From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia & Daytonian in Manhattan
In the last half of the 19th Century 23rd Street was the theatre district of Manhattan – opera houses, music halls, theatres and vaudeville houses lined the street from 5th to 8th Avenue. At the northwest corner of 23rd Street and 6th Avenue was Bryant’s Opera House – the home of the highly elaborate and popular minstrel troupe, Bryant’s Minstrels, perhaps most remembered for premiering the song “Dixie” and other Stephen Foster songs. When it was put up for sale in 1878, German-born Albert Bial and John Koster, who ran German-style concert hall and beer garden next door, took it over.
The concert hall of Koster & Bial’s — photo NYPL Collection
The newly-named “Koster and Bial’s Music Hall” included a closed 1200-seat vaudeville theatre and open-air beer garden. Because there was a law against selling alcohol in a theatre, the stage curtain was removed and a folding screen put in its place. And with that the music hall became a restaurant offering entertainment rather than a theatre offering food and drink. Moses King, in his 1892 Handbook of New York City referred to Koster and Bial’s as “high-class” and said that the “entertainments are of the vaudeville or variety order, like those given at the Alhambra in London and the Eldorado in Paris, with a burlesque to lead the programme…”
In 1886 Koster and Bial commissioned German architects Herman J. Schwarzmann and Albert Buchman to build a saloon and retail outlet for their beer bottling business a block north at the corner of 24th Street and 6th Avenue. Construction of the 4-story brick building with brownstone and terra cotta trim was completed on January 25, 1887. The saloon was dubbed “The Corner” and an exuberant metal cornice proclaimed the name as well as KOSTER & BIAL. On the 2nd floor corner of the building brownstone plaques carved with whimsical late Victorian lettering reading “The Corner,” doubled as street signs. Patrons entered through an ornate entrance of cast iron, stained glass and polished wood. The music hall and the saloon were joined so theatre-goers could enter either through the main entrance at 23rd Street or through The Corner building.
Koster and Bial’s Music Hall
Koster and Bial’s Music Hall was an important vaudeville theatre in New York City, located at Broadway and Thirty-Fourth Street, where Macy’s flagship store now stands. It had a seating capacity of 3,748, twice the size of many theaters. Ticket prices ranged from 25¢ for a seat in the gallery to $1.50 for one in the orchestra.[1] The venue was founded by John Koster (1844-1895) and Albert Bial (1842-1897) in the late 19th century and closed in 1901.
Trouble started when Koster and Bial offered more than food, drink and vaudeville. They also offered gentlemen patrons the paid favors of women. The New York Times, in a 1902 article reminiscing about former theatres, remarked “While Koster & Bial were in Twenty-third Street the notorious ‘cork room’ existed in their theatre. The walls of this room were covered with stoppers from champagne bottles, and the affairs that took place in the room in the late hours after show time would have astonished the churchgoers. In fact, what happened in the ‘cork room’ did finally become so well known that the affairs had to be stopped.”
The scandal of police raids forced John Koster to close the music hall on 23rd Street in 1893. Koster and Bial moved to 34th Street, partnering with Oscar Hammerstein I in the opening of a new Koster and Bial’s Music Hall.
The last Koster and Bial’s Music Hall originated when they moved uptown into the former Manhattan Opera House, a huge theatre built in Herald Square in 1892 by Oscar Hammerstein I in pursuit of his passion for grand opera.[citation needed] Quickly running into financial problems, Hammerstein decided to convert his theatre to a vaudeville format. He offered Koster and Bial a partnership under which he would manage the entertainment and they would manage the food. The new Koster and Bial’s Music Hall opened on August 28, 1893 and proved to be very successful. Hammerstein however quarreled with his partners and lawsuits ensued. Ultimately Koster and Bial bought out Hammerstein and operated the theater solely on their own.[4] The theatre finally closed in 1901 and was demolished to make way for Macy’s Department Store.[5]
The pictures were projected on a twenty-foot screen in an ornate gilded frame.
On April 24, the Times reported: Koster and Bial’s Music Hall.jpg EDISON’S VITASCOPE CHEERED. “Projecting Kinetoscope” Exhibited for First Time at Koster and Bial’s. …
The ingenious inventor’s latest toy is a projection of his kinetoscope figures in stereopticon fashion on a white screen in a darkened hall. In the center of the balcony of the big music hall is a curious object, which looks from below like the double turret of a big monitor. In the front of each half of it are two oblong holes.
The turret is neatly covered with … blue velvet brocade… The moving figures are about half life size. …a buzzing and roaring were heard in the turret, and an unusually bright light fell upon the screen. Then came into view two precious blonde young persons of the variety stage in pink and blue dresses, doing the umbrella dance with commendable celerity.
Their motions were clearly defined. When they vanished, a view of an angry surf breaking on a sandy beach near a stone pier amazed the spectators.
A burlesque boxing match between a tall, thin comedian and a short, fat one, a comic allegory called “The Monroe Doctrine”; an instant of motion in Hoyt’s farce, “A Milk White Flag,” repeated over and over again, and a skirt dance by a tall blonde completed the views, which were all wonderfully real and singularly exhilarating.
Walking past Macy’s between 6th and 7th Avenues, I passed this plaque commemorating Edison’s Vitascope first presenation on this site.
Placed on the wall with millions passing by daily. And, I stopped to read it!
Shakespeare’s Globe theatre opened in 1997 is a replica of the original Globe theatre in Bankside, England near the site of the original Globe Theatre. from Laura Hussey. Ed Litcher also got it right!
Text by Judith Berdy Thanks to Bobbie Slonevsky for her dedication to Blackwell’s Almanac and the RIHS Thanks to Deborah Dorff for maintaining our website Edited by Melanie Colter and Deborah Dorff
All image are copyrighted (c) Roosevelt Island Historical Society unless otherwise indicated
Wikipedia Daytonian in Manhattan
BROOKLYN MUSEUM New York City collection by Dior.Photo courtesy Brooklyn Museum. There are never-before-seen sections from Dior dedicated only to the Brooklyn Museum. Photo courtesy Brooklyn Museum. Marilyn Monroe’s The Last Sitting byBert Stern Y line dress worn by Dovima.Photo courtesy Brooklyn Museum.
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ENTERTAINMENT STYLES AND PERFORMANCES HAVE CHANGED OVER THE YEARS. WHAT WAS ACCEPTABLE IN THE 1900’S MAY BE CONSIDERED INAPPROPRIATE AND SEXIST IN THE 2000’S. JUDITH BERDY
Chorus Girls In the 1930s and ‘40s, New York was famous for its chorus girls. Paris had its Folies Bergère and London its Windmill (where nudity was permitted only when naked starlets stood stock still as living statues). But in film and in real life, nothing was like New York.
The New York chorus line had several godfathers. One was the English musical comedy which included (and largely depended on) a line of gorgeously attired of beautiful girls (referred to at the time as ballet girls). Impresario George Edwardes established the Gaiety Theatre as the spiritual home of musical comedy and his “Gaiety Girls” were soon world famous, setting the pattern all others would try to copy.
