Last Friday we heard about flooding during the excessive rainfall. We should tell our neighbors in Western Queens and Astoria that their homes are build on swampy ground. La Guardia Airport is built on the “Corona Dumps” a massive landfill.
Sunswick Creek is a buried stream located in Astoria and Long Island City, in the northwestern portion of Queens in New York City. It originated to the north of Queensboro Bridge and Queens Plaza in Long Island City, flowing north to the present-day site of the Socrates Sculpture Park in Astoria, and emptying into the East River. The creek was named for a term in the Algonquin language that likely means “Woman Chief” or “Sachem’s Wife.”The mouth of the creek was settled in the late 17th century by William Hallet and Elizabeth Fones, who built a milldam at the creek’s mouth to create a mill pond. Due to industrialization in Long Island City, the creek became heavily polluted and was covered-over starting in the late 19th century.
The term “Sunswick” was a neighborhood name formerly applied to the surrounding portions of Ravenswood and Astoria. It is believed to have originated from a Native American language, possibly the Algonquin word “Sunkisq.”[2] The Greater Astoria Historical Society defines the term as “meaning perhaps ‘Woman Chief’ or ‘Sachem’s Wife.'”[3] This name is shared by Sunswick 3535, a bar at the intersection of 35th Street and 35th Avenue.[1]: 98 Additionally, the present-day 22nd Street was formerly named Sunswick Street.[4]
History
17th through 19th centuries
In 1664, the land on the northern shore of the creek’s mouth was purchased by British settler William Hallet (or Hallett), who obtained the plot from two native chiefs named Shawestcont and Erramorhar.[5]: 84 This peninsula, which jutted out onto Hell Gate to the northwest, was acquired in portions and was later renamed Hallet’s Cove.[5]: 84 [6]: 295 Hallet subsequently built a lime kiln on the creek. Sunswick Creek formed a navigable waterway with Dutch Kills, another stream to the south, making it easy for merchants to transport produce and goods along the creek.[5]: 19 A milldam was built at the mouth of the creek in 1679, creating a small mill pond.[7]: 4 Joseph Hallett and Jacob Blackwell built a mill on the creek’s right bank, near its mouth, in 1753.[6]: 296
By the 1860s and 1870s, Sunswick Creek was heavily polluted due to increasing industrialization, a lack of proper sewerage, and the high population density of Long Island City and Astoria.[7]: 4 The historian Vincent F. Seyfried wrote that disease around Sunswick Creek and Dutch Kills had become common by 1866, and that “The damming of the Sunswick Creek cut off the flushing-out of the meadow lands and the salt water that used to ebb and flow became stagnant and slimy and filled with mosquitoes.”[7]: 4 [8] After outbreaks of disease in 1871 and 1875, the marshes surrounding the creek were drained in 1879.[7]: 4 In addition, Long Island City had started building a proper sewage system in the 1870s, which was still not complete by the time Long Island City became part of the City of Greater New York in 1898.[7]: 5 The creek was partially diverted into one of the sewage system’s brick tunnels at Broadway, which was completed around 1893.[1]: 97
20th century
After the consolidation of Queens into New York City, Sunswick Meadows, a lowland north of the present Queensboro Bridge, was infilled with the construction of the bridge in the 1900s and 1910s.[7]: 6 This was accomplished partly by dumping dirt from the excavation of New York City Subway tunnels in Manhattan.[9][10] In addition, street cleaners tossed dry rubbish into the lowland to raise the grade of nearby streets.[11]
In 1915, residents of Ravenswood sent a letter to the New York City Board of Health to complain about the tide gates along Sunswick Creek, which had been installed to alleviate an infestation of mosquitoes. The residents claimed that the tide gates were actually keeping mosquitoes in the creek, since these gates resulted in stagnant water, and threatened to open the tide gates. In response, the Board of Health suggested filling up their land, which the Brooklyn Times-Union reported would require the infilling of 6 acres (2.4 ha) to a depth of 8 to 10 feet (2.4 to 3.0 m). The operation had a projected total cost of over $100,000 (equivalent to $2,892,763 in 2022), which was not affordable for most of the neighborhood’s residents.[12] Early the next year, in April 1916, residents broke down the barriers with axes.[13] Afterward, the New York City health commissioner told a local newspaper that the residents “prefer to live like hogs,” prompting outrage from local residents.[14] Afterward, the Queens borough president, Maurice E. Connolly, announced a plan to install two tide gates on the creek.[15]
