Peggy Bacon studied with John Sloan and Kenneth Hayes Miller. Her sharp wit was evident in her contributions to the New Yorker and Vanity Fair as well as in the more than 60 books she illustrated, including several publications of her own short stories and poetry.
Joan Stahl American Artists in Photographic Portraits from the Peter A. Juley & Son Collection (Washington, D.C. and Mineola, New York: National Museum of American Art and Dover Publications, Inc., 1995)
Peggy Bacon, Antique Shop, 1943, lithograph on paper, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Bequest of Frank McClure, 1979.98.16
Peggy Bacon, Tired Eyes, 1935, drypoint on paper, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of Ruth and Jacob Kainen, 1977.108.2
Peggy Bacon, George C. Miller, The Titan, 1929, lithograph on paper, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of Mr. and Mrs. William S. Benedict, 1974.37.1
Peggy Bacon, Promenade Deck, 1920, drypoint, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of Frank McClure, 1974.86.1
Peggy Bacon, Post Haste, ca. 1935, drypoint on paper, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Bequest of Frank McClure, 1979.98.13
Peggy Bacon, The Supply Store, 1918, drypoint on paper, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Bequest of Frank McClure, 1979.98.8
Peggy Bacon, Carrie, 1918, drypoint on paper, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Bequest of Frank McClure, 1979.98.7
Peggy Bacon, Washington Square, 1918, drypoint on paper, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Bequest of Frank McClure, 1979.98.9
It’s a very busy week for Nellie Bly. Tomorrow – January 25 (1885)—marks the date that her first newspaper article was published – The Girl Puzzle in The Pittsburg* Dispatch – namesake of the monument. It also the day in 1890 when Nellie Bly returned from her record-breaking race around the world. As you know, Thursday January 27 is the 100th anniversary of her death so this is some publicity around that as a celebration of her legacy.
TIMES SQUARE MURAL, 1997 ROY LICHTENSTEIN TIMES SQUARE SUBWAY STATION INSTALLED 2002 LAURA HUSSEY AND GLORIA HERMAN 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
SMITHSONIAN AMERICAN ART MUSEUM
All image are copyrighted (c) Roosevelt Island Historical Society unless otherwise indicated
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Like other pop artists, Roy Lichtenstein hoped to eliminate the distinction between “high” and “low” art. He drew inspiration from cartoons and advertisements, adopted the look of mechanical processes, and often borrowed images directly from comic strips. In Reverie’s single frame, black outlines define fields of dots that mimic commercial half-tone printing, making a punchy and accessible image of a lovelorn songstress.
The Smithsonian American Art Museum acquired the monumental sculpture Modern Head by Roy Lichtenstein, a major figure in the pop art movement, in 2008.Modern Head stands thirty-one feet tall and is made of stainless steel painted blue. The sculpture is part of a series Lichtenstein began in the late 1960s that explored the idea of creating images of human figures that look like machines. This concept pervaded the artist’s work throughout his career. Lichtenstein created the first Modern Head in 1974 out of wood that was painted blue. In 1989 he produced an edition of four in brushed steel. In 1990 the artist painted one a vibrant blue, making the sculpture in American Art’s collection a unique work. Silhouetted against the urban skyline, the flat planes and curvilinear geometric forms of the sculpture blend the streamlined industrial style of 1930s art deco architecture and design with references to Picasso and Apollo, the Greek god of the arts. In 1996, Modern Head was installed by the Public Art Fund of New York City in Battery Park City, one block from the World Trade Center. The sculpture survived the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks with only surface scratches and was temporarily used by the FBI as a message board during its investigations. The sculpture was removed from the site on November 9, 2001, and was subsequently on view at the Nassau County Museum of Art in Roslyn Harbor, New York, and at the Fairchild Tropical Botanic Garden in Coral Gables, Florida. The sculpture is installed on the grounds of the Museum’s main building at the corner of Ninth and F streets, N.W.Smithsonian American Art Museum, 2008Modern Head is part of a series Roy Lichtenstein began in the late 1960s that explored the idea of creating images of human figures that look like machines. The flat planes and curvilinear geometric forms of the sculpture blend the streamlined industrial style of 1930s art deco architecture and design with references to Picasso and Apollo, the Greek god of the arts. On September 11, 2001, the sculpture, which was installed one block from the World Trade Center, survived the terrorist attack on New York City with only surface scratches. It was temporarily used by the FBI as a message board during its investigations.Smithsonian American Art Museum: Commemorative Guide. Nashville, TN: Beckon Books, 2015.
ANDY SPARBERG, GLORIA HERMAN, LAURA HUSSEY, GOT IT RIGHT
CREDITS
SMITHSONIAN AMERICAN ART MUSEUM
Thanks to Bobbie Slonevsky for her dedication to Blackwell’s Almanac and the RIHSThanks to Deborah Dorff for maintaining our website Edited by Melanie Colter and Deborah Dorff FUNDING PROVIDED BY ROOSEVELT ISLAND OPERATING CORPORATION PUBLIC PURPOSE GRANTS CITY COUNCIL REPRESENTATIVE BEN KALLOS DISCRETIONARY FUNDING THRU DYCD
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
Marcel Duchamp at the Walker Art Center, October 1965. Photo: Eric Sutherland
FRIDAY, JANUARY 21, 2022
The 578th Edition
MARCEL DUCHAMP: THE BARBARA AND AARON LEVINE COLLECTION
at the
HIRSHHORN
WASHINGTON, D.C.
