Jessie Tarbox Beals, self-portrait with camera. Jessie Tarbox Beals photograph collection, ca. 1905-1940, PR-4, New-York Historical Society. [Click image for higher resolution scan.]
Jessie Tarbox Beals was a woman of many firsts. A pioneer of photography, she was the first published female photojournalist in the United States, the first woman press photographer, and the first female night photographer. The Jessie Tarbox Beals photograph collection, ca. 1905-1940, PR-4, at the New-York Historical Society is available through our Shelby White and Leon Levy Digital Library.
Beals was born in 1870 in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada. Her father, John Nathaniel Tarbox, was a sewing machine manufacturer, and inventor of the portable sewing machine. Jessie Tarbox Beals moved to Massachusetts when she was 17 to become a teacher, a job she held for roughly 12 years. She got her start in photography by chance, when she won a small camera in a contest. She was immediately intrigued and began taking portraits of local students at a low price. Once she caught the photography bug, Beals never looked back. Her first credited work is in the Vermont newspaper the Windham County Reformer in 1900. In 1902, she was hired as a photographer for two newspapers in Buffalo, New York; The Buffalo Inquirer and The Buffalo Courier.
Beals was no doubt a tough woman, and quite the hustler. She always went the extra mile for her photographs. She did not have one particular focus, and her photos contain a wide number of subjects; such as major events (e.g., the 1904 Louisiana Purchase Exposition), outdoor photography (e.g., houses and gardens), architecture, Greenwich Village, children, and urban poverty. According to the Library of Congress’s own post about her, she carried around a 50-pound (8×10 format) camera for her assignments–definitely not equipment for the faint of heart!
Three cafes and their owners on the corner of Washington Place. A Busy Corner in Greenwich Village, Will o’ the Wisp Tea Room, Idee Chic [?], Aladdin Tea Room. Jessie Tarbox Beals photograph collection, ca. 1905-1940, PR-4, New-York Historical Society. [Click image for higher resolution scan.]
Beals moved to New York in 1905 and made a name for herself in the New York scene by first opening a portrait studio, and then by taking portraits of prominent artists (a job commissioned by American Art News). She later moved to Greenwich Village, opening a tea room and art gallery in 1917. Much of her work during this time was freelance, and she spent her days capturing the artistic nature of Greenwich Village. She focused on educational and arts programs aimed at progressive reform initiatives. She also contributed to the New York Times by submitting scenic photographs of architecture, street scenes, and gardens.
W. H. Wells 265 W. 11th; 10 year old pear tree 4 stories high, started flowering and fruiting again, special treatment by Mr. Wells. Jessie Tarbox Beals photograph collection, ca. 1905-1940, PR-4, New-York Historical Society. [Click image for higher resolution scan.]
Beals fit right in with the bohemians of Greenwich Village and enjoyed the artistic, free spirit of the neighborhood. She got on well with the likes of Sinclair Lewis and Edna St. Vincent Millay. Since Beals didn’t specialize in one area, choosing instead to take a wide variety of photos, her collection is particularly rich for setting the scene of Greenwich Village in the early 20th century. Her photos are even used in other blog posts about other 20th century figures! For example, our blog post on Alice Foote MacDougall features photographs taken by Beals of the coffee shop mogul. She has captured images of four presidents (Theodore Roosevelt, Calvin Coolidge, Herbert Hoover, and William Howard Taft), as well as other famous/prominent individuals such as Mark Twain, Ida M. Tarbell, General Pershing, and Fannie Hurst to name a few. No matter your interest, whether it is portraits, gardens, street scenes, fashion, or documentary photography, Beals has no doubt covered it.
Mark Twain. Jessie Tarbox Beals photograph collection, ca. 1905-1940, PR-4, New-York Historical Society. [Click image for higher resolution scan.]
It is thanks to fellow photographer Alexander Alland that Beals’ work did not fall into complete obscurity. Beals passed away in 1942, at the age of 71, in the charity ward at Bellevue Hospital. Much of her work was initially thought to be lost or destroyed. However, Alland bought many of Beals’ negative and prints from her heirs, and in 1978 published a biography entitled, Jessie Tarbox Beals: First Woman News Photographer. See through the eyes of Jessie Tarbox Beals, and glimpse history by heading over to our Digital Library now!
Dancing in Charley Reed’s Purple Pup, Greenwich Village. Jessie Tarbox Beals photograph collection, ca. 1905-1940, PR-4, New-York Historical Society. [Click image for higher resolution scan.]
This post is by Gina Modero, Reference Librarian for Printed Collections.
COMING TO THE NYPL BRANCH ON FEBRUARY 18TH
WHEN MANHATTAN WAS DUTCH—THE 400TH ANNIVERSARY EDITION
The Dutch of the early 17th century turned an edge of Manhattan wilderness into New Amsterdam. Although it lasted only 40 years, the colony had a profound and lasting impact on the future city of New York. From the start, people of many ethnicities filled its streets, trade and profit were paramount, and religious tolerance was the norm.
With Joyce Gold- Historian and noted NYC Tour Guide
This program is free and open to the public. TIme: 6:30 p.m.
PHOTO OF THE DAY
CREDITS
NEW -YORK HISTORICAL SOCIETY FROM THE STACKS GINA MODERO, REFERENCE LIBRARIAN FOR PRINTED COLLECTIONS
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 chalet-style elevated train station is long gone; the Ninth Avenue El, which ran along Greenwich Avenue, was demolished in 1940. (Though Berenice Abbott keeps it alive just as the painting does in this 1936 photo.)
The cigar shop in the little Federal-style house on the left has also bit the dust. The land is part of the churchyard of St. Luke’s, and the sidewalk is occupied by a row of Citibikes.
But otherwise, so much of Beulah R. Bettersworth’s 1934 depiction of Christopher Street looking down toward Greenwich Avenue is strangely unchanged more than 90 years later.