By the end of 1916, the New York City government proposed to close up Sunswick Creek, mandating that households living nearby divert their sewage elsewhere.[16] A 1920 Brooklyn Daily Eagle article stated that the former path of the creek had been mostly developed with industrial buildings.[17] During excavations for a sewer line at Vernon Boulevard and Broadway in 1957, construction workers found remnants of the former grist mill on the creek’s mouth.[18]
Legacy
The creek now exists underground as part of a sewage tunnel, which was documented online by urban explorer Steven Duncan.[1]: 97 [19] According to one blogger, during heavy rains, the creek could be heard near the Sohmer and Company Piano Factory, across from Socrates Sculpture Park.[20] In 2011 and 2012, the Socrates Sculpture Park and Noguchi Museum commissioned a work from artist Mary Miss, entitled Ravenswood/CaLL, which consisted of several signs and mirrors along the course of the creek
WHERE TO ON THIS ELEVATOR? SUGGESTION FOR THE MTA:
ADD SIGN THAT SAYS: UPPER PLATFORM DOWNTOWN,
ADD SIGN THAT SAYS: UPPER PLATFORM DOWNTOWN, BROOKLYN & F SHUTTLE FOR LOWER PLATFORM A SIGN THAT SAYS : UPTOWN TRAINS
(LEXINGTON AVENUE ELEVATOR AT 63 STEET STATION)
WEEKENDPHOTO
5 KIOSKS FOR QUEENBORO BRIDGE TROLLEY AT 59TH STREEN AND SECOND AVENUE. ANDY SPARBERG, GLORIA HERMAN AND DAVID JACOBY GOT IT RIGHT
Text by Judith Berdy Thanks to Bobbie Slonevsky for her dedication to Blackwell’s Almanac and the RIHS
WIKIPEDIA
JUDITH BERDY
MAYA LEVANON-PHOTOS TIK TOK & INSTAGRAM
All image are copyrighted (c) Roosevelt Island Historical Society unless otherwise indicated
Recently, I was to be in Halifax, Nova Scotia and I asked Kathy Grimm about sites to see. Her daughter lives there and I knew she would have some good suggestions. One was the Art Gallery of Nova Scotia to see the Maud Lewis collection. It was great fun to see the creativity of a woman who painted her entire house!!
Doorway into Lewis’ home
Early life Lewis was born in South Ohio, Nova Scotia, the daughter of John and Agnes (Germain) Dowley.[4][5] She had one brother, Charles. She was born with birth defects and ultimately developed rheumatoid arthritis, which reduced her mobility, especially in her hands. Lewis’ father was a blacksmith and harness maker who owned a harness shop in Yarmouth, Nova Scotia. His business enabled Lewis to enjoy a middle-class childhood.[3] She was introduced to art by her mother, who instructed her in the making of watercolour Christmas cards to sell.[6] Lewis began her artistic career by selling hand-drawn and painted Christmas cards.[7]
Lewis’ father John died in 1935, and her mother followed him in 1937.[4] After living with her brother for a short while, she moved to Digby, Nova Scotia to live with her aunt.[4]
Cottage sitting room
Marriage
Dowley married Everett Lewis, a fish peddler from Marshalltown, on January 16, 1938, at the age of 34.[8] He also worked as the watchman at the county Poor Farm. According to Everett, Maud showed up at his doorstep in response to an ad he had posted in the local stores for a “live-in or keep house” for a 40-year-old bachelor. Several weeks later, they married.[9][4]
They lived in Everett’s one-room house with a sleeping loft, in Marshalltown, a few miles west of Digby. Maud used the house as her studio, while Everett took care of the housework.[10] They lived mostly in poverty.
Maud Lewis accompanied her husband on his daily rounds peddling fish door-to-door, bringing along Christmas cards she had painted. She sold the cards for five cents each, the same price her mother had charged for the cards she had made when Maud was a girl. These cards proved popular with her husband’s customers. When Everett was hired as a night watchman at the neighbouring Poor Farm in 1939, Lewis began selling her Christmas cards and paintings directly from their home.[3] Everett encouraged Lewis to paint, and he bought her her first set of oils.[11]
She expanded her range, using other surfaces for painting, such as pulp boards (beaverboards), cookie sheets, and Masonite. Lewis was a prolific artist and also painted on more or less every available surface in their tiny home: walls, doors, breadboxes, and even the stove. She completely covered the simple patterned commercial wallpaper with sinewy stems, leaves, and blossoms.[11]
Lewis used bright colours in her paintings, and her subjects were often flowers or animals, including oxen teams, horses, birds, deer, and cats. Many of her paintings are of outdoor scenes, including Cape Island boats bobbing on the water, horses pulling a sleigh, skaters, and portraits of dogs, cats, deer, birds, and cows. Her paintings were inspired by childhood memories of the landscape and people around Yarmouth and South Ohio, as well as Digby locations such as Point Prim and Bayview. Commercial Christmas cards and calendars also influenced her.