Marcel Duchamp: The Barbara and Aaron Levine Collection features the recent gift of more than fifty major historical artworks, including more than thirty-five seminal works by Marcel Duchamp, promised to the Museum by Washington, DC, collectors Barbara and Aaron Levine. The exhibition comprises an unparalleled selection of artworks, thoughtfully acquired over the course of two decades and offering a rarely seen view of the entire arc of Duchamp’s career.
The exhibition showcases a number of Duchamp’s most famous readymades, including Hat Rack, Comb, Apolinère Enameled, With Hidden Noise, L.H.O.O.Q., and Why Not Sneeze?, which together embody Duchamp’s then-radical idea that an artist’s ideas are more important than craft or aesthetics. Also prominently featured are a number of Duchamp’s unique drawings and prints related to his magnum opus, The Bride Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors, Even (The Large Glass), including Pendu Femelle, Studies for the Bachelors in the Cemetery of Uniforms and Liveries, No. 2, Bride, and Nine Malic Moulds. Further insight into his unique working process is revealed by The Bride Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors, Even (The Green Box) and In the Infinitive (The White Box), which contain more than 150 facsimiles of Duchamp’s working notes for The Large Glass. His forward-thinking mindset can be seen in his later kinetic works, such as the Rotoreliefs (Optical Disks) and Cover of S.M.S. (Esquivons les ecchymoses des esquimaux aux mots exquis), which demonstrate the artist’s interest in creating works that call upon the brain to enhance, instead of merely process, the information received by the eye, deftly anticipating future experiments in film and Op art. The exhibition also includes portraits of Duchamp, as well as works by his contemporaries and those he influenced, including Man Ray, Tristan Tzara, Henri Cartier-Bresson, Diane Arbus, and Irving Penn, among others. An educational resource room for visitors of all ages is included at the end of the exhibition, featuring books about Duchamp and his practice and hands-on making activities inspired by the artist’s work. An interactive chess table is also featured at the end of the exhibition—a nod to one of the artist’s favorite pastimes.
Marcel Duchamp: The Barbara and Aaron Levine Collection is the first stage of a two-part exhibition on the life and legacy of Duchamp. The second stage of the exhibition, on view June 19–Oct. 15, 2020, examines Duchamp’s lasting impact through the lens of the Hirshhorn’s permanent collection, including significant works by a diverse roster of modern and contemporary artists.
Both exhibitions are organized by Evelyn Hankins, the Hirshhorn’s senior curator, and accompanied by a 224-page catalogue.
INSTALLATION AT THE HIRSHHORN
INSTALLATION AT THE HIRSHHORN
THE BOX IN THE VALISE
THE BRIDE STRIPPED BARE BY THE BACHELORS, THE GREEN BOX
HIRSHHORN MUSEUM SMITHSONIAN Marcel Duchamp: The Barbara and Aaron Levine Collection has been made possible with support from the Hirshhorn International Council and the Hirshhorn Collectors’ Council.
This is a series of of articles on the history of Wall Street in the city of New York. You can read the entire series here.
Illustrations: Colonial two shilling currency from the Province of New York (1775); the Walton House on Pearl Street, home of the Bank of New York from 1784 to 1787, by artist Abraham Hosier; the Manhattan Company Building at 40 Wall Street, erected in 1929–1930 and now known as the Trump Building; and the tricolor cockade used by the Democratic-Republicans and in the French Revolution.
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Martin Lewis, Peter A. Juley & Son Collection, Smithsonian American Art Museum J0001865
Born in Victoria, Australia, Martin Lewis was a printmaker who is known for his scenes of urban life in New York during the 1920s and 1930s. As a youth Lewis held a variety of jobs that ranged from working on cattle ranches in the Australian Outback, in logging and mining camps, to being a sailor. In 1898, he moved to Sydney for two years where he received his only formal art training. During this period he may have been introduced to printmaking; a local radical paper, The Bulletin, published two of his drawings.
Lewis left Australia in 1900 and first settled in San Francisco. He eventually worked his way eastward to New York. Little is known about his life during the following decade except that he made a living as a commercial artist and produced his first etching in 1915. Lewis’ skill as an etcher was noticed by Edward Hopper, who became a lifelong friend. In 1920, dissatisfied with his job, Lewis used his entire savings to study art and to sketch in Japan. He returned to New York after a two-year stay and resumed his commercial art career, but also pursued his own work as a painter and printmaker.
During the Depression, Lewis moved to Newtown, Connecticut, but later returned to Manhattan, where he helped establish a school for printmakers. From 1944-1952 Lewis taught a graphics course at the Art Students League in New York.
During his thirty-year career, Lewis made about 145 drypoints and etchings. His prints, like Shadow Dance and Stoops in Snow, were much admired during the 1930s for their realistic portrayal of daily life and sensitive rendering of texture. The artist’s skill in composition and his talent in the drypoint and etching media have received renewed attention in recent years. Lewis is one of the few printmakers of this era who specialized in nocturnal scenes. Some scholars consider his print Glow of the City his most significant work because of the subtlety of handling. A minute network of dots, lines, and flecks scratched onto the plate creates the illusion of transparent garments hanging in the foreground, while the Chanin Building, an art deco skyscraper, towers over the nearby tenements.
