In 1869, alarming news about the dangers of drinking absinthe swept north from the city of New York, through Albany, all the way to Malone, near the Canadian border. A “brilliant writer” from the New York press and a “talented lady” had ruined themselves physically and mentally by drinking absinthe.
Comparing the drink to opium and morphine, the article warned readers that absinthe “obtains an all-powerful control over its votaries, deadens the sensibilities, and is, indeed the guillotine of the soul.”
Results of experiments on animals by Dr. Valentin Magnan, a respected French physician and an authority on what was called “alcoholic insanity,” gave weight to warnings that absinthe caused vertigo, convulsions, hallucinations, insanity and criminality. According to Dr. Magnan, the effects were permanent and hereditary — children of an absinthe drinker stood a good chance of developing a serious mental illness.
Dr. Magnan’s 1869 experiments on guinea pigs, rabbits and cats were well-publicized in New York State. He compared the effects of pure alcohol and absinthe on the animals by putting one in a glass case with a saucer full of pure alcohol, and another in a case with a saucer of the essence of wormwood (Artemisia absinthium), one of the plants used to make absinthe and from which it takes its name.
The animal exposed to absinthe soon “fell on its side, agitating its limbs convulsively, foaming at the mouth and presenting all the signs of epilepsy.” The animal forced to get intoxicated by pure alcohol “behaved like an ordinary drunkard. He became lively, then reeled about, and at last lay down and fell into a heavy sleep.”
The warnings about the danger of using absinthe came primarily from opponents of alcohol abuse and public drunkenness. Interestingly, as the nineteenth century wore on, French wine makers encouraged their efforts.
They had seen most of their vineyards destroyed during the Great French Wine Blight and the shortage of wine led to higher wine prices. To curb their growing expenses, absinthe manufacturers stopped using wine alcohol and began using cheaper industrial alcohol made from beets and grain. The result was an inexpensive absinthe, cheaper than wine, which greatly appealed to working class drinkers.
A distilled spirit made from the essences of a number of plants including anise, fennel, hyssop, and wormwood, absinthe has high alcohol content, typically 110 to 144 proof (55 to 72 per cent alcohol). Because of its traditionally bright yellowish-green color, absinthe has been known by a number of nicknames including the green muse, the green torment, the green oblivion, and its most popular nickname, the green fairy.
During the second half of the nineteenth century, absinthe enjoyed a surge of popularity in France where more absinthe was consumed than in the rest of the world. Artists, writers and poets such as Edgar Degas, Vincent van Gogh, Paul Gauguin, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, Arthur Rimbaud, and Oscar Wilde were said to have been inspired by the green fairy.
Absinthe also made its way into the U.S. The Absinthe Room opened in the French Quarter of New Orleans in 1874 and attracted prominent literary figures including Mark Twain and Walt Whitman. In the city of New York, the Absinthe House opened its doors for business and soon absinthe drinking became all the rage with bohemians and their wannabees.
As absinthe became more popular in New York State, alarm bells about its usage rang louder. In 1879, a doctor reviewed the use of absinthe, “an unusually deadly poison,” in an article for the British magazine Contemporary Review.
Reprinted in The New York Times, the story concluded that heavy use of absinthe can cause “epileptiform convulsions” and unconsciousness which can last for six or seven hours. The doctor warned that in the worst cases, the absinthe user can become a “confirmed epileptic.”
The anti-absinthe drumbeat continued into the last years of the nineteenth century. For example, an 1893 article in the New York literary magazine Current Literature entitled “Confessions of an Absintheur” and written by “A Slave to the Green Fairy,” began with the author saying, “I know what absinthe means! Madness and death!”
The movement to ban absinthe was given a huge boost in 1905 when a Swiss laborer murdered his two children and pregnant wife after a day long drinking bout with wine, brandy — and two glasses of absinthe. The crime and its connection with absinthe were highly publicized and support for a ban on absinthe skyrocketed.
In 1912, following the lead of the Congo Free State, Brazil, Belgium, Switzerland and Holland, the U.S. banned the importation of absinthe. A doctor speaking for the government said absinthe was being banned because it was “dangerous to health,” “one of the worst enemies of man,” and because users risked becoming “slaves to this demon.”
The ban on absinthe in the U.S. lasted almost 100 years. In 2007, the federal government lifted its ban and the green fairy returned to New York State. At first, sales soared and in 2010, New York State absinthe was distilled in Walton, a town in the foothills of the Catskills in Delaware County, and in Gardiner, a town in neighboring Ulster County.
Since then, sales of absinthe have leveled off. Some analysts have suggested that the drop may have occurred because consumers were disappointed by the “green fairy effect” or they did not like absinthe’s licorice-like taste.