The three-story yellow building on the northwest corner of Greenwich is still there and still yellow. The two red-brick taller buildings to the north exist as well. The curvy awning at the entrance to the Hudson Tubes—aka, the PATH train—remains in place.
Beyond Greenwich Street, the Gothic steeples of St. Veronica’s enchant and delight. Far in the background, a sliver of the Hudson River lets us know we’re at the small-scaleend of this historic street in Greenwich Village.
I tried to capture the same view today, but my camera work is no match for Bettersworth’s eye. This was her neighborhood—she lived in an Art Deco high-rise on the corner of Bleecker Street—and she depicts her neighborhood with tenderness.
I’m not the only one so taken with this streetscape. “A wintry corner of Greenwich Village lives in this painting as Beulah Bettersworth knew it when she and her husband inhabited 95 Christopher Street, a block away,” explains the Smithsonian, which has the painting in its collection. (Before that, FDR had it hanging in the White House.)
“Closely observed details draw the viewer into the painting to join Bettersworth’s neighbors hurrying through the slushy snow, catching a whiff of tobacco from the cigar store in the foreground. Snow melts from the roof of St. Veronica’s Catholic Church, whose towers are visible behind the Ninth Avenue ‘L’ station. The elevated train station had been an elegant adaptation of a Swiss chalet when it was built in 1867, but by Bettersworth’s time it was an aging relic soon to be torn down.”
More about Christopher Street is known than about Bettersworth. Born in St. Louis, she studied at the Art Students League and became a WPA painter during the Depression. She exhibited portraits and still lifes; she painted a mural for the Columbus Ohio post office that by today’s sensibilities has been considered controversial.
She died in Tucson in 1968, and I like to think she’d be quite charmed to know that the contours of this part of Christopher Street are almost frozen in time.
PHOTO OF THE DAY
Snowy day at the north end of Blackwell’s Island about 1915
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.
The holdings of the New-York Historical Society Library are vast and fascinating. It is always fun to open a box of photos or unroll a set of drawings to discover something new. Recently, a researcher was working with the Printmaker File (PR 58), a collection of aquatints, engravings, etchings, lithographs, and woodcuts, representing work by over 200 artists dating from 1730 to the present. That’s how the delightful etchings of Albert E. Flanagan caught my eye.
Ruth Marie Reeves (1892–1966) was an American painter, Art Decotextile designer and expert on Indian handicrafts.
1930 Place madeNew York, United States, North America Silk shantung Overall: 54 x 35 1/4 in. ( 137.2 x 89.5 cm )
Gift of Bella C. Landauer 1945.82 Designed by Ruth Reeves (1892-1966), the textile “Manhattan” was part of a series commissioned by the W. & J. Sloane Company in 1930. The series was exhibited later that year at the Metropolitan Museum of Art exhibition, “Decorative Metal Work and Cotton Textiles.” Reeves’s designs ranged from the abstract to more realistic scenes of contemporary life and reflected her interest in the urban landscape of soaring skyscrapers, expansion bridges, and sophisticated citizens. Description MarkingsPrinted along selvage: “Manhattan designed by Ruth Reeves” ClassificationsTEXTILES
In 1920, Reeves traveled to Paris and studied with Fernand Léger.[5] During her time in Paris, she pioneered the use of vat dyes and the screen print process for home fabrics.
Above Drawing, preliminary sketch for “Westpoint” from the Hudson River series, 1933–1934 by Ruth Reeves
Ruth Reeves working on a mosaic mural. Photographed for the Works Progress Administration. Identification on verso (handwritten and stamped): Federal Art Project W.P.A.; Photographic Division; 110 King Street; New York City Location: 628 West 24 St.; Date: 6/10/40; Negative No.: 4794-1; Photographer: Shalat. Identification on accompanying label (typewritten): Ruth Reeves, right, and an assistant at work on a large mosaic mural in the Stained Glass Shop, a unit of the New York City WPA Art Project, located at 624 West 24th Street, New York City. Miss Reeves, well-known textile designer, mural painter and Guggenheim Fellowship winner for 1940, has adopted the familiar theme of school activities for the mural which is to be installed in the William Cullen Bryant High School.
Career
Returning to the United States in 1927, her designs were influenced by modern developments in France like Cubism.
Reeves’s first exhibition was with the American Designers’ Gallery in New York, where she showed textiles.[8]Lewis Mumford called her wall hangings and dresses inspired by traditional Guatemalan designs shown in 1935 “probably the most interesting work any designer has offered for commercial production today.
One of her best-known works was the carpeting and wall fabrics of Radio City Music Hall in New York City.[10] Her fabric and carpet designs along with those of her colleague Marguerita Mergentime can be seen there today. ]Donald Deskey, who won the competition to design the interiors for Radio City Music Hall, commissioned Reeves and Mergentime to design textiles for the hall.[12]
The Index of American Design, one of three main divisions of the Federal Art Project (FAP) was originally conceived by Reeves and Romana Javitz, the curator of the Picture Collection at the New York Public Library, as a way for the American artist to find authentic American everyday objects to use as visual references for their work. The Index was established with the FAP in January 1936 with Reeves as its national supervisor. She held the position until the spring when Adolph Cook Glassgold replaced her. Within the Index, Shaker works were highly prized as Reeves felt they emphasized the art of the American common man.[10][13][14]
She later taught at the Cooper Union Art School in New York [ She married engineer Donald Robert Baker and had three daughters. The couple separated in 1940
She often worked with narratives sourced from her life or friends live
South Mountain is one of her earliest narrative pieces designed as an autobiographical family portrait. It was named after the road she lived on in the artist colony in New City, New York. This piece was the start of her “personal prints” that were privately commissioned limited editions.