New York had seen women unclad on stage before. Before the Civil War, theaters offered tableaux vivant, women posing as figures in a mythological diorama (perhaps “Psyche Going To The Bath” or “Venus Rising From the Sea”), not nude but wearing a body stocking. Soon, the tableaux part fell away, and nude bodies (or at least bodies that appeared to be nude) became the main idea. These “artist models” soon became so common on New York stages that they became incorporated into productions, such as The Black Crook at Niblo’s Garden in 1866, considered the first Broadway musical.
Another ancestor was our more raucous burlesque. American burlesque also looked to England. The English genre had been successfully staged in New York from the 1840s, and it was popularized by a visiting British burlesque troupe, Lydia Thompson and the “British Blondes”, beginning in 1868. New York burlesque built on this and on the earlier tradition of minstrel shows, and consisted of songs and ribald comic sketches, acrobats, magicians, solo singers, and chorus numbers, all usually concluded by an exotic dancer or a wrestling or boxing match.
The transition from old line burlesque to striptease was gradual. At first, ladies showed off their figures while singing and dancing. Then they stopped singing. The borders between vaudeville (more family directed, no chorus girls), burlesque (risqué and lots of girls) and strip are blurry, and all coexisted in New York in the early 20th century.
Surely the most famous chorus girls in New York performed in Florenz Ziegfeld’s “Follies” – the “Ziegfeld Girls.” Crowds watched scores of beautiful young women dressed (really undressed) in risqué outfits — a nod to burlesque – whose headdresses frequently involved more fabric than their costumes. The girls didn’t dance or sing but sashayed and posed – and so chorus girl as a “showgirl” was introduced and became a staple in all shows.
Chorus girls weren’t the highlight of the show; initially, the girls were transitional entertainment and accessories. But audiences and hopeful “Stage Door Johnnies” scanned the line for the newest beauty.
Where did they come from? One article says that chorus girls generally fell into one of four types. First, the born trooper, the real chorus girls, mainstay of the crew, who took to the stage from the sheer love of acting; Second, the showgirls, matrimonial fisherwoman who saw the stage as route to snaring a rich husband; Third, the runaway, the girl who ran away from home imagining she was doing something exciting and romantic; and Fourth, the society girl from a wealthy family who took up stage work as a lark, who were darlings of the tabloid, and might be tolerated purely because of their publicity value.
I don’t know how accurate this is, but they were all turf for a lot of films. And surely many in the chorus dreamed for the chance in 42nd Street when the leading lady breaks her ankle and the unknown youngster from the chorus has her big moment
Chorus girls were obviously sexy – that was the point – and attracted newsprint, with headlines such as “Showgirl Miss Virginia Lee Engaged to Eleven Men.” And books, too, like Madge Merton’s “Confessions of a Chorus Girl”, Grace White’s “Fallen by the Wayside, or a Chorus Girl’s Luck”, Frank Deshan’s “Chorus Girls I have Known” which were eaten up by the public. Even the New Yorker paid attention to the line. (Peter Arno’s “Valerie won’t be with us for several days. She backed into a steaming potato”.)
And movies. From Ziegfeld to Busby Berkeley isn’t a very big step. Berkeley took Ziegfeld’s girls into a magic cinematographic world of unlimited space and unbelievable camera angles. These are chorus girls moving in military precision (Berkeley was much influenced by military drill) but not in military outfits in head-spinning routines. Many of the most famous Berkeley scenes are in Gold Diggers of 1933, 42nd Street, Footlight Parade and Fashions of 1934.
Chorus girls and night clubs. One thinks of small, dark places with three musicians and a couple of strippers – burlesque drifted here. But New York had night clubs for a long time, back into the late 19th century. Mostly illegal, they focused on liquor, gambling and sex. Many jazz clubs of the 1920s were closed by Prohibition (but see below) and the Big Bands of the 1930s required more space than New York clubs could provide.
The New York night clubs we remember best opened in the 1940s. One of the most famous was the Latin Quarter, opened in 1942 by Lou Walters, Barbara Walters’ father. Throughout the 1940s and 1950s, the Latin Quarter presented floor shows that featured chorus girls and can-can dancers, and headliners that included Frank Sinatra, Frankie Laine and the Andrews Sisters. It rivaled the Copacabana, which had opened two years earlier, in attracting the rich and the famous of post-World War II New York.
What about Chinese restaurants? Weren’t there chorus girls in Chinese restaurants or is this something I saw in a noir film? Well, it’s true, there were Chinese restos with chorus girls. But not in New York City. In San Francisco, this became a thing. Patrons were promised “’a taste of China,’ but really, it was more China-by-way-of-Hollywood….The Chinese American chorus girls might make their entrance in modest cheongsams, but would quickly discard them to reveal sexy burlesque costumes underneath.” And it fits, as most film noirs took place in San Francisco. New York had more cop films.) The Rockettes? Wonderful, but not chorus girls.
Thanks for taking a trip with me on this snowy day
CHINESE SCHOLARS GARDEN SNUG HARBOR CULTURAL CENTER AND BOTANICAL GARDEN LAURA HUSSEY, MITCHELL ELINSON, GLORIA HERMAN AND HARA REISER GOT IT RIGHT
Text by Judith Berdy Thanks to Bobbie Slonevsky for her dedication to Blackwell’s Almanac and the RIHS Thanks to Deborah Dorff for maintaining our website Edited by Melanie Colter and Deborah Dorff
All image are copyrighted (c) Roosevelt Island Historical Society unless otherwise indicated
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In the 1880s and 1890s, Staten Island was home to some of New York City’s wealthiest families, among them Vanderbilts and Roosevelts, who turned an agricultural community into a sportsman’s paradise, with clubs devoted to tennis, boating, hunting, and bicycling. Among the residents was a young competitive athlete named Alice Austen, the amateur photographer who brilliantly captured the relaxed luxury of the island suburb and much else in the Gilded Age city. In 1945, ailing and destitute, Austen was forced to leave her home and might have died unknown and unappreciated. But the Staten Island Historical Society (today Historic Richmond Town) rescued her photographs—7,000 negatives and prints—and, in 1951, the year before she died, the public finally learned of her work in the pages of Life Magazine. Due to this recognition, her family’s home was saved from demolition and today is a public museum. Alice spent the last 50 years of her life partnered with Gertrude Tate, and in 2017, the Alice Austen House was designated a national site of LGBTQ history.
In 1976, Ann Novotny published the only monograph on Austen, which is long out of print. Last year, the Gotham Center for New York City History, at the Graduate Center, City University of New York, granted me a Robert D.L. Gardiner Fellowship to complete a new biographical study of this pioneering figure. My work expands upon Novotny and will be published by Fordham University Press. One can preview my research and see over 100 photographs from this prized collection in a new digital exhibit just released by the Gotham Center and formally announced here in Untapped New York.
Ragmen and Cart, Twenty-third Street between Third and Lexington Avenues. Courtesy of the Collection of Historic Richmond Town
The first group of Austen’s photographs to attract the notice of historians were her “Street Types of New York,” an 1896 portfolio of working class New Yorkers, which immediately drew comparison with Jacob Riis’s and Lewis Hine’s contemporaneous works. All the more notable was that a well-to-do young woman from Staten Island had taken the photographs.