Another explanation for the drop may be found in commentary about absinthe widely attributed to Oscar Wilde. He said, “After the first glass, you see things as you wish they were. After the second you see things as they are not. Finally, you see things as they really are, and that is the most horrible thing in the world.”
CANINE STYLES IS A DOG GROOMING SHOP AND CLOTHING STORE FOR UPPER EAST SIDE DOGS. THIS STORE HAS THE MOST CREATIVE WINDOW DISPLAYS FOR OVER THE MANY YEARS AT 63RD AND LEXINGTON AVENUE.
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NEW YORK ALMANACK
MAYA LEVANON-PHOTOS TIK TOK & INSTAGRAM
All image are copyrighted (c) Roosevelt Island Historical Society unless otherwise indicated
The East Side of Manhattan is about to get a glow-up. Internationally acclaimed artist Bruce Munro will unveil a new Field of Light installation at Freedom Plaza, between 38th to 41st Street east of First Avenue in Manhattan, on December 15th. The installation, which spans more than six acres, will feature “17,000 lowlight, fiber-optic stemmed spheres that will illuminate with a slow subtle change of hue.” Guests are invited to fully immerse themselves in the lights as they walk a winding path along the East River waterfront. Made possible by The Soloviev Foundation, this installation is free and open to the public, but tickets are required. The show is currently sold out through February, but March tickets will be released on February 1st, here.
Courtesy of the Art Production Fund. Image by Daniel Greer
Artist Debbie Lawson makes her mark on New York City as the first UK-based artist to be featured at Rockefeller Center with her Art in Focus exhibit. Located at the Rink Level of 45 Rockefeller Plaza, Lawson has filled the concourse with a mural mosaic of carpet imagery combined with wild animals like boars, deer, and tigers. Viewers will see wild animal imagery camouflaged in carpet patterns while wandering through the space. Lawson was heavily inspired by the architecture of the Art Deco complex, especially the gilded lions at the 50th Street entrance. She created three royal lions that creep around carpets, featured in the vitrine spaces. Her installation blurs the lines between two and three dimensions, as well as between the natural and built world. Lawson’s work will be on view through January 9th, 2024.
The New York Botanical Garden Holiday Train Show is a beloved annual tradition for the holiday season in NYC! On view through January 15th, the show features recreations of famous New York City sights, from the Statue of Liberty to Yankee Stadium. There are more than 200 buildings in all! Each is meticulously crafted by Laura Busse Dolan and the creative team at Applied Imagination, the family-run company that has been creating the train show scenes since 1992. This year, the show will feature a brand-new outdoor train display. T
Photo by Rachel Fawn Alban
NYC Health + Hospital’s art collection has grown by one more mural this month with the unveiling of Rachel Fawn Alban’s Healing in Community photo mural inside NYC Health + Hospitals/Coler on Roosevelt Island. The mural came together over a series of photography workshops with community members, staff, and patients and visits Alban made to the facility. The final piece, which contains portraits of 34 members of the Coler community, is a tribute to each subject’s contributions to that community. A total of nine new murals have been created this year as part of NYCHH’s Community Mural Project. Those murals, along with the existing 26 murals that were part of the project, can all be seen in a new book, Healing Walls: New York City Health + Hospitals Community Mural Project 2019-2021.
Photo Credit: Sebastian Bach
A new art installation comes to Brooklyn at the Lena Horne Bandshell in Prospect Park. Conceptual photographer Kevin Claiborne created a mural featuring phrases like “Where can Blackness reach” and “Where is Black enough,” superimposed upon the repeating face of an unidentified Black youth from Harlem in the early 1900s. The mural offers viewers critical self-reflection and an examination of the Black experience. Guests are encouraged to dive deeper into the origins and embodiment of Blackness with this mural, on view through April 24th, 2023.
TUESDAY, JANUARY 9TH, 6:30 P.M. NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY
Affordable Housing and the Future of New York’s Open Space
Learn the history of affordable housing in New York City and how Roosevelt Island, created in 1975, is an integral part of that history. Hear about ideas of open space that were supported by this approach to housing and how they are being reconsidered today.