[This is an excerpt from the interactive companion program to the videodisc American Art from the National Gallery of Art. Produced by the Department of Education Resources, this teaching resource is one of the Gallery’s free-loan educational programs.]
Martin Lewis, Dock Workers Under the Brooklyn Bridge, ca. 1916-1918, printed 1973, aquatint and etching on paper, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of Frank McClure, 1975.82.2
Martin Lewis, Circus Night, 1933, drypoint and sandpaper ground on paper, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Bequest of Frank McClure, 1979.98.155
Martin Lewis, At the Wall, 1949, aquatint, sandpaper ground, soft ground etching on paper, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Bequest of Frank McClure, 1979.98.158
Martin Lewis, Quarter of Nine–Saturday’s Children, 1929, etching on paper, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of Page Cross, 1971.50
Martin Lewis, Subway Steps, 1930, drypoint on paper, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Museum purchase, 1971.345
Martin Lewis, The Great Shadow, 1925, drypoint on paper, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Bequest of Frank McClure, 1979.98.150
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)
SMITHSONIAN AMERICAN ART MUSEUM
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My favorite museums in DC are the National Portrait Gallery, that shares it’s building with the American Art Museum. These are not giant edifices on the Mall, but two gems on G Street a few blocks away. Next trip, save some time and visit. You will not be disappointed. Judith Berdy
Storied Women of the Civil War Era
May 24, 2019 – March 20, 2022A number of women rose to national prominence during the Civil War era. Some, such as First Ladies Mary Todd Lincoln and Julia Dent Grant, became public figures when their husbands’ careers thrust them into the spotlight. Others—such as abolitionist Anna Elizabeth Dickinson, actress and theater manager Laura Keene, and Union spy Pauline Cushman—achieved recognition on their own terms. Despite traveling different paths to fame, these women had at least one thing in common: they each visited one of Mathew Brady’s photography studios in New York City or Washington, D.C., and posed for a portrait in the popular, new carte de visite format.Similar in size to a European calling card, the carte de visite originated in France in the mid-1850s and was introduced to the American market in the late summer of 1859. Inexpensive to produce and collect, they fueled the rapid growth of a mass market for affordable photographic portraits. Americans not only collected images of their friends and family members but delighted in filling parlor albums with pictures of men and women of note. When the vogue for collecting such likenesses took hold, Mathew Brady’s studios met the demand by producing thousands of cartes de visite, including portraits of many of those women who captured the public’s imagination during the Civil War era.The exhibited photographs are modern prints made from original Brady carte de visite negatives in the National Portrait Gallery’s Frederick Hill Meserve Collection.
ABOVEKate Bateman 1842–1917 Born Baltimore, Maryland Just four years old when she made her acting debut, Kate Bateman enjoyed great success as a child prodigy until she outgrew such roles at the age of fourteen and briefly retired from the stage. She reemerged in 1860 in the title role of Evangeline, a dramatization of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s celebrated poem. She soon confirmed her status as a bona fide adult star with her portrayal of Julia in the 1862 production of The Hunchback. Her most famous role, however, was that of Leah in Leah, the Forsaken—a melodrama adapted specifically for her by playwright Augustin Daly. When Leah opened in New York City in 1863, Bateman’s stirring performance received a wildly enthusiastic reception from the public. Although Bateman would play many parts during her long career, the story of Leah, a Jewish maiden who is cruelly abandoned by her Christian lover, would remain her greatest triumph. Mathew Brady Studio (active 1844–94) Modern albumen silver print from 1863 wet collodion negative
Pauline Cushman 1833–1893
Born New Orleans, Louisiana A brief but harrowing career as a Union spy transformed minor actress Pauline Cushman into a major celebrity. In 1863, while appearing in a play in Unionoccupied Louisville, Kentucky, Cushman gained entrée to Confederate circles by publically feigning Southern sympathies. Hailed as the darling of the rebel troops, she gathered intelligence for the North until her duplicity was discovered. Arrested, tried, and condemned to hang, she was rescued by Union forces before the sentence could be carried out.
In recognition of Cushman’s service to the nation, she received a commendation from President Lincoln and was awarded the honorary rank of major. In June 1864, P.T. Barnum advertised that “MISS MAJOR PAULINE CUSHMAN! THE FAMOUS UNION SPY AND SCOUT,” would recount her “EXTRAORDINARY EXPLOITS and ADVENTURES” during a series of appearances at his American Museum. Barnum also advised patrons that “elegant” carte de visite portraits of Cushman would be offered for sale.
Mathew Brady Studio (active 1844–94) Modern albumen silver print from c. 1860-1870 wet collodion negative
Mary Todd Lincoln 1818–1882
Born Lexington, Kentucky When her husband was elected president in 1860, Mary Todd Lincoln welcomed her role as the nation’s First Lady. Yet, her years in the White House proved far from happy. Unjustly suspected by many of harboring Confederate sympathies, she quickly became a target of public criticism for everything from her Southern birth to her extravagant style of entertaining. Hurt and embittered by these attacks, Mrs. Lincoln was shaken further by the death in 1862 of the Lincolns’ beloved eleven-year-old son, Willie. Still suffering from that tragic loss, she was utterly devastated by her husband’s assassination at the hands of John Wilkes Booth in April 1865. Mrs. Lincoln never fully regained her equilibrium and spent her remaining years plagued by mentalinstability.