Trude & I masked, short skirts, August 6, 1891. Courtesy of the Collection of Historic Richmond Town
Trude and Alice grew up together. In this photograph, the two twenty-five-year-olds mirror each other, masked, with their hair down, wearing only their undergarments and stockings, and pretending to smoke cigarettes, looking vaguely like women of ill repute. They stand in Trude’s bedroom in the rectory of St. John’s Church, where Trude’s father was pastor. The church was around the corner from Clear Comfort, the Austen family home.
More recently, portraits showing Alice and her friends dressing in men’s clothing or posing as prostitutes have gone viral online. Not only do they upend Victorian gender norms, but they seem to foretell Austen’s lesbian relationship with Tate. Having had access to Historic Richmond Town’s Alice Austen Collection—now digitized and extensively researched by former curator Maxine Friedman—and a cache of letters written to Austen, which belong to the Alice Austen House, I place these images into the larger narrative of Austen’s life.
Austen was a conservative rebel, deeply attached to Staten Island’s high society yet very much a New Woman, physically active and fiercely independent. Born in 1866, she came of age when outdoor leisure activities were the lifeblood of Staten Island’s elite society, and she pursued social status as if it were a competitive sport, collecting her dance cards, newspaper mentions, and tennis scorecards. After a decade of what she called “the larky life,” she came to doubt its ultimate goal—marriage to a suitable man. In 1895, Austen met Daisy Elliott, a Manhattan-based gymnast, ardent feminist and lesbian with whom she had a romantic affair. In 1897, she met Tate, a Brooklyn-born dancing instructor, with whom she shared the rest of her life. When Tate moved to Austen’s Staten Island home in 1917, the women were perceived as middle-aged friends without the stigma that was then growing around lesbianism.
Austen’s photographs of her lifelong friend Gertrude (Trude) Eccleston illustrate her rebellious yet conservative nature.
Group of our party, self in it, August 10, 1888. Courtesy of the Collection of Historic Richmond Town
Alice was very close to the entire Eccleston family, and she often accompanied them on vacation, cameras in tow. In August 1888, she photographed the vacationers at a Lake Mahopac resort, where she was visiting for two weeks. In this sunlit group portrait, Trude and Alice sit in chairs at right. Family friend Charles Barton sits at Trude’s feet, holding her hand. They married twelve years later, but Trude was not interested in him at the time. Prior to Alice’s arrival, Trude wrote, “There is a great dearth of men up here and although every place is full of people they all seem to be old people or very young girls.”
[Trude, Mr. Gregg and Fred Mercer], August 9, 1891. Courtesy of the Collection of Historic Richmond Town
This Clear Comfort photograph shows Trude with her cousin Fred Mercer (at right) and Lieutenant John C. Gregg. Trude had met Gregg at Fort Douglas in Salt Lake City in May 1890, while accompanying her sister Edith on a visit to Edith’s in-laws. Trude described their flirtation to Alice:
This morn. I went for a little stroll with him out to see target practice. He wanted me to fire off one of the guns but they kick so hard that I could not & finally consented pulling the trigger if he held the gun & took aim, this necessitated my embracing him somewhat, well the thing went off and kicked so hard his shoulder hit my cheek & nearly upset me in the arms of another officer. I wish you could have seen the performance, it was great.
Smitten by Trude, Gregg requested a transfer to New York the following summer, when this photograph was taken. During his visit, Alice took the photograph of “Trude & I masked, in short skirts.” Perhaps as relief from Gregg’s high-stakes wooing, Alice and Trude celebrated a moment of rebelliousness. In October, Trude accepted Gregg’s marriage proposal, and they remained engaged for three years until Trude broke off the engagement.
[Daisy Elliott carrying a bicycle], ca. 1895. Courtesy of the Collection of Historic Richmond Town
Alice met Daisy Elliott through her enthusiasm for bicycling, a national craze of the 1890s. Alice’s friend Violet Ward wrote the popular guide, Bicycling for Ladies (1896), and Daisy posed for the illustrations based on Alice’s photographs. Nine years older than Alice, Daisy and Alice had a rocky romantic affair. Her last letter, dated January 18, 1898, exemplifies their cat-and-mouse game: “My darling … You have made me believe in your love, you never made it more evident than to-day—and now I am willing to be set aside till you again have time for me.”
[Alice Austen and Gertrude Tate in the Catskills], 1897. Courtesy of the Collection of Historic Richmond Town
In 1897, on vacation with the Ecclestons at Twilight Park in the Catskills, Alice met Gertrude Tate. Alice was 31 and Gertrude 26. Recovering from an illness, Gertrude had lost her hair and wore a wig, which did not stop her from enjoying herself, as this photograph shows. (Gertrude wears a white shirt and dark skirt, Alice a tan, wide-brimmed hat.) After Alice left, Trude wrote to her about Gertrude, whom they had nicknamed “the Chipmunk”: “Hardly any one will be left here after Labor day—the Tates go then. I will miss them so much, we must keep track of the Chipmunk, she is a great girl. She sends lots of love to you & says she misses you more than she can say.”
[Alice Austen and friends], n.d. Courtesy of the Collection of Historic Richmond Town
Gertrude regularly visited Clear Comfort, and between 1903 and the outbreak of World War I, she and Alice traveled to Europe almost every summer. In 1917, Gertrude moved to Staten Island, where the two women lived contentedly until 1929, when Alice lost her inheritance in the stock market crash.
Alice remained close to Trude and other friends from childhood, as this 1930s photograph shows. Seated on the steps of the piazza at Clear Comfort are Alice (front right) and Trude (rear right), who by then had moved from Staten Island to New Jersey. It is likely that Gertrude Tate took the photograph.
Mosaic image of the Galapagos giant tortoise, an endangered species, one of the mosaics in the subway station at the Museum of Natural History at 81st St station on the C train line
HARA REISER, ANDY SPARBERG, LAURA HUSSEY, ARO EISENPREISS, M. FRANK, JAY JACOBSON, VICKI FEINMEL, AND GLORIA HERMAN GOT IT RIGHT
CREDITS STATEN ISLAND HISTORICAL SOCIETY HISTORIC RICHMOND TOWN
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In 1904 architects Herbert Spencer Harde and Richard Thomas Short designed and built the sophisticated West 85th Street apartment building called Red House. The upscale brick, stone and terra cotta structure was frosted with elaborate Gothic elements. Three years later they would outdo themselves with the even grander Manhattan Square Apartments. Portrait painter Walter Russell had by now added real estate development to his interests. He formed the Walter Russel Bond & Realty Co. and before the outbreak of World War I would be responsible for what The Sun called in 1914 “several buildings notable for size and attractiveness.” Among his first would be the lavish apartment building at Nos. 44 through 48 West 77th Street. The site was exemplary. It overlooked Manhattan Square where the New York Natural History Museum stood. Next door was the fashionable Manhattan Square Hotel. Russell, perhaps inspired by Red House, commissioned Harde & Short in 1907 to design his 14-story structure. The results were stunning. The architects created a soaring neo-Gothic fantasy of brick and terra cotta. As they had done with Red House, they dropped Gothic screens along the tops of expanses of windows and lavished the façade with tracery, trefoil carved balconies and a French Gothic tower. While Red House smacked of a great English estate; this new cooperative apartment building was cathedral-like.