Matthias Altwicker, AIA LEED AP, is an architect and an associate professor of architecture at New York Institute of Technology. Both his practice and research focus on housing and open space, including collaborations with the New York City Housing Authority (NYCHA) and municipal administrations in New York City and Long Island. SPONSORED BY THE NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY & R.I. HISTORICAL SOCIETY
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UNTAPPED NEW YORK
MAYA LEVANON-PHOTOS TIK TOK & INSTAGRAM
All image are copyrighted (c) Roosevelt Island Historical Society unless otherwise indicated
September 3, 1942. “New York, New York. Newsroom of the New York Times newspaper. Reporters and rewrite men writing stories, and waiting to be sent out. Rewrite man in background gets the story on the phone from reporter outside.” Medium format acetate negative by Marjory Collins for the Office of War Information
September 3, 1942. “New York, New York. Newsroom of the New York Times newspaper. Right foreground, city editor. Two assistants, left foreground. City copy desk in middle ground, with foreign desk, to right; telegraph desk to left. Makeup desk in center back with spiral staircase leading to composing room. Copy readers go up there to check proofs.” Medium format acetate negative by Marjory Collins for the Office of War Information
September 1942. “New York, New York. Photographic department of the New York Times newspaper. One of eight staff photographers returns to staff room after assignment. Over door is eulogy of news camera. At left are maps of the city and region for photographers’ reference.” Acetate negative by Marjory Collins for the Office of War Information.
September 3, 1942. “New York, New York. Radio room of the New York Times newspaper. The Times listening post, between 10 pm and midnight, between first and second editions. The operator is listening to Axis news (propaganda) broadcast. Paper in foreground has been examined to see what has already been covered in last edition of paper. Operator reports and gives new angles to city editor. Messages are recorded on paper tape in international Morse code.” Acetate negative by Marjory Collins for the Office of War Information
September 3, 1942. “New York, New York. Wire room of the New York Times newspaper. Copy boy about to tear off dispatch from the Associated Press wire.” Medium format acetate negative by Marjory Collins for the Office of War Information.
September 1942. New York. “Photo engraving department of the New York Times newspaper. This camera photographs a photographic print through a screen and produces a strip negative.” Acetate negative by Marjory Collins for the Office of War Information.
NEW DATE FOR THIS PROGRAM, TUESDAY, FEB.13TH
SAVE THE DATE
TUESDAY, JANUARY 9TH, 6:30 P.M. NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY
Affordable Housing and the Future of New York’s Open Space
Learn the history of affordable housing in New York City and how Roosevelt Island, created in 1975, is an integral part of that history. Hear about ideas of open space that were supported by this approach to housing and how they are being reconsidered today.
Matthias Altwicker, AIA LEED AP, is an architect and an associate professor of architecture at New York Institute of Technology. Both his practice and research focus on housing and open space, including collaborations with the New York City Housing Authority (NYCHA) and municipal administrations in New York City and Long Island. SPONSORED BY THE NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY & R.I. HISTORICAL SOCIETY
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SHORPY HISTORIC AMERICAN PHOTO ARCHIVE
MAYA LEVANON-PHOTOS TIK TOK & INSTAGRAM
All image are copyrighted (c) Roosevelt Island Historical Society unless otherwise indicated
THE RIHS WILL BE AT THE EVENT INSIDE 546 MAIN STREET THIS SATURDAY, STOP NY FOR GREAT BUYS
STOP BY THE KIOSK FOR GREAT GIFTS AND OUR EXCLUSIVE ROOSEVELT ISLAND TAPESTRY THROW
THE SHOP HAS RETURNED FOR A SECOND YEAR AT THE RIVAA GALLERY THRU SUNDAY. STOP BY FOR WONDERFUL INDIAN MERCHANDISE
TWO EXCITING UPCOMING EVENTS AT OUR NYPL BRANCH
SAVE THE DATE
TUESDAY, JANUARY 9TH, 6:30 P.M. NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY
Affordable Housing and the Future of New York’s Open Space
Learn the history of affordable housing in New York City and how Roosevelt Island, created in 1975, is an integral part of that history. Hear about ideas of open space that were supported by this approach to housing and how they are being reconsidered today.
Matthias Altwicker, AIA LEED AP, is an architect and an associate professor of architecture at New York Institute of Technology. Both his practice and research focus on housing and open space, including collaborations with the New York City Housing Authority (NYCHA) and municipal administrations in New York City and Long Island. SPONSORED BY THE NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY & R.I. HISTORICAL SOCIETY
COLER CELEBRATES STAFF AND RESIDENTS
“HEALING IN COMMUNITY” A NEW PHOTO MURAL WAS UNVEILED TODAY WITH PORTRAITSOF 35 RESIDENTS AND STAFF IN THE UNIQUE COMMUNITY. CEO STEPHEN CUTOLLO AND JUDITH BERDY, COLER AUXILIARY PRESIDENT ARE PHOTOGRAPHEDNEXT TO THEIR IMAGES ON THE MURAL. THE MURAL IS THE WORK OF ARTIST RACHAL ALBAN. THE SPONSOR IS NYC HEALTH+HOSPITALS /ARTS IN MEDICINE. THE COMMUNITY MURAL PROGRAM IS MADE BY GENEROUS SUPPORT FROM THE LAURIE M. TISCH ILLUMINATION FUND.
