS PUBLICATION FUNDED BY DISCRETIONARY FUNDS FROM CITY COUNCIL MEMBER JULIE MENIN & ROOSEVELT ISLAND OPERATING CORPORATION PUBLIC PURPOSE FUNDS.
Heading west today and stuck in traffic, I noticed 203 East 29th St. A white shingled building stood out in this street of brick buildings.
Like many British Loyalists following to the Revolution, John Watts lost everything except his life. After he was forced to leave New York, the 131-acre Rose Hill Farm that he established in 1747 was auctioned off by the Committee of Forfeiture. The property stretched from what today would approximately be East 21st Street to East 30th Street on the eastern side of Manhattan.
Nicholas Cruger spent 144 pounds in 1786 for a parcel of Watts’s farm. Born in 1743, by 1770 Cruger had become the largest merchant in New York City. Dealing primarily in the West Indian trade, he spent much of his time in St. Croix where, years before the Revolution, a young Alexander Hamilton had worked for him. Around four years after he bought the former Watts property, a sturdy post-and-beam, clapboard country house appeared with a prominent Dutch-style hipped roof.
Cruger died in St. Croix on March 11, 1800. Already the city was inching northward toward his summer estate. In 1811 the Commissioners’ Plan laid out the street grid of midtown Manhattan. The plan dissected Rose Hill with 29th Street edging up to the residence and Third Avenue running just behind. Within a few years they would become actual thoroughfares, with the house Nicholas Cruger built now sitting awkwardly with its side facing 29th Street.
By 1830 Joseph Haskett, a saddler, owned the property. And then during the Civil War the family of George McDonald lived here. George died in the house on October 22, 1868 at the age of 56. His funeral was held here the following Sunday afternoon.
As the city moved ever northward, eventually engulfing the wooden home, the character of the neighborhood changed. Five years after McDonald’s death No. 203 was being operated as a rooming house. On February 9, 1873 an advertisement in The New York Herald offered “Handsomely furnished rooms to let–to gentlemen, without board.”
Among the tenants in 1893 were William Sutton and his sister, Mary. It would appear that the families living in the 29th Street house were struggling, for a day or two after Christmas that year Sutton stole a blanket belonging to a truckman, Richard Barry.
It was Mary, however, who was accused of the crime. She was arrested on December 27 and held in jail over night. The following morning her brother surrendered. The Evening World ran the headline “Innocent Girl Arrested.”
In 1905 at least four tenants were living here: a coach driver, Charles Barshfeld, truck driver Harry Jarvis, and Mary Decker, who was a bookbinder, and 68-year old Elizabeth Lamoureaux.
Years earlier, in France, Elizabeth had been a member of Sarah Bernhardt’s company. When she came to America she acted with the Ravel troupe, and also played the role of Pocahontas. She retired from the state in 1885. When Elizabeth discovered in December 1905 that Sarah Bernhardt would be appearing at the Lyric Theatre, she was determined to obtain a ticket.
The elderly woman showed up at the Lyric Theatre at 10:00 on the cold night of December 6 carrying a camp stool. The New-York Tribune explained “She did not wish to ask Bernhardt for free seats, and fearing that she could not buy seats near the stage unless she was first at the box office, she came last night to the theatre, prepared to sit out the dull hours between 10 in the evening and 9 o’clock the next morning.”
Lee Shubert opened the lobby so she could stay out of the cold. At midnight he sent a boy for sandwiches and coffee. (Apparently the thought of selling her a seat before the ticket booth opened did not occur to him.)
A mere five years later the house’s population had doubled. Among the blue collar tenants were a janitor, an elevated railroad guard and an upholsterer. A junk shop took over the street level around 1912
The wooden structure sat incongruously among its brick-and-stone urban neighbors until 1979 when Patrick and Linda Lyons purchased it for $80,000. Intent on making the well-worn house a home again, they initiated a three-year renovation. Rather than restore the venerable old structure, they gutted it. Everything other than the timbered frame was dismantled and discarded – the clapboard siding, the interior walls, the original six-over-six paned windows.
The reproduction elements, however, are faithful to the original structure. The renovation resulted in a single family home in the upper portion with an apartment at street level.
The unexpected wooden farmhouse at No. 203 East 29th Street has changed hands a few times since its renovation. Because of the 1866 law prohibiting construction of frame structures in Manhattan, there are only a handful of wooden buildings to be found and stumbling upon this one is a delight.
PHOTO OF THE DAY
A Day of memories at Coler Today residents, staff, volunteers and visitors joined together to remember the residents of Coler that passed away this year. Coler has been a home and family for so many and passings are heartfelt by residents and staff.
CREDITS
Daytonian in Manhattan Judith Berdy
All image are copyrighted (c) Roosevelt Island Historical Society unless otherwise indicated THIS PUBLICATION FUNDED BY DISCRETIONARY FUNDS FROM CITY COUNCIL MEMBER JULIE MENIN & ROOSEVELT ISLAND OPERATING CORPORATION PUBLIC PURPOSE FUNDS.
I have come to the point that living with a 28 x 40-inch black flat file that is 35 inches tall in my living room must come to an end. This is not a divorce but just moving out the intrusive obstacle. This cabinet (must be male) blocks access to half my living room window while obstructing opening a cabinet door.
Though I do have a great love for island history he and I must separate. The children, I mean contents will have an amicable separation into some new storage.
Tonight I started clearing out the contents of the adjoining cabinet though I could only get one door open including:
Two boxes of envelopes that will never be used by me, (That is what happens when you get free stuff at Materials for the Arts).