On January 9, 1909 The New York Times remarked “In its architectural features the building represents a distinct departure from anything hitherto attempted in apartment house construction in this city.” The Sun said it “is considered among the finest specimens of Gothic architecture among city apartments.”
A sketch appearing in The New York Times on January 9, 1909 included both a stylish carriage and an automobile. (copyright expired)
There were just two apartments per floor, prompting The Times to say “It has been possible to provide rooms of a size seldom found outside of the largest private residences.” The living rooms, or “salons,” measured 18.5 by 27.5 feet and dining rooms were 15 by 20 feet. Residents could choose between “studio suites” of ten rooms and three baths, or nine rooms and three baths. In the basement, servants would find the “ironing room.” The Edison Monthly noted that “an electric iron, with separate outlet and meter, are provided for each tenant. Each outlet is provided with a lock and key, making it impossible for one tenant to make use of an outlet belonging to another.” The New-York Tribune mentioned that budgetary overruns. “The plans for the building were filed in March 1907, Harde & Short, the architects, estimating the cost at $750,000. The building, however, cost considerably more than this.” Even if it had come in on budget the expense would have topped $18.5 million in today’s dollars.
A postcard of the Manhattan Square Hotel (with red flag) also showed the Manhattan Square Apt. Across the street is the red brick Natural History Museum.
Before the first brick was laid Russell had made an agreement to sell the finished building. On November 19, 1909 the New-York Tribune reported that the title would be transferred “within a few days” to the Manhattan Square Apartment Association. The building quickly filled with a broad array of well-to-do residents. Because of their association with Walter Russell and the window-walled “studios,” several well-known artists moved in.
The “ironing room” of the Manhattan Square Apartments was a major convenience. Edison Monthly June 1909 (copyright expired)
Among these was eminent sculptor Karl Theodore Bitter who was one of the first residents. Following Joseph Pulitzer’s death in 1911 a competition was held to design an ornamental fountain in the open area in front of the Plaza Hotel which the publisher had envisioned. Bitter won the commission for the fountain’s figure of Pomona, while Thomas Hastings of Carerre & Hastings would design the basin. The project stretched on for several years; but Bitter would never see it completed. He finished his clay model of Pomona in 1915. Only a few days later, on April 9, the 47-year old artist left the Metropolitan Opera House with his wife around 11:30 p.m. They headed across Broadway to catch an uptown streetcar. “The street was filled with automobiles, picking up owners in front of the opera house,” reported The New York Times, “and Mr. and Mrs. Bitter threaded a dangerous way across the thoroughfare to the northbound car tracks.” Edward T. James was driving south and swerved to avoid a limousine turning away from the opera house. “The sculptor saw the danger and threw his wife to one side. He got her so far from the automobile’s path that, while she was struck, she was only tossed aside.” Things did not fare so well for Bitter. He was struck and dragged for 30 feet, “crushed between the pavement and the car.” Bitter suffered a fatal skull fracture. Marie Bitter’s grief was exacerbated when only a month later a 23-year old chauffeur objected to the probate of the will. Carl Bitter claimed he was the artist’s son; the result of a common-law marriage with Adelaide Omar. The untidy affair would play out in the courts for months.
In the meantime another well-known resident found himself in the courts. Dr. Otto G. T Kiliani, too, was one of the first owners. Born in Germany, he was Professor of Clinical Surgery at Columbia University and a surgeon at the German Hospital. Patients who could not afford to pay were offered free treatment at the hospital and such was the case in April 1912 when Jacob Weiss was operated on. Two years later he sued Dr. Kiliani, charging “that after operating on him they had sewed up two sponges in his abdominal cavity,” explained The Times on January 23, 1914. When the case went to trial, not only did Weiss produce “practically no evidence in support of his charge;” but “It was shown that Dr. Kiliani had not even been present at the operation.” Dr. Kiliani later told reporters “Suits like these are being brought constantly against physicians and surgeons and the plaintiffs are usually those who have received free treatment.” Also living in the Manhattan Square Apartment in 1915 was 70-year old former politician Theodore W. Myers. Myers had served as City Controller, was former President of the National Democratic Club, a member of the Chamber of Commerce and a partner in a banking firm Arthur Lipper & Co. The New-York Tribune estimated his worth at between $3 and $4 million. The wealthy Myers held memberships to the New York Athletic Club and New York Yacht Club. He was apparently well-traveled for he also was a member of the Automobile Club of America, the Automobile Clubs of France and England, and the Travelers’ Club of Paris. Several years earlier Rose Alixis Knight moved into the building with her mother. Rose was about 30 years younger than the widowed Myers, so their sudden marriage on February 10, 1915 was a shock to political and social circles. The New-York Tribune began its report of the wedding saying “Cupid has taken to politics and is playing queer pranks with the politicians.” The couple remained in Myers’ apartment where his noted collection of paintings and engravings was hung. They spent winters in Florida and on March 20, 1918 after just having returned to New York, Myers suffered a fatal heart attack in the apartment. His funeral was held here two days later. His young widow was left in grief; but considerably wealthy. Another well-known artist in the building was Samuel Montgomery Roosevelt. As war ravaged Europe and before the United States entered the conflict, wealthy New Yorkers often worked for war relief. On Sunday, March 26, 1916 at 9 p.m. Roosevelt and his wife hosted a musical recital “to aid widows and orphans of French soldiers,” as noted in The Sun that afternoon. Roosevelt would remain in the Manhattan Square Apartment for years. The cousin of Theodore Roosevelt, he was as much a member of the artistic world as high society. He was a member of the exclusive Knickerbocker, Lambs, Manhattan, New York Yacht, Tuxedo, and Larchmont Yacht Clubs, among others. A close friend of John Singer Sargent and James A. McNeill Whistler, he too painted society portraits like that of Theodore Roosevelt, Bishop James H. Darlington, Oliver Belmont and the Earl of Kintore. As with all wealthy New Yorkers, the newspapers followed the Roosevelts’ movements. On June 10, 1919 The Sun mentioned “S. Montgomery Roosevelt, 44 West Seventy-seventh street, will leave New York to-day for the Grand Cascapedia, Canada, for salmon fishing, and will be gone a fortnight.” A year later the coverage would be more shocking. The headline in the New-York Tribune on August 20, 1920 read “Samuel M. Roosevelt Drops Dead in Club.” The 64-year old artist collapsed on a staircase of the Knickerbocker Club. Before a doctor could arrive, he was dead of a brain hemorrhage. Another portrait painter in the building was Italian-born Francesco Paolo Finocchiaro. He had arrived in New York around the turn of the century and in 1910 was made a chevalier by the King of Italy. The artist married widowed socialite Florence Angell Mason in her Madison Avenue home on October 30, 1918. The Sun said “The bride has been identified with the summer life in Newport, where she has a home in Catherine street known as Wabun.” The newspaper noted that the newlyweds would be living in Finocchiaro’s Manhattan Square apartment. As expected, the couple remained socially active and hosted entertainments like the “reception with music” in the apartment on May 8 1920. Not involved in the arts was Robert Reis, the head of the underwear firm Robert Reis & Co. The wealthy businessman lived here with his wife, Sarah—their three children were all grown by now. In 1918, the same year that Finocchiaro and his new bride were getting settled, Robert Reis died leaving an estate of about half a million dollars. Sarah remained on in the apartment, enjoying her summers at Loon Lake in the Adirondacs through the 1920s. By the time of Reis’s death the United State was firmly entrenched in the European war. It would shape the lives of several residents, such as German exporter Engen Schwerdt whose offices were at No. 79 Wall Street. On Tuesday February 26, 1918 The Sun ran the headline “Wool Exporter Held as Leader in German Plot.” The newspaper explained that Schwerdt had been arrested for master-minding a plot to divert wool to the German army. “For the purpose of hoodwinking the Textile Alliance, which was organized for the purpose of preventing wool from falling into German hands, dummy concerns appear to have been employed by the plotters, and from evidence in the hands of the authorities it has been learned that the schemers became so bold as to store their wares in London.” The newspaper said “Schwerdt’s American wife is at her residence, 44 West Seventy-seventh street.” She pleaded to reporters “We are both for the Allies. I am as good an American as can be found.” At the other end of the spectrum was Marjorie Snare Mason. Her husband, Colonel Charles W. Mason, Jr., was in France with the 30th Infantry; her brother, Frederick Snare, Jr. was also in France with the 305th Machine Gun Battalion; and her father, Frederick Snare was commander of the Red Cross Base Hospital No. 6 at Bordeaux, France. With the men in her life fighting abroad, the 36-year old woman was alone in her Manhattan Square apartment. On January 19, 1919, she died in her home of heart disease. The building would become home to members of the theater, as well. Actress Selma Paley was living here in 1920 when she was sued by the wife of Oliver Morosco for, according to the New York Clipper on June 30, “alienating the theatrical man’s affections.”