CREDITS
JUDITH BERDY NYC HEALTH+HOSPITALS
MAYA LEVANON-PHOTOS TIK TOK & INSTAGRAM
All image are copyrighted (c) Roosevelt Island Historical Society unless otherwise indicated
The New York Herald was founded by James Gordon Bennett, Sr. in 1835. Under his leadership it was the dominant newspaper in the city for most of the century. Shortly after his death in 1866 James Gordon Bennet, Jr., who was raised in Paris, returned to New York to take the reins.
The junior Bennett brought with him the carefree lifestyle he had enjoyed in France, and his unorthodox behavior sometimes offended well-bred Victorian New Yorkers. Such was the case in 1877 when he attended the New Year’s Day party hosted by his fiancée’s parents. His engagement came to an abrupt end when he urinated in the fireplace.
In 1893 Bennett engaged the services of McKim, Mead & White to design a new printing plant and headquarters for The Herald far north of Printing House Square on the trapezoid-shaped plot of land facing West 35th Street, bounded by 6th Avenue and Broadway. Completed in 1895 it was nothing short of a masterwork.
Sanford White based the design on the 1476 Palazzo del Consiglio in Verona, Italy. But there was obvious influence from the publisher. James Gordon Bennett, Jr. was obsessed with owls, which he made the symbol of The Herald. Now 26 four-foot high bronze owls now perched along the cornice of the building. Those at the corners, with spread wings, had illuminated green glass eyes which glowed eerily on and off with the striking of the two clocks embedded into the facade–one symbolic of Wisdom, the other of Industry.
The massive grouping dominated the roof line. The two clock faces flank the central second story windows and bronze owls stand guard all along the cornice. from the collection of the New York Public Library
The striking of that clock seemed to be accomplished by two massive figures in printers’ aprons under the watchful eye of Minerva, goddess of wisdom, whose traditional attendant was an owl. The massive bronze grouping was executed by French sculptor Antonin Jean Carlès, personally chosen by Bennett. On the hour and the half-hour, the mechanized typesetters were set into action, swinging mallets against a large bronze bell atop which perched yet another owl.
At noon on March 21, 1895 the clock was first set into action. The Editor & Publisher wrote that “thousands of persons cluttered up the neighborhood and gazed at the two figures.”
The mechanical typesetters–given the names Guff and Stuff by New Yorkers–clanged out the hours for nearly nearly three decades–during rain, snow and summer heat–as busy pedestrians scurried by below. The colorful James Gordon Bennett, Jr. died in 1918 and three years later, on May 12, 1921 the New-York Tribune ran the headline: Old Herald Building Soon to Come Down. It added “The heroic bronze smiths, known as Guff and Stuff, who had been striking out the hours night and day on the big bell on top of the southern façade of the building for the last twenty-eight years, and the goggling owls that had watched from their lofty perch on top of the building during those years were removed last month, for they were the property of the late Mr. Bennett.”
One calculation put the total number of mallet thumps by Guff and Stuff at 3,188,680.
Thankfully for posterity, Bennett’s unnatural love for owls had prompted him to retain personal ownership of the bronzes as well as the sculptural clock grouping. All of the statuary was carefully crated and stored.
Nearly two decades later a committee of businessmen in the Herald Square area was formed to erect a memorial to Bennett. The men raised $10,000 (just under $180,000 today) and the well-known architect Aymar Embury II received the commission to design the structure.
As ground was broken on July 3, 1940 The New York Times reported “The proposed new forty-foot granite monument of modified Italian Renaissance design, with its double-faced clock and the two bronze owls, will serve as a background and base for the bronze group…The statue and bell will face south in front of a niche flanked by Corinthian pilasters, the upper part of which contains the clock and two of the owls of which the younger Bennett was so fond.”
photo by the author
Although the monument included a lengthy inscription about Bennett and his contributions, The Times essentially ignored him when it reported on the unveiling on November 19 that year. The newspaper referred to it as “Minerva and the Bell-ringers.” The article ended saying “The ceremonies will end at 6 P. M. with the striking of the clock, the ringing of the bells by ‘Stuff’ and ‘Guff,’ and the eyes of the owls blinking again for the first time in twenty years.”
The spread-winged owls with their blinking green eyes were salvaged from the Herald Building’s corners. Both clock faces from the Herald facade survived, now back-to-back atop the monument. photo by the author
The clock and its figures got a make-over in 1989 when Stuff began moving forward and actually making contact with the bell with his mallet, causing damage. The clock, the granite and the figures were cleaned and conserved and, $200,000 later, emerged looking as they did in 1940. Others of the reclaimed bronze owls perch on posts around the triangular park.
photo by the author
SAVE THE DATE
TUESDAY, JANUARY 9TH, 6:30 P.M. NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY
Affordable Housing and the Future of New York’s Open Space
Learn the history of affordable housing in New York City and how Roosevelt Island, created in 1975, is an integral part of that history. Hear about ideas of open space that were supported by this approach to housing and how they are being reconsidered today.