Lewis returned to the same subjects again and again, each time painting them slightly differently. For instance, she made dozens, if not hundreds, of images of cats over the course of her career. The serial nature of her practice was partly motivated by customer demand; she repeated compositions that sold well while discarding less popular ones. “I put the same things in, I never change,” she said of her style on the CBC program Telescope in 1965. “Same colours and same designs.”[12]
Many of her paintings are quite small, no larger than eight by ten inches, although she is known to have done at least five paintings that are 24 inches by 36 inches. For several years, Everett cut the boards for the paintings to size, although near the end of her career she was purchasing Masonite pre-cut to set dimensions.[3] The size of her paintings was limited by the extent she could move her arms, which were affected by arthritis. She used mostly wallboard and tubes of Tinsol, an oil-based paint. Her technique consisted of first coating the board with white, then drawing an outline, and applying paint directly out of the tube. She never blended or mixed colours.[13]
Early Maud Lewis paintings from the 1940s are quite rare. A large collection of Lewis’ work can be found in the Art Gallery of Nova Scotia (AGNS). It occasionally displays the Chaplin/Wennerstrom shutters (now part of the Clearwater Fine Foods Inc. collection) comprising 22 exterior house shutters Lewis painted in the early 1940s for some Americans who owned a cottage on the South Shore. Most of the shutters are quite large, at 5 ft x 1 ft.6 inches. Lewis was paid 70 cents a shutter.[citation needed]
Between 1945 and 1950, people began to stop at Lewis’ Marshalltown home on Highway No. 1, Nova Scotia’s main highway and tourist route, buying her paintings for two or three dollars each. Only in the last three or four years of her life did Lewis’ paintings begin to sell for seven to ten dollars. She achieved national attention as a folk artist following an article in the Toronto-based Star Weekly in 1964. In 1965, she was featured on CBC-TV’s Telescope.[14][15] Two of Lewis’ paintings were ordered by the White House in the 1970s during Richard Nixon‘s presidency.[16] Her arthritis limited her ability to complete many of the orders that resulted from her national recognition.
Ktchen stove
Later life and death
In the last year of her life, Lewis stayed in one corner of her house, painting as often as she could while traveling back and forth to the hospital for treatment of health issues. She died in Digby on July 30, 1970, from pneumonia.[17] Her husband Everett was killed in 1979 by a burglar during an attempted robbery of the house.[18]
House
After Everett Lewis’ death, their painted house began to deteriorate. A group of concerned citizens from the Digby area started the Maud Lewis Painted House Society to save the landmark. In 1984, it was sold to the Province of Nova Scotia and transferred to the care of the AGNS,[4] which restored the house and installed it as part of its permanent Lewis exhibit.[4]
A steel memorial sculpture based on the Lewis’ house has been erected at the original homesite in Marshalltown, designed by architect Brian MacKay-Lyons.[19] A replica of the Maud Lewis House was built in 1999 by retired fisherman Murray Ross, complete with finished interior. It is a few kilometres north of Marshalltown on the road to Digby Neck in Seabrook.[19]
TODAY BRIGHT IN THE SUNSHINE THE COLER RESIDENTS HAD A GRAND BBQ IN THEIR GARDEN.
THE DIETARY DEPARTMENT AND THERAPEUTIC RECREATION DEPARTMENTS CAME TOGETHER TO BRING HUNDREDS OF RESIDENTS TO THE GARDEN FOR THE FUN AFTERNOON.
IT TAKES A MULTI-DEPARTMENT EFFORT TO SAFELY SERVE THE RESIDENTS. EVERY RESIDENT HAD A COLOR CODED STICKER INDICATING THE MEAL THAT THEY WERE BEING SERVED.
A GROUP OF HUNTER COLLEGE DIETARY STUDENT ARE INTERNING AT COLER AND THEY MADE GREAT SERVERS AND HELPERS TODAY.
WE ARE NOT ALLOWED TO PHOTOGRAPH THE RESIDENTS, BUT WE ASSURE YOU THAT THERE WERE LOTS OF SMILES AND CHEERFUL RESIDENTS TODAY ENJOYING A SPECIAL END OF SUMMER BBQ.
RECREATION THERAPISTS ROBERT, GENARO AND ASHLEY FORMED AN ASSEMBLY LINE OF HAMBURGER ASSEMBLY. DIRECTOR OF THERAPETIC RECREATION JOVEMAY SANTOS WAS BUSY ON THE ASSEMBLY LINE TOO.
GEORGE IS COLER’S BEST M.C. AND MUSIC MASTER AT ALL EVENTS.
RECREATION THERAPISTS MARGARET AND MARIA TOOK A BREAK TO GREET AND SERVE THE RESIDENTS
THERAPIST ASHLEY LOVES FOOD EVENTS AND DOES SPECIAL SNACKS FOR RESIDENTS EACH WEEK
THURSDAY PHOTO OF THE DAY
THE NEW POWER CELL AT THE OCTAGON HAS JUST BEEN COMPLETED. THE BUILDING REPLACED THEIR ORIGINAL UNIT THIS YEAR.