Modernization streamlined the facade, removed the pinnacle and Gothic screens, and enlarged the upper floor openings.
Samuel Goldwyn had an apartment here at the same time, and throughout the decades it would become home to Erica Jong in the 1940s, and to actress Patricial Neal and her new husband Roald Dahl in 1954. At some point before mid-century the building lost the name Manhattan Square Apartment (possibly because of the 1922 building on West 81st Street that took the same name) and became known as The Studio Building. On September 28, 1939 The New York Times reported that “A forty-five foot studio living room is being constructed for the special use of Paul Trebilcock, portrait painter, in the building at 44 West Seventy-seventh Street.” It is possibly at this time that the windows of the top floor were stripped of their mullions and plate glass installed. Tragically, at some point a misguided attempt at modernization resulted in much of the Gothic ornamentation of the upper floors being stripped away and the marvelous gables, parapets and pinnacle were destroyed. The dripping Gothic screens, as well, were trashed.
The building would make a brief appearance in Tom Wolfe’s 1987 The Bonfire of the Vanities: A Novel in the line “Kramer had that vision comfortable in place when just up ahead, from the swell-looking doorway of 44 West Seventy-seventh Street emerged a figure that startled him.” Despite the vandalism of the upper stories, the building still has, for the most part, only two apartments per floor. Even in its decimated state, Harde & Short’s “distinct departure from anything hitherto attempted” is still an eye-catcher.
WEEKEND PHOTO
FRIDAY PHOTO OF THE DAY
FISHING BOATS AT SHEEPSHEAD BAY LAURA HUSSEY GOT IT RIGHT
SOURCES
DAYTONIAN IN MANHATTAN
Funding Provided by: Roosevelt Island Corporation Public Purpose Funds Council Member Ben Kallos City Council Discretionary Funds thru DYCD Text by Judith Berdy
Edited by Deborah Dorff ALL PHOTOS COPYRIGHT RIHS. 2022 (C) PHOTOS IN THIS ISSUE (C) JUDITH BERDY RIHS
Even in the cold, guys (and some women too) are out around the island fishing. Sometimes a couple of people, an outing. But usually, one person, a solitary fisherperson. But what’s down there, drawing them on?
Turns out there’s a lot of critters swimming in the water around here. A New Yorker article tells that that “as the water has become cleaner, the shad runs have slowly returned to the Hudson. A herring called the mossbunker swims in huge schools, and is caught by the ton, ground up, and fed to farmed salmon. There are four-foot-long stingrays down by the Rockaways and off Coney Island, and they’re hard to see when they’re flat against the bottom. A diver will be going about his business when he encounters a section of mud the size of a coffee table that suddenly—zooomp!—up and swims away.” Cleaner water and conservation efforts have led to much larger shoals of Atlantic menhaden, a dinner which has attracted humpback whales. But this is just background noise. In the East River, people catch flounder, fluke, bluefish, catfish, tautog, summer flounder, perch and porgy. But these are just incidental. The real game is striped bass. Morone saxatilis officially. That’s what the fisherpeople are after.
Tell us more. The striped bass is the largest member of the sea bass family, often called “temperate” or “true” bass to distinguish it from species such as largemouth, smallmouth, and spotted bass which are actually members of the sunfish family. (I didn’t say this was going to be easy.) Striped bass are silvery, shading to olive-green on the back and white on the belly, with seven or eight uninterrupted horizontal stripes on each side of the body.
Striped bass can live in both freshwater and saltwater environments. In coastal regions, individual fish may swim up streams as much as 100 miles inland to spawn. Some striped bass spend their entire life cycle in freshwater. Spawning begins in the spring when water temperatures approach 60°F. Typically, one female is accompanied by several males during the spawning act. Males are generally mature in two years, and females in three to four. Adults are piscivorous (fish-eating) and eat almost any kind of small fish as well as several invertebrates, particularly crabs and squid. Bluefish, weakfish, cod and silver hake prey on small striped bass. Adults have few predators, other than seals and sharks – and fisherpeople. Striped bass have a fairly long life, up to 30 years.
But most all, they can be big. Stripers may reach 10 to 12 inches during the first year and they’ve been known to grow up to 5 feet in length and 77 pounds. The time of year seems to matter as does moon phase and tide. In midsummer, here on the East River, they are smaller – 20 inches or so, while in the spring and fall, stripers not only are more abundant, but they also run 30, 35, and even 40 inches long. Striped bass are considered excellent for eating (though not those taken from the East River), but are overfished and, thus, are protected. Strippers over 28 inches can be taken, but most larger fish are returned to the river.
One can fine lots of photos on the internet of big East River striped bass caught and happy anglers.
Where do you catch one of these fellows? Their preferred habitat is inshore near structures such as rocks and pilings, but they can also be found in open water as well.
Striped bass aren’t the only big fish found in the East River. Bluefish, which most of us think of as Atlantic coast residents, can be taken as well. Bluefish are long, moderately stout fish, with distinctly forked tails. They are known for being fierce fighters on fishing lines. Bluefish are coastal migrants that travel in schools into local waters in the spring, following mackerel and bunker. They range in length from nine to 24 inches and weigh 12 to 15 pounds. Here’s a 19 pounder, which must have put up quite a battle, and another.