Mrs. Lincoln posed for this portrait in one of the elegant silk gowns fashioned for her by the talented African American dressmaker Elizabeth Keckley
Mathew Brady Studio (active 1844–94) Modern albumen silver print from 1862 wet collodion negative
Julia Dent Grant 1826–1902
Born White Haven, near St. Louis, Missouri Julia Grant served as a stabilizing influence in the life of her husband, Ulysses S. Grant. She remained steadfast in her devotion and her belief in his potential, despite a series of setbacks that plagued the couple during the early years of their marriage. When Grant reentered military service during the Civil War, his need for his wife’s companionship and counsel was such that Julia hastened to join him in the field whenever possible. Throughout the war, no general’s wife spent as much time in army encampments as she did. While traveling to meet her husband in Oxford, Mississippi, in December 1862, Julia narrowly avoided capture by Confederate raiders when they swept into the town of Holly Springs. She later joined Grant at his encampments in Jackson, Memphis, Nashville, Vicksburg, and City Point. At the war’s conclusion, Julia accompanied her husband to Washington, D.C, along with his victorious troops.
Mathew Brady Studio (active 1844–94) Modern albumen silver print from c. 1864 wet collodion negative
Queen Emma 1836–1885
Born Honolulu, Hawaii On May 6, 1865, less than a month after General Robert E. Lee’s surrender marked the end of the Civil War, Hawaii’s recently widowed Queen Emma embarked from Honolulu on a lengthy international tour. After an extended stay in England, where she met with Queen Victoria and raised funds for the construction of an Anglican cathedral in Honolulu, Queen Emma traveled to a host of European cities. In late July 1866, following a second visit to London and brief sojourn in Ireland, she sailed for New York City. As the first queen of any nation to visit the United States, she was welcomed with great fanfare that included a thirteen-gun salute when her ship docked on August 6. Warmly praised by the New York press, Queen Emma generated similar excitement when she traveled to Washington, D.C., where President Andrew Johnson feted her at a grand White House reception.
Mathew Brady Studio (active 1844–94) Modern albumen silver print from 1866 wet collodion negative
Lavina Warren Stratton 1841–1919
Born Middleborough, Plymouth, Massachusetts One of the most famous women of the Civil War era stood just thirty-two inches tall. Mercy Lavinia Warren Bump was a person with dwarfism who began her professional life at sixteen as a schoolteacher. She later embarked on a career as an entertainer when a cousin invited her to perform on his Mississippi showboat. In 1862, famed impresario P. T. Barnum recruited the “Lilliputian Queen”—now known as Lavinia Warren—to appear at his American Museum in New York City. There, she met Charles Stratton, a little person and Barnum protégé, who enjoyed international celebrity as “Tom Thumb.” When the pair announced their plans to wed, Barnum publicized the engagement and reaped as much as $3,000 per day in admission fees from those who flocked to see the couple. Their lavish “Fairy Wedding” in New York City’s Grace Church on February 10, 1863, provided a much-needed diversion for a war-weary nation.
Mathew Brady Studio (active 1844–94) Modern albumen silver print from 1863 wet collodion negative
Anna Elizabeth Dickinson 1842–1932
Born Philadelphia, Pennsylvania Acclaimed as “The Girl Orator” by radical reformer William Lloyd Garrison, Anna Elizabeth Dickinson was still in her teens when she launched her publicspeaking career. An ardent abolitionist and women’s rights advocate, she first found receptive audiences in Philadelphia, where she spoke before the Pennsylvania Anti-Slavery Society (1860) and later delivered an address titled “The Rights and Wrongs of Women” (1861). On the lecture circuit, Dickinson built a following among listeners captivated by her intensity, youth, and dedication to reform. She campaigned effectively for Republican candidates, and in 1863, she joined Frederick Douglass in promoting African American enlistment in the Union Army. On January 16, 1864, at the invitation of Congressional Republicans, Dickinson became the first woman to speak before the U.S. House of Representatives. In her address, she lauded the contributions of African Americans to the war effort and endorsed the reelection of President Lincoln.
Mathew Brady Studio (active 1844–94) Modern albumen silver print from 1863 wet collodion negative
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Winfred Rembert (1945-2021) was an artist from Cuthbert, Georgia who lived and worked in New Haven, CT. His artwork, painted on carved and tooled leather, displays memories of his youth—Black life in the Jim Crow South. His artistic vision calls forth vivid scenes from Georgia cotton fields and colorful characters from the juke joints and pool halls of Cuthbert. They also reveal his encounters with racial and police violence in the aftermath of a civil rights protest, and the seven years he spent on Georgia chain gangs. Rembert’s paintings, which have often been compared to the work of Jacob Lawrence, Romare Bearden, and Horace Pippen, have been exhibited at museums and galleries around the country, including the Hudson River Museum, the Montgomery Museum of Fine Arts, the Yale Art Gallery, and the Adelson Galleries in New York, and been featured in The New York Times, The Boston Globe, Huffington Post, Vanity Fair, and Hyperallergic.
Rembert was honored by Bryan Stevenson’s Equal Justice Initiative in 2015, and in 2016 received a United States Artists Barr Fellowship. In November, 2019, NPR’s Morning Edition aired a powerful segment featuring Winfred and Patsy Rembert produced by StoryCorps.
Rembert is the subject of two award-winning documentary films: All Me: The Life and Times of Winfred Rembert(dir. Vivian Ducat, 2011) and the New Yorker documentary Ashes to Ashes(dir. Taylor Rees, 2019), about the legacy of lynching in America.