Text by Judith Berdy Thanks to Bobbie Slonevsky for her dedication to Blackwell’s Almanac and the RIHS
JUDITH BERDY
Thanks to Deborah Dorff for maintaining our website Edited by Melanie Colter and Deborah Dorff
MAYA LEVANON-PHOTOS TIK TOK & INSTAGRAM
All image are copyrighted (c) Roosevelt Island Historical Society unless otherwise indicated
I usually pass by the FIT campus when the museum is closed. The other day I saw it was open and who can resist an exhibit about food and fashion.
Both food and fashion are central to our daily lives. They speak to people’s most basic needs while also expressing our individual and cultural identities. The exhibition Food & Fashion explores how food themes and motifs are used to comment on critical topics from luxury, gender, and consumerism to sustainability, social activism, and body politics. Food has influenced fashion design from the eighteenth-century to today. So while the connection between the two genres is hardly new – think of woven pomegranates, embroidered ears of wheat, or fruit-trimmed hats – just this year, in 2023, the New York Times reported that food motifs are “the new florals” in fashion. Food & Fashion is an exciting and timely exhibition that includes over eighty garments and accessories by designers including Chanel, Moschino, and Stella McCartney. It is a multifaceted look at how intertwined these genres are and what they can express about our culture and society.
Food & Fashion is co-curated by Melissa Marra-Alvarez, curator of education and research, and Elizabeth Way, associate curator of costume at MFIT.
On the occasion of Hispanic Heritage Month, Four Freedoms Park Conservancy has engaged its first guest curator, bestselling author, Pulitzer Prize finalist, and Brooklynite Xochitl Gonzalez.
Kicking off her programming is a newly commissioned mural by Latin-American artist Mata Ruda entitled “Esta Tierra Es Nuestra Tierra” (“This Land is Our Land).”
“Esta Tierra Es Nuestra Tierra” (“This Land is Our Land)”
When: Now through October 15
Where: Franklin D. Roosevelt Four Freedoms State Park, 1 FDR Four Freedoms Park, NYC
Free
LEARN MORE ABOUT THE CURATOR AND ARTIST
XOCHITL GONZALEZ is the New York Times bestselling author of Olga Dies Dreaming. Named a Best of 2022 by The New York Times, TIME, Kirkus, Washington Post, and NPR, Olga Dies Dreaming was the winner of the Brooklyn Public Library Book Prize in Fiction and The New York City Book Awards. Her new novel, Anita de Monte Laughs Last, is forthcoming in March 2024 with Flatiron Books. As a staff writer for The Atlantic, she was recognized as a 2023 finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in Commentary.
MATA RUDA (Karl Miller Espinosa) is a Latin-American artist and muralist residing in Newark. Using iconography from both sides of the border, he creates a variety of murals and paintings that empower overlooked communities. His work has been exhibited by institutions including: the Newark Museum, El Museo Barrio in Harlem, the Street Art Museum in Russia, and the Hudson Valley Center for Contemporary Art. Since 2012 he has been invited to commissioned to create public murals in Russia, Puerto Rico, Ukraine, Mexico, the United States, and more.
Ooops…. We missed Thursday’s issue due to late night activities.
FROM THE ARCHIVES
FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 22, 2023
RUTH LAW
PIONEER IN AVIATION
WIKIPEDIA
ISSUE# 1081
Ruth Law Oliver (May 21, 1887 – December 1, 1970) was a pioneer American aviator during the 1910s.
Biography
She was born Ruth Bancroft Law on May 21, 1887 to Sarah Bancroft Breed and Frederick Henry Law in Lynn, Massachusetts.[1]
She was inspired to take up flying by her brother, parachutist and pioneer moviestuntmanRodman Law,[4] with whom she challenged herself to physically keep up during their childhood.[5]
She was instructed by Harry Atwood and Arch Freeman at Atwood Park in Saugus, Massachusetts,[6] having been refused lessons by Orville Wright because, according to Law, he believed that women weren’t mechanically inclined, but this only made her more determined, later saying “The surest way to make me do a thing is to tell me I can’t do it.” She was an adept mechanic.[5] She received her pilot’s license in November 1912, and in 1915 gave a demonstration of aerobatics at Daytona Beach, Florida, before a large crowd. She announced that she was going to “loop the loop” for the first time, and proceeded to do so, not once but twice, to the consternation of her husband, Charles Oliver.