Since our Island lacks the old piers and structures that seem to attract the larger striped bass, catching a really big one is probably less likely. But, still, I’ve seen people reel in fish that looked more than 20 inches long. And that very big blue was taken just off Gracie Mansion. Who knew what was out there, just off our shores? Fish on!
COLUMBUS CIRCLE JAY JACOBSON, JOHN GATTUSO, ANDY SPARBERG, M. FRANK, CLARA BELLA, GLORIA HERMAN, LAURA HUSSEY, KIM BRUCE, HARA REISER, AND ED LITCHER CONTRIBUTED THE FOLLOWING: Columbus Circle, the monument for Christopher Columbus that had begun in 1842 wasn’t completed until 1905. It was at this time that the Circle began to become the cultural center it is today.
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Emery Roth was a prolific New York City architect who designed many notable buildings in the 1920s and ’30s. He was renowned for elegant prewar Manhattan apartment buildings like The Beresford, The San Remo, Ritz Tower, and The Whitby. For much of his life, Emery Roth lived at 210 West 101st Street on the Upper West Side with his family. in the penthouse he designed. In 2014, however, the penthouse went up for rent, and this drew his descendants to visit the apartment and reminisce on the before and after.
Justin Rivers, Untapped New York’s Chief Experience Officer, interviewed Emery Roth’s grandsons Richard Roth Jr, his brother Emery Roth II, and his daughter Robyn Roth-Moise for a newly released video exclusive to our Untapped New York Insiders archive. In it, the Roths spoke about the legacy of their grandfather (and great-grandfather for Robyn). It revolves around their memories of the legendary architect, some of his greatest works, and Emery’s apartment on the Upper West Side that was in the Roth family for many years. Richard and Emery II, who goes by Ted, spent portions of their respective childhoods either living or visiting there. Robyn also remembers having select family holidays there.
Courtesy of the collection of Emery Roth II.
“This apartment was a part of our family history, it was an apartment that Emery lived in as well as my dad when he was young,” said Robyn in a separate interview with Untapped New York. “It stayed in my family, although [it] went to the Eisner side of the family (my dad’s mother). I was curious to see what changes they had made to the apartment. My dad, my uncle and myself all own items and furniture that Emery had designed and that resided in this apartment, so the connection remains strong so many years later.”
Courtesy of the collection of Emery Roth II.
Ted Roth compiled Penthouse Karma: A Scrapbook of Emery’s Penthouse, a scrapbook that told the history of the Roth family through the penthouse, based on the patriarch’s recollections, family photographs, and the memories of at least 11 others. Robyn recalls how the apartment had a private elevator entrance that opened into a vestibule, with a painting set into the wall. She loved the personal details and the architecture in the front formal rooms of the apartment as well. “I loved that apartment. I thought it was amazing, special and beautiful,” she said. “The terrace was to die for, as they say. Who else had a wrap around terrace with views of the city?
” Robyn noted that the last time she was in the apartment was back in the 1980s when her great Aunt Jane was moving out of the apartment. The neighborhood had gotten too dangerous and she had been mugged a few times. When she saw that the New York Times conducted a feature on the apartment titled “Emery Roth Lived Here” on January 26, 2014, she contacted the management company explaining who she was and asked if she could see the apartment. And certainly much had changed, although many of the original tiles, doors, and fireplace remained.
Courtesy of the collection of Emery Roth II.
In 2014, the three-bedroom two-bath apartment with a maid’s room, a large wraparound terrace, and a doghouse went up for rent for $15,500 a month. The 2,200 square-foot penthouse is “spacious and sunny,” according to the feature, with multiple windows and original details such as barrel-vault ceilings, elaborately carved woodwork, stained-glass doors, and ceramic-tile floors and wainscoting. The terrace includes a fountain at one end and a doghouse with an arched entry on the other. The building’s exterior is relatively plain with a brown brick facade.
While the kitchens and bathrooms received renovations, Roth’s legacy remains both in the penthouse and across the city. According to Robyn, who never met her great-grandfather, she is amazed by just how many Emery Roth buildings she’s walked by or lived near throughout her entire life not knowing they were Emery’s.
Courtesy of the collection of Emery Roth II.
“I was jealous when my best friend growing up [who] moved to the Beresford,” she recalls. “It was always one of my favorite buildings of his. I was most blown away, when I visited a friend at the Ritz Tower, whose parents owned a duplex in there. He knew how to layout an apartment. I do love looking at the details of the entrances and when possible the lobbies of his buildings.”
Courtesy of the collection of Emery Roth II.
Richard Roth Jr., in honor of his grandfather’s legacy, has continued the storied legacy of his family’s firm, Emery Roth and Sons, when Project X was thrown into his lap. It was slated to be a high-profile tower directly behind Grand Central Terminal that would change Park Avenue forever. The project would bring two of the biggest names in architecture together, Walter Gropius and Pietro Belluschi, and it was Richard’s job to make sure it all came together. The result was a building that set the tenure of a late 20th-century Park Avenue and a structure that still fascinates New Yorkers today: the Pan Am Building, now called the MetLife Building.
To see more of the details of the apartment go to:
LAURA HUSSEY GOT IT. ED LITCHER ADDED SOME HISTORY: Prospect Park War Memorial – This monument was dedicated to men of the 14th Brooklyn, the famed “Red Legged Devils”, who fought under the 106th infantry regiment during the war; who in fact, held garrison in prospect park before being reassigned to its parent unit in order to help enlist new men [3]. The 106th infantry regiment fought in France under Colonel Franklin W. War and its sister regiment was the 105th. They moved into the line on 25 June, 1918, relieving the exhausted British 6th Division stationed there. It participated in the Ypres-Lys offensive and the Second Somme Offensive, which finally cracked the Hindenburg Line. The regiment suffered 1,955 casualties, with 1,496 wounded and 376 killed in action.
Text by Judith Berdy Thanks to Bobbie Slonevsky for her dedication to Blackwell’s Almanac and the RIHS Thanks to Deborah Dorff for maintaining our website Edited by Deborah Dorff All image are copyrighted (c)
Sources
UNTAPPED NEW YORK
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On Saturday a surprise package arrived in the mail. What is the New-York Historical Society sending me? It was a wonderful surprise, a copy of “Scenes from New York City”. This is the story of the 130 piece collection of NYC art just donated to the New-York Historical Society by Elie and Sarah Hirschfeld.
I had heard that the collection was being donated and looked forward to seeing it. The book with the catalog tells the story of each piece and the artists. It was a wonderful read for a snowy day.
Yesterday, I visited the exhibition that takes up the two large galleries on the second floor of the N-YHS.
The paintings are grouped by subjects (not in date order). There are at least 5 pictures of the Queensboro Bridge, Roosevelt island and all are recognizable city sites. I recognized many artists that we have featured in this publication.
Take the F train and the B train to Central Park West and enjoy this trip thru our city. The show is on until February 22nd. (No B train on weekends)
Thanks Elie and Sarah sharing these treasures with us.