In 1930, Reeve was commissioned by the W. & J. Sloane Company to create a group of narrative textiles to be submitted to the American Federation of Art for their International Exhibition of Decorative Metalwork and Cotton Textiles that was to be held later that year at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The company neglected to check in on her progress and in the end were horrified at the unconventional fabric she designed. Each pattern was printed on twenty-nine different types of cotton and depicted a series of rooms in an imaginary house. The fabrics also didn’t sell and the relationship ended unhappily. The most notable work from this collection is “American Scene,” a panorama that celebrates everyday American life: work, sports, and family.[15][17][18]
In 1933, Reeves created a series of textiles inspired by the Hudson River School. These textiles were funded by a grant from the Gardner School Alumnae Fund. In 1934, the textiles were shown at the National Alliance of Art and Industry.[6]
In 1934, she traveled to Guatemala through a sponsorship from the Carnegie Institution. The textiles she collected on this trip were exhibited at Radio City in New York. In 1935, she worked with R. H. Macy & Company to create five Guatemalan-inspired patterns that were some of her only works to be produced commercially.
Above DescriptionDesign for carpet for Radio City Music Hall. Repeating pattern of still life with musical instruments in tones of brown and beige. Repeat unit is rectangular; some feature instruments including the guitar, saxophone, and accordion, while others rendered with undulating abstract shapes; nine units shown.
PHOTO OF THE DAY
A Transit Art and Design mosaic at Times Square this morning.
CREDITS
WIKIMEDIA COMMONS ENCYCLOPEDIA.DESIGN WIKIPEDIA FROM THE STACKS NEW-YORK HISTORICAL SOCIETY 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 holdings of the New-York Historical Society Library are vast and fascinating. It is always fun to open a box of photos or unroll a set of drawings to discover something new. Recently, a researcher was working with the Printmaker File (PR 58), a collection of aquatints, engravings, etchings, lithographs, and woodcuts, representing work by over 200 artists dating from 1730 to the present. That’s how the delightful etchings of Albert E. Flanagan caught my eye.
Waterfront, New York, 1933
Morning Light, 1934
The Fountain, Central Park, 1933
Skyline, 1933
Flanagan was born in Newark in 1884. He graduated from Columbia University’s School of Architecture in 1910 and worked at several firms over the course of his career, including McKim, Mead & White. He taught at Columbia and was one of the original members of the Society of American Etchers. His work is in the collections of several other museums and libraries, including the Metropolitan Museum and the Library of Congress. He died in New York City in 1969.
Coenties Slip, New York, 1931
Plaza Group – Towers of Manhattan, 1930. The two buildings at center are the Sherry-Netherland Hotel and former Savoy-Plaza Hotel, which was demolished in 1965 to allow for construction of the present General Motors Building.
Jacob Street, New York, 1931. All the buildings on this street were razed in the mid 1960s and the street itself became part of the Southbridge Towers apartment complex. (Of interest to Bob Dylan fans: Jacob Street was the site of his photo shoot for the cover of the July 30, 1966 edition of the Saturday Evening Post and the 45 RPM release of “I Want You.”)
The detail in Flanagan’s etchings is what is most appealing. It is interesting to consider the time at which they were made, during what many have since referred to as a ten-year hangover from the Roaring ’20s. Though they depict a busy city in the throes of a financial crisis, a city subject to all manner of Modernist movements, and one on the brink of another war, there is a quiet aspect to them that suggests tranquility — a calm response to chaos.
Afternoon Light, 1930
PHOTO OF THE DAY
On as freezing Friday, CBN Older Adult Center celebrated January birthdays and after members Roma, staffer Joanna, Marilyn, Indira and Judy practice a future Conga Line.
CREDITS
This post is by Jill Reichenbach, Reference Librarian,Department of Prints, Photographs, and Architectural Collections. FROM THE STACKS NEW-YORK HISTORICAL SOCIETY 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 Jane Bannerman Travel Sketchbooks Collection in the New-York Historical Society’s Patricia D. Klingenstein Library consists mainly of freehand pen and ink or watercolor illustrations depicting “Jane’s jaunts,” as the artist called them, around the world. Presently on view in the library’s reading room is Jane Bannerman: New York City Freehand, a selection of Bannerman’s New York City scenes. Bannerman was an eyewitness to a changing city, and her sketches capture intimate views of a New York that is at times preserved and at others fleeting, a theme familiar to visitors of New-York Historical’s current Lost New Yorkexhibition.
As a native New Yorker, Bannerman clearly delighted in capturing sweet and simple vignettes of everyday life in the city. One in particular caught the eye of a colleague and sent me on a research journey; as it turns out, the illustration depicts a former “resident” of Central Park and beloved fixture of two city boroughs – Manhattan and Queens.
“Jonah’s Whale,” named after the Biblical story, was an installation in the Central Park Children’s Zoo for over 30 years after opening in 1961. It was not a real whale, but an interactive sculpture that children could walk into, and at various points housed a fish tank and other small, marine life-themed exhibits. In 1996, the Zoo decided to go in a more scientific and educational direction, and Jonah’s Whale — later named Whaley, and then Whalemina — was moved to Rockaway Beach, where it lived at Beach 95th Street. Though a local attraction, having been lovingly restored and decorated with mirrors and multi-colored tiles, it sadly washed away during Superstorm Sandy in 2012. In the years since there have been efforts to both construct a new whale and write a children’s book about it.
Flipping through Bannerman’s sketchbooks feels like a walking tour of a bygone New York City. The examples below evoke scenes from Lower Manhattan and the East River shore. To see more of her sketches in the Patricia D. Klingenstein Library, visit Jane Bannerman: New York City Freehand, on view until July 28, 2024.
Properly known as the Ravenswood Generating Station, in Queens, along the East River, “Big Allis” is the City’s largest power plant, and plans are afoot to convert it into a renewable energy center.
Sketch of 72nd Street. Jane Bannerman Travel Sketchbooks Collection, PR 297, Patricia D. Klingenstein Library, New-York Historical Society.
Here Bannerman depicts the sidewalk knife sharpener, who came equipped with a home-made contraption: a grinding wheel turned by a fan belt, to sharpen knives. He carried a school bell to announce his presence.