Matthias Altwicker, AIA LEED AP, is an architect and an associate professor of architecture at New York Institute of Technology. Both his practice and research focus on housing and open space, including collaborations with the New York City Housing Authority (NYCHA) and municipal administrations in New York City and Long Island. SPONSORED BY THE NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY & R.I. HISTORICAL SOCIETY
THURSDAYPHOTO OF THE DAY
In the lobby of 75 Rockefeller Plaza is a commemorative wall saluting employees who have served in our armed forces, a great show of support
WEDNESDAY PHOTO OF THE DAY
COOK AND FAMILY CHILDREN ON BACK PORCH OF BLACKWELL HOUSE 1915 (?) GLORIA HERMAN GOT IT
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DAYTONIAN IN MANHATTAN
MAYA LEVANON-PHOTOS TIK TOK & INSTAGRAM
All image are copyrighted (c) Roosevelt Island Historical Society unless otherwise indicated
THE LOBBY OF 787 SEVENTH AVENUE HAS THE #3 LARGEST TREE IN MANHATTAN.
WHILE WALKING THRU THE BUILDING I COULD NOT BELIEVE THE SIZE OF THIS TREE!
Mural with Blue Brushstroke is a 1986 mural painting by Roy Lichtenstein that is located in the atrium of the Equitable Tower (now known as the AXA Center) in New York City. The mural was the subject of the book Roy Lichtenstein: Mural With Blue Brushstroke. The mural includes highlights of Lichtenstein’s earlier works.
Gillie and Marc’s Paparazzi Dogs are the world’s most notorious photographers. The four bronze Dogmen have sniffed out the rich and famous in Melbourne’s Federation Square, the Jing’an Sculpture Park in Shanghai, and New York’s Greenwich Village and the Rockefeller Center. The sculptures have gone from being an art experiment about photographing celebrities to sought-after celebrities in their own right. When Gillie and Marc first launched the series, within days the life-sized dogs went viral with millions of visitors coming to see them. People from all over the world, along with celebrities such as Snoop Dog, were eager to pose with the Pap Dogs, quickly giving them a celebrity status. Trey Ratcliff, considered to be one of the world’s best contemporary photographers, also came and was followed by 500 professional photographers to take a photo of him. Gillie and Marc had intentionally created the interactive piece to expose the pack mentality of the media and how we hunt celebrities to get their photo.
I visited the park today on a beautiful sunny morning. Many visitors stopped The dogs are facing the elevators and waiting to snap a celebrity!
How appropriate that the dogs are in Rockefeller Center, ready to snap a VIP arriving to SNL.
Just one more photo please!
SAVE THE DATE
TUESDAY, JANUARY 9TH, 6:30 P.M. NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY
Affordable Housing and the Future of New York’s Open Space
Learn the history of affordable housing in New York City and how Roosevelt Island, created in 1975, is an integral part of that history. Hear about ideas of open space that were supported by this approach to housing and how they are being reconsidered today.
Matthias Altwicker, AIA LEED AP, is an architect and an associate professor of architecture at New York Institute of Technology. Both his practice and research focus on housing and open space, including collaborations with the New York City Housing Authority (NYCHA) and municipal administrations in New York City and Long Island. SPONSORED BY THE NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY & R.I. HISTORICAL SOCIETY
Back in September, RIOC announced that the “Girl Puzzle” would be closed for concrete repairs for a month. To make a long story short concrete “repairs” were done and immediately discovered that the work was not up to standards.
The area has been cordoned off since September yellow railings and red safety nettting.
I visited the park today on a beautiful sunny morning. Many visitors stopped by, ignoring the downed netting and useless railings.
According to Amanda Matthews, the artist, the situation is in discussions and no work can be done in winter……Let’s have RIOC remove the barriers and clean up the area so visitors can enjoy the park.
The other day I reported on the trespassers that were in the Smallpox Hospital recording their adventures in the middle of the night.
Today, our contemporary landmark is being blocked by contemporary barriers.
One Southpoint Park needs protection from intruders.
Our Lighthouse Park needs to be barrier free when no work is being performed.
Judith Berdy
SHAME One of our Island bloggers posted videos of trespassers in the Smallpox Hospital after climbing the fences into Southpoint Park and the Smallpox Hospital. The management of the FDR Four Freedoms State Park. FFP Conservancy, Cat Sanctuary and RIHS are infuriated that this criminal act is being publicized. Shame on our “press” that exploits these activities.