Greeting card for all kinds of celebrations, that now get an e-mail. My current cards are from Trader Joes, and they suit me fine.
Coin wrappers from the days when the RIHS rolled coins from the donation jar and gave them to local merchants for dollar bills in exchange,
All the NY Times issues from November 23, 1963 and thru the next week of John F. Kennedy’s funeral. I am keeping the photos the White House sent of the young Kennedy family.
The NYTimes from the Obama inauguration are here, from a time when I was so hopeful for our country.
The Hebrew Union College Ordination of my cousin Rabbi Leon Cohen. He studied In Cincinnati and was a rabbi in Selma, Alabama. I am keeping that document and a trip I took to Selma a while back
Airplane tickets to many cities from extinct airlines: Pan Am, TWA and others I will keep those and the associated baggage tags. Being a travel agent had many perks and these are wonderful memories. Photos from cruises that have faded along with the fashions of 1992.
I just came across my Halsey Junior High School and Forest Hills High School diplomas. We will not mention some of my grades, though I got an award for being a Playground Assistant in 1962. Why did I save the card with the combination to my locker (24 34 18)?
A shoe box of photos was just discovered with different eras sorted in envelopes, many more must be in my storage locker downstairs. A large envelope has photos that I took all over the world. Some are wonderful and I was surprised that I took them, more great memories.
A bag of foreign coins..though interesting, what can be done with them?
The last box is my mother’s papers and the many wonderful memories we shared. Also, so many letters, cards and e-mails from her passing in 2012. Those are cherished and are now in a better box, suitable for them.
The cabinet is empty now with the contents all over my floor. Some will be discarded; many will find a new home.
If you are an historian, collector or hoarder, contact me this week and you may have some yellowed newsprint for your archives.
The RIHS materials are safe, not disturbed and will remain in place until a new home is found. As a bonus, I am offering a free flat file of 2 sets of 5 drawers. (Delivery not included)
Judith Berdy
PHOTO OF THE DAY
A Day of memories at Coler Today residents, staff, volunteers and visitors joined together to remember the residents of Coler that passed away this year. Coler has been a home and family for so many and passings are heartfelt by residents and staff.
CREDITS
Judith Berdy
All image are copyrighted (c) Roosevelt Island Historical Society unless otherwise indicated THIS PUBLICATION FUNDED BY DISCRETIONARY FUNDS FROM CITY COUNCIL MEMBER JULIE MENIN & ROOSEVELT ISLAND OPERATING CORPORATION PUBLIC PURPOSE FUNDS.
The plan was simple: take the Q102 bus to the florist on 36th Avenue, grab a coffee and head off to Dollar Tree in Astoria.
I ordered the flowers and asked Carlos the owner for a suggestion for a good cup of coffee.
Little Flower Cafe on the Corner of 28th Street and 36th Avenue was perfect!
When I arrived at Dollar Tree at Broadway and 31 Street, it was closed. Though looking fully stocked it seemed to be closed “temporarily”. Resisted temptation for fresh bread from Parisi Baker.
What to do? Around the corner was the Q104 bus down Broadway to Vernon Blvd.
It is only a 10 minute ride and there is was in front of Costco. I really did not want to go shopping so decided to visit Socrates Scultpture Park.
At the entrance is a new structure made out of 8 shipping containers for the offices.
The burgundy color adds class to the utilitarian structure.
Chaikia Bookers tire art decorated the main pathway leading to the waterfront
Pieces of the are everywhere you look.
The artists work at an outdoor workshop for the upcoming fall show.
A paved path leads all around the park, perfect for walking, running and biking. Lovely trees of all varies are lining the lawn.
Walking along the path that I never knew was there. Years ago, at my last visit the park was in rough shape. Now it is landscaped though casual and welcoming to man and beast.
The artists work at an outdoor workshop for the upcoming fall show.
As I was walking north on Vernon Blvd. two workers from City Parks Foundation were preparing to work with neighbors in the waterfront. They were equipped with waders and were exploring on the sandy beach telling all about the marine live along the beachfront. Yes, a beach on Vernon Blvd. (no swimming please)
Yes, a rowboat on the beach just south of the Mark Scuvero scultpure works. The seagulls were along the beach and enjoying a neihhbor feeding them.
A recently refreshed playgound leads to the NYC Ferry pier and to my voyage home.
A half hour later it was lunch at the Cornell Cafe.
PHOTO OF THE DAY
Socrates has been an official park since 1985, but the battle to make it a park took much longer!
CREDITS
Judith Berdy
All image are copyrighted (c) Roosevelt Island Historical Society unless otherwise indicated THIS PUBLICATION FUNDED BY DISCRETIONARY FUNDS FROM CITY COUNCIL MEMBER JULIE MENIN & ROOSEVELT ISLAND OPERATING CORPORATION PUBLIC PURPOSE FUNDS.
Text by Judith Berdy Thanks to Bobbie Slonevsky for her dedication to Blackwell’s Almanac and the RIHS Thanks to Deborah Dorff for maintaining our website Edited by Deborah Dorff All image are copyrighted (c) Roosevelt Island Historical Society unless otherwise indicated
Google Images (c)
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FUNDING PROVIDED BY ROOSEVELT ISLAND OPERATING CORPORATION PUBLIC PURPOSE GRANTS CITY COUNCIL REPRESENTATIVE JULIE MENIN DISCRETIONARY FUNDING THRU DYCD
Some buildings in New York are so stunning, they make you stop in your tracks. The Knox Hat Factory, at Grand Avenue and St. Marks Place in Prospect Heights, is that kind of building
It almost looks like a castle, with the yellow brick factory walls fortified to protect the interior, and a corner watchtower to help spot and vanquish invaders.