Judith Berdy
ALL IMAGES ARE PROTECTED BY COPYRIGHTS ( C )
Bernard Buffet, Park Avenue View from the Pan Am Building (Park Avenue Vue du Pan Am Building),1989, framed print with glass glazing, measuring 11 x 14 inches. Enjoy New-York Historical Society’s Elie and Sarah Hirschfeld Collection at home with this exclusive reproduction. Printed with archival-quality inks to acid-free and lignin-free 230gsm coated fine art paper. The bright white base and smooth matte finish of the paper guarantee the color accuracy of the images. Hanging wire is in-set making this print ready to hang.
Bernard Buffet (1928–1999) was a French painter of Expressionism and a member of the anti-abstract art group L’homme Témoin (the Witness-Man).
Scenes of New York City: The Elie and Sarah Hirschfeld Collection, an extraordinary promised gift to the New-York Historical Society from philanthropists and art collectors Elie and Sarah Hirschfeld, celebrates a multifaceted and dynamic New York from the 19th century into the present day. The pieces date from the year 1818 to the 21st-century and are all centered on New York City’s defining landmarks, from buildings, bridges and parks, to the art movements that shaped the city’s culture. The artworks are created by American and European artists like Norman Rockwell, Keith Haring, Edward Hopper, and Raoul Dufy, showing the city through their distinctive eyes. On view October 22, 2021 – February 27, 2022.
William James Glackens (1870-1938) was an American realist painter and one of the founders of the Ashcan School, which rejected the formal boundaries of artistic beauty laid-down by the conservative National Academy of Design.
Adriaan Lubbers was born in the Netherlands in 1892. His early art career included exhibiting his works in March 1922 in Amsterdam. During that period he settled with others artists in a farmhouse at Vierhouten. There he met the painter Leo Gestel with whom he traveled to New York. At 33 years old, Lubbers produced his first drawings which depict New York landmarks in a realistic style.
Joseph Stella (1877-1946) was an Italian-born American Futurist painter best known for his depictions of industrial America, especially his images of the Brooklyn Bridge. He is also associated with the American Precisionist movement of the 1910s–1940s.
Marcel Gromaire (1892–1971) was a French painter. He painted many works on social subjects and is often associated with Social Realism, but Gromaire can be said to have created an independent oeuvre distinct from groups and movements.
Ernest Lawson’s, High Bridge Aqueduct, after 1928.
Enjoy New-York Historical Society’s Elie and Sarah Hirschfeld Collection at home with this exclusive postcard featuring Leon Kroll’s Broadway Looking South 1919. Measures 4 x 6 inches.
Leon Kroll (1884-1974) was an American painter and lithographer. A figurative artist described by Life magazine as “the dean of U.S. nude painters”, he was also a landscape painter and produced an exceptional body of still life compositions.
A SMALL SAMPLE OF THE WORKS
Red Grooms takes over a New York street scene
Four views of the Queensboro Bridge Miss Liberty standing proud
Laura Hussey got all of the buildings. Andy Sparberg, John Gattuso got some!!!
Text by Judith Berdy Thanks to Bobbie Slonevsky for her dedication to Blackwell’s Almanac and the RIHS Thanks to Deborah Dorff for maintaining our website Edited by Melanie Colter and Deborah Dorff
All image are copyrighted (c) Roosevelt Island Historical Society unless otherwise indicated
NEW-YORK HISTORICAL SOCIETY
ELIE AND SARAH HIRSHFELD COLLECTION SCENES OF NEW YORK CITY
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Joseph Jacinto Mora (October 22, 1876 – October 10, 1947) was a Uruguayan-born American cowboy, photographer, artist, cartoonist, illustrator, painter, muralist, sculptor, and historian who lived with the Hopi and wrote about his experiences in California. He has been called the “Renaissance Man of the West”.[1]
Mora was born on October 22, 1876 in Montevideo, Uruguay. His father was the Catalan sculptor, Domingo Mora, and his mother was Laura Gaillard Mora, an intellectual born in the Bordeaux region of France. His elder brother was F. Luis Mora, who would become an artist and the first Hispanic member of the National Academy of Design. The family entered the United States in 1880 and first settled in New York City, and then Perth Amboy, New Jersey.[2]
In the spring of 1903, Mora arrived in Solvang, California. He stayed at the Donohue Ranch. He made plans to travel to the Southwest to paint and photograph the Hopi. He spent time at the Mission Santa Inés; those photographs are now maintained by the Smithsonian Institution. Mora visited many Spanish missions in California that summer by horseback. He followed the “Mission Trail”, also called the “Kings Highway“.
In 1904, Mora visited Yosemite.[3] Later, in 1904, to 1906, Mora lived with the Hopi and Navajo near Oraibi, Arizona.[4] He took photographs,[5] painted[6] and otherwise recorded the daily life of these Native Americans, including the Hopi Snake Dance. He learned the Native languages and made detailed drawings of what he observed.[7]
In 1907, Mora wrote and illustrated the comic strip Animaldom.[8]
In 1907, Mora returned to California and married Grace Needham. Their son, Joseph Needham Mora, was born on March 8, 1908. The Moras moved to San Jose, California, where Mora continued his work.
On 22 February 1911, the Native Sons of the Golden West Building, in San Francisco, with six terra cotta panels, by Domingo Mora and his son, Jo Mora, was dedicated.[9][10] In 1915, he served on the International Jury of Awards at the Panama-Pacific International Exposition and displayed six sculptures.[11] In 1915-16 two of his sculptural commissions were revealed: the bronze memorial tablet with the profile of the late Archbishop Patrick W. Riordan for the Knights of Columbus and the Cervantes Monument in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park.[12][13] By 1919, he was sculpting for the Bohemian Club, including the Bret Harte Memorial plaque, completed in August 1919 and mounted on the outside of the private men’s club building in San Francisco. Statue of Junipero Serra in Carmel Woods.
On July 22, 1922, for the opening day of the Carmel Woods subdivision, Mora had carved and painted a wooded statue of Padre Junípero Serra, which was installed within a small wooden shrine, surrounded by plants and a pair of wooden benches at the entrance to the development, at the intersection of Camino del Monte and Alta Avenue.[14][15]
In 1925, he designed the commemorative half dollar for the California Diamond Jubilee. During this period he also illustrated a number of books, made large murals, and published charts, maps (cartes) and diagrams of the West and Western themes. Beginning in 1937, Mora wrote and illustrated children’s books about the West. In 1939, a Works Progress Administration project was completed, with Mora bas-relief sculpture adorning the King City High School Auditorium building.