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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Recently we wrote about The New York Parental School and its architect C.B.J. Snyder. Here is much more on the man who designed glorious school buildings.
Think of someone who had an enormous positive impact on the City, who was a City employee, a prolific builder who never got rich and whose name is scarcely known today. I give you Charles B. J. Synder.
Who was he? A builder of schools. At the turn of the 20th century, he designed and supervised the construction of 400 public schools in New York. Not only many schools, but attractive, safe and healthy schools. In his 1902 book “The Battle With the Slum,” the social reformer Jacob Riis wrote of Snyder: “Mr. Snyder builds New York’s schools, and he does that which no other architect before his time ever did or tried; he ‘builds them beautiful.’ In him New York has one of those rare men who open windows for the soul of their time. Literally, he found barracks where he is leaving palaces to the people.” A public school that “opens the windows of the soul” – not bad. So, what’s the story here?
Public funds for education became available after 1795, and in Manhattan a Free School Society was formed to disperse the state money. Later, a parallel Catholic parochial school system was constructed. A compulsory attendance law for the primary grades was enacted in 1874 but the city school system was soon overloaded by new immigration. Universal school attendance was never realized.
For many children, life was tough. In the winter of 1892, Riis visited eleven of the city’s sixteen riverside dumps to investigate the enforcement of two public health laws: one required that old rags be washed before resale, and the other forbade rag pickers from living in the dumps. He learned that neither law was enforced. Riis saw women and children working and living in the dumps. He wrote: “I found boys who ought to have been at school, picking bones and sorting rags. They said that they slept there, and as the men did, why should they not? It was their home. They were children of the dump, literally.”
For those who went to school, New York’s public schools were widely viewed as wretched. A Harper’s article (“New York Common Schools”) published in the winter of 1894-95 quoted Dr Rice, New York City Commissioner of Education: “The typical New York public school is a hard, unsympathetic, mechanical-drudgery school – a school in which the light of science has not entered.” The article describes how the schools “crowd little children into ill-ventilated rooms, and keep them for hours at work by the light of flaring gas…”
School construction? Horrible. Christopher Gray writes that “From 1884 to 1891, the architect for the Board of Education had been George Debevoise, whose work was described by the Real Estate Record and Guide in 1893 as ’a civic disgrace — warehouses have greater artistic value.’ Debevoise resigned suddenly amid suggestions that he had schemed with contractors to substitute cheaper materials in school projects — although criminal charges were never filed.”
In 1898, William H. Maxwell was appointed superintendent of the newly consolidated New York City school system. An Irish immigrant himself, Maxwell was a visionary advocate of improving education for the immigrant children then flooding into New York’s schools. Maxwell first fought and defeated the old corrupt system that permitted political bosses to hire teachers. He then sought better-trained, professional teachers and selected them based on their qualifications.
The flood of new New Yorkers intensified. In 1909, the U.S. Immigration Commission reported that over 70% of New York City students were children of immigrants. Between 1900 and the beginning of World War I in 1914, New York schools experienced a 60% increase in enrollment. Most of these new students were Russian Jews and Italians, either immigrants themselves or the children of immigrants. Moreover, the cultural backgrounds and languages of these “new” immigrants were quite different from those of the English, Germans, and Irish who had dominated immigration to America before 1900.
Overcrowding plagued New York schools. Many schools held double sessions. A single classroom with one teacher often held 60 and occasionally up to 150 children. In the primary grades, pupils frequently sat three to a seat. Many immigrant children had only three hours of instruction a day. During some years, as many as 30,000 new students, mostly immigrants, were simply turned away.
But a new light was dawning. In 1891, with the firing of Debevoise, the Board of Education had turned to Charlies Snyder, a slight man, born in Stillwater, north of Albany, a descendant of Dutch settlers in Saratoga Springs. He was 31 years old, an architect and mechanical engineer, had studied at Cooper Union and worked with the obscure New York architect William E. Bishop. Gray says that it’s not clear how he got the job, “but it must have had something to do with the banker Robert Maclay, who served as head of the school board’s building committee — Snyder gave his son Robert, born about 1894, the middle name Maclay.” Snyder would serve as Superintendent of School Buildings until 1923.
For the next three decades, Snyder presided over the greatest expansion of elementary, middle, and high schools in the five boroughs in the nation’s history. It was not uncommon for him to open more schools in a single year than existed in most other American cities. His buildings were big enough to hold the waves of immigrants flooding into the city, to have indoor play areas for the kids and auditoriums for the community, and light and air, the values of an age made real in brick, mortar and steel. “He found barracks, where he is leaving palaces to the people.”
Snyder’s schools are widely praised for their quality, longevity, and beauty. He worked in many styles – Beaux Arts, Flemish Renaissance, Italian palazzo, Collegiate Gothic and Renaissance Revival – but all embodied his commitment to health and safety issues, improving fire protection, ventilation, lighting, and classroom size. All schools were to be built of fireproof materials, capable of being emptied within three minutes. Snyder’s schools included auditoriums with projection rooms and organs, space for public art, laboratories, vocational training facilities, gymnasiums, swimming pools and roof playgrounds. The buildings were designed also to accommodate new after-school activities like recreation classes and evening lectures. Light was key. He pushed an “H” design, with enclosed outdoor play areas. In these buildings, 60% the exteriors were made up of windows, double what had been the standard; many of these were 10 feet high.