But of course this is Brooklyn, and in 1890 when the hat works opened as the world’s largest hat factory, it was just one more manufacturing building in a city filled with companies that made things.
As companies go, however, Knox Hatworks has a long history in Gotham. “Founded by Irish immigrant Charles Knox, the Knox Hat Company began operations in lower Manhattan, selling beaver hats in a small store he opened in 1838,” states the Brooklyn Public Library.
“Through promotion and word of mouth, the business built an impressive clientele, including Abraham Lincoln, who purchased a new Knox stovepipe right before his 1860 speech at the Cooper Institute.”
After Charles Knox—aka “Knox the Hatter”— died, his son, Civil War hero Edward, became the head of the company.
In the ensuing years, the original Knox store on Fulton Street burned down. Edward Knox relocated the hat shop to 212 Broadway, then to the posh Fifth Avenue Hotel on 23rd Street.
In the 1880s, he decided Knox should get into the manufacturing business. A letter published in the Brooklyn Daily Eagle in 1952 recalled the factory’s early days.
“When this plant first opened, all the men who worked there wore high hats to and from work,” stated the cheeky letter writer. “What a time we kids had during snowball weather.”
Knox Hatworks continued production through World War II, but eventually the building was abandoned, according to the Brooklyn Public Library. “In the mid 1980s developers bought the building and converted it to apartments.”
The Brooklyn Public Library’s post about the factory included a photograph dating to 1905—showing a spectacular clock tower with a mansard roof, now removed.
It’s unfortunate, but at least the developers kept the terra cotta panels at the corner of the building, which gives a little backstory on the building and company that curious passersby love to know. (Though the founding date of the company carved into terra cotta is wrong, per Lost New York City.)
PHOTO OF THE DAY
IMAGES OF KNOX HATS
CREDITS
Ephemeral New York
All image are copyrighted (c) Roosevelt Island Historical Society unless otherwise indicated THIS PUBLICATION FUNDED BY DISCRETIONARY FUNDS FROM CITY COUNCIL MEMBER JULIE MENIN & ROOSEVELT ISLAND OPERATING CORPORATION PUBLIC PURPOSE FUNDS.
In April 2009, the heirs of Berlin-born George Grosz filed a restitution lawsuit against New York’s Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) claiming that three paintings by the artist held in the museum’s collection rightfully belong to the family.
The trustees resisted the call.
The contested art works included a portrait of Max Hermann-Neisse (1886-1941). What is the story behind this remarkable painting and how did it end up in Manhattan?
What links the sitter to the socialite Wallis Simpson, Duchess of Windsor, whose Royal Suite furnishings at Manhattan’s Waldorf Astoria Hotel were put under the hammer by Kaminsky Auctions in October 2020?
Painter & Poet
The painter George Grosz (1893-1959) suffered badly from Nazi policies driven by Joseph Goebbels to control cultural manifestations. Party officials confiscated about 300 of his works held in museums and galleries, some were stolen and sold, others burned (seventy paintings vanished without a trace).
One of the paintings seized by zealots was a stunning portrait of his friend, the poet Max (Macke) Herrmann-Neisse.
Born on May 23, 1886, in Neisse, Silesia (now Nysa, Poland), into a Jewish family of innkeepers, Max Herrmann was a physically disabled child and grew up with a powerful sense of otherness.
Having studied art and literature in Munich, he turned to writing. Influenced by Expressionist authors, Herrmann published poems in various German avant-garde periodicals. In 1914, Fischer Verlag issued his first collection Sie und die Stadt (She and the City).
In May 1917, Max married Leni Gebek. The couple settled in Berlin where they immersed themselves in the city’s vibrant mix of artistic and political activities. From that time onward he added his place of birth to his name.
Mixing in bohemian circles, Herrmann-Neisse was a known figure in the city’s bars, theaters, and seedy cabarets. He was Berlin’s literary version of Toulouse Lautrec, creating an ever-expanding oeuvre of poetry, stories, and cabaret pieces. In 1924 he received the Eichendorff-Preis and three years later the Gerhart Hauptmann Award.
In 1925, George Grosz displayed his first portrait of the poet with hunchback and bald head at the “Neue Sachlichkeit” (New Objectivity) exhibition in Mannheim. Today, this painting is on display at the city’s Kunsthalle (museum of modern art).
Two years later he produced an even more stunning portrait. In 1933, the Nazis purged this painting from Berlin’s legendary Flechtheim Gallery, condemning it as a prime example of “degenerate” art.
They closed the gallery as its founder Alfred Flechtheim was Jewish.
Litany of Bitterness
Two days after the Reichstag (the seat of government) Fire in February 1933, Max and Leni fled Berlin in fear of their safety as a decree had been issued that permitted the regime to incarcerate opponents without charge.
Via Switzerland and the Netherlands, they arrived in London in September that same year. A few months later, the Nazis burned his books.
Unable to speak English and deprived of German citizenship, his poetry became an expression of utter isolation. He applied for British national status, but his request was denied.
Herrmann-Neisse continued to write. Some poems created in London are among his best, but there were few opportunities for publication.