Sketch of Fraunces Tavern. Jane Bannerman Travel Sketchbooks Collection, PR 297, Patricia D. Klingenstein Library, New-York Historical Society.
In 1785, this meeting hall and inn built at the corner of Queen Street (now Pearl Street) and Canal Street (now Broad Street) became one of the first buildings to be occupied by offices of the federal government, when New York City was the nation’s capital. The entire block housing the Museum (which opened in 1907) is on the National Register of Historic Places.
Lastly, Bannerman illustrated a haunting view of two neighboring buildings, St. Paul’s Chapel and the Twin Towers. “The Little Chapel That Stood” was a place of peace and rest for first responders (firefighters, police officers, doctors, and nurses) in the midst of unimaginable pain. Originally termed a “chapel of ease,” it was completed in 1766 at Broadway and Fulton Street. George Washington celebrated Thanksgiving there in 1789. Sketching most likely in the late 1970s, Bannerman titled the image “Past and Future,” juxtaposing the historical and modern eras that produced these two vastly different structures.
Jill Reichenbach is Reference Librarian at the Patricia D. Klingenstein Library.
PHOTO OF THE DAY
The cold steel winter sunshine refines the smokestacks across the river.
CREDITS
FROM THE STACKS NEW-YORK HISTORICAL SOCIETY 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.
This post was written by Luis Rodriguez, Collections Management Specialist
By 1897, New York City was well on its way toward being the roaring metropolis of steel and concrete that we know today. Elevator cars were carrying passengers up and down in the earliest skyscrapers, while the elevated rail lines stretched further and further uptown. It was then that James Reuel Smith embarked upon his quest to document a particular feature of the city’s vanishing pastoral life—its springs and wells. Traveling by bicycle, Smith explored the upper half of Manhattan and much of the Bronx looking for and photographing those places where New Yorkers were still obtaining water without the necessity of an aqueduct or faucet.
James Reuel Smith. Unidentified girl drinking from a spring on the east side of Broadway between W. 184th and W. 185th Street, New York City. September 19, 1897. Glass plate negative. New-York Historical Society.
Springs were very important to Mr. Smith. He made careful notes regarding each aquiferous site, and he always had in mind the publication of his findings. His interest led him to travel around the Mediterranean region in search of the springs mentioned in classical literature, and this work resulted in the 1922 publication of Springs and Wells in Greek and Roman Literature, Their Legends and Locations.
James Reuel Smith. Central Park spring opposite E. 76th Street, 75 feet east of Sixth Avenue, New York City. April 2, 1898. Glass plate negative. New-York Historical Society
His study of New York City’s springs, however, was only published posthumously. When he died in 1935, his will directed that the New-York Historical Society should receive his photographs and papers, as well as some money, on the condition that it publish his then unknown work. The arrangement resulted in the 1938 publication of Springs and Wells of Manhattan and the Bronx: New York City at the End of the Nineteenth Century.
James Reuel Smith. Unidentified man drinking from the spring at E. 63rd Street, Central Park, 100 feet west of Fifth Avenue, New York City. October 26, 1897. Glass plate negative. New-York Historical Society.
In Smith’s introduction to the book, written around 1916, he reflects on the rapidly changing city and on the practical and aesthetic pleasures offered by the remaining springs: “In the days, not so very long ago, when nearly all the railroad mileage of the metropolis was to be found on the lower half of the Island, nothing was more cheering to the thirsty city tourist afoot or awheel than to discover a natural spring of clear cold water, and nothing quite so refreshing as a draught of it.”
James Reuel Smith. Unidentified woman drinking at Carman Spring, on W. 175th Street east of Amsterdam Avenue, New York City. undated [c. 1897-1902]. Glass plate negative. New-York Historical Society.
Many more of James Reuel Smith’s photographs can be found online at New York Heritage, where they are part of our “Photographs of New York City and Beyond” collection.
James Reuel Smith. Unidentified boy seated beside a spring on the Hudson River shore, east of the railroad tracks near the foot of W. 177th Street, New York City, September 25, 1897. Glass plate negative. New-York Historcal Society.
PHOTO OF THE DAY
LUNA has joined MOMO as a visiting dog at Coler. She is looking forward to her new career. MOMO had no comment but was glad to share her treats with the newcomer.
CREDITS
FROM THE STACKS NEW-YORK HISTORICAL SOCIETY 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.
What happened to the 104 bronze figures that once lined NYC’s famous thoroughfare?
The bronze statuette of Mercury now standing atop Helicline Fine Art proprietor Keith Sherman’s kitchen island once stood atop a traffic light on Fifth Avenue. Over 100 of these statuettes formerly lined the famous thoroughfare from Eighth Street to 59th Street, but the figures vanished from the streetscape over 60 years ago. What happened to these gilded gods and how did Sherman get a hold of not one, but four of them?
To trace the appearance and disappearance of Fifth Avenue’s Mercury statuettes, we need to look at the earliest days of vehicular traffic on Fifth Avenue. They were a mess. To help ease the flow of traffic, five elevated signaling sheds were constructed in 1920. A patrolman at each post manually operated the tri-colored signal lights. These signals were effective in cutting down travel time along the avenue.
The first signaling sheds were built simply for function and painted with black and white stripes for visibility. A couple of years after their installment, the Fifth Avenue Association offered to pay for more ornamental and permanent versions. A design competition was held and the victor was American sculptor Joseph H. Freedlander
Freedlander designed a series of ornate bronze towers that stood 23 feet tall on a granite base. The towers were adorned with neoclassical ornamentation such as eagles, torches, and foliage. An illuminated clock sat at the center of the tower below the glass-enclosed space where the patrolman operated the signal, a space heated by an electric stove according to the New York Times.
As traffic signal technology advanced, the bulky manually operated towers became obsolete. Freedlander was tasked with designing traffic light poles to take their place along Fifth Avenue. He topped these slender bronze poles with a figure of Mercury, the Roman god of commerce and travel.