1910 Eastern District Brooklyn High School P.S. 64 sitting dormant in 2013, courtesy of GVSHP
1897 Public School 165 The first school to make use of Snyder’s H-plan Snyder’s Morris High School in the Bronx, shot by Jacob Riis in 1903. (MCNY).
Today, thirteen of his schools and five of his additions have been landmarked. Two-hundred and eighty of the buildings remain standing and 235 of these are still public schools (the rest have been converted to everything from condos to health facilities, artist housing, halfway homes and shelters). Some have been divided up into three or four schools; some are the subject of fierce legal battles as they crumble in place.
Today’s problem is clear. Half the city’s 1,100 main school buildings are already more than 50 years old, and nearly 40% were built before 1930. Many lack gymnasiums, air-conditioning and cannot accommodate computers and other modern technology. Many great neo-Gothic and Renaissance-style schools were built from 1891 to 1923 during Charles B. J. Snyder’s tenure as Superintendent of School Buildings. ”Some of these schools are almost like a church, quite elegant, handsome, massive and distinctive buildings that are likely to lead to lofty thoughts,” said Timothy D. Lynch, who has worked with both the construction authority and preservationists in rehabilitating old schools. ”Do you need 30 landmarked Snyder schools? Probably not. Is one better than the other? Probably not.”
These schools are expensive to rehabilitate — sometimes it costs as much as a new school. The City Comptroller estimates that it would take more than $9 billion to modernize 455 of the schools built before 1950. Preservationists and residents say they should not be destroyed. In many instances, they are the last architectural jewels in their neighborhoods. And over the decades, they have remained productive, providing classrooms for generations and acting as town halls.
Interesting how the work of this little known man – schoolhouses! – continues to roil our City, not because the buildings are so poorly built and unhealthy but because they added so much value to our communities.
From Jay Jacobson:Used at PS 87. Carried only peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. Our mother filled our lunchboxes with whatever was in the refrigerator and was on the cusp of spoiling. My brother hated four out of five lunches each week. He told mother that he wanted only PBJ because they were easier to trade with other kids. He never traded. Ate the PBJ from third grade through 8th grade. Probably had a few of the lunchboxes. They would last only year or two. Then the latches broke.
Alexis Villefane, Laura Hussey and Gloria Herman remember the 1950’s school-lunch box
Thanks to Bobbie Slonevsky for her dedication to Blackwell’s Almanac and the RIHSThanks to Deborah Dorff for maintaining our website Edited by Melanie Colter and Deborah Dorff
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THE PODCAST THAT EXPLORES BIG QUESTIONS THROUGH INTIMATE STORIES OUTDOORS
It’s hard to keep a resolution for even a few months, but visual artist Nick Golbiewski has kept his for nearly seven years.
The resolution involves daily drawings, outdoors. We spoke with Nick about how this project came about and about connecting with nature in even the most urban of environments.
PHOTO COURTESY NICK GOLEBIEWSKI
OUT THERE: What made you start the Nick’s Lunchbox Service Art Project?
NICK GOLEBIEWSKI: It started on New Year’s Day as a sort of New Year’s resolution: “I’m going to make a drawing every day.” So that’s one aspect of it, this desire to make something every single day. And also at that time in my studio I was working on these large, intricate paintings of city scenes in New York City that would take me three or four months to finish. So there were these long-term projects and also I can finish something in one minute if I need to, and it’s done for the day. That was the genesis of the project.
OT: How has this project made you appreciate nature more, especially in urban settings?
NG: My rules for the project are it has to be made on site and then photographed that day and then posted, eventually, that day. Looking through New York City and going through the seasons, it’s a call to find the magnolia blossoms blooming in the spring and chasing those. Looking back over the years, I can see this magnolia bloomed two weeks earlier than last year; it’s like these sparks of beauty. And also a way of connecting to the outside even if you’re in New York City. I live in Greenwich Village, and there’s lots of buildings but also little gardens around all the trees and the little square of dirt that’s cut out of the sidewalk. And I’m right next to the Hudson River. It’s great being able to be out there and stare at the water in the Hudson River and make a drawing of it for ten minutes.There’s always finding something happening and appreciating what’s there.
OT: Is there any one drawing in particular that has a fun story behind it?
NG: There’s a fun one just a few days ago where we were walking along the creek in Highbanks Park and my kids started talking to some other kids, at distance, because we’ve been starved socially.When drawings bring up conversations with people, I think that’s when I feel the most successful or interesting. As an artist I’m always really psyched when one day I’ll make a drawing of the entrance of the Metropolitan Museum and they’ll retweet that drawing. It makes me feel like, “Wow people are listening”.
PHOTO COURTESY NICK GOLEBIEWSKI
OT: Have you ever had to do one in just absolutely terrible weather?
NG: Yes! I remember this crazy snowstorm, walking out to the Hudson River. You could hardly even see the horizon of New Jersey. I think my drawing was one line across a paper: okay here’s the separation between sky and earth. Even that line stopped working halfway through with the pen and all the snow falling on it. That’s one of the most weather adverse ones, but since then I’ve learned that pencil works a lot better in the rain or snow.
OT: What are some tips you have for people who want to draw and paint on the go?