As a young man he had visited every bar and joint in the streets of Berlin. Socially and psychologically, he was inextricably bound up with the city. The loss was unbearable. “Ein deutscher Dichter bin ich einst gewesen” (I once was a German poet) he wrote in 1934.
Shortly before his death he wrote “Litanei der Bitterness,” a poem that reflects on life in exile, expressing the pain of being dependent on the goodwill of others: “Bitter ist es, das Brot der Fremde zu essen” (It is harsh to eat the bread of foreigners).
In 1936 he published a collection of poems in Zurich entitled Um uns die Fremde (Amongst Foreigners – with a preface by Thomas Mann), a poignant work of exile poetry that explores themes of displacement and alienation. By the time of publication, the poet’s personal life was becoming increasingly bizarre.
From that year onward, he and his wife lived in a ménage à trois with Leni’s lover, the Swiss diamond dealer Alphonse de Sondheimer who supported the couple financially.
They shared his apartment at Bryanston Court in George Street, Mayfair. Unable to earn a living himself and deprived of publication outlets, the poet saw the senseless wealth of one of London’s most opulent residential areas.
Consumed by sorrow, he suffered the agony of physical and linguistic isolation. The virus of displacement hits every migrant at some time to a varying degree – it broke Herrmann-Neisse.
The domestic arrangement in Mayfair lasted until the poet died from a heart attack in April 1941. Buried at East Finchley Cemetery, he rests in a lone grave far from his beloved Berlin.
Leni later married Sondheimer who in 1947 became a British citizen and changed his name to Alphonse Sandhurst. She committed suicide in 1961 after Alphonse had passed away.
Wallis Simpson at Bryanston Court
Bryanston Court is a luxurious Art Deco seven-story red brick block of apartments. Built in the early 1930s, it became home to an international set of affluent residents.
It turned out to be a microcosm of the decade’s chaotic political developments, providing a tale of Royals, spies, and secret agents. It was here that a resident named Mrs. Wallis Simpson first entertained the Prince of Wales.
Locialite Bessie Wallis Warfield grew up in Baltimore where shortly after birth she and her widowed mother were cared for by wealthy relatives. In 1916 she married US Navy pilot Earl Winfield (Win) Spencer, a heavy drinker with a violent temper. The relationship lasted for a decade.
While in Shanghai in 1925 she had a fling with Count Galeazzo Ciano, who was later to become Mussolini’s son-in-law and Italy’s Foreign Minister. The affair resulted in a pregnancy. An allegedly botched abortion left her with lasting gynaecological problems.
She divorced Spencer in 1927. By that time, she had become involved with Ernest Aldrich Simpson, an Anglo-American shipping executive.
He was also a former officer in the Coldstream Guards, the oldest continuously serving regular regiment in the British Army, famous for protecting the monarch, wearing iconic red tunics, and sporting tall bearskin hats.
He left his first wife to marry Wallis in July 1928 at the Register Office in Chelsea, London. The couple set up home in a three-bedroom apartment at Bryanston Court where they mingled with a well-connected group of residents.
Their friend Lady Thelma Furness was the mistress of Edward, Prince of Wales, the eldest son of King George V. In January 1931 she invited the couple to Burrough Court, her country house at Melton Mowbray, Leicestershire, where Wallis first met the heir to the throne. Prince Edward was at once besotted by her.
Fashion & Fascism
Edward became a regular visitor to Bryanston Court. It was there that Wallis and her husband hosted the glamorous parties that he delighted in. The relationship between Edward and Wallis started in 1933.
Born in September 1891 in Vienna, Stephanie von Hohenlohe was the illegitimate daughter of a Jewish woman from Prague. She would later claim to be of pure Aryan descent.
A social climber, she gained the title of “princess” by a brief marriage to an Austrian noble. In 1927, she targeted a meeting with Lord Rothermere, the reactionary owner of the Daily Mail. They became lovers.
In 1932, he employed her to orchestrate communications with the Nazi leadership. She gained access to the Chancellery in Berlin. Hitler referred to her as “Dear Princess” and awarded her with the Golden Insignia of the Nazi Party.
Prompted by Rothermere, Stephanie settled at Bryanston Court into an apartment next door to Wallis Simpson and cultivated a friendship with her.
British intelligence kept the building under surveillance, fearing that Stephanie used her proximity to Wallis Simpson and Prince Edward to gain access to British intelligence.
For that reason, MI6 also tracked Wallis Simpson. Her social encounters were monitored as rumors persisted that she had been intimately involved with Joachim von Ribbentrop, Hitler’s ambassador to Britain.
Bryanston Court was a nest of Nazi plotters.
On the death of King George V in January 1936, Edward succeeded his father whilst Wallis Simpson was in legal divorce proceedings. His wish to marry an American woman who had been divorced twice threatened to cause a constitutional crisis.
Refused the union of a morganatic marriage, he abdicated in December that same year and was made Duke of Windsor by his brother and successor George VI.
Wallis married Edward six months later and became formally instated as the Duchess of Windsor (but not Royal Highness).
It was the beginning of a decades-long semi-exile in Europe and Manhattan, marred by friendships and meetings with dubious characters, including a visit to Nazi Germany in 1937 and a private session with Adolf Hitler.
There is little doubt that the couple harbored Nazi sympathies.
The Windsors made Manhattan’s Waldorf Astoria their primary American home for over two decades. The couple occupied a lavish suite (42R) on the hotel’s top floor with superb views over the city.