Freedlander’s depiction of Mercury stands atop a globe wearing a World War I-style helmet and a sash draped around his waist and arms. One arm is outstretched while the other holds a winged wheel at his side. The figure stood atop a rectangular traffic light with just two colors.
Two Mercury statues were installed at 41st Street and Fifth Avenue in 1931 and more were added until they stretched all the way from 8th to 59th Street.
The Mercury statuettes stood watch over Fifth Avenue for over thirty years until more innovations in street lighting and signaling were made. Many of the ornate lampposts of the early twentieth century began to be replaced by sleek modern posts in the 1950s. By 1962, the changes hit Fifth Avenue.
Christopher Gray wrote in theNew York Times in 1997 that Traffic Commissioner Henry A. Barnes had the Mercurcy statues removed in 1964 “to stop souvenir hunters.” The paper reported that the removal process was complete by Christmas of that year.
Another article in theNew York Times from 1971 states that the statuettes were briefly reinstalled due to public demand after Michael B. Grosse, executive vice president of the Fifth Avenue Association at the time, had the statuettes refurbished. It’s unclear when the statues were taken down again, but they were gone by the time Gray wrote about them in the 1990s.
Throughout the coverage in the Times the disappearance of the statues was attributed to traffic accidents, vandalism, theft, and destruction. Gray wrote that the statuettes were “junked for scrap.” He was able to track down just three of the 104 statues that once existed. He found two in the collection of the Museum of the City of New York and one in the office of the Fifth Avenue Association. Untapped New York reached out to those institutions to check on the tiny Mercury figures.
MCNY confirmed that the museum has one in its collection, while the representative we corresponded with for the Fifth Avenue Association said they were unable to turn up any photos or information about a statuette in their possession.
A former chairman of the Fifth Avenue Association wrote a letter to the editor in 1997 in response to Gray’s piece, stating that he remembered the Association giving out the statues to “guest of honor at the annual luncheon, which took place at the Waldorf-Astoria for a great many years.” Clearly not all the statues had been destroyed. They are out there somewhere.
Art collector Keith Sherman, co-owner of Helicline Fine Art, has been lucky enough to find multiple Mercury statues on the antique market. “I pore through hundreds of auctions every week and at one point I was just fascinated by this gorgeous Art Deco Mercury,” Sherman told Untapped New York. He didn’t know the backstory at first but after doing research on the artist and learning about the statuette’s New York City history, he was hooked.
His first Mercury find was in the 1990s. In total, Sherman has found four of the statuettes. He has sold two, one is at his Manhattan home and another is at an upstate property.
Sherman’s Mercury statues have come from the families of former Department of Transportation workers who he surmises salvaged the statues when they were removed from their posts. His most recent Mercury find was during the pandemic and he always has an eye out for more. “Every time I look at an auction, in my head, I’m saying ‘When I flip to the next page, will there be a Mercury? Will there be another one?'”
If you remember seeing the Mercury statues on Fifth Ave or have ever come across one since they were removed, let us know by leaving a comment!
PHOTO OF THE DAY
A MACY’S ODDITY.
Back in the 1960’s when Macy’s was constructing their new store on Queens Boulevard there was a holdout homeowner. To satisfy the the problem the building has a notch in the structure to accommodate the neighbor. It is still visible on the western side of the building.
CREDITS
HELICLINE FINE ART- KEITH SHERMAN DYLAN BROWN
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.
Fashion icon Ralph Lauren, who transformed a small necktie business into an international brand, joined elite company recently when he accepted the Presidential Medal of Freedom from President Joe Biden.
Lauren, known for his “preppy threads,” but whose fashion empire extends to fragrance and furniture and beyond, said in a statement that it was an “honor of a lifetime.”
In bestowing the award, the White House cited Lauren’s philanthropy, “including fighting to end cancer as we know it,” and noted that “Ralph Lauren reminds us of our distinct style as a nation of dreamers and doers.”
And those who know their Sullivan County, New York, history know that in the case of Ralph Lauren, his own dreams started right there. That’s right, Ralph Lauren once lived and worked in Monticello.
Ralph Lifshitz, was born to Frank and Frieda Cutler Lifshitz on October 14, 1939, and grew up in the same Jewish neighborhood in The Bronx that produced Robert Klein, Penny and Garry Marshall, and rival designer Calvin Klein. His father made a living painting houses, and also dabbled in art, as well.
“The Lifshitz family had spent summers there for years,” Gross writes. “In the 1930s, Ralph’s uncle, Izzy Lifshitz, opened a produce store in Monticello and soon became a wholesaler, supplying fruits and vegetables to the many local summer camps and hotels. Eastern European immigrants had vacationed in the mountains since the turn of the century, converting farmhouses into boardinghouses, boardinghouses into hotels, and hotels into grand resorts like Grossinger’s, Kutsher’s, and the Concord.”
Several members of the Cutler family owned property there, too. One of Frieda’s brothers had a bungalow colony. Frank and Frieda had a kochalyn– a rooming house with a communal kitchen. Frank bought the Green Mountain House (aka Lifshitz Bungalows) but hated it because he had to commute every weekend while Frieda and the kids got to stay all summer.
“When he got there on Fridays, he’d be overwhelmed with repair and painting chores,” according to Gross. “The big white house atop a wooded rise had two bedrooms on its ground floor, three more upstairs, and two separate bungalows with five more bedrooms – every one with its own sink.
“Next door was the Hilltop Bungalow Colony, owned by the Pincus and Cohen families. All alone together on their hilltop, the two compounds were a world apart in the 1940s. ‘We were kept secluded and out of the mainstream,’ says a Cohen cousin, Barbara Levy. ‘We knew there was a war, but nobody talked about it.’
“They would all swim in the Hilltop’s unfiltered concrete pool, climb the apple trees, go berry picking, play punchball, sneak into the local hotels, and walk to the movies at the Rialto and Broadway in town.”