Ruth Law was the only woman in World War I permitted to wear the French government aviation uniform for nonmilitary purpose
In 1915 she participated in a publicity stunt for baseball’s Grapefruit League. Dodgers manager Wilbert Robinson and outfielder Casey Stengel heard that Law had been dropping golf balls from the sky for a nearby golf course and decided that a similar stunt would be good for publicity. On March 13, 1915, Law flew with Stengel on board (though, later, Stengel would recant his role in the tale, saying it was team trainer) ready to drop the baseball to Robinson’s waiting mitt. But instead of a baseball, a grapefruit was flung out the plane, either as a prank or by mistake. The fruit shattered on impact, covering Robinson in the “ooze and goo” and making him believe he was injured and covered with blood. Fortunately, this was not the case, but a popular legend is that this incident was how the Grapefruit League earned its nickname.[7]In the spring of 1916, she took part in an altitude competition, twice narrowly coming in second to male fliers. She was furious, determined to set a record that would stand against men as well as women.Her greatest feat took place on 19 November 1916, when she broke the existing cross-America flight air speed record of 452 miles (727 km) set by Victor Carlstrom by flying nonstop from Chicago to New York State, a distance of 590 miles (950 km). The next day she flew on to New York City. Flying over Manhattan, her fuel cut out, but she glided to a safe landing on Governors Island and was met by United States ArmyCaptainHenry “Hap” Arnold (who changed her spark plugs in the Curtiss pusher),[citation needed] who would one day become Commanding General of the United States Army Air Forces. PresidentWoodrow Wilson attended a dinner held in her honor on 2 December 1916.
After the United States entered World War I in April 1917, she campaigned unsuccessfully for women to be allowed to fly military aircraft. Stung by her rejection, she wrote an article entitled “Let Women Fly!” in the magazine Air Travel, where she argued that success in aviation should prove a woman’s fitness for work in that field.After the war, she continued to set records. After Raymonde de Laroche of France set a women’s altitude record of nearly 13,000 feet (4,000 m) on 7 June 1919,[8] She broke Laroche’s record on 10 June, flying to 14,700 feet (4,500 m).[8] Laroche, in turn, broke Oliver’s record on 12 June, flying to a height of 15,748 feet (4,800 m).[9]On a morning in 1922, Law woke up to read with surprise an announcement of her retirement in the newspaper; her husband had tired of her dangerous job and had taken that step to end her flying career,[10] and she acquiesced to his demand.She attributed a 1932 nervous breakdown to the lack of flying, having settled down in Los Angeles, spending her days gardening.[5]In 1948, Law attended a Smithsonian event in Washington, D.C. celebrating the donation of the Wright brothers’ Kitty Hawk plane, despite Orville Wright’s earlier refusal to teach her. Notwithstanding her accomplished career in aviation, she traveled by train.[5]She died on December 1, 1970, in San Francisco.[1] She is buried in Pine Grove Cemetery in Lynn, Massachusetts.
Ruth Law, from the cover of the May 5, 1917 issue of Billboard.
Place-Royale in Old Québec, Notre-Dame-des-Victoires (Our Lady of Victories) church is considered to be the oldest church built in stone and which still has its same walls in Canada. The Norwegian Joy is docked a few blocks away and is intruding on the historic scene.
TUESDAY PHOTO OF THE DAY
GUASTAVINO CEILING ON ROOF OF ENTRACE TO CHATEAU FRONTENAC HOTEL IN QUEBEC CITY Andy Sparberg got this right
Text by Judith Berdy Thanks to Bobbie Slonevsky for her dedication to Blackwell’s Almanac and the RIHS
WIKIPEDIA
Thanks to Deborah Dorff for maintaining our website Edited by Melanie Colter and Deborah Dorff
MAYA LEVANON-PHOTOS TIK TOK & INSTAGRAM
All image are copyrighted (c) Roosevelt Island Historical Society unless otherwise indicated
Having spent three weeks in Boston where he enjoyed an enthusiastic reception, Charles Dickens arrived on February 12, 1842, in South Street, Lower Manhattan, on the packet New York from New Haven. The city depressed him.
In his travelogue American Notes, he contrasted sun-filled Broadway with the filth of The Five Points. In the district’s narrow alleys the visitor was confronted with all that is “loathsome, drooping, and decayed.” Dickens described New York as a city of sunshine and gloom.
As Manhattan’s built environment expanded with the arrival of large numbers of newcomers, New Yorkers complained of being engulfed by blackness. The introduction of gas light in the streets alleviated the issue during night time hours, but distribution of the new technology was unequal. The monopolistic New York Gas Light Company bypassed deprived localities in favor of affluent or commercial districts.
Access to light in Manhattan, both natural and artificial, defined the difference between rich and poor neighborhoods, between safe and troubled environments. It marked the social inequalities of the urban landscape.
Pen Power
In 1906 Carl Hassman published his cartoon The Crusaders depicting a vanguard of writers and journalists as knights campaigning against corruption and corporate deceit. Many of the portrayed characters carry the pen as it were a warrior’s lance. The artist incorporated a number of vanguard journals in this imaginative army, including McClure’s Magazine and the satirical weekly Puck (famous for its cartoons).
That same year the term “muckraking” was introduced by President Theodore Roosevelt in describing the socially committed journalism of his day. Having borrowed the word from John Bunyan’s The Pilgrim’s Progress (1678), he criticized the press for focusing on corruption at the expense of more positive news. Journalists took this attack as a compliment and adopted the term as a badge of honor.