They arrived every fall in New York City for the social season, hosting private gatherings for elite guests. In 1950, the Duchess met James Paul (Jimmy) Donahue, the inheritor of the Woolworth department store fortune.
Nineteen years her junior, he was a flamboyant playboy. Gossip about their affair was rife on both sides of the Atlantic, leaving the Duke of Windsor publicly humiliated. In Manhattan, she sacrificed what was left of her reputation.
Washington Principles
Curt Valentin (1902-1954) had been an assistant to gallery holder Alfred Flechtheim in Berlin, and he too was of Jewish background. In late 1936, the Nazis barred him from practicing his profession, but they allowed him to move to Manhattan.
With approval of Hitler’s Reich Chamber of Fine Arts that regulated all visual artists and their representatives, he opened the Buchholz Gallery on West 46th Street (later moving to West 57th Street).
The gallery served as the main American channel for the sale of modern artworks that the Nazis had purged from European museums and private collections. The hard dollars of the proceeds supported the war economy.
Curt Valentin acted as a go-between for Alfred H. Barr, director of MoMA, to handle stolen masterpieces. Transactions were kept secret to avoid a public backlash.
Having emigrated from Berlin to the United States in 1939, Charlotte Weidler was a curator and art dealer who acted as consultant for the Carnegie Institute, Pittsburgh.
While she initially worked behind the scenes to protect German artists from Nazi persecution, she later took part in selling looted art. She collaborated with Valentin in laundering works that had been taken from their rightful owners.
Weidler was in possession George Grosz’s portrait of Max Herrmann-Neisse, claiming she had inherited the canvas from Alfred Flechtheim’s estate following his death in 1937.
The real story of how she took possession of the painting remains unresolved to this day. In 1952, she handed the work to Valentin who acted as an intermediary to broker its sale to MoMA (then directed by Barr’s successor, René d’Harnoncourt).
The non-binding 1998 Washington Principles on Nazi- Confiscated Art pressed institutions to find “looted” artworks in their collections and settle disputes with the heirs of former owners in a “just and fair” manner.
To this day, museums are reluctant to investigate the origins of dubious holdings. The legal battle between the heirs of George Grosz and MoMA was dismissed on a procedural technicality: the statute of limitations.
The family had waited too long to file their lawsuit after the museum had formally addressed their claims. The process contravened the ethical spirit that the Washington Principles had called for.
Grosz’s portrait of Max Herrmann-Neisse, the poet of Berlin betrayed by fellow Berliners, stays in Manhattan.
PHOTO OF THE DAY
RI HISTORY CELEBRATED IN RIVERCROSS WINDOWS
CREDITS
New York Almanack
All image are copyrighted (c) Roosevelt Island Historical Society unless otherwise indicated THIS PUBLICATION FUNDED BY DISCRETIONARY FUNDS FROM CITY COUNCIL MEMBER JULIE MENIN & ROOSEVELT ISLAND OPERATING CORPORATION PUBLIC PURPOSE FUNDS.
Launched in July 1900, the transatlantic liner S.S. Vaderland (Flemish for fatherland) sailed the route between Antwerp and Hoboken on behalf of the Red Star Line. Catering for 340 first-class, 200 second-class, and over 600 third-class (formerly steerage) passengers, the liner was one of “mid tier” elegance rather than opulence and designed to compete with its rivals of the Cunard and White Star lines. She played a key role in the early history of mass emigration from Europe to the United States.
On May 25, 1912, the liner left Antwerp, arriving at Ellis Island for immigrant inspection on June 4th. On board was a talented twenty-year-old Polish woman keen to break free from traditional Jewish domestic constraints and find intellectual and sexual freedom in Manhattan.
Refusal & Removal
Every era creates its own political vocabulary reflecting current socio-cultural and ideological issues. Exclusion and deportation were keywords in American political discourse of the 1920s but attempts to “control” the influx of people go back to colonial days.
In 1639, Massachusetts law makers authorized towns to remove paupers. In 1683, New York handed local officials the legal right to send transient beggars to the “country from whence they came.”
Waves of European immigrants during the late nineteenth century provoked a nativist backlash fueled by the fact that most newcomers originated from Southern and Eastern Europe.
Catholics (especially Irish, German and Italian) and Jews were viewed as inferior to the “old [Protestant] stock” of settlers. Concerns about criminality dominated the public debate. Perceived links between immigration and urban crime would shape federal law from the 1882 Immigration Act onward.
A process of tightening entry conditions culminated in the 1924 Johnson-Reed Act which capped new arrivals by banning most Asian immigrants and imposing nationality-based quotas. It created a Border Patrol to enforce limits on the number of Mexicans and other “illegal aliens” entering the country.
An entire bureaucratic apparatus was set up to track undocumented residents. It became a lucrative business challenge with railway companies competing for contracts to transport deportees and private property owners offering (unsuitable) accommodation to hold and guard them.
The Act curtailed the flow of arrivals, but immigrants were still blamed for driving up crime rates. The number of deportations rose significantly during the decade, escalating from 2,762 in 1920 to 16,631 in 1930.
There was a clear shift in policy from one that tried to restrict mass entry to a more active intervention of monitoring individuals already living in the country.
Post-entry infractions allowed authorities to expel individuals for violating immigration law or breaching conditions of stay. The policy targeted two distinct groups for deportation.
Following the First World War the fear of social agitation led to the Palmer Raids in which officials used post-entry infringements as a justification to deport political leftists. This was the First Red Scare.
The other group was more vulnerable. LPC (Liable to Public Charge) was an immigration term for individuals likely to become dependent for subsistence.