Frank Lifshitz used to frequent Gusar’s Pharmacy on Broadway in the village. He used to paint pictures and sell them outside, usually allowing drug store owner George Gusar to see them first.
One day during the summer of 1955, he asked Gusar if he might know where the two Lifshitz boys might find summer employment. Gusar hired them both.
“I don’t remember much about them,” he once related to a newspaper reporter. “They didn’t really stand out, but you have to realize, I’ve had a lot of people work for me over the years who went on to become famous, like George Cooke and Eddie Cooke.”
The boys – Ralph and his older brother Jerry – left the drugstore after a short time for jobs as waiters at Camp Roosevelt on Sackett Lake, where they worked for a number of summers thereafter. Their tenure there proved life changing.
“Camp Roosevelt opened up new possibilities for Ralph,” Gross writes. “It was his first real exposure to a world beyond the insular immigrant community his parents inhabited. Though most of the campers were middle class, some were rich – the children of hotel owners, real estate moguls, and newspaper distributors – and they were real preppies, not just dress-up wannabes.
“Their world, until then alien, suddenly seemed within his reach. ‘Even then,’ says one of Jerry’s campers, ‘Ralph knew where to mingle.’”
The Camp Roosevelt experience made a lasting impression on Ralph Lifshitz, and was largely responsible for instilling in him his renowned drive and insatiable ambition. As Gross points out, he became a sort of real life Jay Gatsby, “who sprang from his Platonic conception of himself.”
In keeping with this new image, he and his siblings legally changed their name to Lauren in the late 1950s, and the rest, as they say, is history, culminating in the nation’s highest civilian honor, whose previous winners include Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., President Ronald Reagan, Maya Angelou, and Mother Teresa.
Obviously, Ralph still “knows where to mingle.”
I wrote a few months ago about my relatives that were the owners of the Luzon Lodge, far from the later Catskill experience.
PHOTO OF THE DAY
No, it is not Sportspark! This is the greatest feature on the MSC MIraviglia, the cruise ship I sailed on last week. A great way to have basketball, soccer, tennis, pickleball while at sea. Keeping teens active this is the best attraction on board after unlimited food at the buffet. (During really rough seas, the gym is closed for safety).
CREDITS
NEW YORK ALMANACK 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.
New York State Governor Kathy Hochul said she wants to spend $400 million to revitalize Albany, including committing $150 million to the State Museum and $35 million to move soon to be announced proposals to re-imagine some of Albany’s Hudson River waterfront into the design phase.
Hochul teased the history-related proposals in her State of the State address and in press materials on Tuesday. Plans for how that money would be spent will come when the Governor’s budget proposal is released later this month.
“If it all comes true, it will be the biggest damn Christmas present to Albany in decades,” State Senator Pat Fahy told the Albany Times Union. “It’s extraordinary.”
The $150 million the New York State Museum would receive comes years after unfulfilled promises of a $14 million Museum renovation, which was supposed to include new exhibits, a wall system for the exhibition space that would make it more versatile, and interactive technology and media displays.
This new investment will be used “to renovate the New York State Museum and upgrade the exhibits to be more inviting to visitors, including families,” according to the Governor’s office.
Hochul told the Times Union that her office would convene a panel of education and tourism experts. The panel “will focus on how to best preserve the museum’s cultural and educational heritage while modernizing the space to be more appealing,” she said.
Details of the State Museum proposals provided to the Times Union did not mention the involvement of the state Education Department, which oversees the Office of Cultural Education’s State Museum, Library and Archives.
“Instead, it suggests that the state ‘identify a new operating model for the museum, returning this world-class collection to its rightful place as a point of pride for all New Yorkers.’, the Times Union reported.
Education Department spokesperson JP O’Hare told the paper: “We look forward to reviewing the governor’s proposal and will provide our feedback once we have had the opportunity to assess the details thoroughly.”
Management has been at issue at the State Museum for at least a decade, and has recently gained support for structural change the Times Union reported.
“Last summer, past and current museum employees expressed frustration about what they saw as a lack of oversight from the education department, which they said contributed to stagnation and management problems at the museum,” according to the paper.
“At the time, Fahy discussed her 2023 proposal to create an advisory body — including those from the private sector — to oversee the museum as well as the other two entities under the Office of Cultural Education: the state archives and library.”
The Governor also supported plans to include Harriet Tubman as one of New York’s representatives in the U.S. Capitol’s Statuary Hall; more funding for community centers and playgrounds statewide; and more.
COMMENT
I have visited the Albany Cultural Education Building many times while in Albany.
The building contains the NYS Archives, where RIOC historic records were relocated a few years ago since RIOC was unable to safely preserve them.
The State Library has been used many times for historic research and is located in the building. These two institutions are a great resource for historians and everyone.
The problem is the NYS Museum, an enormous space on three floors of the structure. The exhibits are out of date, rarely changed, and the animals in the dusty dioramas are on death row. There are some areas, such as the 9/11 WTC exhibit, that are so realistic you can smell the smoke that still lingers in the vehicles exhibited. In general, the museum is sad and hopefully will finally be a shining exhibit of State history and not a dusty relic of the 1960s Rockefeller development of the Capitol.
PHOTO OF THE DAY
Members of the Coler Auxiliary gathered together to celebrate 2024 and plan for 2025 projects to improve residents’ lives on Wednesday. from left to right: Jacqueline Kwedy, Theresa Chamberlain, Judith Berdy, Marie Marie, Glorias Swaby, Mary Coleman, Emilia Ciobanu, Emmanuella Chevalier. (not shown: Moriko Betz, Khady Sene, Alida Torres, Darlene Torres)
CREDITS
NEW YORK ALMANACK 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 am back from vacation and the new Lenovo is making life a breeze. I can tell you the tale of the week on the high seas later. Did not miss your weather, but mine was never above 75 degrees.