During the period between roughly 1890 and 1920 (the Progressive Era), muckrakers were investigative journalists who exposed fraud and duplicity in authority whilst highlighting social problems. Their aim was to generate public anger which would force lawmakers to intervene (or not). The muckrakers’ well-researched reporting differed from “yellow” journalistic practice by which newspapers sensationalized stories based on fiction and hearsay rather than factual information.
The muckraker was driven by both a quest for dramatic effect and a passion for justice. Coinciding with a growing readership and an emerging sense of urban identity, this type of journalism had been expanding gradually. In the city of New York, the scandal-focused approach and stylistic tone was set earlier in the nineteenth century by an enigmatic author named George Goodrich Foster.
Journeyman Journalist
Foster remains a shadowy figure as biographical information is scarce. He was born about 1812 in (probably) Vermont. With little or no formal education, he was – in his own words – a “dreamy poet” who took up journalism out of financial necessity.
Having moved to New York in 1842, his love for poetry became clear three years later when he published the first American edition of The Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley. In his introduction he praised the radical poet for his civilizing role in society. A student of French utopian philosophy, Foster’s thinking was influenced by Charles Fourier’s radical views on social change. He made his political engagement clear with the publication of The French Revolution of 1848. From the outset of his career, Foster acted as a commentator with reform in mind.
It may have been this particular aspect of his intellectual makeup that motivated Horace Greeley to hire him as a reporter. Founder and editor of the New York Tribune, the latter was a promoter of reform movements such as socialism, feminism, temperance and vegetarianism.
Foster soon established a reputation as an author of urban sketches and an observer of events that took place during New York City’s gaslight era. In engaging pieces, he attempted to pinpoint underlying sources of urban vice and crime and suggest solutions to the problems engendered by those living in poverty and destitution.
On a roving assignment (a “journeyman journalist” in his own phrase), he covered city life in all its aspects. Day or night, Foster hurried to report from fire or crime scenes; he joined public processions; covered local controversies; and commented on visits to New York by foreign dignitaries.
Foster was a regular guest at Manhattan’s House of Detention (known locally as “The Tombs”) which he outlined as a “shrine of petty larceny, drunkenness, vagabondism and vagrancy,” referring to his slum and prison tours in terms of “pilgrimages.” The use of the term is a reminder of the fact that journeys into the urban “jungle” were considered to be of great moral significance. Here too, Forster set an example.
Victorian London of the 1870s was a city of stark contrasts between affluence and squalor. In 1872 English journalist Blanchard Jerrold and French engraver Gustave Doré produced a book entitled London: A Pilgrimage. Together, the two explored the capital, visiting night refuges, lodging houses and opium dens.
In order to produce a telling record of the city’s “shadows and sunlight,” they also attended an event at Lambeth Palace and the Derby at Epsom Race Course. Doré’s 180 engravings, with their dramatic use of light and shade, captured the public mood.
Gaslight Foster
Few writers or journalists knew Manhattan by day or by night better than did George Foster. An urban chronicler, he roamed the streets and avenues, observed the razzmatazz of city life, and recorded events with a sharp eye and in a fluent and witty style.
His portraits of “swells” dining at Delmonico’s or gathering in oyster cellars; of Bowery derelicts and criminals; of “sidewalkers” hooking clients at The Five Points; of high-class “cyprians” operating in luxurious brothels (the “Golden Gates of Hell” in his words), provided his readers with juicy tales of life in a metropolis that by then had become the nation’s richest, most crowded and most vice-ridden center of activity. Foster’s snapshots helped forge the city’s identity and its distinct vocabulary (“New York City English“).
We shape our buildings and thereafter they shape us, Winston Churchill insisted in a speech of October 1943 concerning the rebuilding of the bomb-damaged House of Commons. The same statement can be applied to urban neighborhoods. In his descriptions, Foster dissected the metropolis into various “slices” of life animated by colorful characters. He was one of the first authors to offer a social geography of New York City.
Foster’s columns proved popular and a collection of tales was published in 1849 as New York in Slices; by an Experienced Carver. In autumn 1850, he published a new series of sketches entitled New York by Gas-Light, with here and there a Streak of Sunshine which, as his publisher claimed, sold even better than the previous book.
Covering much the same topics, this set of stories concentrates on the “festivities of prostitution, the orgies of pauperism, the haunts of theft and murder, the scenes of drunkenness and beastly debauch, and all the sad realities that go to make up the lower stratum – the underground story – of life in New York!” (opening paragraph). The effort earned him the nickname “Gaslight Foster.”
What was the appeal of Foster’s columns? In his writing the author showed genuine sympathy for people caught in the meshes of poverty, a concern that was spiced by his contempt for politicians and religious dignitaries who defended the status quo and peppered by his hatred of the hedonistic lifestyles associated with a “sporting man culture.”