SAVE THE DATE
TUESDAY, JANUARY 9TH, 6:30 P.M. NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY
Affordable Housing and the Future of New York’s Open Space
Learn the history of affordable housing in New York City and how Roosevelt Island, created in 1975, is an integral part of that history. Hear about ideas of open space that were supported by this approach to housing and how they are being reconsidered today.
Matthias Altwicker, AIA LEED AP, is an architect and an associate professor of architecture at New York Institute of Technology. Both his practice and research focus on housing and open space, including collaborations with the New York City Housing Authority (NYCHA) and municipal administrations in New York City and Long Island. SPONSORED BY THE NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY & R.I. HISTORICAL SOCIETY
New York has been a hotbed of innovation since its founding. Made in New York: 25 Innovators Who Shaped Our World (SUNY Press, 2023) by Frank Vizard tells the stories behind the innovators and their inventions.
Like many New Yorkers, some came from elsewhere to find success in their new homes. Others were homegrown. Some became famous; others struggled for recognition. All were visionaries and risk-takers who were willing to put their lives on the line if necessary.
From the first brassiere to the first modern submarine, and from Batman to the first mass-produced cameras, New York has been a seabed of life-changing innovations that have altered how we live.
Made in New York celebrates the compelling stories of these innovative men and women. Find out why invention of the teddy bear in Brooklyn is a civil rights story as is dry cleaning. The invention of voting machines in New York is still relevant to elections today. And baseball wouldn’t be what it is now without New York rules.
Luminaries like Nikola Tesla, Raymond Loewy and DJ Kool Herc shine alongside lesser known figures like George Speck, Katherine Blodgett, and Marie Van Britten Brown. What they did in New York impacted the world.
Frank Vizard is a former editor with Popular Science magazine and has written for a wide variety of publications ranging from Luxury Magazine to USA Today. Vizard’s other books include Why A Curveball Curves: The Incredible Science of Sports (2009) and the novel Screamer (2018). He lives in Westchester County, NY.
Radicals and Rogues: The Women Who Made New York Modern
This is the story of a group of women whose experiments in art and life set the tone for the rise of New York as the twentieth-century capital of modern culture.
Across the 1910s and 1920s, through provocative creative acts, shocking fashion, political activism, and dynamic social networks, these women re-imagined modern life and fought for the chance to realize their visions.
Taking the reader on a journey through the city’s salons and bohemian hangouts, Radicals and Rogues celebrates the tastemakers, collectors, curators, artists, and poets at the forefront of the early avant-garde scene.
Focusing on these trailblazers at the center of artistic innovation — including Beatrice Wood, Mina Loy, the Stettheimer sisters, Clara Tice, the Baroness Elsa von Freytag Loringhoven, Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney, Marguerite Zorach, and Louise Arensberg — Lottie Whalen offers a lively new history of remarkable women in early twentieth-century New York City.
Lottie Whalen is a writer, researcher, and curator working in the fields of feminist history, avant-garde art, and textiles. She is the co-founder of Decorating Dissidence, an interdisciplinary arts project that considers radical histories of craft and its potential as a force for change in the modern day. She lives in Glasgow.
The Trials of Madame Restell: A Female Physician and the Campaign to Make Abortion a Crime
“Madame Restell,” the nom de guerre of the most successful female physician in America, sold birth control, delivered children, and performed abortions for decades in a series of clinics run out of her home in New York City. “Restellism” becoming a term detractors used to indict her.
Abortion was then largely unregulated in most of the United States, including New York. But during the Industrial Revolution a sense of disquiet arose about single women flocking to the city for work and greater sexual freedom, amid changing views of motherhood, with fewer children born to white, married, middle-class women.
Restell came to stand for everything threatening the status quo. From 1829 onward, restrictions on abortion began to put her in legal jeopardy. For much of this period she prevailed — until she didn’t.
The Life of Madame Restell
Ann Trow was born in the wool processing community of Painswick, in in Gloucestershire, England, on May 6, 1812. Her parents were poorly paid mill workers, and it’s unlikely Ann received much education. When 15 years old, she became a live-in maid and the next year she married a tailor seven years her elder, Henry Summers.
Ann and Henry were struggling financially when she gave birth to a daughter in 1830. The following year they migrated as a family to the city of New York, settling a few block from the infamous Five Points. A few months after their arrival, Henry died, leaving Anna widow with a young child.
Ann worked as a seamstress and in 1836 met and married Charles Lohman, was a Russian immigrant working as a printer at the New York Herald. The family moved to Chatham Street, where Ann met Dr. William Evans.
Evans had no formal medical training, but made pills, tonics, and powders based on old herbal remedies which he sold as cures for everything from baldness to consumption.With Evans’ help Ann made and sold her own pills to cure liver, lung, and stomach ailments, establishing a small business until a customer asked for a medicine to end an unwanted pregnancy.