Introduced in the 1882 Immigration Act and signed by Republican President Chester A. Arthur (the son of an Irish immigrant), the concept has been in operation ever since.
The updated Act of 1891 listed “classes of aliens” to be refused admission, including “idiots, insane persons, paupers or persons likely to be come a public charge.” Deportation gradually transformed from a process of last resource into a mechanism of social control.
Moral Turpitude
Legal provisions designed to uphold “healthy” moral standards focused strongly on single women. The law allowed for the arrest of any female who, within a five-year period following arrival, turned out to be a “public charge.”
While the early part of the decade was marked by the “sensational” removal of agitators, the “deportation machine” then became increasingly obsessed with removing women for financial dependency and/or moral infractions such as prostitution.
Federal officials gathered lists of foreign-born individuals in public hospitals, prisons, and alms-houses, creating a hostile environment for women who cared for their children alone. Deportations regularly split families, with mothers expelled and children left behind.
Immigration officials used poorly defined crimes of “moral turpitude” to deport women, specifically those suspected of prostitution, living out of wedlock, or any other diversion from traditional family orientated standards.
So-called “White Slave” legislation was drawn up to target “immoral” behaviors or illicit relationships. An ill-defined charge, officers also sought out independent women who, like Emma Goldman, dared to criticize the political status-quo.
During the 1920s, attitudes toward lesbian women were a contradictory mix of increased visibility and punitive regulation. Within covert subcultures of Chicago or New York City, women adopted masculine fashion to signal lesbian identity.
The monocle, first worn by women in Paris, became a marker of gender affiliation; Le Monocle was a fashionable lesbian bar and club opened in the 1920s on Boulevard Edgar-Quinet, Montparnasse (it closed when the German forces occupied then city).
Such symbols may have been tolerated as “daring” and bohemian in alternative urban settings, but mainstream society ridiculed them as unnatural. Viewed as a psychological deviancy, social observers labeled lesbianism a depravity or mental illness.
Growing visibility triggered a reactionary response. The Great Depression and renewed political conservatism led to increased intolerance.
Lesbian venues became once more subject to surveillance and police raids. In this climate of suspicion and persecution, a lesbian immigrant woman with anarchist sympathies was bound to face a barrage of hostility.
Tearooms
Chaka Złoczower (Kotchever) was born in June 1891 in the Polish town of Mława (part of the Russian Empire) into a large Jewish working-class family. Little is known about her youth, but when she sailed from Antwerp to New York City through Ellis Island, she was a confident multi-lingual person.
On arrival, she anglicized her first name to “Eve” and took “Adams” as her last name, a choice that some of her later adversaries considered provocative. As many Jewish immigrant women did at the time, she started as a factory worker in New York’s garment industry.
Amongst her early contacts was the Russian-born anarchist Emma Goldman. Given Poland’s socio-political turmoil of her younger days, it is probable that she herself held radical ideas on arrival.
Eve became a traveling salesperson of subversive periodicals such as Emma Goldman’s Mother Earth and Max Eastman’s The Liberator. By 1919, the year that Goldman faced deportation, Eve Adams was a suspect under surveillance by the “Radical Division” of J. Edgar Hoover’s Bureau of Investigation (later known as the FBI).
In 1921, Eve settled in Chicago with her lover, the Minnesota born painter Ruth Olsen Norlander (1889-1973). For about eight months, the couple ran a tea room named The Grey Cottage in East Chestnut Street, Towertown, frequented by a gay and lesbian clientele.
After the 1893 World’s Columbian Exhibition, artists, writers, and poets had settled in the district, attracting the opening of radical bookshops and bohemian clubs (including the legendary Dill Pickle Club).
At the time, the term “tearoom” had two distinct meanings: a social venue for unchaperoned women to meet and socialize; as well as a slang term used in gay subculture (referring to a public lavatory used for male sexual encounters).
Like it was for TheGrey Cottage, some women-owned establishments provided a front – “tearoom” was a lesbian code for safe space at a time that same-sex activity was criminalized.
By 1924 Eve had returned to Manhattan, living in a block (now demolished) at 38 Washington Square West. She ran a small tearoom named Eve’s Hangout in the basement of a row house at 129 MacDougal Street in Greenwich Village which became a destination for local activists, gay men, and lesbians.
Inevitably, the Hangout was watched by police; local crusaders who campaigned to “clean up” the area turned into informants. A Village alliance of social radicalism and moral “aberration” was intolerable to them.
There was more to come. In February 1925, Eve Adams (pen name Evelyn Addams) published a privately printed collection of nine short stories entitled Lesbian Love in a limited edition of 150 copies for circulation among friends.
It was America’s first ethnography of lesbians. The stories, reflecting personal encounters and relationships from the author’s past, predated the publication (and obscenity trial) of Radclyffe Hall’s Well of Loneliness by three years.
That is the historical significance of the book. The choice of title was audacious. The term “lesbian” at the time was associated with medical literature and used to pathologize women in same-sex liaisons.
It was this negative label of “perversion” that Adams embraced to give identity to a type of relationship that needed recognition.
Vice squad officer Margaret Leonard was instructed by the NYPD to visit Eve’s Hangout and gather undercover evidence against its owner. She claimed that Eve had made sexual advances.
The latter was arrested on June 17, 1926, at her tearoom being accused of indecency in print and disorderly conduct towards a female officer. According to police transcripts, she had ten copies of her book left, all of which were confiscated and destroyed.