NG: Just make it very portable and small scale. I always carry a small sketchbook with me and recently a couple of pencils and a small sharpener. That’s all you need. I’ve added in watercolor lately and so that means a small watercolor set and an old, single-serving yogurt cup I’ve been reusing for a year now that I just fill up with a little water from a water bottle. And for me, the other thing is a phone to take a picture of it on site afterwards. For example, I would draw and paint the left half of the bridge at Highbanks Park in Columbus and then let the photograph show the right half so that the different sides could talk to each other.
OT: I really like those tips. You can start with the basics.
NG: Yeah I’ve been leading a couple Zoom drawing workshops this pandemic, and usually I start with doing a blind contour drawing in these workshops. It’s a sketch where you’re just looking at an object, and you put your mark making tool down to the paper, and you’re not allowed to look down at your paper nor pick up the pencil. It’s one continuous line, so if you’re drawing somebody’s face it will end up having this beautiful line quality where you are really looking at someone’s glasses and their nose but when you look down at the paper afterwards it’s like this face slanting across the page. Usually you get somebody to laugh once they look at that, but it also loosens up the drawing technique. Draw every day. It kind of works, you get better.
This interview has been edited for brevity and clarity.
photo courtesy of Nick Golebiewski
MORE LUNCHBOX IMAGES
Photo print of Washington Square Park, the daily drawing from Nick’s 8-year-long daily drawing project.
A fine art photo print from my “Nick’s Lunchbox Series” daily drawing project of the Wonder Wheel in Coney Island. On the boardwalk, I made a drawing, painted with watercolor, and photographed the sketchbook in front of the real ferris wheel.
1,000 drawings! Wow, this is the one thousandth consecutive daily drawing in my #NicksLunchboxService project, and I chose a place that’s really important to me—the chapel at Greenwood Cemetery, built in 1911 and designed by architecture firm Warren and Wetmore, who also did Grand Central.
1.6.22 Lunchtime drawing: Pearl River Mart on Broadway, picking up a porcelain planter for a plant cutting I have in the studio, and when I first moved to NYC virtually every present I gave came from this place (at their old location.)
1.7.21 Lunchtime drawing: Snow! Magical snow! A watercolor sketch of the Washington Square Arch in the snow. I especially like how the paint starts freezing on the paper and the crystals cause the pigment to shift in spots. Also, this is my ninth year of making this drawing-a-day project. What do you want to see more of?
2022
1.22 Drawing: Welcome to the new year, “Skate at your own risk” is good advice for 2022. Rockefeller Center ice time with the Christmas tree and Prometheus in gold.
BANK OF THE UNITED STATES FACADE AT THE METROPOLITAN MUSEUM AMERICAN WING LAURA HUSSEY AND ARLENE BESSENOFF GOT IT!!
OOPS OTHER CORRECT RESPONSES THIS WEEK CAME FROM ARON EISENPREISS AND ANDY SPARBERG. WE TRY TO KEEP UP BUT SOMETIMES OR “AI” FAILS US!!!
SOURCES
OUT THERE PODCAST #NicksLunchsServiceproject (C)
Funding Provided by: Roosevelt Island Corporation Public Purpose Funds Council Member Ben Kallos City Council Discretionary Funds thru DYCD Text by Judith Berdy
Text by Judith Berdy
Edited by Deborah Dorff ALL PHOTOS COPYRIGHT RIHS. 2022 (C) PHOTOS IN THIS ISSUE (C) JUDITH BERDY RIHS
All image are copyrighted (c) Roosevelt Island Historical Society unless otherwise indicated
Prior to the American Revolution, there were virtually no banks in the United States. However, Alexander Hamilton, who was George Washington’s key advisor on financial matters, was familiar with the central banks of England and the Netherlands which had been key factors in the growth of the economy of those countries.
Unlike some agrarian Virginian politicians such as Thomas Jefferson, Hamilton believed that banking and credit was the key to the nation’s future. In 1781 he encouraged Robert Morris, the recently appointed Superintendent of Finance for the Continental government, to form the Bank of North America in Philadelphia. For a time up, until the British surrender of New York, this was the only Bank in the colonies.
The Bank of New York
After the British surrender of New York City on Evacuation Day on November 25th, 1783, Hamilton returned to the city of New York. There, in 1784, he convinced the New York State Legislature to charter the Bank of New York, the only bank in the city until the Manhattan Company was chartered in 1799. Hamilton’s Bank of New York was instrumental in assisting New York merchants, whose city had been ravaged by the British during the Revolution, to rebuild the city’s economy. Banking in those days was in many ways a highly partisan endeavor however, and the Bank of New York was affiliated with Hamilton’s Federalist party, so that it behooved merchants seeking financing to support the Federalists.
The post-Revolution government was committed to enforcing New York State land forfeiture laws, which allowed the seizure of land from those who had sided with the British, a sizable portion of the residents of the city of New York. This policy violated the terms of the Treaty of Paris which had ended the Revolution which provided that the pre-war rights of British supporters would be respected. As a result, a number of Loyalist landowners sought out New York lawyers such as Hamilton to argue claims to their land which had been forfeited to the new State of New York.
Hamilton became an ardent advocate of the U.S. Constitution, which would provide what he considered a more rational federal system leading to an economically and militarily stronger United States. One provision of the new Constitution was the clause that said “No State shall impair the obligation of contract,” which was used to guarantee Loyalist rights to their prewar lands. The fight to ratify the U.S. Constitution in New York was thus very bitter, and was strenuously opposed by Anti-Federalists.