In 1921 the Mora family moved their primary residence to the largest art colony on the West Coast, Carmel-by-the-Sea. Mora received a commission for the bronze and travertine Cenotaph, for Father Junípero Serra in the Memorial Chapel at the west end of Mission Carmel.[11][16][17][18] He served on the board of directors of the Carmel Art Association, where his sculptures were exhibited between 1927 and 1934. He co-established Carmel’s first private art gallery which was operated by resident artists.[19] In 1931 Jo, his wife, and daughter Patricia moved to nearby Pebble Beach into a newly built home. Five years later in the adjoining large studios he completed his massive diorama, Discovery of the San Francisco Bay by Portola, for the California Pavilion at the 1939-40 Golden Gate International Exposition on Treasure Island. At a length of almost 100 feet, with 64 sculptures of Spaniards and Indians and over 200 animals, it was said “to surpass anything of its kind at the Fair.”[20][21] He fashioned smaller dioramas for the Will Rogers Memorial Museum in Claremore, Oklahoma and the Sutter’s Fort Museum in Sacramento, California.[22][23]
Between 1908 and the late 1940s his sculptures, illustrations,[24] watercolors and etchings were frequently exhibited across the United States.[11][25][26]
Technically the map is an overview of the scenic drive through the Monterey peninsula in northern California, now home to legendary golf courses and a world-renowned aquarium. At the very top of the map, there are drawings of two groups of people, “old” and “new” Californians. The old group consists of a cowboy and a padre and a group of women traveling in an ox-drawn wagon. The group of new Californians appears to be well-to-do tourists with golf clubs, a sleek convertible and a polo horse. Numerous drawings frame the border of maps, highlighting many of the indigenous species of birds and animals of the area as well as some of its historic buildings. The highlight of the map, though, has to be the center panel featuring a drawing of various forest-dwelling critters, all wearing human clothing.
BELLEVUE HOSPITAL MAIN BUILDING JOHN GATTUSO, ANDY SPARBERG, LAURA HUSSEY GOT IT RIGHT!
CREDITS
JO MORA ARCHIVES
WIKIPEDIA
Text by Judith Berdy Thanks to Bobbie Slonevsky for her dedication to Blackwell’s Almanac and the RIHS Thanks to Deborah Dorff for maintaining our website Edited by Melanie Colter and Deborah Dorff
All image are copyrighted (c) Roosevelt Island Historical Society unless otherwise indicated
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From Health Officer of the Port to Disease Detectives:
Public Health Workers in New York City
Katie Ehrlich
NYC MUNICIPAL ARCHIVES
More than 250 years ago, the sole responsibility of New York City’s first public health workers, as they could be called, was keeping disease out of the city. It is a function essential to a rapidly-growing metropolis. Centuries later, we are again face-to-face with it, even as New York in 2020 bears almost no resemblance to the port city at the lower tip of Manhattan it once was.
Until the late 19th century, the role of public health was largely to react to outbreaks of diseases such as cholera and yellow fever. A Health Officer of the Port enforced the quarantining of ships coming into New York Harbor when there was a known or suspected contagion.
Group portrait of 17 sanitary inspectors, 1870-1873. NYC Municipal Archives.
In 1805, a designated board of the mayor and legislators was tasked with overseeing the health of city residents. Officials kept increasingly robust counts of the dead in an attempt to stem these diseases. The city’s sanitary inspectors, part of the nascent Board of Health, worked to ensure the streets were free of garbage and rotting animals and vacant lots were unsoiled.
The population of Manhattan skyrocketed mid-century with the arrival of Irish and German immigrants, more than doubling the population between 1840 and 1860. Yearly outbreaks of cholera were exacerbated by tightly-packed housing quarters where these newcomers resided in neighborhoods such as the Five Points. Efforts to manage the health of the population became a more pressing issue for city government.
Aerial view of Hoffman Island, off Staten Island, once used to quarantine incoming immigrants, circa 1934-1945. Mayor LaGuardia Collection. NYC Municipal Archives.
The state created a new board of professionals to oversee health in New York City and its immediate surrounding areas in 1866. This was followed by a full-fledged Department of Health, staffed by doctors and other professionals in 1870. New York City opened the first city-controlled diagnostic laboratory in 1892, employing bacteriologists who mitigated outbreaks of infectious diseases over the years through testing and producing antitoxins and vaccines. The city’s public health lab continues this work to this day.Additional waves of immigrants from eastern and southern Europe around the turn of the century and reforms in the social, educational and labor realms ushered in the public health nursing movement. In 1902, the New York City Department of Health created the first public health nursing program in the country. City nurses were installed at schools and paid home visits to millions of families and new mothers to tackle high infant mortality rates. Baby health stations popped up around the five boroughs. Public health nurses advised and examined pregnant women and mothers of young children, gave referrals, instruction on early child care and breast-feeding, information about access to city services and provided low-cost, quality milk.
Nurse visiting patient, possibly with tuberculosis, in tenement apartment, ca. 1910. Department of
1910. Department of Public Charities Collection. NYC Municipal Archives.
Fleet of “healthmobiles” employed by the Department of Health in the late 1920s to promote information about diphtheria and offer free toxin-antitoxins. NYC Municipal Archives.
Through the Great Depression to the post-World War II years, federal and private money funded an expansion of health services. Physicians and nurses staffed new district health centers. More food inspectors examined more establishments. And the city increased resources focusing on child health by bringing dentistry into the fold of city services.
Mayor Fiorello La Guardia with Department of Health Commissioner John Rice touting the plunging city death rate to under 10 per 1,000 of population for the first time, 1939. Mayor LaGuardia Collection. NYC Municipal Archives.
Baby Health Station under elevated tracks at Gun Hill Road and White Plains Road, Bronx, circa 1940s. NYC Municipal Archives.
The Department of Health struggled and contracted under Mayor John Lindsay’s superagency reorganization plan and subsequent economic crisis of the 1970s only to take on renewed importance when HIV appeared and devastated the city. The city was able to secure outside funds to bolster staff and much-needed tracing, research and outreach programs. City health workers continued the uphill fight against HIV/AIDS on a community basis. They tackled tuberculosis outbreaks and lead poisoning among vulnerable populations into the 2000s.
Technicians at work in a Department of Health laboratory, circa 1940s. NYC Municipal Archives.
As the city launches its contact tracing and testing program for Covid-19, it is important to remember this work has a history in New York City.
During the first decades of the 20th century, the Department of Health’s Dr. Josephine Baker was instrumental in tracking down asymptomatic carrier “Typhoid Mary” Mallon.
Department employees, sometimes with the help of volunteers, have used detective methods of sorts to track, refer and follow up on cases of tuberculosis, venereal diseases and later, HIV/AIDS.
At the threat of a smallpox outbreak in 1947, city health workers and volunteers vaccinated an astonishing 6.3 million New Yorkers in a month!
In 1978, staff epidemiologists tracked the source of the city’s first outbreak of Legionnaires Disease. The city continues to disperse health workers to New Yorkers’ homes, schools, restaurants and other businesses to monitor the city’s health on numerous fronts.
Providing direction for New Yorkers coping with the Covid-19 pandemic is the latest example of the city’s public health workers fulfilling a centuries-old imperative.
CLAUDE MONET’S HOME AT GIVERNY, FRANCE LAURA HUSSEY GOT IT RIGHT!!
SOURCES
NYC MUNICIPAL ARCHIVES BLOG
Funding Provided by: Roosevelt Island Corporation Public Purpose Funds Council Member Ben Kallos City Council Discretionary Funds thru DYCD Text by Judith Berdy
Edited by Deborah Dorff ALL PHOTOS COPYRIGHT RIHS. 2022 (C) PHOTOS IN THIS ISSUE (C) JUDITH BERDY RIHS