The only known surviving copy was traced back by Jonathan Ned Katz when preparing his biography of Eve Adams, an iconic study that saved her “daring life” from oblivion.
Katz added the complete text of Lesbian Love as an appendix to his book The Daring Life and Dangerous Times of Eve Adams (Chicago Review Press, 2021). The copy Lesbian Love was sold by the owner in 2024 at Bonham’s “Remarkable Women” auction.
Convicted to a sentence of one year for her “crime,” Eve was locked up in the women’s penitentiary on Welfare (now Roosevelt) Island. There she crossed paths with the notorious Mae West (1893-1980) who had been sentenced to ten days imprisonment for the alleged obscenity of her acclaimed Broadway play, Sex.
While West was treated as a celebrity and quickly released, Eve had to face deportation proceedings. The trumped-up charges were an excuse to punish Adams for her friendship with Emma Goldman. She was deported to Poland on December 7, 1927, and not allowed to return to America.
Convoy 63
In 1930, Eve moved to Paris, where she worked under the name Eva Kotchever as a street bookseller along the Left Bank, offering “forbidden” writings by Henry Miller (including Tropic of Cancer), Anais Nin, and others, to American tourists.
Three years later she met Hella Olstein Soldner, a Jewish singer who originated from Łódź, Poland. Eve was hired to take care of Hella’s house, but it was an open secret that the two were a couple.
In 1940, the Nazis marched into Paris and many of city’s Jewish residents fled to the “zone libre” of southern France. This territory was not occupied by German forces until November 1942.
Administered by the collaborationist Vichy regime under Marshal Philippe Pétain, the latter would participate in rounding up Jews (in razzias), often prioritizing the removal of foreign Jews.
Having settled in Nice on the Mediterranean coast, Eva and Hella were arrested at their home in December 1943. They were held briefly at Drancy, the main French transit camp near Paris, before being sent to Auschwitz on Convoy 63.
The train left on December 17, 1943, transporting 848 men, women, and children. Most of them were sent to the gas chambers upon arrival. There were few survivors.
Adams and Olstein were not amongst them. It is not even known if the couple were together or separated during that fateful journey.
In 2021, the city of Paris named a street for her in the 18th arrondissement, Rue Eva Kotchever.
PHOTO OF THE DAY
TIME TO UPDATE THIS SIGN MORE USELESS SIGNAGE THAT IS IGNORED WE CAN DO BETTER
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New York Almanack
Jaap Harskamp Illustrations, from above: Postcard showing S.S. Vaderland on the River Scheldt leaving Antwerp for New York; Thomas Nast’s “Uncle Sam’s Thanksgiving Dinner” from Harpers Weekly, 1869 (colorized); I.W.W. New York City headquarters after a Palmer Raid, 1919; H. W. Lytle & John Dillon’s From Dance Hall to White Slavery: The World’s Greatest Tragedy (Chicago: Charles C. Thompson, 1912) from the collection of John Warren; Adams’ Polish passport, 1928 (Daniel Olstein Collection via OutHistory); Cover of what’s believed to be the only remaining copy of Lesbian Love; Eve Adams (right) and Hella Olstein (Daniel Olstein Collection); and the plaque for Eva Kotchever Street in Paris, 2021.
All image are copyrighted (c) Roosevelt Island Historical Society unless otherwise indicated THIS PUBLICATION FUNDED BY DISCRETIONARY FUNDS FROM CITY COUNCIL MEMBER JULIE MENIN & ROOSEVELT ISLAND OPERATING CORPORATION PUBLIC PURPOSE FUNDS.
In late July of 2007, the RIHS Visitor Center finally opened to visitors and islanders. After a 4 year period of starts and stop the kiosk was finally ready to open.
The long story was over as the original trams passed over with our future visitors.
On opening day Jessica Lappin, our City Council member cut the ribbon.
Image via Library of Congress
Four remnants of the many structures that once made up the Billings estate can still be seen in Fort Tryon Park today. The largest and most notable remnant is the driveway Billings had constructed at an estimated cost of $250,000. This private road would allow BIllings to have an easy and direct route to Riverside Drive, now the Henry Hudson Parkway. Billings hired architects Buchman and Fox to figure out a way to build a gently sloping road that would allow horses and carriages to easily traverse the 200-foot drop from the estate to Riverside Drive. The solution was to build a sort of bridge that extended over the edge of the hill, creating a wide curve “S” curve supported by “a high, graceful arch” at each end, with five smaller arches in between. It took 100 laborers more than a year to build the roadway out of stone quarried from the site.
The team from NYC Department of Cultural Affrairs and Department of Design and Construction were there to admire the project.
We were ready with books, mugs, tee shirts and totes for our customers.
My mom Ruth Berdy was one of our first guests.
RIOC CEO Steve Shane was a great supporter of the project.
Two of our first staff were Deborah Dorff and Zakia Wazani
IN 2010 the kiosk was restored to it’s original colors and authentic historic look.
At the same time the tram cabins were being replaced so the Tram Plaza had two new additions in the winter of 2010.
PHOTO OF THE DAY
Dance performance by Chris Bisram Celebrating City of Water Day at the FDR Park
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Untapped Cities
All image are copyrighted (c) Roosevelt Island Historical Society unless otherwise indicated THIS PUBLICATION FUNDED BY DISCRETIONARY FUNDS FROM CITY COUNCIL MEMBER JULIE MENIN & ROOSEVELT ISLAND OPERATING CORPORATION PUBLIC PURPOSE FUNDS.