John La Farge: Eclectic Art Circles in London & Manhattan
During the late nineteenth century articles that focused on artist’s dwelling and studio as a demonstration of his or her creative personality became fashionable reading.
Between March and April 1884, six installments were published simultaneously in London and New York City of “Artists at Home,” a serial publication of twenty-five photogravures (a high quality print process) by Joseph Parkin Mayall with biographical sketches by the art critic and member of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, Frederic George Stephens (1827-1907).
The London home of Frederic Leighton (1830-1896) in Holland Park with its Arab Hall or Lawrence Alma-Tadema’s Italianate villa in St John’s Wood were presented in great detail and glowing terms. These grandiose mansions created enormous curiosity, both in Britain and America.
Victorians in Togas
Introduced by the great German art critic Johann Joachim Winckelmann (1717-1768) in 1763, the term “eclectic” was most clearly defined a decade later by Joshua Reynolds in his Discourses (1774), describing the ancient heritage as a “magazine of common property, always open to the public, whence every man has a right to take what materials he pleases.”
Dutch painter Lawrence (Lourens) Alma-Tadema (1836-1912) was born on January 8, 1836, in Dronrijp, Friesland. Trained at the Antwerp Academy of Art, he was an Orientalist with a preference for Merovingian and Egyptian subjects.
When on honeymoon in the Campania region, he visited Pompeii to witness the first excavations of the site. Inspired by the spectacle, he embarked on depicting scenes from Greek and Roman Antiquity. A prolific artist, he came to be known as the painter of “Victorians in togas.”
In 1864 he secured a commission for twenty-four pictures from Belgian-born dealer and publisher Ernest Gambart (1814-1902) who at the time dominated London’s art market; in 1869 he received a contract for another forty-eight paintings. These works were exhibited at the prestigious French Gallery, Pall Mall. Successful sales linked the painter closer to Britain.
In December 1869, some nine months after the death of his first wife, Lawrence met Laura Epps. Half his age, she made him decide to settle in London with his two young daughters. Having married in July 1871, the couple made Townsend House on Titchfield Terrace near Regent’s Park their home.
Lawrence re-designed the property to resemble a Roman villa, but in the early hours of October 10, 1874, an accident happened. The barge Tilbury was towed westwards along Regent’s Park Canal.
Laden with sugar, nuts, barrels of petroleum and five tons of gunpowder, the canal boat caught fire as it went under Macclesfield Bridge, causing an explosion that killed all on board. The blast seriously damaged Townsend House.
In Alma-Tadema’s elaborate reconstruction of the property each room was given a distinct theme. Downstairs there were a Gothic library, a Japanese studio (for Laura), and a Spanish boudoir. The upstairs parlors were laid out in Moorish and Byzantine styles. Lawrence’s studio was given a Pompeian look.
As soon as the restoration work was finished, the artist went out in search of a new project to mark his position as the arbiter of Victorian taste. He found a villa at 44 Grove End Road in St John’s Wood, once owned by Jacques-Joseph (James) Tissot, a prominent French painter who had returned to Paris in December 1882.
When the family settled there in November 1886, the grand mansion of sixty-six rooms had been modeled in Italianate style. The entrance to the hall was laid with Persian tiles and named the Hall of Panels as it consisted of an “unending” series (some fifty in total) of vertical paintings against the white walls produced by friends and visitors to the house.
One room was filled with treasures from China and Japan. Another chamber had leather-covered walls with cabinets and brasses of Dutch workmanship.
Central to the structure was a balcony overlooking a marble basin with fountain. Alma-Tadema himself occupied a three-story studio with walls of grey-green marble and capped with a semi-circular dome covered in aluminum. One of its stained glass windows was designed by a painter and muralist from New York City.
Gilded Age Architect
Having studied art history in Rome, Vermont-born Richard Morris Hunt (1827-1895) decided on a career in architecture instead. He trained in Geneva, before being admitted to the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris, the very first American architect to enter this prestigious institution. His schooling was thoroughly French.
Back in the United States by 1856, he opened a practice in New York becoming the city’s most prominent architect. He has been labeled the builder who “gilded the Gilded Age.”
Hunt shaped New York’s built environment with his designs for the Metropolitan Museum, the Roosevelt Building, the vanguard Stuyvesant apartment block, the pedestal of the Statue of Liberty, and numerous grand mansions (including Vanderbilt’s estate on Fifth Avenue), although few of his buildings still stand.
His grand structures were based on French neo-classical and Renaissance models. Almost single-handedly, he replaced the dominant English High Victorian public building of the 1860s/70s with his interpretation of French classicism.
His first eye-catching project was the Tenth Street Studio Building. Completed in January 1858, the structure at 51 West 10th Street was New York City’s earliest multiple-artist studio. Boasting twenty-five studios, its central atrium was a shared area that featured a glass ceiling and gas lighting for daylong illumination.
Hunt himself rented space in the building where he founded the first American architectural school in 1858.
An early tenant in the building was William Merritt Chase (1849-1916) who first occupied a small apartment and then took over the gallery originally intended as exhibition space.
To American critics, eclecticism served as a defining characteristic of the artist’s work to indicate his exploration of multiple genres, his stylistic borrowings from Old Masters, and his passion for exotic objects of various historical periods. Chase encouraged his students to adopt a similar approach by instructing them: “Take the best from everything.”
Marquand Mansion
In 1884 Hunt built the Marquand residence at the northwest corner of Madison Avenue & 68th Street. Banker Henry Gurdon Marquand (1819-1902) had made his fortune in financing railroads. Having developed a passion for art, he acquired paintings by Anthony van Dyck, an array of Roman bronzes, and a rich collection of Chinese porcelains.
One of the co-founders of New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art, Marquand acted as its second President and donated many works of art to the institution.
The Marquand mansion was designed to call up memories of a French “château” (castle). The outside looked palatial, but ample attention was given to the building’s interior. Rooms were arranged in a rectangular plan around a central hall from where a double staircase gave access to the tiered galleries above.