In his self-described role as an “experienced carver” of urban life, Foster practiced voyeurism with a social conscience. His success indicated an emerging wider sense of city identity that went beyond the Knickerbocker history of New York City.
That shift in urban awareness became evident when Benjamin Baker’s musical farce A Glance at New York in 1848 hit the stage, turning out to be one of the greatest theatrical successes up to that time. Following the adventures of Big Mose, a muscular firefighter, the play was a potpourri of filth and fury.
Its main character was presented as the “toughest man in the nation’s toughest city.” The play became a trailblazer for a new kind of drama populated by street-familiar characters that spoke directly to New Yorkers. Baker’s realistic and unsentimental image of the Bowery would have inspired Foster’s approach.
Foster’s work remains of interest to the social historian. Criminals, beggars and prostitutes may abound in his tales, but there is also ample attention to the plight of working people, to women struggling in sweatshops, to gangs that controlled districts, or to the aimless exploits of “b’hoys & g’hals” hanging out on street corners.
In spite of his stress on degradation and exploitation, Foster’s approach did help to instill a feeling of anticipation of “better days ahead.” The author believed that the city would “cure” itself from the “poison” of prostitution. Poverty and injustice could be eradicated. New York City was full of potential and an era of social change and reform was imminent. Foster’s messianic idealism never left him.
Decline & Demise
Throughout his writings, starting with the introduction to his Shelley edition, Foster showed an understanding of those being destroyed by the impersonal forces of poverty and destitution. His final book New York Naked was undated and appeared sometime in 1854. More substantial than his two preceding publications, it lacked their spark. By now he had become interested in Italian opera (he edited a Memoir of Jenny Lind, a compilation of printed items resulting from the from the adored Swedish singer’s 1850 tour) and his sketches of New York’s publishers, editors and writers remain of interest to historians of books and newspapers.
Beyond his publishing activities little is known of Foster during the years after he left the Tribune in 1849/50. Sometime before the end of 1853 he moved to Philadelphia, but must have hit hard times. In January 1855 he landed in prison for passing forged bank notes. He died on April 16, 1856, shortly after his release.
At best, Foster was a great storyteller, an author who could outline a scene in a single stylish paragraph through sharp characterisation. At worst, his writing deteriorated into sugary sentimentalism or petty finger-wagging. This was a thin dividing line. Many moralists had entered and described the sordid world of the metropolis, be it in London or New York, but only the work of great narrators survived and made an impact. Gaslight Foster was one of those.
GUASTAVINO CEILING ON ROOF OF ENTRACE TO CHATEAU FRONTENAC HOTEL IN QUEBEC CITY
Text by Judith Berdy Thanks to Bobbie Slonevsky for her dedication to Blackwell’s Almanac and the RIHS
NEW YORK ALMANACK
Illustrations, from above: “Prostitution: ‘Hooking a Victim’,” Engraving from New York by Gas-Light, 1850; Carl Hassman’s “The Crusaders,” 1906 (Library of Congress); Cover of 1879 sheet music for C.M. Connolly’s song “Under the Gas Light”; Cover of the first edition of Foster’s New York by Gas-Light (1850); and “Mayhem in Five Points,” an 1855 guidebook lithograph by an unknown artist.
Thanks to Deborah Dorff for maintaining our website Edited by Melanie Colter and Deborah Dorff
MAYA LEVANON-PHOTOS TIK TOK & INSTAGRAM
All image are copyrighted (c) Roosevelt Island Historical Society unless otherwise indicated
Changes came to the Brooklyn Bridge not long after this “eighth wonder of the world” linking the cities of New York and Brooklyn opened to enormous fanfare on May 24, 1883.
The toll to cross the bridge (one cent for pedestrians, a nickel for a horse and rider, and 10 cents for a horse and wagon, per history.com) ended in 1891. Eight years later, tracks were added to the bridge’s roadways so trolleys could carry people across the bridge in both directions.
But before that, in 1886, a high-profile New York welfare worker came up with a more fantastical idea: building an “ornamental palace of glass,” as Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper described it, on the top of each of the bridge’s two towers (sketch above).
These glass enclosures would serve as “grand observatories” for visitors who wanted to view the cities of Brooklyn and New York from “lofty heights,” the article continued.
How would people reach these glass enclosures? They would be whisked to the top of the towers and into the observatories by elevators, which would be enclosed in new steel framework to be added alongside each tower.
It might rank as the boldest, most unusual idea to alter the bridge ever put before city officials. But then Linda Gilbert (above), the woman who suggested it, was a bold and unusual New Yorker.
Born in Rochester in 1847, Gilbert (above in 1876) had been dubbed “the prisoner’s friend” because of her dedication to improving prisons and the lives of people residing in them. As a young woman, she used inherited family money to create penitentiary libraries, eventually building libraries at Sing Sing, the Tombs, the Ludlow Street Jail, and the New York House of Detention.