Fort Tryon Park sits high above the Hudson River on land once home to several Gilded Age estates. The most luxurious of the estates belonged to wealthy Chicago businessman and horse breeder Cornelius K.G. Billings. In 1901, Billings bought twenty-five acres of land in what was then the countryside of northern Manhattan. Billings constructed a sprawling summer vacation home with sweeping views of the Hudson River and the Palisades on this land. Though Billings’ magnificent mansion no longer stands, you can still find remnants of it in the park today!
Fort Tyron Hall from a 400-page book about the estate published in 1911
C.K.G Billings, the retired president of the People’s Gas Company of Chicago, started construction on his Manhattan estate in 1901. The incredible natural vistas of Fort Washington and his love for horse racing drew him to northern Manhattan, where he could be close to the Harlem River Speedway that once operated on Harlem River Drive.
The New York Times reported that Billings’ estate, which was to feature a large mansion, stables for sixty horses, and an observatory from which to observe the panoramic views of the waterfront location, would “rival anything of its kind in the city.”
Architect Guy Lowell, who also designed the Supreme Courthouse in New York City, was commissioned to design a lodge on the property. The lodge was perched 250-feet above the Hudson River, overlooking Fort Washington Avenue and Riverside Drive at the highest point on the land. Billings was so taken by the stunning location that he instructed Lowell to enlarge the lodge and make it suitable as a year-round dwelling. Styled after a Louis XIV château, the 25,000-square-foot home featured glamorous amenities such as a heated swimming pool, squash courts, a “fumed oak” bowling alley, and a yacht landing at Dyckman Street. It was called Fort Tryon Hall. Along with the mansion, Billings had a “palatial stable” built “at the cost of $250,000.” Dubbed Tryon Towers, the stables were “finished throughout with Georgia pine, fitted with brass” and “the latest and most sanitary improvements,” according to The New York Times.
Tryon Towers, the Billings estate stables
By 1917, after enjoying his Fort Washington estate for nearly fifteen years, Billings was ready to move on. He sold the property to John D. Rockefeller. Rockefeller planned to combine the Billings property with the neighboring Hays and Shaefer Estates and turn the land into a public park. Rockefeller originally wanted to tear down Fort Tryon Hall, but its architects’ protest made him change course. There was brief talk of making the estate an official residence of the mayor or turning it into a museum, but while the park’s plans lagged, Rockefeller rented the mansion to drug manufacturer Nicolas C. Partos. Before park plans materialized, the mansion, along with priceless works of art and other finery inside, burnt down in 1926.
Image via Library of Congress
Four remnants of the many structures that once made up the Billings estate can still be seen in Fort Tryon Park today. The largest and most notable remnant is the driveway Billings had constructed at an estimated cost of $250,000. This private road would allow BIllings to have an easy and direct route to Riverside Drive, now the Henry Hudson Parkway. Billings hired architects Buchman and Fox to figure out a way to build a gently sloping road that would allow horses and carriages to easily traverse the 200-foot drop from the estate to Riverside Drive. The solution was to build a sort of bridge that extended over the edge of the hill, creating a wide curve “S” curve supported by “a high, graceful arch” at each end, with five smaller arches in between. It took 100 laborers more than a year to build the roadway out of stone quarried from the site.
When Fort Tryon Park was created in the 1930s, the road beneath the bridge was turned into a pedestrian path and the driveway above was made into a lookout point. The Billings Terrace and Arcade are easily spotted from the Henry Hudson Parkway and can also be seen from above on Cabrini Blvd. You can walk down from the Billings Lawn and Terrace to access the Arcade. Underneath the arches, you can still see the beveled bricks the drive was paved with. These special red bricks made it easier for horses to navigate and helped prevent their hooves from slipping. Stone pillars at the end of the driveway mark the former location of a gate that led to Riverside Drive.
From the arcade, you can see another remnant of the Billings Estate, the former gatehouse, known today as the Fort Tryon Hall cottage. The three-story building appears deceptively small from its front entrance but expands at the top of the hill. When the estate property was turned into a park, the gatehouse served as a residence for the park’s superintendent and family. The stone and stucco building is now home to NYC Parks’ and Fort Tryon Park Trust offices. You can find the cottage next to the Heather Garden, just west of Corbin Circle.
The last remnant of Fort Tryon Hall is a memorial plaque Billings funded in 1909. The large bronze and granite plaque commemorates Fort Tryon, the Revolutionary War stronghold that once occupied the site, and the brave soldier Margaret Corbin. When Margaret Corbin’s husband John, a cannoneer, was killed in battle, she took up his charge, cleaning and loading the canon until she too was wounded. For her efforts, Corbin became the first woman to receive a military pension and be buried at West Point. As the memorial reads, it was “erected under the auspices of the American Scenic and Historic Preservation Society through the generosity of C.K.G. Billings.” The main entrance and plaza of Fort Tryon Park were renamed for Corbin in 1977. You can find the memorial in the retaining wall north of Linden Terrace.
PHOTO OF THE DAY
Dance performance by Chris Bisram Celebrating City of Water Day at the FDR Park
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Untapped Cities
All image are copyrighted (c) Roosevelt Island Historical Society unless otherwise indicated THIS PUBLICATION FUNDED BY DISCRETIONARY FUNDS FROM CITY COUNCIL MEMBER JULIE MENIN & ROOSEVELT ISLAND OPERATING CORPORATION PUBLIC PURPOSE FUNDS.