Each section was decorated in a different historical style. A Pompeian salon, Moorish library, Japanese drawing room and Spanish refectory were designed to house Marquand’s eclectic collection of art works.
Alma-Tadema’s presence here was almost inevitable. In 1882, Marquand had commissioned a painting from him intended to depict Plato teaching philosophy to a group of followers. After various re-workings of the painting, the artist eventually completed “A Reading from Homer” in 1885.
He would also be involved in the decoration of the estate. His skill as an interior designer was internationally known. Marquand was aware of his talent when he commissioned the artist to design the mansion’s music room.
The Greek-style suite of furniture was planned by Alma-Tadema himself (at the staggering cost of £25,000) and compromised a music cabinet, several settees, chairs, occasional tables and stools.
All items were executed in London’s West End by Messrs Johnstone, Norman & Co. of 67 New Bond Street under the supervision of Norfolk-born William Christmas Codman (1839-1921, who, from 1891 onward, would act as chief silver designer for Gorham Manufacturing Company of Providence, Rhode Island).
Alma-Tadema commissioned Frederic Leighton to create a triptych ceiling painting that featured allegorical figures representing music, dance and poetry. Central to the room was a grand pianoforte, the workings of which had been supplied by Steinway & Sons (now known as the “Alma-Tadema Steinway”).
Edward Poynter, another artist who sought inspiration in classical antiquity, was requested to paint the piano’s fallboard. Its interior lid was fitted with parchment sheets to be signed by its performers (names included Walter Damrosch, Arthur Sullivan, William Gilbert and others).
Backwards & Forwards
John La Farge (1835-1910) was the eldest child in a family of urbane Catholic French immigrants who had settled in New York City. His father, a successful lawyer, was a refugee from the ill-fated expedition by Napoleon Bonaparte to regain control of Saint-Domingue on the Caribbean island of Hispaniola.
Born in 1835, John was brought up with close attention to French culture and educated at Mount Saint Mary’s College, Maryland. He then studied law in New York, without ever abandoning his interest in art.
In 1856 he left for Europe. In Paris he briefly worked at Thomas Couture’s studio and visited museums in northern Europe to copy the Old Masters. When news broke of his father’s illness, he returned to New York City.
On his way back he stopped by in Manchester to see an exhibition that included paintings by the Pre-Raphaelites from which he drew inspiration.
After briefly taking up his studies again, the death of his father left him financially independent. Free from having to pursue a legal career, he dedicated his life to painting and rented a studio in the Tenth Street Studio Building (which he would maintain for the rest of his career).
After meeting Richard Morris Hunt, he traveled to Newport, Rhode Island, to study painting with the architect’s brother, William Morris Hunt.
Having married in 1860, his family life was centered in Rhode Island, but his outlook was that of a cultivated metropolitan artist. During the 1860s he was one of the first American artists to be influenced by Japanese color prints (he visited Japan in 1886 in the company of Henry Adams).
Having embarked on mural painting in the 1870s, he was commissioned by architect Henry Hobson Richardson to paint walls at Trinity Church, Copley Square, in Boston. The project (completed in 1876) established his name as a muralist.
During that same period he began experimenting with stained glass which, at the time, was a relatively new medium to the United States. In Britain, the Gothic Revival had elevated its creation to an art form.
The majority of stained glass used in America was imported and produced in a traditional manner. Having worked out a technique for the manufacture of opalescent glass, La Farge was granted a patent (no. 224,831) for a “Colored-Glass Window.”
Between 1886 and 1902 he created a series of glass stained windows based on the Japanese theme of “peonies in the wind.” One of those had been commissioned by Alma-Tadema for the decoration of his London studio. Another was acquired by Marquand and installed at his Newport (summer) residence.
It was a meaningful moment when, in October 1912, London auctioneers Hampton & Sons announced the sale of Alma-Tadema’s Grove End property and its contents. Jean Guiffrey, a former curator at the Louvre in Paris acting on behalf of the Boston Museum of Fine Art, acquired the glass stained painting for its return to the United States.
The complexity of La Farge’s workmanship was shown in a window commissioned in 1908 by Mrs George T. Bliss for her house at 9 East 68th Street, Manhattan. The work features a woman in classical garb drawing back a doorway curtain. Tiny pieces of glass were joined together to evoke folds in her gown; panels with garlands and Pompeian ornament frame the work.
This is the paradox: La Farge used ground-breaking techniques in order to create an image that represented the backward looking tradition associated with Alma-Tadema and members of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood.
In the same year that John La Farge began work on the Bliss window, six automobiles representing America, France, Germany and Italy set off from Times Square on a 169-day ordeal competing in a New York City to Paris Race. The contest was won by the American team driving “The Flyer,” a car built in Buffalo, NY, by the E. R. Thomas Motor Company.(You can read more about the race here).
Whilst contemporary artists retreated into the past by seeking inspiration in late medieval or early Renaissance culture, technology’s exponential growth moved ahead and increased the pace of life. Art had to be dragged into the modern world.
While others were shopping for “diamonds & jewels” I was at this wonderful Ardastra sanctuary in Nassau. I was thrilled to meet Rosie’s relative living in the warm Bahamian sunshine.
CREDITS
NEW YORK ALMANACK
Illustrations, from above: W. P. Frith’s “A Private View at the Royal Academy,” 1883; Lawrence Alma-Tadema’s “A Reading from Homer,” 1885 (Philadelphia Museum of Art); Henry Gurdon Marquand’s mansion at the northwest corner of Madison Avenue and 68th Street, built in 1884, demolished ca. 1912; The Alma-Tadema Steinway, 1887 (Clark Art Institute, Williamstown, Massachusetts); John La Farge’s “Peonies Blown in the Wind,” 1886 (Museum of Fine Art, Boston); and John La Farge, Window from the Bliss house at 68th Street, 1908/9. (The Met, New York City).
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.