In the first half of the 1800s, family planning was considered the private business of women. Before “quickening,” or the moment when a woman first felt a fetus move, a woman could fairly easily obtain abortifacients, and if that didn’t work, midwives and doctors performed surgical abortions.
In New York State, doctors hoping to take control of the work of midwifes and female medical practitioners succeeded in lobbying for a law in 1827 that made providing an abortion a crime punishable by a year in jail and a $100 fine. Since most people cared little about what was considered a private matter, few abortions were reported to authorities, and the law was seldom used.
Historians believe Ann’s first abortion medication was simply a copy of an old recipe, part of a long tradition of female-led family planning. Ann’s abortifacient was popular however, and see gave up working as a seamstress to practice her brand of medicine.
After visiting her family in England in 1838 she returned and rented a respectable-looking office on a fashionable street. Ann spread the story that she had learned effective and safe medical abortions from a famous abortionist in Paris and adopted the name Madame Restell.
Her first advertisement ran in the New York Sun in March 1839 and she soon launched a mail-order business, establishing offices in Philadelphia and Boston.
Madame Restell’s medicines were not very effective however. Her birth control powder was ineffective and women who found themselves pregnant, spent more money for her abortion medicine. If that failed, Madame Restell offered a secret surgical abortion which cost $100 for wealthy women, and $20 for those who were poor (still an extraordinarily high price for the time).
After Madame Restell performed these surgical abortions in the back room of her office, the women could go to a doctor and claim they had suffered a miscarriage.
Ann’s popularity drew the attention. of a loose alliance of doctors, religious leaders, and social reformers who hoped to end her practice. Her first arrest occurred only five months after her first advertisement was published, but the charges were dropped.
This was only the beginning of decades of legal troubles. Called “the wickedest woman in New York,” and accused of hurting and killing her patients, in 1846 there was a riot outside her office.
The following year Ann’s detractors succeeded in securing a conviction for performing an illegal abortion. She served a year in prison and then stopped offering surgical abortions, focusing on her pills instead.
She made a fortune and her stature was great enough that Mayor Jacob Westervelt officiated her daughter’s wedding in 1854. In 1862, Ann and Charles built a mansion in an exclusive neighborhood where she opened an office in 1867.
At the end of the Civil War, the anti-abortion movement grew however, under the leadership of Anthony Comstock, U.S. Postal Inspector and head of the Society for the Suppression of Vice.
Comstock sponsored the 1873 Comstock Acts that made it illegal to send obscene material by mail. In 1878, the year after her beloved husband had died, Comstock pretended to be a man seeking abortion services for a woman out of state, and had Ann arrested when she responded to the need.
Rather than face another trial and certain conviction, Ann Loham died by suicide on April 1, 1878, the day her trial was set to begin.
Syrett’s The Trials of Madame Restell paints an unforgettable picture of the mid-nineteenth-century New York and brings Restell to the attention of a whole new generation of women in the current fight over reproductive choices.
The Eight: The Lemmon Slave Case and the Fight for Freedom (SUNY Press Excelsior Editions, 2023) tells the story of Lemmon v. New York — or, as it’s more popularly known, the Lemmon Slave Case. All but forgotten today, it was one of the most momentous civil rights cases in American history.There had been cases in which the enslaved had won their freedom after having resided in free states, but the Lemmon case was unique, posing the question of whether an enslaved person can win freedom by merely setting foot on New York soil — when brought there in the keep of an “owner.”
The case concerned the fates of eight enslaved people from Virginia, brought through New York in 1852 by their owners, Juliet and Jonathan Lemmon. The eight were in court seeking, legally, to become people — to change their status under law from objects into human beings.
The Eight encountered Louis Napoleon, the son of a slave, an abolitionist activist, and a “conductor” of the Underground Railroad, who took enormous risks to help others. He was part of an anti-slavery movement in which African-Americans played an integral role in the fight for freedom.
The court ruled that the eight were free upon arriving on New York’s free soil, and the case became a battle cry for secession when appeals defied the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling in Dred Scott v. Sandford.
The case was part of the broader judicial landscape at the time: If a law was morally repugnant but enshrined in the Constitution, what was the duty of the judge?
Should there be, as some people advocated, a “higher law” that transcends the written law?
These questions were at the heart of the Lemmon case. They were difficult and important ones in the 1850s — and, more than a century and a half later, we must still grapple with them today.Albert M. Rosenblatt teaches at the New York University School of Law and is a retired Judge of New York State Court of Appeals. His previous books include Opening Statements: Law, Jurisprudence, and the Legacy of Dutch New York (co-edited with Julia C. Rosenblatt) and Judith S. Kaye in Her Own Words: Reflections on Life and the Law, with Selected Judicial Opinions and Articles (co-edited with Judith S. Kaye and Henry M. Greenberg), both published by SUNY Press.