After her own funds dried up, she launched the Gilbert Library & Prisoners Aid Fund in 1876. Her need for more money to put toward her prison reform work appears to have been the reason behind her glass observatory idea.
“Gilbert proposed a modest fee for visitors, three-quarters of which would serve as direct revenue for the bridge, while the rest would fund Gilbert’s charitable and reformatory work,” wrote Richard Haw, author of Art of the Brooklyn Bridge: a Visual History.
“I am constantly hampered in my work for lack of funds,” Gilbert stated to Frank Leslie’s newspaper, bolstering her idea by adding that one of her cousins, Rufus H. Gilbert, was the inventor of the city’s first elevated railway.
She described the bridge towers as “not very ornamental.” Instead, she advocated for adding on top “two of the grandest points of elevation in the world” as long as she could be assured of getting a quarter of the receipts to put toward her prison reform work.
“The scheme will certainly attract general attention,” the Frank Leslie article concluded. In the end, of course, the glass observatories idea was DOA.
“The bridge’s trustees considered the proposal, but it went no further,” wrote Haw.
PLEASE JOIN US ON WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 20th 4-7 P.M. AT THE “DOUBLE TAKE” MOSAIC OPPOSITE THE SUBWAY STATION ROOSEVELT ISLAND, NEW YORK
MTA ARTS & DESIGN ROOSEVELT ISLAND HISTORICAL SOCIETY ROOSEVELT ISLAND OPERATING CORPORATION
TRAVEL INSTRUCTIONS TO ROOSEVELT ISLAND: BY TRAM: TAKE TRAM AT 59TH STREET AND SECOND AVENUE TO ISLAND, WALK 3 BLOCKS NORTH TO SITE OUTSIDE SUBWAY STATION.
BY SUBWAY: TAKE Q TRAIN TO 63RD STREET/LEXINGTON AVENUE STATION. FOLLOW SIGNS TO “F” TRAIN SHUTTLE TO ROOSEVELT ISLAND STATION. SHUTTE OPERATES 3 TIMES PER HOUR TO ROOSEVELT ISLAND. PROCEED UPSTAIRS TO EVENT. SEE BELOW FOR FULL DETAILS
BY FERRY: NO SUGGESTED DUE TO RIVER CLOSURE FOR UNITED NATIONS ACTIVITIES AND RIVER ACCESS CLOSURE
FROM THE ARCHIVES
WEEKEND, SEPTEMBER 16-17, 2023
WE WILL BE BACK NEXT WEEK
STAY TUNED
ISSUE# 1077
NOW IN EFFECT
THE SHUTTLE OPERATES 5 A.M. TO MIDNIGHT DAILY
The “F”SHUTTLE TRAIN WILL ONLY RUN BETWEEN 21 ST/QUEENSBRIDGE, ROOSEVELT ISLAND TO LEXINGTON AVE./63 ST. STATIONS. THERE IS ONE “F” SHUTTLE TRAIN ON ONE TRACK GOING BACK AND FORTH FROM 5 A.M. TO MIDNIGHT DURING THE WEEK.
TIMES TO REMEMBER: F SHUTTLE DEPARTS ROOSEVELT ISLAND STATION EVERY HOUR ON THE: :02 PAST THE HOUR :22 PAST THE HOUR :42 PAST THE HOUR
RETURNING F SHUTTLE DEPARTS 63 ST/ LEX STATION EVERY HOUR ON THE: .10 PAST THE HOUR .30 PAST THE HOUR .50 PAST THE HOUR
THERE ARE NO TRAINS GOING EAST TO QUEENS AFTER QUEENSBRIDGE. THERE ARE BUS CONNECTIONS FROM THAT STATION OPERATED BY THE MTA.
Q TRAIN CONNECTIONS AVAILABLE FROM 63/LEX STATION SOUTHBOUND Q TRAIN TO 57 STREET & 7 AVENUE Q TRAIN TO 42 STREET TIMES SQUARE (CONNECT HERE TO F TRAIN VIA PASSAGE) Q TRAIN TO 34 STREET (CONNECT HERE TO F TRAIN) Q TRAIN TO 14 STREET UNION SQUARE Q TRAIN TO CANAL STREET (OVER MANHATTAN BRIDGE TO BROOKLYN) Q TRAIN CONNECTIONS AVAILABLE FROM 63/LEX STATION NORTHBOUND (72 ST., 86 ST., 96 ST AT SECOND AVENUE)
Overnights between midnight and 5 a.m., F shuttle train service is suspended and free Q94 shuttle buses will connect the Roosevelt Island, 21 St-Queensbridge, and Queens Plaza stations. These are MTA buses.
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
MAYA LEVANON-PHOTOS TIK TOK & INSTAGRAM
All image are copyrighted (c) Roosevelt Island Historical Society unless otherwise indicated