The fact that the Bank of New York had a monopoly position over banking in the city was undoubtedly significant factor in the Federalists’ ratification victory. However, in the next decade, there would be increasing bitterness in the city among many veterans of the revolution who felt that the pre-war aristocracy was reasserting itself in contravention of what they believed had been hard won rights.
Ultimately this feeling would be reflected in the rise of the Tammany Society and the creation by Aaron Burr of the Bank of Manhattan in 1799 as a rival to Hamilton’s Bank of New York.
The Bank of Manhattan
As the city of New York’s economy began to improve in the 1790s, many veterans of the Revolution felt they were left out of the prosperity and began to congregate in a civic organizations, especially the Tammany Society. Over time, these disaffected veterans and their supporters denounced the ruling Federalists and the increasingly autocratic administration of John Adams. Particularly galling was the administration’s Alien and Sedition Act (1798), which stifled free speech.
By 1799 a new political party, the Democratic-Republicans, (ancestors of today’s Democratic Party) was coalescing around Aaron Burr, a prominent lawyer and politician. They challenged the Federalists for control of the city government and the state legislature, although the Federalist Bank of New York’s monopoly on banking was a significant impediment to their efforts.
Burr promoted a civic project to fresh bring water into Manhattan by convincing the State Legislature to incorporate the Manhattan Company for this purpose. The charter for the company however, also permitted their excess funds to be invested in banking. In fact, the corporation made fairly minimal efforts on their water plan (although a hexagonal cistern remains the logo of JP Morgan Chase, its corporate descendant). As a bank however, it was successful in breaking the Bank of New York’s monopoly. Among the directors of the new Bank of Manhattan were Aaron Burr, 72-year-old Horatio Gates and other members of the Tammany Society.
Horatio Gates was a former British officer who had been the Patriot commander at the Battles of Saratoga and had afterward clashed with Alexander Hamilton, Washington’s young aide, and later Washington himself, whom he was alleged to be scheming to replace. Gates’ reputation significantly declined after his disastrous defeat at the Battle if Camden in South Carolina in 1780, and, unlike Adams and Washington, he had played no role in the formation of the new government after the Revolution.
Gates was active in the Society of Cincinnati, another organization devoted to perpetuating the liberties secured in the Revolution, and in veterans affairs more generally. In 1790, he moved from his home in Virginia to the city of New York, where he became friends with Aaron Burr and was convinced to run, as a kind of celebrity candidate, with former Governor George Clinton, in the 1800 election on the Democratic-Republican ticket. Gates and the other Democratic-Republicans won a stunning upset victory, which helped elect Thomas Jefferson over John Adams. (See Hamilton, Gates and the New York City Elections of 1800).
Gustave Myers in his history of Tammany Hall (1902) states that without the formation of the Bank of Manhattan and the Tammany Society, the Democratic-Republicans would have been wholly ineffective. By providing a vehicle through which merchants not allied with the Federalists could obtain financing, the Bank of Manhattan broke the stranglehold on the city’s merchant community, and subsequently chartered banks continued to expand the availability of credit. Ultimately, the largest faction of the Democratic-Republicans, the Democratic Party, would become the predominant political power in the city of New York for most of the 19th and 20th centuries.
The opening of banking to a broader base of merchants and the proliferation of bank charters subsequently granted by the New York State Legislature would lead to one of the most entrepreneurial periods in New York’s history. Although undoubtedly there were some speculative excesses, in the 25 years after 1800 election, the State of New York would become a national center for some of the most daring technological projects in the nation’s history (notably the Erie Canal, completed in 1825) which would lead the city to commercial dominance by the mid-19th century.
Postscript
One would think that JPMorgan Chase would be proud of its origins in the fight of Aaron Burr and Horatio Gates to oppose the monopoly of the Bank of New York and open banking more broadly. However, in the early 2000s Chase Bank ran an advertisement in Crains New York with a picture of Hamilton, boldly proclaiming that he and a group of far-sighted businessmen had founded the bank in the 1790s.
What happened Judge Crater? On August 6, 1930, New York Supreme Court judge Joseph Force Crater vanished on the streets of Manhattan near Times Square. The dapper 41-year-old’s disappearance launched a massive investigation that captivated the nation, earning Crater the title of “the missingest man in New York.”’ Joyce Gold, a NYC Tour Guide 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
NEW YORK ALMANACK BANK OF NEW YORK MELLON
This is a series of of articles on the history of Wall Street in the city of New York. You can read the entire series here.
Illustrations: Colonial two shilling currency from the Province of New York (1775); the Walton House on Pearl Street, home of the Bank of New York from 1784 to 1787, by artist Abraham Hosier; the Manhattan Company Building at 40 Wall Street, erected in 1929–1930 and now known as the Trump Building; and the tricolor cockade used by the Democratic-Republicans and in the French Revolution.
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FIRE WATCH TOWER IN MOUNT MORRIS PARK LAURA HUSSEY GOT IT!!!
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)
JUDITH BERDY ROOSEVELT ISLAND HISTORICAL SOCIETY
FUNDING PROVIDED BY ROOSEVELT ISLAND OPERATING CORPORATION PUBLIC PURPOSE GRANTS CITY COUNCIL REPRESENTATIVE BEN KALLOS DISCRETIONARY FUNDING THRU DYCD