Affordable Housing and the Future of New York’s Open Space
Learn the history of affordable housing in New York City and how Roosevelt Island, created in 1975, is an integral part of that history. Hear about ideas of open space that were supported by this approach to housing and how they are being reconsidered today.
Matthias Altwicker, AIA LEED AP, is an architect and an associate professor of architecture at New York Institute of Technology. Both his practice and research focus on housing and open space, including collaborations with the New York City Housing Authority (NYCHA) and municipal administrations in New York City and Long Island. SPONSORED BY THE NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY & R.I. HISTORICAL SOCIETY
PICTURE OF THE DAY
THE ROOSEVELT ISLAND HISTORY BOOK THE BEST GIFT FOR A NEWCOMER OR YOUR FAVORITE RELATIVE.
OUR CLASSIC ROOSEVELT ISLAND BOOK, THE ESSENTIAL GIFT $25-
CREDITS
NEW YORK ALMANACK JUDITH BERDY
MAYA LEVANON-PHOTOS TIK TOK & INSTAGRAM
All image are copyrighted (c) Roosevelt Island Historical Society unless otherwise indicated
SHOP THE KIOSK FOR YOUR HOLIDAY GIFTS THIS WEEKEND!!!
KIOSK OPEN 12 NOON TO 5 PM DAILY EXCEPT TUESDAY
WE WILL HAVE OUR MERCHANDISE AVAILABLE AT THIS SALE ON DECEMBER 2 AT THE SEIOR CENTER, 546 MAIN STREET.
Recently I have heard a tirade of complaints about tourists, mostly unfounded. There have been some challenging times at the tram but the wonderful, interesting and curious people whom I meet make our island better. Our guests support our businesses and restaurants. The island’s magic, which probably attracted you to live here probably started with a tram ride to the Island.
Today I decided to work in the kiosk. Having no plans until dinner, I decided to work while everyone else was enjoying the day off.
Just as I opened, neighbors from Rivercross stopped by to purchase a tapestry throw. A rush of business always occurs before I am set-up, but it was a good omen.
A couple from Amsterdam and I conversed on favorite TV shows. They love our American detective and action ones while we had laughs over old episodes of Benny Hill and Faulty Towers. (They never watch Van der Valk)
Today was a great day for South American visitors: Brazil, Colombia, Peru and Ecuador. My Spanish made everyone sigh with relief that they would be able to converse (not that well ) with me.
Many of our visitors had been to the parade and the usual response was that this was a one-time experience and it is better on TV, as per two sisters age 6and 9.
A woman from Serbia enjoying a week on her own in the city, just wandering thru neighborhoods to discover our city. After trying to get into the Museum of Natural History she decided it was not the day to be near Central Park. I assured her that tomorrow we will be back to our normal chaos.
A Mexican family and I had a great time discussing sloths and interpreting our conversation while they shopped and “adopted” a sloth to take home. Seems sloths are not well known outside Costa Rica and Panama.
So many of our visitors are living in New York temporarily for their jobs and are thrilled to be here. They take every opportunity to explore the sites.
One gentleman had a great job, testing all the high tech on European sports cars. Showed us a photo of the salesroom with a $250,000 one ready for purchase.
A young woman from the Middle East was soon to leave the island where she has been for a few years with a job in finance. She is single and regrets having to return to a different culture. Tears were flowing when she thought of leaving New York. We do not realize what opportunities we offer to all who come from restrictive cultures. I invited her to visit as often as she liked before leaving our island.
Just as I was locking up, a women came into the kiosk asking about the Smallpox Hospital. Being almost 5 p.m. and too late to see the building, I asked of her interest in the hospital. She is a research microbiologist who studies epidemics and medical history. She purchased one of our books and I told her to contact use for more information on the island history.
Time to close up and off to dinner at Granny Annies.
A fun afternoon and as always, you do not know who walks in the door.
WEEKENDPHOTO
MAY THE HOSTAGES AND PRISONERS BE RETURNED TO THEIR FAMILIES DURING THIS WEEK
THURSDAY PHOTO OF THE DAY
The Saks Fifth Avenue holiday display opposite Rockefeller Center. Hara Reiser and Nina Lublin got it right.
PICTURE OF THE DAY
THE ROOSEVELT ISLAND HISTORY BOOK THE BEST GIFT FOR A NEWCOMER OR YOUR FAVORITE RELATIVE.
OUR CLASSIC ROOSEVELT ISLAND BOOK, THE ESSENTIAL GIFT $25-
CREDITS
JUDITH BERDY
MAYA LEVANON-PHOTOS TIK TOK & INSTAGRAM
All image are copyrighted (c) Roosevelt Island Historical Society unless otherwise indicated
